Introduce yourself to the audience and tell them a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm Dr. Phil Fernandez. I pastor Trinity Bible Fellowship. It was a church I planted back in 1988 in Bremerton, Washington, and still with the same church. And in 1990, I started the Institute of Biblical Defense, which deals with Christian apologetics and taking debates and training Christians in how to defend the faith. And I do a lot of speaking. Don't do as much debating as I used to. And I also teach now at a Christian high school. I teach some concurrent credit Bible, theology, and philosophy courses. Wow. Is that high school or college? It's high school, but they're concurrent credit courses. I'm considered an adjunct professor for Northwest University. out of the Kirkland, Washington area. And then I also, I do head the doctor of ministry program for Veritas International University out of Southern California. It was a school founded by Dr. Norman Geisler. So. Busy man. So you're a busy man. Yeah, probably too busy. Yep. Yep. Aren't we all, sir? Aren't we all? So today's topic, we've decided we'll talk a little bit about Ten Commandments and see where that leads us. Sound good? Sounds good to me. Fantastic. So the Ten Commandments, we can find them in Exodus and Deuteronomy. They're pretty much the same in both of them. The story's a little different. There's a few, you know, differences in between. But all together, what are the Ten Commandments to you? What are they to you? How do you feel about them? Well, I think, you know, we look at the Ten Commandments, we look at them as, you know, what commandments are, laws and things of that sort. But it's one of those deals where I think I think the Apostle Paul had a legalistic hermeneutic of the Old Testament, where he interpreted the Old Testament from a standpoint of legalism and laws and technicalities. And so as a Pharisee trained by Gamaliel, he was into the letter of the law and, you know, trying to explain what does it mean not to work on a Sabbath day and adding all these technicalities and things of that sort. But when he was confronted by Jesus of Nazareth on the road to Damascus, and, you know, changed everything, he was, you know, born again, he came to Christ, and I think immediately right there seeing, you know, when he said, you know, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, well, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus of Nazareth. I think immediately Paul recognized that he needed a new hermeneutic. a new way to interpret the Old Testament, that he was interpreting it from a legalistic standpoint, and now he understood that he needed to interpret the Old Testament from a Christocentric point, seeing Christ in the Old Testament, as you know, Jesus talked to the Pharisees and said that, you guys claim that you accept the law of Moses, but Moses wrote about me, and you reject me. So if you would believe what Moses said, you would believe in me. And so I think having that understanding, there are several things we need to acknowledge about the Ten Commandments. And one is that obeying God's laws in our own strength, trying to obey God's laws in our own strength, we're always going to fail short. And so one of the purposes of the law is to show us that, you know, Paul says in Romans 3.20 that no one will become righteous in God's sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin. And so in Galatians 3.24, he tells us that the law was a tutor, a substitute teacher, to lead us to Christ. So, you know, the law is good. It's not a bad thing. But like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, 5, and 6, the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Well, the reason why the letter of the law kills is because if we try to obey God's perfect standards in our own strength, the law is going to knock us down and reveal to us God's righteousness, and then show that our own righteousness is filthy rags before the Lord, as Isaiah says, so that the law is going to show us that we cannot perfectly obey God's commands, and therefore we're in need of a Savior. So I think the first thing we've got to recognize when we look at the Ten Commandments or any of the Old Testament laws or even New Testament commands. We just need to understand this is not... we're not saved by the law, we're saved by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus alone. And then, I think we also need, I think Paul points out in, you know, but then after being saved, in Romans 6, Paul says that Well, that doesn't mean that you should continue in sin. May it never be. How shall we who die to sin still live in it? So God's grace not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but he releases us from the power of sin so that the Holy Spirit indwells us so for the first time in our lives, we can do Sermon on the Mount living. We can begin to obey God's laws from the heart through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so some of Paul's readers in Romans probably thought, wow, well then he said, okay, we're saved. We're not saved by the law. We're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus alone. But now I guess we get sanctified by the law, and then Paul slams that in Romans 7. Well, just to clarify a little bit here, Paul thinks that the Old Testament laws were what exactly? Well, he's basically in reference to the Old Testament laws were not given to the Jews for the purpose of being saved. I mean, if you, you know, like in Exodus 20, I mean, it starts out, you know, Then God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So it's kind of almost in a figurative way, it's a reminder, hey, look, I've already saved you. Now you're my people, my covenant people. Yeah, and so it's not like, hey, I'm giving you the laws that are going to deliver you. God's saying, no, I am your deliverer. So why the laws in the beginning, then? Well, like Psalm 197 said, the law of the Lord is perfect. You know, I mean, you agree that the law of the Lord is a good thing, right? Yeah, oh