Looking at our world from a theological perspective, this is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central. Good morning, everyone. It is Wednesday, January the 15th, 2025. It is currently 1149 AM Central Time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Well, I told you that really 2025 is kind of about a blank notebook, right? It's about a blank notebook because typically before I arrive at a new year, I kind of start mapping out, oh, I want to do this and we're going to do this series and we're going to cover this and we're going to focus on this. And this year I decided, even though it's kind of just symbolic to leave a blank notebook right here under the microphone, right? And so anytime I sit down, it's kind of like, well, I don't have a, a plan. I don't have anything mapped out. Let's just see what today brings us, right? It's almost like I'm just going to let each day guide the podcast. It's almost like we got in a car, we started on a road trip called 2025, but we have no idea where we're going. We have no map, we have no plan, we have no agenda, and we're just going to let, well, whatever we see, we're going to kind of pull over and stop and look at it, right? If we're driving down the highway, I'm like, oh, look, look, that looks like an interesting exit. Let's take it. So that's kind of what we have. That's kind of been my approach. However, there has been at least one thing that has kind of already dominated the year, and I think it's going to do that throughout the year. Even though the notebook is blank, right? If I'm being honest, at least on the front page, the letters AI should be there because artificial intelligence really has become the major theme for this podcast in 2025. Some people may love that, some people may hate that, but I believe it's important, right? I believe it's important because I believe artificial intelligence is going to have a massive impact on Christianity, a massive impact on theology, biblical interpretation, on so many things. I think in some ways, I'm going to continue to say this, it makes the church almost irrelevant in many ways. And we've talked about all of that. So even though it's a blank notebook, AI is kind of there. And well, this is where, well, the blank notebook, well, kind of leads us right back to AI. Let me explain what happened. Yesterday, I was asked to review a sermon. Does everyone want a reminder of what that sermon sounded like? Someone emailed me and said, hey, tell me if AI can handle this sermon. Remember what we experienced? Do you want a little reminder? Some of you who listened to it yesterday was like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want to hear it. Because a number of you did email saying, man, I'm just going to be honest. That was hard to listen to. I know. But we need that reminder, all right? So blank notebook. Yesterday, in my notebook, someone said, hey, can AI handle this sermon? So I downloaded the sermon and we heard a little bit of this. Sunday night rolled around and I talked about how when our faith is tried, it will be worth it. I'm afraid, honey, that we're in a time where we don't want to use the faith that God has given us. As much as I love Brandon and he give me this. Amen, I believe, amen, out of the bottom of his heart. Amen to Brandon, I love you brother. But when he give me this knife, he fully expected it. I believe for me to, amen, to set it up somewhere, Alan. And to look at it and look at how pretty it was. Amen, to just walk by and glance at it from time to time. But you know what I've done, Todd? I've pulled it out of my pocket a many of a time. Amen, amen, brother. I've done things with it that ought not to aim at a knife. Ain't made to do. Are y'all with me? And honey, God did not give us that measure of faith to hang up on the shelf somewhere and to walk by when church time comes around. Now, there's no way to get around it. From my own personal preference, I'm just gonna be honest with you, I can't listen to that. I mean, I know that that's wrong because I'm allowing my own personal preference to say, hey, you may even be preaching theologically sound biblical message, but the style, I can't get past the style. I can't handle it. And look, I understand that. people who listen to me say, I can't handle your voice. I don't like the sound of your voice. I don't like how animated you are. So that's just the reality. And that's one of the things we just have to admit as human beings and as Christians that sometimes are listening to a sermon, are liking it or disliking it. In many cases, it's more about stylistic preferences than it is about the Bible or theology. Even if that sermon was 100% doctrinally, theologically sound, I would not be able to listen to it. I know that's wrong, But it's just the case, because as human beings, we are greatly impacted by preaching style. And that sermon also captures that that sermon greatly reflects kind of a certain cultural context, right? It's definitely something that's far different than other cultural context. And we talked about all of that and how that impacts, well, human beings and preaching and teaching and listening to sermons. And we talked a little bit about AI and the difference there. So I did that. We reviewed the sermon. AI tore that sermon apart. It really did. And what was fascinating to me, though, is that sermon was on James 2, 14 through 26. And I didn't really know where we were going. I had AI do a lot of work working on the sermon, and then it kind of turned into, if you really think about it, what AI ended up doing yesterday is AI refuted and disagreed and