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EP066 The Battlefield Notes: Tools For Studying Your Bible · The Immutable Word

• 0:00
  And I don't confuse reading with study. I think a lot of our brethren,
• 0:03
  they think studying is reading or reading is studying. They're two different efforts.
• 0:09
  Okay. When I say study, that's a separate endeavor. That's where I'm going to
• 0:13
  devote. Again, I'm going to invest that time where it's going to be two or three
• 0:15
  hours where literally I'm going to dig through my notes.
• 0:19
  I'm going to organize them. I'm going to obey those very specific hermeneutical
• 0:23
  procedures and principles.
• 0:25
  We'll talk about some of those later, you know, maybe in another episode.
• 0:28
  But, you know, allow the Bible to interpret itself and magnify the Word above everything else.
• 0:33
  Welcome back to The Immutable Word. Robert and I are back for another episode.
• 0:38
  Hope you've been enjoying the previous episodes. We did one on stewardship of,
• 0:42
  with money in general, covering some principles from R.B.
• 0:45
  Ouellette's book. Before that, we covered a series about the Baptist acrostic.
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  And I'm hoping to hear from you guys about what you think about that.
• 0:54
  If you had some experiences on the street, if you've been able to use some of that framework.
• 0:59
  And then any questions about finances in general to see if it's been helpful
• 1:02
  for you in your everyday finances when it comes to budgeting or dealing with debt.
• 1:07
  And just talk about some of the baby steps. We could always do more episodes
• 1:11
  and talk about money a bit more deeply and the biblical principles behind that.
• 1:16
  So, anyways, we'd love to hear from you and let us know what you think.
• 1:19
  Robert, how's it going with you? Actually, pretty good.
• 1:23
  I know um you just recently met with your dad and we talked about him a little
• 1:28
  bit before when we were doing the uh cult series,
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  yeah yeah just as a reminder for some people maybe not everybody remembers or
• 1:36
  some new listeners may not be aware but your,
• 1:39
  dad my stepdad been a JW missionary for what 30 plus years somewhere around
• 1:44
  there yeah back in the early 90s right and,
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  so you know just You know, without going,
• 1:52
  all the way back in history, growing up with him and all that stuff, he wasn't a JW then.
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  You know, typical Army guy and, you know, a drinking problem,
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  things like that. Just, but, you know, overall, he was a lot younger than our mom.
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  And I'm saying all this to say that he's the last person I would have ever thought to become a JW.
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  You know, and so, especially when you think about JWs. And I know that,
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  you know, you used to visit him when you were younger and he would take you to the JW.
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  Kingdom Hall. The Kingdom Halls and conferences and things like that.
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  So you had a lot of exposure to it, which is interesting. So if you got,
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  if, you know, if anybody's interested, go back and listen to our cult series
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  where we talked a lot about that and how JWs,
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  kind of train, you know, their ranks to prepare how, I mean,
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  cause a lot of, a lot of people don't realize, but JWs.
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  I would say, you know, and other groups, Calvinists and stuff like that always
• 2:48
  tend to be Seventh Day Adventists tend to be ex-Baptists.
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  And it's just, it's, it's kind of a sad legacy to be honest with you.
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  We just did the Baptist Legacy or the Baptist Series, Baptist History,
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  and we're talking about the doctrinal standpoints.
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  And a lot of Baptists can't even recite those. They'd be—,
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  They'd be challenged to kind of go through those acronyms, right,
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  that acronym through each one of them, and to be able to recite to you and even
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  give you off the top of their head two or three verses to support each point.
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  But that, I think, lends itself to the reason why, you know,
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  a lot of JWs tend to be ex-Baptists, because ex-Baptists don't study their Bible, right?
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  Yeah. I mean, they're easy victims because they don't.
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  A lot of them are converted Baptists. I remember when going to the Kingdom Hall
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  as a kid, because I used to visit them every summer, my parents,
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  our parents, our mom and him were divorced.
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  And so, I'd go back and forth every year and spend the summer and go to the
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  Kingdom Hall. And a lot of the people I'd meet, they used to be Baptists.
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  And they would talk to me about it because they know that I was in the Baptist faith.
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  Our stepdad was a pastor in Del Rio and a couple of other places as well.
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  And so, they were always talking to me about it. And I was easily confused.
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  I was just pretty young, you know, at the time, probably like starting from,
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  eight years old on. Thank you.
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  By that time, our parents were already saved and been saved for a few years.
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  At the time, our stepdad was a pastor there in Del Rio, Texas.
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  And whenever I'd visit, they'd really focus on talking to me about it.
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  Not like forcing it down my throat or anything.
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  They were very studied.
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  And they had a watchtower. They would take my Bible, because I used to bring
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  my King James Bible with me, and they'd show me verses.
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  And I would come back home with a lot of questions and a lot of doubt about
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  what we believed and very convincing.
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  And I attribute that to because I was a kid, easily gullible at that time,
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  but it was still very convincing.
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  I remember it to this day. So it had that much of an impact that it stuck with
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  me about how studied the folks are. And every night they would do devotions
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  and study things from the watchtower.
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  And they were very devoted to it.
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  So judging from that experience, knowing what you know today, right?
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  And I know that even when you were a teenager, you were kind of doing some serious
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  study, trying to evaluate what JWs believe against what we believe.
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  You know, so kind of going through, and they're not shy about their doctrine.
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  I mean, they have plenty of material that you can study. They won't take our
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  material. They won't take a track from us or anything that might counter their
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  arguments, but they'll definitely give you whatever study material they have of theirs.
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  So, just by judging from that, what would you say is,
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  Well, I'm trying to think of how to ask the question is, you know,
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  as far as a warning to some of our listeners, and I'm not saying that our listeners
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  would fall victim to that, but let's just say they have friends,
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  family, perhaps might be persuaded by some of those JW arguments.
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  What's the one thing that stands out based off of what the JWs push and how
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  they challenge, you know, like these ex-Baptists?
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  What would you say stands out the most as far as what Baptists should be concerned
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  about and kind of be aware of?
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  I'd say the number one thing, because you could talk about the different doctrines.
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  You could talk about the Trinity, because they don't believe in the Trinity.
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  They don't believe that Jesus Christ is God.
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  He's a God and several things like that. and you can easily get stuck in the weeds and,
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  you can get confused because they can use your Bible and take verses out of
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  context, which is how they go about it and convince you otherwise.
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  So, I'd say being rooted in the Word of God and knowing your Bible is key and
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  having a sure footing, because when they try to do that, you immediately recognize
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  that that's what's happening.
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  Cherry picking verses, we talked about that. You'd pick that up very quickly
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  and you can quickly challenge them on that and stay on that and then be able
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  to argue and defend your position easily.
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  But you have to know, you need to be able to recognize those signs and recognize
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  those behaviors and see when they're doing that.
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  So I'd say that's always the key thing, because that's how they do it.
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  They would show me verses, cherry pick them, and that's how they prove their points.
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  And it sounds very convincing at the very surface, at the surface level.
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  Yeah, when you, there's an apologist, he has a kind of a famous saying,
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  he says, never quote a verse.
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  And we talked a little bit about that, the context to me, you know,
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  the fallacy, meaning, you know, cherry picking verses, taking verses out of context.
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  And that's the problem is I can make, I can pull one verse and completely destroy
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  somebody's, you know, theological base based off of one or two verses. It's not hard to do.
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  So one of the things, I guess, in my experience dealing with JWs,
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  Mormons, Muslims, any of them, really, Seventh-day Adventist,
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  Church of Christ, is context.
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  It is so easy for them to pick one or two verses, and those one or two verses sounds convincing.
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  But the problem is, is they're not taking the entire context of the chapter
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  and the book and the theme and the author, where it's at in the Testament, right division.
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  You know, is this to the Jew, the church, the Gentile? They don't take any of
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  that into context, basically.
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  And so, like, for example, one of their verses—,
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  There's no remembrance of me under the sun. I think it's in Ecclesiastes.
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  They draw a lot of passages, right? And it says there's no remembrance of the
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  after the grave. I think it's in Psalms.
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  So when you look at that, they go, well, see, if there's no remembrance of you
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  or there's no life after death, you know, in the traditional Christian sense,
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  then perhaps everything you believe about life after death is wrong.
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  And so they, but they won't go into the context, like, for example,
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  in Solomon, no, I'm sorry, Ecclesiastes.
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  That phrase, under the sun, it's something like 25, 30 times in the book of.
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  Ecclesiastes, because Solomon is writing from the perspective of a human being here on earth.
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  He's not writing about eternal things. You know what I mean?
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  Because everything that he's talking about is his practical,
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  pragmatic experience here on earth.
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  And so, if you don't understand that about the book of Ecclesiastes,
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  it's easy to pull one or two verses out of context.
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  So, you know, that's one thing. I just know from my experience,
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  basically what you're saying is it's easy for them to—and Mormons do this too.
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  Mormons sound Christian. Catholics sound Christian.