yeah, definitely. Is it just the Ten Commandments? Now, is it just the Ten Commandments you're referring to as the law, or are we talking about all 613? Well, that's the question I have for you. When you read from the Old Testament, where you see, like, in Psalm 119, it talks about the Law of the Lord being perfect, but it also talks about the precepts, the statutes. When Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, that was another way of saying the entire Old Testament. So you could represent, like, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses, you could summarize the whole Old Testament by just saying the Law, or you could say the Law and the Prophets, or you could say the Law and the Prophets and the Writings. And so basically what I'm saying is that we should not ignore God's laws, but we should not try to derive salvation from God's laws, which He was never intended to do. God's laws were never intended to save us. One of God's intentions of the laws was to show us that we're sinners who need to be saved, and then Paul talks about, once you're saved through faith, you're no longer under the law. Now, if we unpackage that, you know, we could do 12 programs on what that means, but even more importantly, what it doesn't mean. And so, in other words, not being under the law does not mean antinomianism. It does not mean we're against the law. Jesus even said, look, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And so it's kind of like, so what's that? What do you think that means? Well, I think that he's basically saying that, look, you guys think I'm anti-law because I'm healing people on the Sabbath day. And so you think I'm teaching against the law of Moses, but I'm not. I'm here to fulfill it. And you know, he fulfilled the ceremonial laws by basically, they were just metaphors or symbols of him. So we're not saved by animal sacrifices, as Hebrews chapter 10 says. were saved by Jesus as one sacrifice for all. So he fulfilled the ceremonial aspects that way, and then he performed all the moral demands of the law, because God demands perfection, we all fall short, while the righteousness of Christ is imputed or credited to us when we trust in Jesus for salvation. So if these laws and rules were so perfect and the way that God wanted them to be, why replace them? Why stop them? No, and I don't think that... I don't think that replacing is the word. The word Jesus used was fulfilled. So we're still going to follow these laws? I'm not even saying... What's that? We're supposed to be still following these laws, then? Well, I think we have to understand what exactly is meant by no longer being under the law. For instance, Jesus talks about, like, kind of kingdom living in the Sermon on the Mount, so whereas the Jewish rabbis are saying, You know, thou shalt not murder. Well, I haven't murdered anybody. And Jesus is saying, if you just harbor evil thoughts against a brother, you've already broken that command. In Matthew 5.18, Jesus says, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. So heaven and earth don't disappear until Revelation 21.1. So, the law is still essentially in effect by what Jesus is telling us here. Matthew 5. Yes, but again, the law, by the law, and he's talking about the law and the prophets. I believe he's talking about the entire Old Testament. It's the Word of God. God's Word will not return void. Everything God intended the law to do, it will do. One of the things God did not intend the law to do was to save us. That was not the case. Well, that's not what he's saying here at all. He's saying that you're supposed to be still following the laws. None of it should disappear. You should keep doing it until the end of time. But Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, Jesus is explaining how to obey the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. He's talking about obeying God from the heart. Where does it say the spirit or heart? Well, he's talking about the blessed are the pure in heart. Okay. Even Paul could follow the law, wouldn't you think? Yes, because the Holy Spirit is in dwelling in them and working through them. So that's physically following the law. What's that? So that would be physically following the law, though. I wouldn't call it physically following the law. Mentally? You don't mentally? No, I would say it's living by the Spirit. Living by the Spirit. What does that mean exactly, living by the Spirit? living by the power of the Holy Spirit, acknowledging, you have to just acknowledge, I cannot obey God's laws perfectly from the heart, in my own strength, even after being saved, and so I'm going to rely upon the Holy Spirit's power, not just to save me, but to empower me and to work through me and to lead me to obey God's laws. So where does it say to stop following the Old Testament laws, exactly? Well, you've got... first off, I break down the Old Testament law into ceremonial, civil, and moral aspects. Okay. So, like, the civil aspects would be like punishments for crimes. Ceremonial aspects, those are the symbolic things, like Colossians 2, 16 and 17. We could look at that passage where... Leviticus 10, 7, where you don't leave the entrance of the tent or you'll die, those kinds of things? Well, there's, you know, there's... There are some commands that were more civil, more for the situation of the Jews. For instance, if you have to go to the bathroom, you would leave the camp and then you would go through a cleansing before you came back. And if Europe had just applied that to their situation, not obeying the letter, but seeing the wisdom in that they could've avoided the bubonic plague. But what about all the other things that are in there, such as the Leviticus 10-7, don't leave the entrance of your tent a meeting or you will die, or Numbers 25-5, each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshiping Baal. I mean, you have to kill people if they believe in a different deity. Picking up sticks and numbers is a death sentence. These are the other things I'm talking about, you