Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Did Scott Adams Convert On His Death Bed? || SLP627

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Did Scott Adams Convert On His Death Bed? || SLP627 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The creator of the Dilbert cartoons bestselling author and internet sage Scott Adams has died at the age of sixty-eight from prostate cancer.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: He spoke often and openly about his own diagnosis, and many people journeyed with him through his last days.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: He spoke of many things, including faith.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to get into what we can learn from the last days of Scott Adams' life.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Our condolences to Scott Adams' family, in particular, his former wife, who uh was with him in uh the latter part of his life and uh caring for him, and condolences to his friends and family.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Death is always a tragedy.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even if there are things that death reminds us of uh as it sharpens our mind as death does things, and we'll we'll get into what death actually accomplishes.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is always a tragedy in the same way that the death of Jesus accomplishes great good and yet is a tragedy.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we can look fully in the face of death, call it the tragedy that it is, mourn with those who mourn, uh, and learn some of the lessons.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure Scott Adams, uh, having commented on many people's lives and deaths, uh, will not mind us uh trying to learn from both his life and his death.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I want to learn five lessons, uh five questions that we're going to ask.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: But first, let's look at what Scott Adams said um on January the 4th, um, so uh around about a week and a half before he died on Rumble, uh live streaming platform to a very wide audience.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Scott Adams um is very reflective about what death means for him and what faith might mean for him as he approaches death.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what he says.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And especially when I talk about my own uh impending uh death, um many of my Christian friends and Christian followers say to me, Scott, you still have time, you should convert to Christianity.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I usually just let that sit because that's not an argument I want to have.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've not been a believer.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've not been a believer, but I also have respect for any Christian who goes out of their way to try to convert me because how would I believe you and believe your own religion if you're not trying to convert me?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I have great respect for people who care enough that they want me to convert and then go out of their way to try to convince me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna hear for the first time today that it is my plan to convert.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I still have time, but my understanding is you're never too late.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, uh any skepticism I have about reality would certainly be instantly answered if I wake up in heaven.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I do believe that the dominant Christian theory is that I was I would wake up in heaven if I have a good life.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't necessarily have to state something in advance.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so, to my Christian friends, yes, it's coming.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't need to talk me into it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I am now convinced that the risk reward is completely smart.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: If it turns out that there's nothing there, I've lost nothing.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I've respected your wishes, and I like doing that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: If it turns out there is something there, and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So with your permission, uh I promise you that uh I will I will convert.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I probably won't spend much time in that phase.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So don't expect it to happen today, okay?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But uh argument made, argument accepted.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then he moved on to other things.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a lot of people are noticing the the great similarity between that and what has come to be seen as Pascal's wager.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century mathematician, philosopher, and theologian, who at one point in his ponse um seems to go into a risk-reward calculation um uh about faith.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And even though that Blaise Pascal never did it like this, sometimes it's sort of set up as a two by two grid, and you've got, you know, imagine that you wager on God and he doesn't exist.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you haven't lost very much, there's nothing after death, and you've given up uh a Sunday going to mass.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the risk is low, uh, and the possible reward is very high, because if God exists and you do wager on him, then you have won infinitely.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you don't wager on God and God doesn't exist, well, once again, you haven't lost very much.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: But finally, here is the massive risk.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: If God does exist and you haven't wagered on him, you could lose infinitely.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so if this is the risk-reward calculation, what should you do?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: You should wager on God.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the popular imagination, what Pascal wrote in the 17th century has been reinterpreted quite significantly for the modern day, and it's been given a kind of a hyper-Protestant spin as well, because what it means to wager on God has become, in the popular imagination, simply making some kind of profession of faith, some kind of deathbed conversion.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Blaise Pascal was a Catholic, a Jansenist, he was not thinking in those terms.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it seems like Scott Adams has picked up that kind of form of Pascal's wager and run with it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the first question I want to ask and answer in this video is Is this Pascal's wager?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And my answer to that first question is no, that's not what Pascal was talking about originally.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: We had an expert on Blaise Pascal on the channel, Bishop Graham Tomlin, who is the author of Blaise Pascal, The Man Who Made the Modern World.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I got him to explain what Pascal meant in the 17th century.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what he says.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the the way the wager works is like this.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that Pascal would do, he had a lot of friends who were into gambling.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: He kind of then says, Well, life is a bit like that.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we find ourselves in the middle of life, like the middle of a game, where the outcome is uncertain.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we don't know.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a God?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Is there not a God?