stated that basically a lordship salvation understanding is incompatible with a belief in being saved by imputed righteousness, and it's more in line with an infused righteousness concept. Basically, AI was like, the whole lordship idea is just, it's theologically inconsistent, logically inconsistent, there's problems with it. But then at the same time, A.I. told me, basically, if you don't go along with this more lordship way of thinking, you have no place within Christianity. You're kind of left on the outside, for the most part, because non-Catholic Christians tend to look at salvation and a very lordship kind of, you have to do this to prove your salvation type mindset. So that was fascinating. And I didn't really know we were going to end up there. Maybe we'll return back to that. But that was all, you know, we started with a blank notebook and we ended up with all of that. So I was like, OK, that day is over. Let's move on. Let's just move on. We'll see. We'll see what today has in store. Well, I received an email. Now, I'm going to be reading just parts of the email. I'm not reading every single word of the email. I'm kind of summarizing some things of it. But I received a number of emails from an individual, and he first made a comment about that preaching style, and he admitted he could not... He was having a hard time listening to it. Again, this is personal preferences, right? And no means should I, look, if that's the way that person preaches, and that's who they are, and they're being true to themselves, and that's the way they want to preach, then you know what? They should stay true to their, them. I don't think preaching, I don't like when preachers are kind of taught that you gotta preach in this way, or you gotta preach in this way. I think you need to be true to yourself so that the preaching comes across as real and organic. And if that's him being real and organic, then by all means, I support it, even though I can't listen to it. Go for it. I can't stand when people say, well, you should do this, or you should say this. No, no, no, no. Don't tell me. how to communicate because what I want to do is communicate in a real way, not communicate as if I'm performing or as if I'm in theater or I've got to follow some specific rules to present the material in a way that is more to the liking of more people. I don't like that. I want to come across as being as real as I can be. If that's their style and that's them, then that's what they should do. And they shouldn't worry about those of us who don't necessarily like it. So I get the email, they say a little bit about that. And then they go and say this. On a real note, I'm a long time listener and I love that you're utilizing AI. Oh, I'm just like, okay, good. All right. That's, you know, I haven't received a lot of feedback about our discussion about artificial intelligence. So I was very encouraged to get someone saying, hey, I love that you're utilizing AI. That's a great thing. I'm glad, right? Because, and I don't know the age of the person. I'm assuming, I'm guessing, They're probably younger, right, or probably 30s maybe. I think the older people get, the more they're going to be, I don't really like the AI. Why are you focusing so much on AI? I think it's going to be very much based on age, whether people like what I'm doing or dislike what I'm doing. But whether you like it or dislike it, I'm sorry, AI is here to stay. So we need to utilize it because I need people to understand what it can do, how to better utilize it and understand how it's going to change and transform Christianity. Now listen to what they say. So they love that I'm utilizing AI. They go on to say, this is back to the email, AI isn't biased and it's factual. I'm like, wow, okay. Now, biased, I do agree that some people may say it has a bias. We could get into a debate about that. What I have found when it comes to theology, though, it's not biased towards one theological system, right? It will analyze the system based on biblical consistency, logical consistency. It doesn't have a team, per se, unless you're using an AI that's coming from a theological team that programs their AI to only approach things from that perspective. So I like an AI that's more open and not coming from a particular system, all right? They go on to say, I've been using it for a long time now. And I'm like, okay, so here's someone who's probably been utilizing it longer than I have. All right, that's good. Because you want people listening who can say, wait, well, hey, you missed this about AI, or you missed this about AI, or what about this? Because they've been using it a long time. They have far more knowledge. I feel like I've been using it for a while, but I think I'm just now really beginning to grasp what it can do. Like I stated yesterday, when people perceive AI almost as a fancy Google search, I don't think they get it. To me, the beauty of AI, as I tried to indicate yesterday, it's the reasoning. I can reason with it. Like I got into that huge discussion with AI yesterday that basically led it to completely criticizing and demolishing kind of a lordship mentality. And that was fascinating to me, right? And it did so not on the basis of it was for this team or that team. It did so on the basis of, well, if your theological starting point is imputed righteousness and not infused righteousness, well, if you're going to truly believe in a gospel based on an imputed righteousness, well, this and this and this is just radically inconsistent with it. And I was like, well, thank you. I've been trying to tell people that and they get mad at