know, not just those little things. These are the things we're supposed to still be following. Jesus says, not one smallest letter. No, I don't think so. I think that when you look at the Sermon on the Mount and the way Jesus dealt with it, I think that these civil aspects of the law dealt with punishments for crimes for the nation of Israel, and God was stricter with them at some points because they were a theocracy. They were the chosen nation of God, they were to be the custodians of His Word and the one true faith, which is... and so I don't think that America is a chosen nation of God. We're not the custodians of God's Word. And so he was stricter, so even those who were involved in false worship and things of that sort, they were to be executed. I don't think that in a Gentile nation that should be applied. Do you think that's a perfect thing? What's that? Do you think that's a perfect thing? Yeah, I think that was a perfect law for God's people in that cultural situation, yeah. Well, we can go back to the Ten Commandments here, along with the... But basically, just to give you my overall view there, is that the ceremonial aspects, like the Sabbath law, the Jewish feast days, you know, Paul in Romans 14 says the stronger brother lives every day for the Lord, does not put one day above another, but these are things that were fulfilled by Christ or are going to be fulfilled by Christ at His Second Coming. The civil aspects of punishments for crimes, you know they couldn't keep people in prisons they were nomadic people he couldn't carry around a thousand prisoners with them and uh... and so they some of those laws might The punishments for crimes might apply today. Gentile nations might not. What's that? That's so harsh, though. I mean, these punishments are so harsh. Like, let's go to some of them are, but some of them are some of them are very lenient. Right. But the ones that are harsh, we still have to address. Right. I mean, like the picking up sticks, if we're going to be picking up sticks on the holy day and all of a sudden we're going to be killed because we're picking up sticks on a holy day, that I don't see as perfect. I mean, I see that's no, that's incredibly, incredibly strict. But this was for God's chosen nation. Right, but that doesn't seem holy, righteous or good as Romans 7, 12 says the law is. Holy, righteous and good isn't killing somebody for merely trying to start a fire so they can cook something. I mean, it's kind of weird that why doesn't Yahweh want people to work on his day anyways? Why is that such a big deal? I think it's a big deal because unlike modern lazy Americans, Ancient mankind would have worked probably from sunup to sundown 365 days a year. What about the ones that didn't follow the Ten Commandments or these laws? No, no, but basically what I'm saying is that God said, God said, take one day a week where you don't worry about the physical needs of providing for your family. You're not allowed to. And take that one day to where you could focus on me. Or I'll kill you. Yeah, because I said that God was very strict with his people, the chosen nation. Yeah, but again, that's not holy, righteous, or good. Let's just go back to the text. I think God is the giver of life, is sovereign over life, and has the authority over life. But now, so I talk about the ceremonial, civil aspects, and then the moral aspects, I think they still apply today, like murder, stealing, adultery, coveting, they're still wrong. But I don't think we're going to attain salvation through the works of the law. Jesus saves us in the midst of our sin, loves us enough to save us in the midst of our sin, but then He loves us too much to leave us there. And the Holy Spirit indwells us when we get saved, and He begins to change us from within. So, back to those Ten Commandments. The first three of them are all about—well, four, actually. The first four are all about Him. Yep, yep. All about a relationship with God. No action figures. No other gods, no idols. He's very jealous, he tells us. Don't take God's name in vain. Right. So now let's put ourselves in a situation where we've created a whole universe. Would you make laws about these people having no other gods before them, or would you just let them do their thing? Would you be so egotistical as to demand worship and be the only one that anybody loves? Would you do such a thing and then require a death penalty at the end of it if you don't? Well, it seems to me that egotistical, and it's pretty obvious at this point, you know, you're showing your colors here, that you apparently are not a believer, but being egotistical, to me, being egotistical is a guy acting like he's God if he's not. Well, God, okay. But if you are God, you are the most You're allowed to do that? Ultimately worthy being allowed to do that, allowed to, what do you mean, allowed to do that? Allowed to think so highly of oneself? You are the source. Yeah, you are the infinite God. So? God, with true humility, we just acknowledge who we are. Why doesn't he have humility? He does. He acknowledges who he is. He is God. You're not. He's not humble about it, though. Yes, he is. No. We water down the word humility. Humility really means to make a right assessment of oneself. And because we humans are not infinite, and we're not God, a right assessment of ourselves, the word humility seems to take on thinking low of oneself. but God makes the right assessment of himself, and he's the infinite God, he's the infinite creator. So you don't see that? So I mean, if you were a Christian, and you believed in an infinite God, you would not see any contradiction with it being, you would not think it was egotistical for an infinite God to want praise and worship, and to expect to be treated like he's the infinite God who created us and gave us every good thing we have. It's the part where he expects it, but actually demands it, or you'll die. That's the part. Expecting it is one thing, like I expect... He's the giver of life, he's sovereign over life. I expect my children