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  Right? Seventh-day Adventists, man, they'll challenge you and say,
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  so are you saying that Jesus Christ destroyed the law? And then they'll go and
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  show you the verse where Jesus says, I'm not come to destroy the law, I've come to fulfill it.
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  So are you saying the law is destroyed? Is that why? So you're saying you don't observe the Sabbath?
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  You see what I mean? So they'll do this. And again, there's so many just tricky
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  ways, you know, of how they manipulate into a scripture.
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  But you know what I think, this is my take on it, is, okay, I expect,
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  you know, a Mormon, J.W., Seventh-day Adventist, Church of Christ,
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  Catholic, I expect them to do that.
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  But I don't expect a Bible-believing Baptist to do that.
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  And unfortunately, there's some of our brethren that do exactly that.
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  They'll tell me John the Baptist is the first Baptist.
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  Why? Because his name's Baptist. I'm like, are you serious?
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  So so why was he baptizing because people were recognizing the death burial
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  and resurrection of jesus christ romans chapter 6,
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  colossians chapter 2 of course not that's not that's not why he was baptizing
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  but they'll look at it that way and our baptist brethren are so ignorant about
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  the bible and proper hermeneutics and again hermeneutics is just the way we study our bible,
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  that it's so easy for them to get duped into this these false religions because
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  all you got to do is point out the error, the theological error.
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  Their interpretive error, and say, well, that's not what it says,
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  and you go back and take them back to the context.
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  And you can sit there and upset their entire theology just by going through
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  the context. So anyway, I think the moral of the story there is,
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  Like you just said, know your Bible, and what that means is know the context.
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  Know why that passage is there. There's immediate context, there's broad context,
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  right? Chapter context, book context, so forth and so on.
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  I mean, that's really the center of it all is knowing your Bible.
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  And you'll be able to quickly pick up the signs of this. It doesn't matter who
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  it is. Like you said, it could be a Catholic, it could be a Mormon,
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  it could be, what does this matter who you're talking to?
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  You'll know when it's happening, but you've got to know your Bible.
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  You've got to study it out. And you got to ask questions. It's like a lot of
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  the things that we've covered before. If you don't have the answers,
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  I don't have all the answers.
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  My dad, for example, he's well-studied. He knows his stuff inside and out.
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  And I'm sure he would get me in a corner very, very quickly.
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  But I would use that opportunity to steal man his position. Well, tell me more.
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  Well, there you go. Tell me more about what you believe in your position.
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  Maybe I might not be able to get to it now, but I'm going to go and study it out.
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  And that's how you learn the Bible, too, because you're provoked to be able
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  to study those things out. There is an answer.
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  You may not have it in hand, but go and check it out. You don't have to be able
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  to answer it all the time.
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  And just going back to my dad, we're kind of covering different themes here.
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  We're covering knowing your Bible.
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  We touched upon a little bit of the cult mentality as well, and also taking,
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  verses out of context, and you can quickly get into a corner,
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  and then you're trying to think of a response.
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  But going back to the cult piece of it, like my dad, you know,
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  I love him. He's an honorable man.
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  He got involved in the Jehovah's Witness domain back in the early 90s.
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  And this was back, I think you remember him growing up back in the day.
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  He was a wild, pretty wild character back in the day.
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  And he had a pretty rough life down in the dumps trying to figure things out.
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  And he comes across Jehovah's Witnesses, and they practically saved his life, right?
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  And they're a community of people that are loving.
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  You know, we talked about love bombing, and that's part of a cultish mentality,
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  and being part of a family, and they have a great support structure.
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  And anybody that's going through a rough time, that's very appealing.
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  And having that support structure and having those people around you,
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  it makes you feel like I've finally found the life I was looking for.
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  I finally found something fulfilling and purposeful.
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  And so I think physically that organization saved his life, probably.
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  Right and that's what really pulled it in many yeah many i mean like 12-step
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  program right we can look at.
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  We can look at people that have taken marriage counseling yeah or counseling
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  in general right maybe they've they've listened to leadership seminars and you know or
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  you know reprogram their lives to be more productive you know what i'm saying
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  there's a lot of external yeah factors that can be involved in getting somebody grounded.
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  Exactly. And so, yes, those things about their personal life is positive.
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  There's still the eternal factor that's still missing. And, you know,
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  he needs Jesus like anybody else and so does his family.
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  And there's, there's a, we've talked about it before. We haven't done,
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  I can't remember. I don't know if we've done a full episode on it,
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  but you know, the faith fact feeling or facts, faith feeling, right?
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  Yeah, we haven't done an episode, but we've brought it up a couple times.
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  But there's an order, right?
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  That we build, we put our faith in the facts, but they have to be the right
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  facts. So it'd be facts, feeling, faith.
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  And so, I'm sorry, I just said it backwards. I'm already getting out of order.
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  What's wrong with it? But yeah, it would be like facts, faith,
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  feeling, or feeling. What's the order again? It's fact, faith, feeling.
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  Okay. Fact, then faith, and then the feeling follows. Because the idea is that
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  we hear the facts, we put our faith in the facts, and then the right feeling comes.
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  But in a lot of these churches, a lot of these religions, it's about the emotion, it's about the feeling.
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  And that's why the bite model that we covered is the emotional control.
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  The behavioral remember yeah behavioral yeah yeah right you have behavioral
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  control information control thought control and then emotional control and that's
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  the emotional control is where you're now part of a family,
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  right i don't want to you know this family's helped me this family supported
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  me this family strengthened me none of those things are bad in and of themselves,
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  except for the fact that they're used as a manipulative practice to teach false doctrine,
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  They're putting their faith in the wrong facts,
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  And so And that's what's the terrible tragedy of it all Right.
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  But I would say this Kind of going back to you know the Baptists Brethren,
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  kind of support them and getting more, you know, prepared to deal with maybe those types of groups.
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  I had a young man ask me today about how I study my Bible.
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  And so I have principles that I study my Bible by, but I think he was also looking
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  for some practical steps, right?
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  One of the practical, I kind of put together four phases of practical steps.
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  And like, for example, reading.
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  Number one is I read. I just read my Bible. Just read it normally,
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  just like anybody else would. Do your daily Bible reading.
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  Capture. When you read, I have some way to capture those important thoughts.
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  So it could be, let's see, I wrote some of these down.
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  Thoughts, questions, insights, and notes that I might have. But I capture it.
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  It might be in a notebook.
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  It might be in the wide margin of my Bible, but the idea is as I read,
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  I capture some, the Lord's going to say something to me, or he's going to show
• 17:35
  me something, or a verse is going to, you know, pop out at me.
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  And, and so I would highlight, it could underline, it could be underlining the
• 17:42
  text, but whatever the case is, I'm capturing something every time I read.
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  I don't just read and not pay attention to what I'm reading.
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  You know what I mean? Reading and taking notes forces you to think about what
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  you're reading. I guess that that's a better way to say it.
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  Then, so I read, I capture number three, I process. And that's where,
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  you know, once or twice a week, I'm going to set aside an hour or two, maybe more.
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  And that's where I'm going to do a little bit more deeper dive.
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  That's where I'm going to organize my notes. I'm going to expand upon them.
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  And I don't confuse reading with study. I think a lot of our brethren,
• 18:15
  they think studying is reading or reading is studying. They're two different efforts.
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  Okay. When I say study, that's a separate endeavor. That's where I'm going to
• 18:25
  devote again. I'm going to invest that time where it's going to be two or three
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  hours where literally I'm going to dig through my notes.
• 18:30
  I'm going to organize them. I'm going to obey those very specific hermeneutical
• 18:35
  procedures and principles.
• 18:37
  We'll talk about some of those later, you know, maybe in another episode.
• 18:40
  But, you know, allow the Bible to interpret itself and magnify the word above everything else.
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  And then as I organize those notes, I put them and I, and I reorganize them
• 18:50
  in folders. I put them in topics. I tag them, you know.
• 18:55
  You can go back later on. Yeah. And I can always build on them because I may not.
• 19:00
  What's that? Because you're, you're a teacher. You teach in the college.
• 19:02
  Oh yeah. You teach Bible. You have Bible studies. Yeah.
• 19:05
  That's where I was going to get to. So first reading, second capture,
• 19:09
  third process. Okay. Fourth is application.
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  And believe it or not, that's where the real learning happens.
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  It's not just in the reading and the processing. You learn during that time.
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  But the real learning happens when you synthesize your notes,
• 19:24
  arguments, defense, polemics, and you actually engage them.
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  This is where your ideas are cross-examined. They're reinforced.
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  They're modified. You have to defend them.
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  This happens with one-on-one witnessing, public ministry, online debates,
• 19:39
  individual discipleship, teaching a class,
• 19:42
  going door-to-door, dealing with a Mormon at your door, dealing with a JW at
• 19:46
  your door, sitting down at lunch and handing somebody a track and having a religious conversation.