me. All right. So that's so frustrating. AI can figure it out, but other people want to argue with me, you know, leave the church over it. It's like, well, AI seems to acknowledge what I'm saying. And guess what? AI never accused me of being. AI never wants to accuse me of being an antinomian. Isn't that fascinating? So that was just crazy yesterday, but it was that reasoning that went on for about an hour. That's what I want people to see. But this is what caught my attention. So this person in the email says, I have been using it for a long time now and even used it to help me write my prayer meditation book. Now, immediately I saw, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This person used AI to write a book. Oh, I've got questions. I've got to see this book. They gave me the name of the book, Dwelling in His Presence, A 30-Day Journey into Christ-Centered Prayer and Meditation. Now, I want you to write this title down. and you can go to amazon.com right now and you can find this book and you can purchase a hard copy, you can purchase it in a digital format. Now, the author of this book is allowing me to upload this and connect it as a PDF file to this episode. If you're using the Sermons 2.0 app, the Sermon Audio website or the Church One app, you should be able to see the PDF file. I'm gonna definitely try to attach it. I can't do it now because I'm live, but once I upload all of this, I'm gonna try to attach the PDF file of the book. And they're allowing us to do that even though they're selling it on Amazon. That is awesome for them because they could say no. People go buy it, but they're willing for me to do this. So I'm very grateful, but if you want to kind of buy the book to support this you should go to amazon.com look for again this is the name of the book dwelling in his presence a 30-day journey into christ-centered prayer meditation Right? Once again, dwelling in his presence, a 30-day journey into Christ-centered prayer meditation. It is available on Amazon and hardback. And I know it's on for the Kindle as well. I think if you have a Kindle Unlimited, I think you can get it for free if it's a Kindle Unlimited. I think so. I could be wrong. But you definitely should check it out. So I was like, whoa, whoa. As soon as I saw this, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Talk about that blank notebook. All right, man, this is gonna become a page in the notebook. I've got to see this book. Now, when they first told me about the book, they didn't tell me it was on Amazon. I didn't even think about looking anywhere. I was just like, well, can you send me a copy of the book? I wanna see this. This is a book written by AI? Come on, I've got to see this. So I immediately emailed and said, hey, come on, tell me about the book. So this is what they sent back. They sent back, I do, they do have a copy. And although I did set the prompts for a Christ-centered theology and referenced a couple that I truly love, it was almost entirely done by AI with little editing. The book was put together almost entirely by AI. I want you to wrap your mind around it. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're like, oh, well, it's probably just like, you know, two or three little pages. Now, are you ready for this? I'm gonna open up the book right now in the PDF file. Okay, if I break this down, hang on. The way it shows up in a PDF file where you have page 273 pages, ladies and gentlemen, AI put together a 273 page book. That's absolutely fascinating. And if I remember correctly, he put it all together, I think he said in a little about a week. AI put together a 273-page book almost entirely done by AI in a week. Someone wrapped their mind around that. If you don't believe this is transformative, if you don't believe this is going to change Christianity, you're out of your mind. So I have the book here. Let me just kind of go through some of the things here, all right? Here's the title page, Dwelling in His Presence, A 30-Day Journey into Christ-Centered Meditation. And here are the Table of Contents. This is page 2 of 273. Dwelling in His Presence, Table of Contents, Introduction, Why Prayer Meditation Matters, What to Expect in This Book, A Personal Story, Finding Peace in the Stillness Part 1 Foundations of Prayer Meditation When Prayer Feels Difficult, Overcoming Distractions, Feeling Spiritually Dry, Doubts About Doing It Right 2. What is prayer meditation? A biblical foundation. How prayer meditation differs from secular mindfulness. Why prayer meditation helps. How to begin. 1. Find a quiet space. Set aside a time. Choose a scripture or focus. Practice stillness. Reflect and pray. 3. A theology of communion with Christ. Karl Barth, responding to God's revelation. John Wesley, Prayer as a means of grace. Thomas Aquinas. Union with God and stillness. N.T. Wright. Prayer as kingdom participation. A theology lived out. A simple practice for prayer meditation. Number four. Preparing your heart and mind for prayer. And I could break this entire thing down. And then part two is a month of guided meditations. Week one, embracing God's love and grace. Day one, God's love surrounds you. Romans 8, 38-39. Day 2, Resting in Christ's Presence, Matthew 11, 28-30. Day 3, Trusting God's Guidance, Proverbs 3, 5-6. Day 4, Strength and Weakness, Psalm 46, 10. Now, whether you agree, whether you disagree, the point is artificial intelligence put together an entire book that takes you through a 30-day guide through prayerful meditation. That's insane. and it did it in about a week. All right, so I'm gonna upload, again, I'm gonna, unless something doesn't