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um after this life is over, do we just go into nothingness or do we go to a eternal bliss or do we go into something worse, which is, you know, eternal torment and so on?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know, he says.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so then he says, sits down and says, Well, okay, well, it's you know, he's he's having a conversation with someone.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think the wager would have been in the form of a conversation.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he poses this question.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: He says, There's a coin being tossed at the far edge of the universe.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of come down head or tails.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Which one are you gonna bet?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Either God exists or God doesn't exist.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Heaven or hell.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: What are you gonna go for?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he actually says, 'cause I'm I'm quoting from your your own book here on page 325.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: You say, How will you wager?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next sentence he says, Reason cannot make you choose either.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Reason cannot prove either wrong, which is interesting.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, his conversation partner says to him, says to him, Well, is there, you know, how how do I choose?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is there are there good reasons one way or the other?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, reason's pretty limited in how he can help you in this, in this, this, this regard.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um So the guy says, Well, what do I do?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so Pascal says, Well, let's work out the probability.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes through a bit of mathematical exploration where he kind of says, Well, okay, let's think about it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you bet if you if you bet that God doesn't exist, um and you're right, well, you know, you haven't gained much, you haven't lost much.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're wrong, you stand to lose a great deal if you're wrong and God does exist.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um whereas he says, if you bet that God does exist and you're wrong, well, again, you haven't lost a great deal, maybe a little bit of sacrifice in this life, but you know, then you go into nothingness and that's it.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're right, you stand to gain a huge amount, which is you you you stand to basically win the jackpot, eternal bliss.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: So he's saying if you purely go on probability, if you were being entirely rational about it, you would always bet on belief.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: You'd always bet that God exists because you stand to gain a lot more that way, whereas the other way you stand to lose uh uh lose a lot more.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so that's that's the kind of bit of mathematical reasoning.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then his corus his kind of conversation partner comes back and says, Well, yeah, but hang on.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: I can't just believe something.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I can't make myself believe something that I don't.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And Pascal says, Well, okay, fair enough, I get that.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: But then he says, this is the killer point, I think.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: He says, at least get it into your head that the reason you don't believe is not because of your reason, it's because of your passions.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, that's what he's driving at.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: He's trying to get this person to realize why they don't believe.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's not because of their reason, it's not a rationality, it's not that they're being properly rational and Christians are being a irrational, faith-based people.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's because they don't want to believe.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you were really following reason and probability, you'd always bet on belief.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: See, that's the point that Blaise Pascal is misunderstood on.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Blaise Pascal is not saying just play a risk-reward calculation and make a deathbed conversion and trick God.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's not really telling you how heaven works or entrance to heaven works.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's really telling you how you work, how your passions and your reason interact.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: The point of the wager is to say if you are simply doing a risk reward calculation, then you'd be in church on a Sunday.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're not in church on a Sunday.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's not largely because you've been clever about it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: The clever thing to do would be to give up a Sunday and go to church.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you stand to gain a lot from that risk reward calculation.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you don't live your life according to a risk reward calculation, do you?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: You live your life according to what you want.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Pascal is very much a theologian and a philosopher of the heart.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: He's famous for saying the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: We are heart-led creatures who do what we want largely.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't find ourselves in church on a Sunday morning, it's largely because we don't want to go to church.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's far less that we are these clever Parisian philosophs who have rationally concluded that church is silly.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't rationally concluded that church is silly, have you, my fellow mathematician friends, says Blaise Pascal.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't concluded that church is silly because of your reason.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: You have not wanted to go because of your heart.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not how Blaise Pascal's wager is considered nowadays.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nowadays, we mischaracterize him and we imagine that he's telling us to do a risk reward calculation and make a cynical deathbed conversion, and that this is the way to get to heaven.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Pascal wasn't really telling you about how you get to heaven.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was telling you about how your heart is already in charge of you.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So is Scott Adams doing Blaise Pascal's wager?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: He is doing a version of Pascal's wager, but it's a version that I'm not sure Blaise Pascal himself would recognize, even if that's the version that has come to be known popularly.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: By the time Pascal's wager is being considered by modern 21st century YouTubers, um, it has changed very significantly from what Pascal meant.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the the second thing that uh I I think um Scott Adams is teaching us at this moment.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: What does our post-Christian dechurched digital age make of death and heaven and hell and faith?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it's I think it's fascinating.