• 19:52
  That's application. That's where the real learning goes.
• 19:56
  People ask me a lot of times, oh, Brother Robert, how do you know so much Bible?
• 20:01
  Because I've been preaching on the street for 37 years.
• 20:05
  And when you preach on the street for 37 years, and if you think nobody's going
• 20:09
  to attack you and nobody's going to challenge you and nobody's going to,
• 20:12
  you know, try to undermine your faith or, you know, question you or put you
• 20:17
  in a corner, then you're crazy. Go out on the street sometime.
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  And that's all you do. That's all you do. And there's been plenty of times I
• 20:24
  walked away defeated. I had no idea how to answer the question.
• 20:28
  So application, I think, to me, is the most critical step when it comes to studying your Bible.
• 20:37
  Reading it, absolutely important.
• 20:39
  Capturing it, absolutely important. Right? Our dad used to say 60% of think is ink. Write it down.
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  Your brain is the worst place to store information, right?
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  And then number three, process that information. Organize it. Tag it.
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  Put it in folders. Put topics to it. put outlines together,
• 20:59
  then application like you said remember when i think you mentioned it when we
• 21:04
  were doing the baptist acrostic series there was a couple times where you actually
• 21:08
  had to answer some questions maybe i think with a co-worker,
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  and you were able to utilize the acrostic in that conversation,
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  guess what that's going to do that's going to reinforce the acrostic that's
• 21:19
  going to reinforce those ideas and doctrines and topics that's how you're going
• 21:23
  to do it that's how you're going to learn.
• 21:25
  I learn the most when I have to teach other people.
• 21:28
  Well, you've got the theoretical learning. It's like anything else.
• 21:31
  You can learn theory, but you're not going to really know it until you have
• 21:34
  the experience of putting it into practice. The real value comes from the actual
• 21:39
  experience, the muscle memory that you're creating.
• 21:43
  And so the application is the street smarts. It's getting out there.
• 21:46
  It's getting out on the battlefield.
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  And it's like studying battlefield tactics but never going out there and fighting the battle.
• 21:54
  Yeah. So the application really solidifies it. application on top of theory
• 21:58
  is where, again, that's where true learning happens.
• 22:02
  So if Christians understand that and they can get that locked down,
• 22:07
  it'll help them so much more because a lot of people will learn,
• 22:10
  try to learn, learn, learn, but they won't put themselves out there,
• 22:14
  especially in the form of ideas and debate those ideas and pre-examine and allow
• 22:21
  their beliefs to be cross-examined and challenged.
• 22:26
  I mean, it's scary, but you need to allow that to happen.
• 22:29
  That's how you grow. There's so many organic ways for you to test what you know,
• 22:33
  and it could be from a simple conversation.
• 22:35
  Like for me, it was just a conversation with a coworker or one of my people asking questions.
• 22:41
  And it was like, oh, I can use the acrostic for this and help answer this or
• 22:46
  articulate the answer to this. And it worked like a charm.
• 22:50
  And it was encouraging. It gives you a little bit more confidence to go even deeper.
• 22:56
  And it had opened up more doors with this coworker to have additional conversations.
• 23:02
  And the tough ones are the ones in the street. Like, you deal with some rather
• 23:06
  interesting characters out there, and it's hard to get in a state of mind where
• 23:11
  it's in the heat of the battle out there, and maybe somebody's yelling at you
• 23:15
  and trying to get them to calm down.
• 23:16
  That's like a very big extreme. But you learn one of the things I do,
• 23:22
  and I've actually, it was funny because I just read this in a book called Forensic
• 23:26
  Faith by J. Warner Wallace. J. Warner Wallace is an ex-cold case detective.
• 23:30
  Highly recommend any of his books, you know, any of our listeners.
• 23:33
  He's not, you know, he's not of our stripe as far as King James Bible,
• 23:38
  you know, Bible-believing King James dispensationalists, Baptists even.
• 23:42
  But, you know, he's got some excellent, excellent information on apologetics,
• 23:48
  you know, making a case for Christianity, defending our beliefs and so forth and so on.
• 23:53
  So, but this is one thing he talked about. He said, he goes,
• 23:57
  what you do is you research what you believe.
• 23:59
  So kind of like what I said, the process part where you outline it,
• 24:03
  organize it, so forth and so on.
• 24:05
  And he says, you memorize verses, right?
• 24:08
  You should be able to pull verses off the top of your head defending a particular doctrine.
• 24:14
  So if it's the deity of Christ, you should have two or three or four verses
• 24:17
  right off the top of your head that you can run to to prove that Scripture demonstrates
• 24:23
  Jesus Christ is God. Okay?
• 24:26
  You should be able—I would say the most core fundamental doctrines that we believe,
• 24:31
  as Christians, like, for example, salvation by grace through faith alone,
• 24:35
  the Bible is our supreme authority. Right? Any of those things, right?
• 24:39
  Even the Baptist principles, the Baptistic distinctives that we studied, right?
• 24:44
  The autonomy of the church, priesthood of the believer, two ordinances,
• 24:47
  individual soul liberty, eternal security, right? We're going to be doing an
• 24:52
  episode on eternal security.
• 24:56
  It's important that he says this, he goes, study and get that information down.
• 25:01
  And this is what I thought was interesting. It's very similar to what I did
• 25:05
  on the street. That's kind of where I'm going to.
• 25:07
  But he said, he says, be able in 150 words or less, defend your doctrine,
• 25:15
  whatever that doctrine is, whatever it is that you believe.
• 25:18
  You should be able in 150 words or less, or in five minutes or less,
• 25:22
  or what sometimes you hear your elevator speech, right?
• 25:27
  Can you tell somebody why you're a Baptist in five minutes or less?
• 25:31
  Can you tell somebody why you believe the King James Bible is the perfect preserved
• 25:35
  words of God in the English language in five minutes or less?
• 25:38
  You see what I mean? If you practice
• 25:40
  doing that, and that's what I started learning how to do on the street.
• 25:43
  I actually started writing down the challenges I got.
• 25:47
  You know, why are you out here yelling at people? You know, why are you out
• 25:49
  here judging everybody all the time? Well, you know, Jesus should be out here
• 25:52
  feeding the poor, not screaming at people.
• 25:55
  And so I started writing those objections down and like, okay,
• 25:59
  how do I answer this? And for me, it was like, how do I answer this in a minute or less?
• 26:03
  You know, because here's the key. I'm not going to have a full-blown Bible study on the street.
• 26:08
  Nine times out of 10, if somebody challenges me, you know what I'm looking for?
• 26:12
  I'm looking for a sincere question.
• 26:15
  You see what I mean? So if somebody just throws out an expletive or an abusive
• 26:20
  ad hominem or trying to poison the well or throwing out straw men and red herrings,
• 26:26
  then the Bible tells us in Proverbs chapter 26, verses 4 and 5,
• 26:30
  or 5 and 6, it says, it says, first, answer not a fool according to his folly,
• 26:36
  lest thou be like unto him.
• 26:39
  Okay. Verse 5 says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits.
• 26:46
  So, in one verse, it says, don't answer the fool.
• 26:49
  In the next verse, it says, answer the fool.
• 26:52
  And so, some people go, oh, well, there you go, you have a contradiction.
• 26:54
  No, if you pay attention to what it's saying, it's not a contradiction at all. He says, answer a fool.
• 26:58
  It says, answer not a fool, according to his folly, lest thou be like him.
• 27:04
  So, the idea is don't behave like him. Don't use poor logic like him.
• 27:09
  Don't defer to and commit fallacies like he would.
• 27:14
  Don't use poor reasoning skills. Don't get mad. Don't have the same temperament
• 27:18
  like a fool would, right?
• 27:20
  So you don't answer a fool the way he would answer you.
• 27:24
  But you do answer a fool, lest he be wise, that's wisdom, in his own conceit,
• 27:31
  his conceitedness, meaning that he thinks he's right, everybody else is wrong.
• 27:36
  So you answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits,
• 27:41
  that's where you answer him in a way that will undermine his worldview.
• 27:45
  That's where you answer him in a way that will expose his bias
• 27:50
  and his poor reasoning skills and show that he's walking the vanity of his mind,
• 27:55
  that his philosophy is not rooted in Christ, but in the rudiments of the world
• 27:59
  and traditions of men. You see what I mean?
• 28:01
  So, if you learn how to respond that way, but if you have somebody that actually
• 28:08
  honestly wants to know the truth, then you should have good enough answers to bring them in.
• 28:13
  They may be one objection away from hearing the truth, right?
• 28:18
  So when you hear a preacher on the street, when they get, let's say somebody,
• 28:23
  throws down an expletive or something like that, it can get somebody mad.
• 28:27
  It can even get somebody street preaching mad. I'm sure you've seen it.
• 28:31
  And they yell back, you're going to fry it like a piece of bacon in hell.
• 28:35
  So that's probably not the right response, right? Yeah. So you don't respond that way.