work correctly, I'm gonna upload the PDF file. It'll be attached to this episode. For those listening on all the other podcasting apps, you need to get the Sermons 2.0 app, or go to the sermonaudio.com website, type in Theology Central, look for this episode about AI writes a book, or you can go to the Church One app, Again, search for Theology Central, find this episode, and you should see the PDF file attached. Or you can go to Amazon.com and look for the book, Dwelling in His Presence, a 30-day journey into Christ-centered prayer meditation. Please do that. And then you can look at the thing I want you to see. This is not about, oh, whether you agree with the book, disagree with the book, it's not about that. It's about someone utilized artificial intelligence to put this together. And if they could do that, anyone can do that. Do you understand this? Pastors can be up there going, I'm gonna preach on this and preach on that. People while sitting in the pew during a sermon can be putting together their own book about prayer or theology. You literally can use artificial intelligence, are you ready for this? To write out your entire Sunday school curriculum for the next year. The people in the pew can do this. They don't even need the pastor. You can say the pastor like, oh, for the next six weeks, we're going to preach on this. They can say, okay, well, great. You go do that, AI. I would like a six weeks, six weeks of sermons on this topic. AI will give you the six weeks of sermons and you'll have them before the pastor gets done with his introduction for that one sermon. Like, how do we, how do we even, how does the church even, why does the church even exist at that point? You've got to go check out the book, all right? So, I'm going to go back to the emails, some more of the email. So I was blown away when I saw the book. And so then I asked, hey, can I upload this? And they said, of course. I do this to help people and try to teach others to realign their focus on Christ and his teachings. If anyone would like a hard copy, they're sold on Amazon, too. This whole project took me only one week. and I wanted it to be almost fully done by AI so that I could feel confident in its accuracy. Did you hear that? Hey, I wanted it to be almost all done by AI so that I could be confident in its accuracy. Now, I'm not going to rely on me. I'm going to rely on AI because AI will probably be more accurate than I could be. I feel the same way now. If I'm going to put something together, I'm like, well, let me check with AI because I trust AI more than I trust myself and all of the years of schooling. I don't care how many degrees I have in theology. I don't care how many degrees I have in biblical studies. I don't care. I don't care if it's an associate's, a master's. I don't care what I have. I trust AI can give me far more than I got, and all of those years combined and all of the education I have. Now, I will argue this. All of my education does allow me to go, wait, hey, what about this or what? I can kind of construct my own philological hypotheses, or I can kind of construct my own hermeneutical hypotheses, and then I can have a back and forth with AI, because I do have the knowledge to be able to engage it on the subject, right? The more you know about a subject, the more you can then go back and forth with AI. But I still like AI, and we've already seen how good AI is, is checking the accuracy in many of the sermons we've listened to. And every sermon that we've used AI to analyze, every single time, it's pointed out completely inaccurate, factual errors, literally factual error, fraudulent information in sermons. We're like, that's not accurate. That's not true. No, that's, remember that one, the one sermon I was reviewing, AI was like, no, this is just wrong. And you're like, what in the world? Like, how is this happening? So, they go on to say, this whole project took me only a week and I wanted it to be almost fully done by AI so I could feel confident in its accuracy. To me, this is more about Not about accuracy. I'm glad they used AI because it proves what I've been trying to say. What I think this individual should do is they should put together a book about how they utilized AI to write these books. so that, and then try to offer step-by-step instruction and helping Christians create whatever, systematic theologies, Bible surveys, Bible studies, devotional guides, Sunday school curriculum, sermon series. If this person put together an entire book, they would be much more qualified then give us kind of a, hey, how do you start? What are the things you asked AI to do? What were your prompts? How did you do this? How did you do that? And they do give me a lot of information here because I do ask some of these questions. So they go on to say, I also wrote another, a more theological book, through AI. So there's another book they have available. Now this one I'm not going to make available, and I didn't ask for a PDF file or anything. It's available on Amazon. It is called Faith Undermined, Conspiracy, Politics, and the Crisis in the Christian Church. Faith undermined conspiracy politics and the crisis in the Christian church. Now, what I would challenge them to do—now, I haven't read their book yet—but I would challenge them, if they perceive that there's a crisis in the Christian church based off conspiracy theories, mindless conspiracy theories, and the political hijacking of the American church, if that's the direction the book is going, which I think it does, that what they should do is they should write to see how a book about how artificial intelligence