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's have a look at um a statement that was released um upon the death of Scott Adams.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's um read by his ex-wife who who um was with him um in his latter days and uh and really cared for him.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is very moving to hear this from Shelley Miles, and this is, I think, uh minutes from Scott Adams' death.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Here is a woman who um was married to him for many years and and loved him to the end.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_05: If you are reading this, things did not go well for me.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_05: I have a few things to say before I go.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_05: My body fell before my brain.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_05: I am of sound mind as I write this January 1st, 2026.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_05: If you wonder about any of my choices for my estate or anything else, please know I'm free of any creation or inappropriate influence of any sort.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_05: I promise.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_05: Next, many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_05: So here I go.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_05: I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with him.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_05: The part about me not being a believer should be quite quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_05: I won't need any more convincing than that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_05: I hope I'm still qualified for entry.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is very moving from Shelly Miles and uh let's let's be praying for Shelly Miles and for for all the friends and family of Scott Adams.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um Paul Vanderclay um responds really wisely as a pastor in uh California in the States.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you're not subscribed to Paul Vanderclay, um go and uh what are your life choices?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: What are you what are you doing in life if you're not subscribed to PvK?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: So go and subscribe to I I think he makes such an important point about what this moment says about church in a dechurched age, about spirituality in a post-Christian age, about mortality in a digital age.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um here is one of uh Paul's reflections at this moment.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: This is something that we're gonna keep talking about for a long time.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: But it's interesting that instead of having a pastor come and ask him, tell me about what you think about the state of your soul.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_04: That's not an uncommon question to ask someone in their later years, even if they're a church member, but often if they're not, often I'll get asked to go visit a husband or a father, and I'll be asked to um, because they're they're they're a Christian and they're concerned that their loved one might be slipping off into a Christless eternity.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_04: I'll say it that way.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: There's all kinds of ways we say this.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so as a pastor, I navigate that conversation with people.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um Scott does it himself, and he does it with social media.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Now, there's a lot to say about what he the move he just makes.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_04: A lot, and I've I've noticed that in news articles, Catholic, a Catholic newspaper has already started picking it up.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_04: And we will talk about this, but there's a lot to process with respect to this.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: But for now, the focus of this is the death of institutions, the death of the church, and the rise of the electronic surrogates.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Electronic surrogates.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's what we are developing in a dechurched age.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: We we don't have the rituals, we don't have the sacraments anymore, we don't have the liturgies to get us through these stages of life and death.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so we are coming up with digital surrogates.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of a priest to confess to, Scott Adams has uh a rumble audience to live stream to.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of a priest saying earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, um, on this very rumble live stream, they very movingly and appropriately do a liturgy that Scott Adams has kind of taught um his live streaming audience to do.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and and it's it's quite moving at as as they do with one another what Scott Adams would usually do as a sign-off to his live streams.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_06: It's um a life well lived that he touched so many of us.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_06: And Jack, I don't know why I feel like you're gonna be more composed.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_06: Do you want to do our sip today?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: No sound, Jack.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: No sound, he's on mute.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, Jack, are you on mute?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, no, I I said I I'd be honored.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_07: And uh I didn't think I'd be doing two shows like this so close to each other, but here we are.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_07: So folks, as everyone knows, all you need is a cup, a mug or a glass, a tankered chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_07: Fill it with your favorite liquid.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_07: We like coffee.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_07: And join us all now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_07: Even saying goodbye to old friends.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Simultaneous joke.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it happens out.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Scott.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_06: Thanks, Jack.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I will drink to that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh very moving, but uh what is inescapable is you cannot do without liturgies, you cannot do without sacraments, you cannot do without you know, take this cup, take drink, um, in remembrance of the death of our internet sage.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um but this is what we are kind of having to do to come up with um digital liturgies, uh to come up with sacraments, to to come up with these embodied forms which more or less replace the church.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so um Scott Adams kind of made his confession not to a priest, but to the internet, and the internet responded um by having a kind of a sacramental liturgical moment at a distance, disembodied from one another, but but trying to be as embodied as we possibly can be across a rumble live stream.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's the second thing we learn about this moment.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um firstly, we've asked the question, is this Pascal's wager?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um certainly it's not Pascal's wager in the form that Pascal intended it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um secondly, what does this say about church in a digital post-Christian age?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it says that we are a much more fractured people who are having to make stuff up as we go along, um, and there might be a cost to that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thirdly, um, what do we learn about faith from this?