• 28:39
  No, I mean, the Bible said, well, Colossians chapter 4 tells us that let our
• 28:44
  grace be seasoned, always with grace, our speech. I'm sorry,
• 28:47
  our speech always with grace, but seasoned with salt, so that we may know how to answer every man.
• 28:53
  So the idea is that if your objective is truth, then you won't be emotional.
• 29:01
  That's why I always say if you learn how to argue well and develop good arguments,
• 29:06
  you'll be less argumentative.
• 29:09
  I don't, the reason why people get flustered because of somebody screaming at
• 29:13
  them or cussing them out is because honestly they don't know how to respond to it.
• 29:18
  People come by and they'll go, you know, was it Satan rules?
• 29:23
  You know what I mean? Like that, you know, or they'll say Satan is God,
• 29:27
  you know, or I worship Satan. They'll say something like that.
• 29:30
  And I'll just, I'll kind of look at him and laugh and say, oh man,
• 29:33
  he goes, your God's going to worship my God one day. How do you feel about that?
• 29:37
  And, and, you know, so I don't, I don't get upset anymore. Most of the time
• 29:41
  I don't get upset, you know? I mean, if, you know, they start pushing their
• 29:44
  buttons and they get physical and they get rowdy, then obviously,
• 29:47
  you know, there's some of your flesh is going to rise up.
• 29:50
  But if you get somebody that's yelling at you and say, man, Jesus,
• 29:53
  would I be out here? You know, he'd be feeding the poor. He'd be feeding the
• 29:56
  poor. He'd never be out here.
• 29:58
  And I said, are you aware that Jesus Christ, you know, went into the temple
• 30:02
  and they were selling goods and he, you know, flipped over their temples or their tables,
• 30:07
  and he told them that they made his father's house a den of thieves and he was
• 30:11
  sitting there flipping them over and driving them out with whips?
• 30:13
  Have you ever read that in scripture?
• 30:15
  Or did you fail to read where Jesus Christ over there, Mark 9,
• 30:18
  Mark 7, and other places where he called the religious people of his day whited
• 30:21
  sepulchers, full of dead men's bones?
• 30:24
  And he said that they were their father, the devil, in John chapter 8.
• 30:28
  Did you ever read that passage?
• 30:30
  So apparently you must not know what the scriptures say about Jesus Christ.
• 30:33
  Or I'll tell them, well, it's unfortunate because your Jesus is not the same Jesus in the Bible.
• 30:39
  I said, where did you get your Jesus from? You know? And the reason I do that
• 30:42
  is because, and sometimes I'll throw those questions out, is because I just
• 30:45
  immediately want to show them that whatever accusation they're making is not biblically based.
• 30:53
  You're telling me to be like Jesus, and Jesus Christ got on a hillside and preached
• 30:58
  to over 5,000 men and their families.
• 31:01
  And so one time I told a pastor this on the street, I said, so do you suppose
• 31:05
  Jesus just whispered to them?
• 31:07
  Did he sit down and just hug them all and tell him he loved them?
• 31:11
  How do you suppose everybody in that group, 5,000 men, not including their families?
• 31:17
  So if you include their families, that's probably 10,000 to 15,000 people.
• 31:21
  Explain to me how a man can be heard clearly by 15,000 people.
• 31:28
  You might have to raise your voice a little bit. Hmm, that makes me wonder.
• 31:32
  And so a lot of times that's what I'm saying. Sometimes I don't have to necessarily
• 31:36
  argue with them. I just have to stop and question their logic.
• 31:41
  Like, wait a minute, let's think about what you're actually saying here for a second.
• 31:47
  And sometimes you have to do that before you can get to a verse of scripture.
• 31:50
  I've had people tell me, Christians that go, well, you know what?
• 31:53
  You do a whole lot better if you just sit down and take somebody to a coffee
• 31:56
  shop and, you know, have a cup of coffee with them and tell them about the gospel.
• 32:01
  And I would ask this sometimes. I said, is that what you do?
• 32:04
  Yeah, that's exactly what I did. I said, well, tell me the name of the person
• 32:07
  that you led to the Lord last week doing that. Well, it wasn't last week.
• 32:13
  I said, okay, so let me understand. You're telling me to do something that you
• 32:17
  rarely do and reach possibly one person, maybe,
• 32:23
  versus I'm out here on the street telling the truth to thousands of people within an hour.
• 32:29
  And I said, do you think that God is more interested in us putting truth out,
• 32:36
  or having a cup of coffee with one person and telling them the gospel?
• 32:40
  I said, which do you think according to scripture?
• 32:43
  And that's why I asked him. I said, that means when I say according to scripture,
• 32:46
  give me the passage and give me the chapter and the verse that backs up your particular argument.
• 32:51
  That that's the proper way to win people.
• 32:55
  And I'm not saying not to do that, but I'm just saying you're explicitly saying
• 32:59
  that what I'm doing preaching on the street is unscriptural.
• 33:03
  So I want you to show me where God says he was more interested how we put truth
• 33:08
  out than that we put truth out.
• 33:12
  And so, you know, and of course, there's a lot of verses I can go to to show
• 33:15
  and prove that. But, you know, once I get to that point, they don't want to
• 33:18
  listen anymore. But, you know.
• 33:20
  But anyway, all of this to say that if you as a Christian learn to engage in
• 33:25
  what you learn and engage outside the four walls of your home,
• 33:30
  and you talk to somebody, you witness to people, you pass out tracts,
• 33:34
  you challenge somebody on their belief.
• 33:37
  Like, say somebody was walking in front of you with an atheist shirt. There is no God.
• 33:43
  How many of us would just, you know, walk on by shaking our head to that person
• 33:47
  versus stopping them and said, hey, that's an interesting shirt.
• 33:50
  Can I ask you a question about that?
• 33:52
  How do you know there's no God? Why do you believe that? Yeah.
• 33:56
  But you see what I mean? It's when you open yourself, that's where people are afraid.
• 34:01
  Because they don't know what to say. That's why I'm telling you application is the best way to learn.
• 34:07
  When you put your feet to the fire and you go into the battleground of ideas,
• 34:12
  and you present your argument and you allow your argument to be cross-examined, guess what?
• 34:18
  You may find holes in your argument, but truth can withstand scrutiny.
• 34:23
  So guess what you need to do? You need to go back and study and find out why
• 34:26
  you couldn't defend the truth in that particular moment.
• 34:29
  Yeah, get out there and get that battlefield experience.
• 34:34
  But, you know, I know we didn't have a topic for this episode,
• 34:38
  but what I wanted to do, you know, I think this is a good segue to kind of explain
• 34:43
  some of the resources that we've been working on and trying to make available.
• 34:48
  But, you know, recently we started a Substack page for the Immutable Word podcast.
• 34:54
  And, of course, we have our podcast episodes, right? I would always encourage
• 34:57
  anybody, you know, that's always the easiest if you're driving back and forth
• 35:00
  to work or if you have a chance that you can listen to something while you're
• 35:04
  working, you know, go back and listen to our episodes.
• 35:06
  We cover a ton of good material, a lot of doctrinal questions,
• 35:10
  and we welcome anybody to give us questions and challenges that we can cover.
• 35:15
  And we've done that a couple times. But on the Substack page,
• 35:18
  there's a couple things that we wanted to start doing.
• 35:22
  There's three, basically kind of three sections on the page. one is like a normal,
• 35:27
  newsletter okay now the newsletter once a week what we're doing is it's just
• 35:33
  going to be from the immutable word podcast and it's going to be some whatever topic,
• 35:38
  like recently i did one on the
• 35:39
  divine watchmaker so talking about the biological miracle of the the human.
• 35:46
  You know dna structure the closed loop system that is that's full of information
• 35:52
  and data and sequencing and all this other stuff from an engineering point of view,
• 35:57
  that we wear these complex watches, smart watches, you know,
• 36:01
  timepieces and stuff that have intricate mechanisms inside, but that the wrist
• 36:06
  that the watch is sitting on is actually a thousand times more complex than the watch.
• 36:13
  And so that's just an example. You know, I write an article like that to kind
• 36:17
  of help, you know, strengthen somebody's faith, in that particular case,
• 36:21
  in creation. God is the creator.
• 36:24
  But that's a regular article that we put out. So you'll see those.
• 36:28
  And those are going to be a little bit longer, more in depth.
• 36:31
  But then we have what I call the wide margin notes. Okay.
• 36:36
  And it's just explaining because some of you, I think some of our listeners
• 36:40
  have already read some of this stuff.
• 36:42
  But the wide margin notes, again, another weekly thing I want to push out,
• 36:46
  that is meant to be a short, abbreviated, topical, or doctrinal note that ties
• 36:55
  to one particular verse, okay,
• 36:58
  that you could easily write in the wide margin of your Bible.
• 37:02
  So one of our wide margin notes we have is Ephesians 5.5, for example.