may be able to do something that's completely the correction of all these things that are undermining the Christian church. Because AI, I think, can combat the conspiracy theories. I think AI is not going to be politically hijacked unless someone creates an AI that only operates from a particular political point of view. Now, here's what I'm fearful is what's going to happen, is we're going to ultimately have, here's the Republican AI, here's the Democrat AI, here's the Baptist AI, here's the Presbyterian AI, here's the Lutheran AI, and I'm going to hate that. I don't want that. I don't want it to give me one perspective. I want it to deal with it in a far different way. So we will see if I'm right about that. But that book, again, is available on Amazon as well. It's called Faith Undermined, Conspiracy, Politics, and the Crisis in the Christian Church. Again, put together by artificial intelligence. Now, if I go to AI about that book, let me see here if it gives me... If it gives me information here, give me one second. I'm gonna close that. Paste this. Give me here. This one's only 43 pages. This one's only 43 pages. And it would be interesting to know like how difficult it is to put the book together, like how long the book can be, when does it become problematic for AI? I got all kinds of questions about it. So this one's much shorter, but again, put together by artificial intelligence. And that is fascinating to me. So back to the email. So I asked, hey, explain to me how you did this. Explain to me how this works. So now this is fascinating. And their response to me about how they used AI to break it down, they utilized AI in order to respond to me. AI helped put together their response. So here is the response. It says, thank you for your inquiry regarding the process of creating this book. I'd be happy to provide an outline of how AI contributed to its development. Below is an overview of the tools and steps involved. So, number one, AI application used. I utilized OpenAI's ChatGPT, a language model designed to assist with content creation, brainstorming, and editing. It was instrumental in generating, refining, and organizing the text throughout the process. Please note, it was used in generating, refining, and organizing the text. 2. Step-by-Step Process A. Planning and Outlining I began by brainstorming the book's core themes, spiritual growth, meditation, scripture-based reflections. Using AI, I created a chapter outline defining key topics such as trust, peace, faith, and transformation. Prompts Use Generate chapter ideas for a Christian meditation book based on scripture. So they went to AI and said, hey, generate the chapter ideas for a Christian meditation book based on scripture. And then AI generated all of that. They went on to also, this was the prompt, provide a detailed outline for each chapter, including key scripture references and reflection questions. Now the reflection questions, I've been using those more recently. So like if I, let's say I look on Sermons 2.0 app and I see a sermon on Genesis 15, then I may go to chat GPT and I may say, give me some discussion questions and things for further study based on Genesis 15. I love that. I love that. I want to use those more in my sermons and even on the podcast. But those discussion questions themselves can turn into an entire episode. But AI is good at doing that. It's really good at doing that. All right. So those were some of the prompts used. b. Writing individual chapters. Each chapter was developed one section at a time to ensure depth and coherence. For example, introduction, prompt, write an introduction to a chapter on trusting God, incorporating Proverbs 3, 5-6. That was the prompt use. Hey, AI, write an introduction to a chapter on trusting God, incorporating Proverbs 3, 5 through 6. Next, meditation guide. Prompt, create a reflective meditation guide on living in God's peace using Philippians 4, 7. Prayers and reflection. Prompt, write a closing prayer and reflection questions for a chapter on finding purpose. then this is what he did. So he, AI is putting it all together. He's just prompting it. He's just saying, AI, put this together. AI, put this together. AI is putting it all together. That is absolutely amazing. Then he, this is what he said he did. I reviewed and refined each section after AI generated the content, tailoring it to fit the tone and focus of the book. I do that all the time. When I'm working on, if I'm working on Isaiah 40, I kind of give AI what I'm looking for. AI will put it together. Now, the thing I do different is once AI puts something together, I will look at it, and then I will then start reasoning with AI. Well, what about this? And well, could it not be interpreted this way? I start basically formulating my own interpretive hypotheses, and then me and AI will spend about an hour going over my hypotheses, and AI will tell me where it's weak, where it doesn't work. I mean, we saw, if you've been listening to our series on Isaiah 43, Isaiah 40-55, we're still in Isaiah 40, you know that me and A.I. went back and forth about how some passages could be applied to Cyrus or not, how A.I. disagreed with me on some. So then I couldn't change A.I.' 