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because Scott Adams calls himself repeatedly not a believer, but he's looked at the risk-reward calculation and then wanted to say, I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior, and I look forward to an eternity with him.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, is that belief?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is that faith?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole reason why we're asking this question is because the way Pascal's wager in this sense has been set up is that um the gates of heaven swing upon a certain profession of faith.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: You must assent to the right ideas.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: You must note them, they must be the correct kind of ideas that mentally you assent to.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps there's also a sense that you kind of got to mean them.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or to really, really mean them, or really, really, really mean them if it's going to be faith.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the huge problems is we have this hyper-Protestant to the point of non-Protestant, to the point of kind of non-Christian almost view of what faith is.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: We've started with the biblical idea that we're saved by faith, and I believe absolutely in the Protestant sense of we are saved by faith alone, no, no works contribute to our salvation.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm absolutely happy to be a Protestant and to say we are saved by faith alone, in Christ alone, it's all a gift of God's grace alone, it's all to God's glory alone.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I completely believe in the solas of the Reformation, if you know what those are, the the alone statements of the Reformation.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Through Christ alone, by God's grace alone, we're saved by faith alone, and it's all to God's glory alone.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: We learn this in scripture alone.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I totally believe all that stuff, but we have reified faith.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Reified is just a fancy way of saying we have thing-ified faith.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, the Latin word for thing, re-s.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have turned faith into the thing that you and I must produce in order to offer it to St.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Peter at the pearly gates, and then those gates open up because we found this thing called faith, and the thing that we have found in our pockets is a key, and that key called faith is the thing that unlocks the door into heaven.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm allowed to um use broad brush strokes and caricatures, I think the the reification, the thing-ifation error that Protestants lapse into characteristically, is to make faith into a thing that we, the believer, drum up from within ourselves.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the characteristic Catholic error is to reify grace.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: To thingify grace, you know, and so even though the angel says to Mary, hail Mary, full of grace.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's truly a biblical understanding.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: But there can be within a caricature of Catholicism.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'll own a caricature of Protestantism and I'll present to you a caricature of Catholicism, but there's enough, um, there's enough similarity between the caricature and the real thing that I think it's still fruitful to do this.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hail Mary, full of grace.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's almost like Mary is kind of full of this.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: She's full of this thing called grace.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the church, through its sacraments, can turn on the taps of grace so that you can go to Mary, you can go to the church, you can go to the treasury of merit, and sacramentally you can kind of download the thing called grace.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have enough grace, then there's salvation for you.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the characteristic Catholic caricature.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Grace is a thing that you need to download through the church and its sacraments.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: The characteristic kind of uh Protestant caricature is that faith is a thing that I need to drum up and I need to make the correct kind of, you know, mental ascent.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And because of that, then the gates of heaven open and through I go.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems to me that um Scott Adams has picked up, and it's our fault, it's the church's fault, it's the Protestant Church's fault.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have falsely communicated that the gate is swinging on the hinges of our correct theology.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: When biblically speaking, the door is Jesus himself.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is the real problem with both the Catholic caricature and the Protestant caricature, is that we're not saved by a thing at all.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're saved by Jesus, the person of Jesus.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: God's grace is, he has given us the person of Jesus to simply be received.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the gift is his grace, and it's purely a gift.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: It is not merited, it is not earned, it is not deserved, it is a gift, therefore it is by grace alone.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And to receive that gift simply is what faith is.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Faith is not my contribution to my salvation.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Faith is a description of me having received Jesus.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: John chapter 1, verse 12, to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those are not two different things.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: John doesn't tell you two different things to be saved.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's always telling you to believe.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: There is one thing to do to be saved, it is to believe in Jesus.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: But John in John chapter 1, verse 12, gives us the parallel statement.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's very helpful that he describes receiving Jesus as believing in Jesus.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: To believe in Jesus is to receive Jesus.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Faith is not a thing that you contribute to your salvation, and the gates of heaven do not swing open upon your correct theology.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: If that were true, you would undermine faith instantly.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what the caricature Protestant says.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: The caricature Protestant says we are saved by faith alone and not by any moral works of our own.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so instead of being saved by moral works, no, we're saved by this other thing called faith.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this other thing called faith, I'm going to offer to God.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: You've just turned a moral work into a mental work.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still a work.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's still you.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's still something you can boast in.