• 37:06
  For this ye know that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man who
• 37:11
  is an idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
• 37:15
  And some people use that, they weaponize that verse to show that you can lose your salvation. Okay?
• 37:21
  That no whoremonger, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater hath any inheritance.
• 37:28
  Doesn't say salvation in the kingdom of Christ and of God. So I put a note,
• 37:33
  salvation is a gift of grace, inheritance is a reward for service.
• 37:38
  The flesh cannot inherit the kingdom, therefore believers walking in the flesh
• 37:44
  lose eternal rewards, not final salvation.
• 37:47
  And then I put a series of cross-references, Colossians 3, 23-24,
• 37:51
  1 Corinthians 6, 9-10, 1 Corinthians 15, 50, Galatians 5, 19-21, and so forth and so on.
• 37:58
  So the wide margin notes is meant for you to stop, take a verse,
• 38:03
  that verse of scripture, open up your Bible and jot those notes down in your wide margins.
• 38:09
  Okay. That's one of the best ways to study your Bible. Because as you read your
• 38:13
  Bible and you look at that wide margin note, it'll provide context.
• 38:17
  It'll provide clarification.
• 38:19
  It may help you. It's expositing that passage basically.
• 38:23
  So those are the wide margin notes. So, you know, more and more of those will
• 38:28
  come out. I'd like to do them. I'd like to do two or three a week,
• 38:31
  but right now it's about one a week until we can kind of build that.
• 38:35
  But I just want people to know what that is, what the wide margin notes is,
• 38:39
  so that you don't just gloss over it.
• 38:41
  You know, it's meant for you to be able to just open up your Bible and go to
• 38:44
  Ephesians 5.5 and write that note down.
• 38:47
  If you want to abbreviate it, abbreviate it, or at least write down the cross
• 38:50
  references, right? Something that might help you.
• 38:53
  And the other thing is our battlefield notes, okay? So the battlefield notes.
• 39:01
  This was kind of inspired, you know, you and I, you know, we read a lot of military,
• 39:06
  novels and stuff like that, a lot of military books.
• 39:09
  And in the military, they have what they call after action reports.
• 39:14
  Okay. So there might be an engagement. It might be a firefight.
• 39:17
  It might be, it might be, you know, a battle scenario where they have to go
• 39:21
  in and they have to take out a target or they have to do a reconnaissance mission. Okay. So,
• 39:27
  And the idea is that, say they get into a firefight, immediately after the firefight,
• 39:33
  they do what's called a hot wash.
• 39:36
  And the hot wash is simply, you know, hey, what happened?
• 39:40
  You know, what happened during the altercation, the engagement?
• 39:43
  You know, did we run into a resource issue? Did we run out of,
• 39:47
  did we not have weapons ready? Was it a blue on blows situation?
• 39:51
  Was it, you know, did we get misinformation?
• 39:54
  You know what I'm saying? So it's a quick hot wash. It's just a quick analysis. of what happened.
• 39:59
  And then what you do later is you, then those people that were engaged,
• 40:03
  the leadership, all, you know, the communications team, whoever was involved,
• 40:08
  then they reanalyze step-by-step the events of that engagement.
• 40:13
  And they put together a more comprehensive after-action report.
• 40:19
  And the after-action report is really, that's where you're going to go more into a deep dive.
• 40:25
  That's where you're going to say, hey, what went right? What went wrong?
• 40:28
  What could we have done better? Did we have a gap in our communications protocol?
• 40:33
  You know, did we have a supply issue?
• 40:36
  You know, did we have, was there fog of war where we were confused about who the enemy was?
• 40:42
  Did we receive wrong intel? You know, whatever the case is, the after action
• 40:45
  is more of a broader analysis of the event.
• 40:51
  So that's what we call, so the idea is that we're soldiers for Christ, right?
• 40:56
  The Bible tells us that. In Timothy, Paul describes us as soldiers and that
• 41:00
  we're not supposed to be distracted by the things of this world,
• 41:03
  a good soldier, endure hardness as a good soldier, so forth and so on.
• 41:07
  We're likened as soldiers. So the idea is that if we get into any kind of engagement.
• 41:11
  Maybe it is a JW comes to your door and you spend 30, 40 minutes with them, right?
• 41:18
  How many of us, when you go through that kind of an altercation,
• 41:21
  or maybe I'm, you know, on the street corner and somebody debates with me on
• 41:24
  evolution, you know, or somebody tells me that there's mistakes in the King
• 41:28
  James Bible and they try to push, you know, a modern version issue.
• 41:30
  Maybe it's an online debate.
• 41:32
  You're on some social media thing and you're trying to defend, you know—,
• 41:36
  you know, the right to life against abortion, right? Or, you know.
• 41:41
  Gender issues and gender theory or Marxism or eternal security or some doctrine,
• 41:46
  you know, Baptist versus Catholic. And you're in this engagement.
• 41:50
  And the idea is, when do you step back and actually analyze what happened?
• 41:56
  Think about that. Like you talked to a JW, you know, and I don't know if you
• 42:00
  had a chance to talk to anything significant on the religious side with your dad this past weekend.
• 42:06
  Did you at all no it was just mainly catching up the different strategy i'm
• 42:11
  taking is just organically opening that door,
• 42:15
  perhaps over time and just having just i i plan on you know with the way i'm
• 42:19
  planning approaching this sorry i don't mean to go off a rabbit trail here but
• 42:22
  ask questions and right steel man and then and then move in from there in terms
• 42:27
  of just having a back and forth but,
• 42:29
  that's that's what i'm planning so let's just let's just let's just say,
• 42:33
  pretend that you guys got into a conversation and maybe the subject of the divinity
• 42:38
  of Christ comes up, okay?
• 42:41
  And you're doing that. You're asking questions. He's asking questions. He's pushing back.
• 42:46
  He's giving you verses. You're giving him verses, right?
• 42:49
  This is what I mean by the battlefield note. You step back after that event,
• 42:54
  that engagement, and you sit down and write down everything that happened.
• 42:58
  What questions did he ask? What verses did he give you?
• 43:02
  Did he did he make some false assumptions? Were there some logical fallacies that he committed?
• 43:07
  What would have been a better response on your end? Or how would you,
• 43:11
  you know, can you steel man his position? You see what I'm saying?
• 43:15
  Yeah. Then you write those things down and then you respond to them.
• 43:19
  So what I've done with the battlefield note, and this is meant to help people,
• 43:23
  is what I'll do is I'll put out a particular argument that somebody made.
• 43:28
  So one of them I have is called the anachronistic assault on the King James.
• 43:33
  And what this is, is, you know, some people will say, like, and I use the example
• 43:38
  from a guy that said the translators use textual criticism and would not have
• 43:43
  been King James onlyists.
• 43:44
  They believed in reconstructing the text.
• 43:47
  So my hot wash was, okay, the perfection of the King James Bible is guaranteed,
• 43:51
  by God's promise of preservation, not by the translator's self-assessment,
• 43:56
  and judging their 17th century work through the lens of modern humanistic textual criticism.
• 44:03
  It's a historical and logical error. So what I do, that's the hot wash.
• 44:07
  It's just a quick analysis of what the high level, 50,000 foot level would be.
• 44:13
  Then I produce what's called the after action, and I do it in four parts.
• 44:18
  The first part is I steel man them.
• 44:21
  I want to identify clearly what their objection is.
• 44:26
  So their objection in this particular case, critics claim the King James translators
• 44:30
  did not hold a rigid mindset.
• 44:33
  You know, that their translations, you know, regarding their translation and
• 44:37
  would agree with the modern scholars that no translation is truly perfect. That's the objection.
• 44:44
  Well, what's the steel man? How would I steel man his argument?
• 44:47
  The translators were brilliant, yet humble scholars who openly drew on previous
• 44:53
  English translations, marginal notes, and multiple sources demonstrating that
• 44:59
  they viewed translation as a progressive human discipline
• 45:04
  rather than the production of an infallible final text. That's their argument.
• 45:09
  So, I mean, if I were to say, is that what you believe? They would say,
• 45:12
  yep, that's exactly what you believe. When you steelman a person's argument,
• 45:15
  you have to represent their argument so accurately that the other side would
• 45:20
  say, yep, that's it. That's exactly what I believe.
• 45:23
  You don't steelman them in a way that you can dismantle their argument,
• 45:27
  that's called a straw man. That's not a steel man.
• 45:30
  You don't fabricate their argument. You steel man it.
• 45:34
  And then I do this. So that first part is I steel man it. The second part is
• 45:39
  I do a internal critique or a worldview in a logic analysis.
• 45:44
  So, for example, I'll identify the false assumptions being made.
• 45:49
  So the argument, this particular argument, I call it anachronistic because you're
• 45:54
  trying to shove the modern lens of textual criticism back on 17th century scholars.
• 46:00
  17th century scholars don't deal with textual criticism the way we do today.
• 46:05
  But they're trying to pretend that that's what they were dealing with back in 1600.