's mind, but I was able to get A.I. to give me a look at the first part of Isaiah 40, compare and contrast it with the decree of Cyrus and Ezra 1, and then even AI had to go, oh, there's a lot of similarities here. So, but that's the thing. I may ask it to put it together, but then I go back and forth arguing with AI, not really arguing, but reasoning together with it. Then they went on to say, editing and consistency. AI assisted with grammar, flow, and tone adjustments to maintain consistency across chapters. Prompt. This is what he then asked AI to do. Refine the following text to match a warm and contemplative tone suitable for a devotional book. That's insane. Hey, I need this to be a little bit more warmer. I needed to have a contemplative focus. This is going to be a devotional book. And I've had AI prompt me. I'll be doing something and then AI will be like, well, would you like me to turn this into a devotional? Would you like me to turn this into a Bible study? Would you like me to turn this into basically asking me, do I want it to go this direction or this direction or this direction? Which again is crazy. So there's the editing and consistency. Next, cover design and visuals. For the cover, I used OpenAI's image generational tool to create conceptual designs. So this was the prompt he used. Design a 6x9 book cover for a Christian meditation book with a serene sunrise and spiritual theme. All right, and the generational tool that he used, OpenAI's image generational tool, or generation tool, is called D-A-L-L dot E, DAL-E. All right, I think that's how you would say it. And I'm probably saying it incorrect, and tech people are gonna be like, know what you're talking about. I understand, I'm not AI. Okay, all right, all I can do is look at the letters, okay. So then final review and compilation. I compiled all chapters into a cohesive manuscript and performed a final review to ensure alignment with the book's spiritual focus and purpose. Now, what I have done with AI is I've had like an hour long discussion with it. And now like, okay, take everything we've said, put it together in a comprehensive study or this and whatever format. And then AI will take an hour long study and compile it in a nice organized format. flow now I know sometimes you I know what some of you are saying I wish you would do that in your podcast because you just repeat and it's it's so tedious well a lot of the reasons I don't do that sometimes is because I'm trying to take you through the entire process I asked AI this, then I asked AI this. I'm trying to take you through the process because I'm trying to get you to understand it's not a Google search, okay? Reason with it, all right? Utilize it for these wonderful things that it can do, all right? Then section by section approach. AI worked with me on one chapter or section at a time, allowing for basically to refine it. All right, this approach ensured each piece aligned with the overall theme while addressing individual topics thoughtfully. Conclusion. Using AI was a collaborative and alliterative process that enhanced efficiency and creativity. While AI generated much of the foundational content, I guided the process, reviewed every section, and made edits to ensure the book maintained its intended tone, purpose, and depth. The result is a work that blends thoughtful human oversight with the capabilities of modern technology. That's amazing what AI can do. It is amazing. So. The whole goal of this is to just try, I just want you to try to wrap your mind around. This is what I want you to try to envision, okay? Well, I got a couple of things. So a couple of things I wanna accomplish here. First is just to tell you about this because it fits with our discussion about AI. Two, I wanna make the book available to you and the best way to do so is, well, for me to do a broadcast and just attach the PDF file to it. So that's another reason. And three, I really want you to start thinking about how you with ChatGPT, I'm just gonna go with ChatGPT since that's the one I use most frequently, just you and ChatGPT, what you can do in comparison and contrast to what your church can do, all right? Now, it's Wednesday, do you have church tonight? Do you have church tonight? Do you have Bible study tonight? If you do, contact whoever, contact your pastor. Hey, what are you preaching on tonight? Contact your teacher. What are you teaching on tonight? And then you just sit down with ChatGPT and say, okay, the pastor's gonna preach on this subject. ChatGPT, give me an in-depth analysis of the text. Give me, break it down into a, analyze the text, break it down exegetically. give me cultural context, whatever. You just start working with it and then you compare what you have in your hand on your phone, you can take your phone with you as the pastor preaches, you look at what you have. I will almost 1000% guarantee, I think I would put money down if we were betting that what you have in your hand will be better than what your pastor has unless your pastor is using the same AI app. And then when the sermon is over, you can ask AI specific questions about the sermon, and you may find that things said in the sermon were completely factually in error, or AI will say, well, this was a hermeneutical error, or this was wrong, or this was wrong. And at some point you're going to be like, there's no point in having a church. That's what I'm trying to get people to understand. Now, people don't like to hear that, and they're gonna push back and go, oh no. You can say whatever you want. I'm talking from a, look, I'm not talking from a scriptural perspective. I'm not trying to argue whether, I'm not saying the Bible doesn't say we need to be at church. I'm not saying that. I'm saying just looking at it from a practical level, you can do that. And I challenge you to do it so that you can see for yourself. If you listen to my discussion about a week ago, or two weeks ago, where we were working on Isaiah 40, and I said, the next section we're going to cover, I think, is