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is still something that is your contribution to all things.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's silly.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's silly to think that all eternity hinges on you getting your theology right.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Catholic caricature is really not right.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: The Protestant caricature is really not right.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: We are saved by God's grace alone in giving us Christ, who is alone our salvation, to be received by faith alone.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: No mental works and no moral works.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And all of that is to God's glory alone.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: That is what faith actually is.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we as a church have not done a great job of communicating that out into the world.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that certainly on the Protestant side of things, when we do evangelism and when we try to evangelize Scott Adams and we try to tell him about Jesus, what he hears, and maybe this is his problem and what he hears, and not our problem and what we've said, but what he has heard is that he needs to say these words about Jesus.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that it's those words that save him rather than Jesus.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the fourth thing to say.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: What what what does this moment teach us about what salvation is?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And again, salvation is something that I think we have reified.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: We've turned it into a thing.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Salvation is the golden ticket, right?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Salvation is bliss in the ninth dimension.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Salvation is an eternal life that is all the way over there and in the far distant future.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in the Bible, eternal life is Jesus.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: You could go to John 17, verse 3.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is eternal life that they know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ you have sent.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or 1 John chapter 1, you know, the life that was there in the beginning.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: He appeared, and we proclaim him to you, right?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is life.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: He is the one who, before the foundation of the world, is being filled by the Father with His Holy Spirit.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: He is brimful of the Lord, the giver of life.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: He is eternal life, such that to have him is eternal life, and not to have him is not to have eternal life.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, if you are facing death, and we're all actually facing death, whether we know it or not, but if you have a life-threatening diagnosis right now and you are walking very consciously through the valley of the shadow of death, to use the language of Psalm 23, what you need is not a correct profession of faith.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: What you need is a good shepherd to walk with you through that dark valley and out into the feast at the end.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: He is salvation.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is salvation.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Which is the main reason why the concept of a deathbed conversion is so confusing.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because we imagine what I really want to do is to have life first and then have my conversion at the end of all things.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's fine.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to live now, and then on my deathbed, I'll sort stuff out with the big man upstairs, and then eternal life can happen.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there's lots of reasons why that's unfortunate and confused.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one of them is even when you're days away from death, you cannot know it.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Scott Adams seemed to think that he had quite a bit more time than he actually did.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he was, even within days of death, putting off a deathbed conversion, even when he was effectively on his deathbed.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this this and at that point, I think Pascal would say, yeah, no, that's what we're like.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Scott Adams, that's what we're like.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: We are these sorts of creatures who are constantly either wagering on God or betting on ourselves.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: We are always these sorts of creatures who are always either investing in ourselves and our flesh and our own strengths and giftings and all that sort of stuff.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: We are either those sorts of creatures or we are abandoning ourselves to Jesus and knowing life in Him.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: We are all always doing that.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so the idea that you would first live and then make a deathbed conversion, that's not really how faith works, it's not how salvation works, it's not how Jesus works, it's not how human hearts work.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: We are all always wagering.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: We are all always leaning into something, whether it is self or whether it is Christ.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you are walking through the valley of deep shadow, you can know eternal life right now.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because eternal life is a person.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this good shepherd, he knows his sheep and his sheep know him.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you need him in order to walk through that dark valley.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: You need to be converted in order to do your deathbed well.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Don't wait for your deathbed in order to get converted.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Most people on their deathbeds are too ill to know even what they're going to eat.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: They don't really understand the medication that's happening, they don't understand so much.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you're waiting for your deathbed in order to convert, I don't think you understand heaven or Jesus or faith or salvation, or yourself.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Convert first, and then you can do your deathbed well.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not to say that I know what has happened to Scott Adams.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think I don't think he has understood what conversion and faith really mean.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think he does know that.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: But that is not to say that he could not be saved.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um precisely because we're saved by Jesus and not by our mental work of understanding faith correctly.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus might well save Scott Adams because of what Jesus is like, not because of what Scott Adams is like.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Jesus will save me, not because of what I'm like.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think he has saved me because of what he is like.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we can all have hope for Scott Adams and for our loved ones who are walking through the valley of the shadow of death because of the fifth point that I want to talk about.