• 46:10
  That's called an anachronistic fallacy. So the false assumption is the argument
• 46:14
  assumes that biblical preservation depends entirely on the conscientious.
• 46:22
  Intent and self-awarement of the human instrument rather than God superintending providence.
• 46:28
  God's not part of the inspiration process whatsoever. It's just all man. That's the assumption.
• 46:33
  What's the fallacy? I just said it, the anachronistic fallacy.
• 46:36
  They're projecting modern, post-enlightenment critical theories onto 17th century
• 46:43
  men whose work occurred before the rise of humanistic textual criticism.
• 46:48
  Textual criticism rose with a man by the name of Johann Griesbach in the late 1800s,
• 46:55
  which fed into the Westcott and Hort theories and,
• 47:00
  their Greek text that then produced the Revised Standard Version,
• 47:04
  and then eventually the American Standard Version, and then that would form
• 47:07
  the basis of every single modern version today.
• 47:11
  That was after the King James Translators.
• 47:16
  But this guy was arguing that the King James translators would have adopted
• 47:20
  the modern critical text theories.
• 47:23
  So that's called anachronistic. You're projecting a modern post-Enlightenment
• 47:28
  critical text theory onto 17th century men who existed before the humanistic
• 47:34
  textual criticism occurred and German rationalism.
• 47:38
  And then I determine in the logical analysis the validity and soundness of the argument.
• 47:44
  So the argument's unsound because it evaluates a providentially guided supernatural
• 47:48
  preservation process using modern secular academic frameworks that elevate human
• 47:53
  reasoning above divine revelation.
• 47:55
  So you're basically choosing a humanistic natural approach to the Bible versus
• 48:01
  a divine preservation and revelation approach to the Bible.
• 48:06
  To worldviews. We talked about
• 48:08
  that before. So I do worldview analysis and then I provide a rebuttal.
• 48:13
  What's the logic in the scripture?
• 48:15
  You know, what's the deconstruction of this argument? And then what's the scriptural response to it?
• 48:21
  And then number four is a full robust response.
• 48:26
  And then that second part of number four is asking challenging questions.
• 48:30
  Like, for example, why do you force 21st century humanistic textual criticism
• 48:36
  onto 17th century scholars who operated under a completely different worldview
• 48:42
  of providential inspiration?
• 48:44
  Or if God promised to preserve his words forever in Psalms 12,
• 48:49
  6, and 7, where exactly is that perfect, physical, accessible text today if
• 48:55
  it's not the King James Bible?
• 48:57
  The reason why is because what that'll do is open up the door to show their
• 49:00
  bias. They don't believe any Bible today is perfect.
• 49:04
  But that's not what the translators believe. The translators believe that the
• 49:07
  previous English translations that were all built on the Texas Receptus,
• 49:12
  the received text, like the Geneva Bible, the Matthews Bible,
• 49:16
  those Bibles, the great Bibles, those Bibles were all built on the same textual
• 49:21
  manuscripts family as the King James Bibles.
• 49:25
  And I believe that the King James translators were exposed to the destructive
• 49:29
  textual criticism of Westcott and Hort, Griesbach, and some of these other men.
• 49:33
  They would have been anti-modern version only-ism.
• 49:38
  So the point is, the reason why I went through all that is to kind of show everybody,
• 49:42
  at least listening here, when
• 49:44
  you go to the Immutable Word podcast and you see that battlefield note,
• 49:48
  that is meant to show you a very specific objection to our worldview,
• 49:53
  our Christian worldview, our Bible-believing worldview.
• 49:55
  And as a soldier it's an after-action analysis analyze the argument,
• 50:01
  analyze the false assumptions being made provide a critique,
• 50:06
  identify the false you know not just the false assumptions but the fallacies
• 50:10
  being committed and what is the scriptural evidence for our position and then
• 50:14
  how would you respond to a person like that so to me.
• 50:19
  I think the battlefield notes is probably one of the most important sections,
• 50:22
  just because it's a tool to help Christians respond to these objections.
• 50:26
  Well, I'd argue that maybe the wide margin notes are equally important.
• 50:31
  Well, I mean, I think they're all important. I wouldn't spend time on any of them.
• 50:35
  But I just, I think some people may not know what the battlefield note or the
• 50:39
  wide margin note and the regular, you know, articles are for.
• 50:43
  I think some people pick up on it. But I just wanted to highlight the Battlefield
• 50:46
  note just because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to take,
• 50:49
  I have a whole slew of arguments that I still have to put in there in the Battlefield notes.
• 50:56
  Yeah, the backstory for the Battlefield notes is that these are based off of
• 51:00
  real interactions that you've personally had. Some of them are real interactions.
• 51:05
  Some of them are memes that seem like I saw this one meme from an atheist.
• 51:12
  Where it's two guys sitting at a table and one guy has a big question mark on
• 51:16
  his t-shirt and another guy has a big cross on his t-shirt and they're both having coffee.
• 51:21
  And the caption above it says, where did humans come from?
• 51:25
  And the guy with the question mark is supposed to be the thoughtful scientific atheist.
• 51:30
  And he goes, well, the evidence strongly suggests a process called evolution
• 51:33
  through natural selection.
• 51:35
  The guy with the cross on his shirt, he goes, where did humans come from?
• 51:40
  He goes, that's easy. Dirt, magic, a voodoo rib and incest.
• 51:45
  Nice. That's exactly. So, so, so the, obviously the argument here is that evolution
• 51:50
  depends on the evidence is neutral.
• 51:53
  It's just all it's doing is, and it's humble in its own self-humility,
• 51:58
  you know, it's just letting the evidence take them to the truth where creation depends on magic.
• 52:04
  That's really it. Right. So what do you, I mean, and that's exactly the kind
• 52:08
  of stuff that I would deal with on the street.
• 52:10
  But, you know, so the question is, is when a Bible believer comes across a meme
• 52:16
  like that, typically the response is, well, the Bible says the fool said in
• 52:20
  his heart, there's no God, you're going to burn in hell.
• 52:24
  Instead of dismantling, identifying what the actual objection is,
• 52:29
  identifying what the presuppositions and the axiomatic foundations of their thinking processes,
• 52:36
  and then dismantling those arguments one by one, and then providing a cogent,
• 52:43
  coherent, thoughtful response that is both logically and biblically based.
• 52:48
  So if you learn to do that, the better you get at it, the less that means like
• 52:54
  this would bother you. To me, I think it's funny. These means crack me up.
• 52:59
  Yeah, because it's a misrepresentation of what we believe, right?
• 53:02
  And it's also a lot of fallacies tied up into it.
• 53:05
  Yep. And it's obviously they're not steel manning us.
• 53:10
  And, you know, there's just a lot of other things that you can break it down.
• 53:14
  But, yeah, asking questions, and it is kind of funny, and it doesn't really
• 53:18
  take much to surface the inconsistencies when you talk to people like that.
• 53:23
  But really, it's like you said, it's just coming down. Because if you start
• 53:26
  asking questions, you might get into a very thoughtful conversation with somebody.
• 53:32
  Here's another funny one. And these are the ones, I've been collecting these.
• 53:35
  These are part of my battlefield notes. So there's a picture of a guy standing on a tree limb with a saw.
• 53:41
  And the caption says the family tree, and the tree itself says Catholic Church,
• 53:47
  and then the guy on the limb is supposed to be a Protestant,
• 53:50
  and he has a little, you know, voice bubble that says, just me and my Bible,
• 53:55
  and he's cutting the branch off of the tree that he's standing on.
• 54:00
  So, obviously, what's the, you know, the high-level overview is that the Christian
• 54:05
  can't understand their Bible without the Catholic Church.
• 54:08
  So, you know, they're making fun of sola scriptura. But some of these are funny, man. They really are.
• 54:14
  But, you know, there's... She posts some movies on the site. There's another one.
• 54:20
  I'm serious. I captured it. I look at these. I'm like, I used to just laugh,
• 54:25
  and just go somewhere else.
• 54:26
  But now I capture them. It's like, you know what? I'm going to deal with this
• 54:29
  because I think it's legitimate.
• 54:31
  There's so many times I've run across Christians that will use these arguments.
• 54:37
  They'll listen, they'll hear arguments like this, and it'll start to weaken their faith.
• 54:40
  Like, you know, this meme, I won't go through all the details,
• 54:43
  but this meme that I'm looking at now is,
• 54:47
  that King James basically manipulated the King James Version as a political
• 54:53
  effort because he hated the Geneva Bible because the Geneva Bible was very anti-king.
• 55:00
  And so anyways...
• 55:04
  Even if it was true, it's still a genetic fallacy because, one,
• 55:09
  just because King James, let's just say he was politically motivated,
• 55:13
  let's just say that's true,
• 55:14
  that doesn't change the fact that the King James Bible is still 100% accurate and 100% true.
• 55:21
  Because King James, for example, was a post-millennialist. He didn't even believe in pre-millennialism.