verse 9 through 11, and what did someone in my congregation do? What did they do? I'm literally saying that. They already have ChatGPT open on their phone, and they already had a breakdown and an analysis of Isaiah 49-11, and they did it in five seconds. They already had it on their phone, And so there, whenever they show up Sunday and we go back to Isaiah 40, guess what? They probably have already now used chat GPT. There's nothing I'm going to be able to say on Sunday that they don't already have right there on their phone. They don't even need to come to church. There's nothing I can give them. In fact, Guess what? Someone right now, you can sit down and you can start working with ChatGPT. If anybody wants to take up the challenge, you just sit down. It's Wednesday. From this Wednesday to next Wednesday, you start working with ChatGPT to put together a book, a commentary on Isaiah 40 to Isaiah chapter 55, and in-depth, verse by verse, an exegetical commentary dealing with cultural context, textual context of Isaiah 40 through 55. I guarantee you by next Wednesday you probably will already have an entire commentary that you helped put together on your phone that you helped make with the use of AI. You don't need me! So I guess the conclusion of this is this book just is another piece of, it's another, quoting the famous lyric, it's another brick in the wall. It's just another nail in the coffin. It's like, hey, we don't need podcasters. We don't need preachers. We don't need Sunday school teachers. We don't need the church. I've got chat GPT. It can give me anything the church can give me. And even just the free, if you're using the free one, it can still do most of it. But if you want, you could just say for $20 a month, AI for $20 a month, AI can do more for me within that month than the church will be able to do for me in five years. And just ask yourself, how much does it take to keep the church operating for one year? And how much does it cost to have chat GPT for one year? ChatGPT can give you advice. ChatGPT can offer counsel. ChatGPT can offer you scripture, scripture references and help you. I mean, it can give you devotionals. It can give you daily devotionals, evening devotion. morning, evening. It can help you with Bible study methods. It can do the Bible study methods for you in five seconds. You can ask it to do a chapter summary method, a devotional method, a verse-by-verse analysis, a biographical, topical, thematic, any of the Bible study methods I've taught you. It can do the entire method for you in five seconds. But just compare. You go to church on Sunday, see what you get, and then just see what you get with ChatGPT. There's no way you're going to be able to say, well, ChatGPT was far better than the sermon. Do you understand what that means? The pastor can be like, you can be sitting in the pew and I can be like, all right, today we're in Isaiah 40 verses nine through 11. By the time I finish that, by the time I finish we're in Isaiah 49 through 11, I take just a pause to breathe, to swallow, whatever that typically those little pauses in speaking. By the time I'm done doing that, you've already got an entire breakdown on your phone of Isaiah 49 through 11. Do you understand that? and you can just be sitting there looking at it. And then every time I speak, you can just shake your head going, man, Chad GPT is better than you. Hey, Chad GPT just said you're wrong. Hey, you're, you're misinterpreting that. Chad GPT says your hermeneutical abilities are trash. Hey, Chad GPT just said you should quit and give up because you're pathetic. Okay. Well, maybe Chad GPT wouldn't say those words, but basically that would be the conclusion. I don't know how to live in this new world. I don't know. There was a time when I was going to school, and I was going to seminary, and Bible college, and Bible institutes, and I was getting this degree, and doing this, and doing this, and doing this, and working on this, and writing papers, and reading this, and doing all of this work, that I always felt, OK, I'm going to be so well-educated and so well-informed that when I stand behind the pulpit, I'm going to know more than anyone and everyone, and I'm going to ensure that I give them the best teaching that they can get. They will not be able to find teaching this good, no matter where they look. That was my way of thinking. Maybe I was naive. Well, I found out I was naive, because then I realized it doesn't matter how many years I went to school. It doesn't matter. You're wrong! You're wrong! You're wrong!" Okay, so whatever. They always think they know better, and they didn't even have to go to school. They didn't have to do the work. So immediately you realize that when it comes to preaching, it doesn't matter how much. When it comes to the church, who cares how much you went to school? Who cares how much you learned? There's going to be someone saying, you're wrong. You're an idiot. You're a heretic. You're a knucklehead. You don't know how to read. So I'm leaving. I'm going to go somewhere else. OK, just whatever. So then you kind of just realize, then I kind of reached a point where I'm like, you know what? Why did I go to school? Why did I spend all of those hours and that time? Why did I do all of that? It was a waste of time. No one cares. So then I became very disillusioned. Well, now with AI, I realize, what was the point? What was the point? And now when I go, when I'm sitting here studying, getting ready for church, why am I studying, getting ready for church? The people sitting there in the pew can already have everything I'm going to give