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: What can we learn about death?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one thing that we can learn about death is that death is an evangelist.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Death is a really profound evangelist because what is death constantly doing?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Death, as it comes upon us and as we feel the creep of the shadow of death upon our lives, it strips us of our strengths.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: It strips us of our certainties, it strips us of our resources, it strips us of our hope in ourselves and our own mortal ability to make life work.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the entire dying process is evangelistic because all of it puts a profound question mark over me, my flesh, my strength, my resources, my goodness, my ability to navigate anything.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as I am lowered and lowered and lowered and lowered down into my deathbed, and lowered and lowered and lowered further down into the grave, to be flat on your back is the best opportunity to look up.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Psalm 90 says, Teach us to number our days, O Lord, that we might get a heart of wisdom.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Ecclesiastes 7 says you learn so much more wisdom from the house of mourning than you do from the house of feasting.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Death is an evangelist.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is saying, Are you going to look up now?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now that you're flat on your back, are you going to look up now?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And at that stage, Romans 10 says that salvation is really easy.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually really easy for us.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: It it costs death and hell for the living God.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: But for us, it's just a matter of saying Lord to Jesus.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Romans 10, verse 9.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: That we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead and you'll be saved.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: We we cry out, Lord, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Death is evangelizing us constantly, saying, Glenn, you do not have resurrection power within yourself.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: But are you are you willing to call on another who does have that power?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to call on Jesus?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to just say, Lord, Lord, Lord?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Death is evangelistic, and I've seen quite a number of deathbed conversions.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: As an Anglican clergyman, I deal with people towards the end of their lives.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen many people in the latter stages of their life be taught by death.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, obviously, death and disease can have a hardening effect, just as evangelism can have a hardening effect.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody who is being moved towards faith in Jesus can harden themselves.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: They can become embittered by this process.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying it's automatic by any means.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: But just as evangelism can either harden or soften people, I think death can either harden or soften people.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I've definitely seen death soften people to the point where your earthly strengths are stripped.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: And just my final word is Scott Adams at the end of his final statement that was uh read out to him by Shelley Miles.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: He says this about what a life well lived looks like.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_05: If I got any benefits from my work, I'm asking that you pay it forward as best as you can.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_05: That the legacy I want.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_05: That's the legacy I want.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Those are beautiful last words that we pay it forwards.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this is actually how life and salvation works as well.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: That we are those to whom God has offered life.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: We don't pay God back.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: God offers us Jesus on the cross, and by the Spirit He is given as a pure gift to us.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: We receive Jesus with no moral or mental works to pay for it.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: And having received Jesus, then by the Spirit we overflow and pay it forward to others, and pay it forward to others and pay it forward to others.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that Scott Adams has recognized is the good life.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm saying to you is this is God's life.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: God's life is a life of superabundant, gracious overflowing.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: He pays it forward, offers you salvation without payment, sets you on your feet, and you don't really pay it back to him.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: You pay it forward to others.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Scott Adams got that totally on an earthly level, and I'm saying to you, it's also how heaven works.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's also how salvation works.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's also how eternity works.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: There you are.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Five lessons.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I hope you don't think that uh that that is cynical to use the tragic death of somebody to teach lessons, but I do think Scott Adams um spoke about lives and deaths uh himself.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he would mind us uh talking in these ways.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let's keep Shelley Miles and all his uh friends and family in mind.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: But those are the five things.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is this Pascal's wager?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: What does this say about our post-Christian digital age?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: It says a lot, actually.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: What can we learn about faith?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Faith is not a thing.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: What can we learn about salvation?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Salvation is not a thing.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's being offered Jesus to have life with.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what can we learn about death?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Death actually is an evangelist.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And let's be praying for ourselves and for our friends and family that death would do its work of awakening us to our frailty and our fragility that we might call on Jesus, the one who is the resurrection and the life.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that will do for us here.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Please go and do 321 go to three two onecourse.com and start an account.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love you to uh go and do that and experience life according to Jesus.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, do give the channel a subscribe and we'd love to catch you on the next video.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: God bless.