• 55:26
  He didn't believe in pre-tribulation rapture. But guess what's in the King James
• 55:29
  Bible? Pre-tribulation.
• 55:31
  Most of these guys were Puritans and they were Calvinist. And guess what?
• 55:35
  The King James Bible doesn't support Calvinist theology.
• 55:39
  So I don't care what his political motivation was, right? That's irrelevant. It's a red herring.
• 55:47
  It doesn't change the fact that the scripture is still pure.
• 55:51
  But they argue, this is a Catholic meme, by the way, they're arguing that the
• 55:56
  King James Bible is not pure because it was born out of political motive.
• 56:01
  So that's it. You know, these are good arguments, I think. I mean,
• 56:04
  I think these are great because this is typically what we run into.
• 56:07
  Got another one where recently I want to do, I really do want to,
• 56:11
  we may have to cover in a couple series. I would like to get sound bites from
• 56:17
  this one. Like Wes Huff was on a show called Cultish.
• 56:22
  And Jeff Durbin and Apologia Studios, which I really like watching Jeff Durbin
• 56:28
  on the street when he's dealing with people. He's got great presuppositional
• 56:31
  apologetics. But he's, number one, he's anti-King James. Number two, he's Calvinist.
• 56:36
  So, I mean, obviously, we're going to differ. But he still utilizes some good practical stuff.
• 56:41
  Well, they have a show, they have a separate kind of a child show called Cultish.
• 56:46
  And what they do is some of their content is actually pretty good.
• 56:49
  They'll look at, you know, Seventh-day Adventists. They may look at Mormons.
• 56:53
  They look at, you know, other cults.
• 56:55
  But here, they actually bring up King James-onlyism as a cult.
• 57:00
  And Wes Huff and everybody, I think a lot of people know who Wes Huff is. He's been popularized.
• 57:05
  He's been all over the internet. He's been on a lot of talk shows.
• 57:09
  Very smart man. And I would say 80% of what he says, I'm 100% on board.
• 57:14
  And I would agree with him from an apologetic standpoint. However,
• 57:17
  he was on The Cultist Show and he sent two episodes where he brought up six
• 57:23
  specific arguments against the King James Bible.
• 57:26
  And they're the same rehashed arguments that I have heard over and over and over again.
• 57:34
  So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a series of, I'm going to do two
• 57:38
  or three or four battlefield notes addressing his arguments.
• 57:43
  But I think we should do a show on it, too, and talk through it,
• 57:47
  because these are great arguments he makes.
• 57:50
  And the Bible says in Proverbs 18, verse 13, you know, that we shouldn't try
• 57:55
  to answer something that we haven't heard. It's a folly and shame.
• 57:59
  He didn't answer the matter before he heareth it.
• 58:01
  I think it's fair to listen to these arguments. And I think what should make
• 58:05
  us different as Bible believers versus like, say, a JW or a Mormon or some of
• 58:10
  these other groups is that we ought to listen and consider the arguments of the other person.
• 58:16
  We ought to hear them because if what we believe is true, it can withstand the
• 58:21
  scrutiny and the cross-examination.
• 58:24
  And if somebody is making arguments that are untrue, then we should know how
• 58:28
  to examine those arguments, dismantle the objections, identify the actual assumptions
• 58:35
  and inferences being made, and then,
• 58:37
  show how the premises are faulty so that we can determine is the argument sound
• 58:44
  or valid or invalid or unsound.
• 58:47
  That's the goal and the objection of every believer.
• 58:50
  Jesus Christ constantly second-guessed the Pharisees and the Sadducees in their logic.
• 58:56
  Paul examined the beliefs of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the philosophers of his day.
• 59:04
  He dismantled the Diana of the Ephesians and their temples and their churches.
• 59:11
  Paul did that. As a matter of fact, the Bereans examined what Paul said to see,
• 59:16
  and they examined the scriptures, they searched the scriptures to see whether,
• 59:20
  the arguments he was making were valid.
• 59:22
  Bible says 1 Thessalonians 5.21, we say it all the time, prove all things.
• 59:27
  So guess what? We have an obligation to the truth. So guess what?
• 59:30
  I should be able to take these six arguments against the King James Version,
• 59:35
  and sit down and expand on them, cross-examine them.
• 59:39
  We should do a segment called Battlefield Analysis and actually go through the,
• 59:45
  video snippets and then break them down that way.
• 59:48
  So I think that'd be fun. Yeah, we need to sit down and figure out how to do,
• 59:53
  the snippets, right? So we can take a soundbite and then respond to the soundbite for sure.
• 59:58
  But yeah, we should be able to break it down and do some real-time analysis on it.
• 1:00:04
  You know, I was going to tell you, Alan, this weekend I was talking to one of
• 1:00:07
  my son-in-laws. I have two of them, so they don't know which one. They know who they are.
• 1:00:12
  But, you know, we were just talking about some of this material that we put
• 1:00:16
  out on the Immutable Word podcast substack.
• 1:00:20
  And we just got to a conversation about witnessing to other people,
• 1:00:23
  and we've said it before.
• 1:00:27
  The doctrinal expression model, where you use the what, the two whys for every what.
• 1:00:34
  And I told them that a lot of times, you know, as grown up as believers,
• 1:00:37
  that a lot of our generation, especially in King James-only independent Baptist
• 1:00:42
  churches, they know the what.
• 1:00:44
  They know what they're supposed to believe, but they don't know why they're
• 1:00:47
  supposed to believe it. so they're unable to defend it.
• 1:00:50
  And he said this, this is what he told me. He said, you know,
• 1:00:53
  he says, you know, he goes, I remember, you know, when I would run into people
• 1:00:58
  that would start to question our faith or push back on the King James issue,
• 1:01:02
  or maybe they'd argue against the deity of Christ.
• 1:01:05
  And he says, I was told by both my family and the church leadership to ignore them.
• 1:01:11
  Don't answer their questions, just move on to the next door.
• 1:01:14
  And he even told me, he goes, Brother Robert, I felt weird doing that because
• 1:01:19
  what if they just needed their objection answered?
• 1:01:22
  And that's what I was trying to allude to. I said, what if they were just one
• 1:01:26
  answered objection away from hearing the gospel?
• 1:01:30
  And so, unfortunately, that's what's been drilled into the minds of our Bible
• 1:01:36
  Baptist, you know, Bible-believing Baptist brethren is don't answer the objection, ignore them.
• 1:01:42
  Don't listen to what they have to say.
• 1:01:44
  You know what I mean? They're going to drag you down. And they'll use verses
• 1:01:48
  like, you know, endless genealogies and foolish questions and all this other
• 1:01:52
  stuff, which is completely out of context, by the way.
• 1:01:55
  But the thing is, is if I believe what I believe to be true,
• 1:02:00
  I should be able to hear any objection to it and withstand the criticism and
• 1:02:06
  turn that criticism around after I analyze it.
• 1:02:10
  If the word of God is actually true, right?
• 1:02:15
  So, you know, we quote John 17, 17 all the time, sanctify them by thy word,
• 1:02:19
  thy word is truth, right?
• 1:02:21
  That means God's word is not just true, it is the foundation of truth.
• 1:02:27
  It is the substance of truth. That means if the word of God makes a propositional
• 1:02:34
  conclusion or assertion,
• 1:02:36
  then that propositional conclusion and assertion is based off of absolute moral objective truth.
• 1:02:44
  I have to believe that, right? Otherwise, it's not the word of God.
• 1:02:48
  It ceases to be the word of God.
• 1:02:50
  So guess what I should not be afraid of? I should not be afraid of critical analysis of my belief.
• 1:02:56
  First of all, kudos to him thinking this way.
• 1:03:01
  I mean, questioning what he's been told by his own family, his church leadership,
• 1:03:07
  to just ignore questions that come to you, the worst thing you could possibly do.
• 1:03:12
  I mean, the Bible says to be ready to give an answer.
• 1:03:14
  Be ready to give an answer to every man.
• 1:03:17
  And they're ignoring that. And it makes you wonder what the whole impetus is
• 1:03:22
  behind telling somebody that. Maybe it's just the lack of accountability.
• 1:03:26
  Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's the misconception of too much knowledge and it's
• 1:03:34
  a waste of time. I personally think it's.
• 1:03:39
  Fear because they don't know how to respond to it. And rather than take the
• 1:03:44
  hard work and the effort to study, to show thyself approved unto God,
• 1:03:48
  they'll take the easy route and just go to people that are ready to hear the gospel.
• 1:03:52
  Well, Jesus Christ took it to people that didn't want to hear.
• 1:03:55
  And he still preached the truth.
• 1:03:57
  Did Jesus Christ, did he or did he not engage the Sadducees and the Pharisees? Yeah, he engaged them.
• 1:04:03
  Did Paul in Acts 26 defend his belief and give his testimony about what happened
• 1:04:09
  to him on the road to Damascus? Yep.