them and better, and they can put it together. They can pull up in the parking lot like, hey, are we getting ready to go in? Just give me a second. Give me a second. All right, everyone. I sent it to your phones. Everybody got it? What I just sent to you is going to be better than the sermon. I should just text everyone, hey, here's a chat GPT breakdown of Isaiah 49 through 11. Don't even bother showing up to church. Just read this. Everyone have a good day. I don't get it. I don't even know what the future looks like anymore. If someone can put together a book, 275 page book in a week. A church would pay who knows how much money to get a book like that so that they could pass them out to all the people in the congregation. Churches do this all the time. Their curriculum, all the money they spend, why? We're gonna have small group, we need small group curriculum, just have AI create it. All right, there you go. Oh, let me give you the name of the book again. Well, okay, so just so that you know, if you're listening to me on the Sermon Audio platform, that would include the website, the Sermons 2.0 app, or the Church One app. What you should see attached to this is a PDF file. It will be the book, Dwelling in His Presence, A 30-Day Journey into Christ-Centered Prayer Meditation. right? That's what it's going to be. I want you to look at the book and just remember it was almost entirely put together by artificial intelligence, okay? I also want you to look up the book on Amazon, Dwelling in His Presence, A 30-Day Journey into Christ-Centered Prayer Meditation. Please consider getting a copy there to support someone putting this together because it serves as a great example of how AI is going to be disruptive to the church. Also know that the person put together another book entitled Faith Undermined Conspiracy Politics and the Crisis in the Christian Church. I think, to me, what I believe the crisis in the Christian church is. Now, my approach is different. I used to argue that conspiracy theories and political hijacking was the crisis the church is facing. I believe now the crisis that the church is facing, and nobody realizes it yet. I don't think anybody understands it yet. The crisis the church is facing is that you're just irrelevant. You're no longer needed. There's nothing you can give me. that I cannot get from AI in five seconds. You are an irrelevant institution from a practical standpoint. Now, if you're a sacramental church, Right? Then, okay, you still can fight for your being relevant because people need the sacraments, and the only way to obtain the sacraments is through the church. Now, if you're not sacramental and people are going to church, you can say, well, you go to the church to sing. Okay, well, I'm pretty sure I can sing at home, right? Well, it's different because you've got people standing next to you. I guess, the church's relevancy is now going to be based on, oh, well, you come here for friends. for quote-unquote community, to hold hands, sing kumbaya, that it's not going to be for the teaching because I can get the teaching better and quicker and faster. And in many cases, as we've already seen this year, just in the tests that we've done, AI has been superior to every sermon that we have reviewed. In fact, AI tore those sermons apart. There's a new crisis. These other crises in the church, I think they've almost become irrelevant. This is my own feelings. I think AI. And when I say crisis, I'm not saying, oh, AI is bad and we just got to stay away from it. There's no staying away from it. So now the church is going to have to realize, how do we function? What does the church look like with AI now becoming irrelevant? What it is, how does the church and AI, what does that look like? All right, there we go. So again, the name of the book, Dwelling in His Presence, A 30-Day Journey into Christ-Centered Prayer Meditation. Please look it up, and I'm hoping that the PDF file attaches without any problems, because if it doesn't, If it does have a problem and I can't get it attached, then I'm going to sound really dumb spending 52 minutes telling you it's going to be there, and it's not. But I'm going to find a way to get it there. So I have it converted to a PDF file. It should be there soon. So the first thing that happens is this message will get sent to all the other podcasting apps. It goes to Spreaker, Spotify, Apple. All the podcasting apps get it first. It won't be attached there because there's no way for me to attach it there. Sorry. Then, as soon as that's done, then I upload it to the Sermon Audio platform, and the PDF file will be attached there. So, for those listening on the other platforms, go to the Sermon Audio website, look up Theology Central, download the Sermons 2.0 app, look for Theology Central, or download the Church One app, which is the one I always tell everyone to download, because when you download the Church One app and then do a search for Theology Central, it becomes the Theology Central app. So then it's easy for you to keep up with all of our content. So it should be there. All right. To the person who wrote the book and did all of this, thank you so very much for sharing this with me. Thank you for doing it because I think this demonstrates a lot of what I've been trying to say. And thank you for making it available. You're trying to sell it and you made it available for people to access. So I hope. I hope people will utilize this and I hope it generates more conversation and discussion about the future. And the future, ladies and gentlemen, is artificial intelligence, whether you like it or not. God bless.