• 1:04:12
  You see what I'm saying? There's no example in scripture that supports the fundamentalist
• 1:04:17
  Baptist idea of running away and hiding intellectually.
• 1:04:20
  Well, think about the woman at the well.
• 1:04:22
  Jesus' conversation with her.
• 1:04:26
  Responding to every objection that she had in the questions.
• 1:04:30
  So it boggles my mind sometimes just to avoid or go through this willful ignorance exercise.
• 1:04:39
  And that's not winning anybody away. It's like you said, there could be one
• 1:04:42
  answer or one question away from accepting the truth.
• 1:04:45
  And the problem as well is the fact that, you know, if somebody's interested
• 1:04:51
  in the truth and you're unable to provide them, then you are failing in your
• 1:04:56
  responsibility as a steward of the truth.
• 1:05:00
  We're supposed to be, the Bible says in 1 Peter 3, verse 15,
• 1:05:05
  be ready always to give an answer of the reason of the hope that's within us
• 1:05:09
  with meekness and fear. Right?
• 1:05:11
  Always ready to give an answer. So if you're not always ready,
• 1:05:17
  like the Bible says, be instant in season, reprove, rebuke with all long suffering and doctrine.
• 1:05:24
  If you're not ready to always do that, that means you're unprepared.
• 1:05:29
  And if we liken ourselves to soldiers, think about the horrible tragedy of a
• 1:05:34
  soldier going into battle completely unprepared, doesn't know how to use his weapon,
• 1:05:39
  hasn't checked, safety checked his weapon, you know, he hasn't loaded his weapon,
• 1:05:43
  he doesn't have a round and chaper, he's not ready to go at the drop of a hat,
• 1:05:47
  it can not only cost him his own life, but it can cost him the life of the men around him, right?
• 1:05:53
  And we don't think of the seriousness of that as Christians.
• 1:05:58
  But the truth of the matter is, we treat our church as a hospital when the church
• 1:06:04
  should be a training ground for soldiers and infantrymen, preparing them to
• 1:06:09
  be able to go out there in the battlefield of ideas.
• 1:06:12
  And the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10 verses 5, casting down imaginations and
• 1:06:16
  every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God.
• 1:06:20
  All right? I mean, that's what we're supposed to do. And it says the weapons
• 1:06:23
  of our warfare are not carnal, but they're spiritual, pulling down strongholds.
• 1:06:28
  Those strongholds are representative of those bad worldview ideas,
• 1:06:34
  Marxism, philosophical naturalism, you know, the gender theory stuff,
• 1:06:40
  you know, false doctrine.
• 1:06:42
  Those are the strongholds that every Christian should know how to dismantle.
• 1:06:46
  Yep, that's right. So, but I would just, you know, kind of encourage our listeners,
• 1:06:52
  you know, go through the Immutable Word podcast sub stack.
• 1:06:56
  Take a look at those articles. You know, maybe there's some things in there that would help you.
• 1:07:01
  I'm trying to include, you know, graphics, other resources, charts that you can download.
• 1:07:08
  You know, this material is free. We're not charging anybody to be a member of
• 1:07:12
  that, of this podcast or the Immutable Word sub stack.
• 1:07:15
  This is this is valuable information at least from my experience I mean when
• 1:07:20
  I was you know, when I was a baby christian You know 30 plus years ago.
• 1:07:25
  I would have loved to have Material like this especially when I was when I was
• 1:07:29
  on the street and dealing with some of these people face on,
• 1:07:33
  And there's there's friends of mine that have walked away from the faith Because
• 1:07:37
  they did not know how to address these objections And they let these objections get the better of them,
• 1:07:43
  you know yeah these are these are great tools a book market you can access it
• 1:07:49
  through your phone you can get the sub stack on your phone everything is.
• 1:07:53
  Centralized on the immutable word.com so check it out we've been populating
• 1:07:57
  and building out that site and we're getting there it's we got a lot of that
• 1:08:01
  material material available through there but you can also sign up for the,
• 1:08:08
  the Substack subscription through the site and it'll take you directly there.
• 1:08:13
  And also you've got the watch I always get this wrong. Watchman's Warning.
• 1:08:18
  Watchman's Warning. Yes, Raina Keener's site.
• 1:08:21
  So, you do contribute to articles, and they've got great articles and great
• 1:08:26
  resources on that site as well. So, do check them out.
• 1:08:29
  Brother Randy and them have been putting—a lot of it has been politically related.
• 1:08:34
  So, they're talking about the war in Iran. They're talking about some of the
• 1:08:37
  events, which I think is good because I think every Christian ought to be aware of it.
• 1:08:42
  There's another one, too, that Now the End Begins.
• 1:08:45
  They've got a lot of good news resources for Bible believers.
• 1:08:49
  You know so they're they're kind of friends uh jeffrey grider randy keener and
• 1:08:54
  them and there's some other good podcasts out there we're going to probably
• 1:08:58
  try to start linking them on resources because,
• 1:09:01
  we don't have a monopoly on truth we just have a very specific angle that we go at it right.
• 1:09:07
  There's a 1611 defense i believe theirs is a lot of good technical theological
• 1:09:16
  doctrinal stuff that they'll look at from a King James point of view.
• 1:09:19
  Obviously, Brother Keener, it's unmovable apologetics, but they'll deal with,
• 1:09:23
  you know, political stuff. They'll deal with aliens.
• 1:09:26
  They'll deal with stuff that we talk about, the Southern Baptist Convention,
• 1:09:30
  you know, banning women from being pastors.
• 1:09:33
  And then, of course, us, we're probably more apologetic than anything.
• 1:09:37
  And that's the strength of our channel, you know. And so, each of us has their strengths.
• 1:09:44
  And I think that if a Christian can, you know, invest themselves in some of
• 1:09:48
  these resources, it would really, really help them.
• 1:09:51
  Because my concern is just that we have more Bible believers out there that
• 1:09:55
  know how to defend the faith, know how to get on the street,
• 1:09:57
  know how to go door to door, know how to deal with people at the workplace,
• 1:10:01
  in the shopping centers, in the malls you pass out of track,
• 1:10:04
  somebody challenging you on your faith, you ought to have a big smile on your
• 1:10:07
  face and say, man, I'm glad you asked me that. That's a great question.
• 1:10:10
  You know, do you have a few minutes, I'd love to sit down and talk to you about
• 1:10:14
  it. I don't think they would expect that. You know? So...
• 1:10:19
  But go to our, our, our sub stack, look at them. If you have questions,
• 1:10:23
  what I would say is, you know, we would really need your guys' help for,
• 1:10:27
  you know, if y'all would like subscribe and share that stuff, that material.
• 1:10:32
  Um, maybe, you know, a member of your family or, you know, another brother or
• 1:10:36
  sister in Christ that can really benefit from some of the information on here,
• 1:10:40
  point them to this resource.
• 1:10:42
  You know, we're not here to, me and Alan don't make money off of this.
• 1:10:45
  That's not our goal here.
• 1:10:48
  We're trying to put good content out there to help our listeners.
• 1:10:52
  We want strong Christians that know their Bible, know how to stand up to the
• 1:10:57
  objections, know how to respond to them logically and in a way that represents
• 1:11:03
  the Lord Jesus Christ the right way.
• 1:11:05
  So that, and that's really what our goal is. So Lord willing,
• 1:11:09
  you know, you guys get a blessing out of it and tell us. Poke holes in it.
• 1:11:12
  If you guys see something wrong or you have a question about an argument we make, please hit us up.
• 1:11:17
  We'd love to be able to examine it or do a deeper dive or maybe,
• 1:11:22
  you know, maybe we misstated something or we could have said something a little
• 1:11:26
  bit more articulately, you know, something, you know, we'll be glad to sit there
• 1:11:30
  and go back and take a look at it.
• 1:11:33
  Yeah, challenge Robert. He loves to be challenged. Yeah. Debate.
• 1:11:39
  Yep. Right on. It's good stuff. But yeah, check this stuff out.
• 1:11:42
  We're always adding content to it. I just want to go back real quick to what
• 1:11:45
  you said, especially with new Christians, and you're just kind of looking for a good place to start.
• 1:11:50
  There's a lot of good stuff in here, and it's good material.
• 1:11:53
  It's a great way to arm yourself as well, in addition to your growth.
• 1:11:57
  So with that, I guess we can wrap this one up.
• 1:12:00
  And if anybody has any questions, reach out to us.
• 1:12:04
  I know you just went through this, so I don't want to beat a dead horse,
• 1:12:07
  but do reach out to us, theimmutableword at gmail.com.
• 1:12:10
  We're probably going to have to be changing that up soon and actually have like
• 1:12:13
  a formal immutableword.com email address. So maybe look for that as we begin
• 1:12:19
  to get a little bit more professional with our stuff. So we're working towards it. We're growing.
• 1:12:24
  And I really appreciate everybody bearing with us as we do.
• 1:12:29
  With that, we'll go ahead and close it up there. We'll see everybody on the next one.