to listen to me sometimes, but you know, that doesn't always happen. But I'm not going to demand it to where I'm going to kill them if they don't. Well, and it was a big responsibility, being the chosen nation of God. You had different nations worshiping false gods, and now the true God is establishing his chosen nation. He's establishing the one true nation and the one true faith, and he's going to pass on that revelation, and he has to be incredibly strict. Why? Even gives them a different diet to separate them from people of other nations. But why? Because he's God, and he wanted us to find out about Jesus, about the gospel message. About how every person could be saved if they would just trust in him for salvation. Let me get this straight. So he had to have People died picking up sticks on the Sabbath day. He had to have be the only one no one misuses name. No other idols He's jealous all this other stuff all these people dying and death and destruction Because Jesus because he was preparing people to for Jesus Yeah, did they give the gospel message? Yeah, I mean, if it bothers you that God expects to be treated like God... Could there have been an easier way? That's your issue, dude. That's your issue. Could there have been an easier way to just tell everybody about Jesus? I don't know if there could have been an easier way. I know there couldn't have been a more righteous way. It could have been more straightforward. Because otherwise God wouldn't have done it. He could have been like, hey, guess what? I'm preparing you for Jesus. You know, hey, guess what? My son Jesus is coming. And all these laws and everything I created that are perfect, they're kind of pointless. Hold on. And they're kind of pointless because my son Jesus is going to come and abolish them all. Oh, you got all these great ideas. You know what you ought to do? You ought to apply to be God. See how good of a job you could do as God. You ought to apply to be God. I think you'd be a good God. You think you'd be a good God? Because obviously you're thinking you'd make better choices than God. None of these people even met Jesus, man, so it doesn't make sense to teach them about him. Why are they in preparation for something they're not even going to be a part of? Do you know what I mean? You could have big events, big events could come and and there's a big introduction if there's a concert that's going to be around they're gonna advertise it will but i guess with the entrance of god into the world He decided it was going to be thousands of years that he would give the introduction to when he would come. Sounds like such a weird thing to do to me. And then at the end of it, require the bloodshed of your own son in order to forgive people that use blood magic. I'm going to use this blood from this, this, this being, and I'm going to transform it into a sacrificial compensation. So I'm able to forgive you, you know, again, be kind of strange to me. Oh, it would seem strange to me if I were, an atheist who thought I could do a better job than God. Yeah, it would seem strange to me too, but within the Christian worldview, there's no inconsistency with the ultimately worthy being creating us and giving us free will so that if we sin, all sin is rebellion against that ultimately worthy being, thus making us deserving, justice would demand that we would deserve the ultimate in punishment, but if there's going to be, and then God's justice would demand that this sin could not be forgiven unless there was an ultimately worthy substitute sacrifice, which is why he sent the Lord Jesus, why Jesus, God the Son, had to become a man to die on the cross for our sins. He had to. because he was unable to forgive without this special magical blood. But no, no, without it, without an ultimately worthy substitute sacrifice, you're using the expression magical blood. That's, that's your, that's your, what's that? It was the blood of Jesus that cures you, is it not? No, the vast majority of, uh, of theologians and, and, uh, pastors throughout the centuries did not believe that the physical blood of the Lord Jesus has any mystical, magical value to it. The blood of Jesus, the blood of the Lamb, is just a metaphorical way of saying that He had to be sacrificed. He was going to be the precious Lamb of God who would die on the cross for our sins. So it's by his death, by his death we are safe. In Matthew and Luke, both, Jesus forgives sins. And in neither of these cases does anything have to die. So why is Jesus able to forgive sins, yet Yahweh needs the blood of Jesus or the death of Jesus in order for him to be able to forgive people of their sins? Jesus even forgave the sins of the Old Testament saints before he died, but there would have to be that ultimately worthy substitute sacrifice. So when he told the woman caught in adultery, your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more, and when he told the paralyzed man in Mark 2, your sins are forgiven, he wasn't just whitewashing over it. He just knew, I'm going to die on the cross for your sins. I'm going to provide salvation for you. It did not happen yet. I know it didn't happen yet. A kid in Sunday school class knows it didn't happen yet. Then why were they sacrificing things in the Old Testament? If Jesus is able to forgive something without it dying, eventually Jesus is going to die and be that sacrifice. So why then did they have to sacrifice things all through the Old Testament? Because to look forward to the day when God would send the Messiah who would be the seat of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent while the serpent bruises his heel. None of them saw him. None of them even met God. I know that. You're acting like I don't know Bible chronology. Come on, man. It doesn't make sense, man. It does make sense. It makes perfect sense to me that absolute justice would demand that that Punishment the punishment must fit the crime and we have sinned against an ultimately worthy God Yeah, we got it. We're worthy of suffering the ultimate and punishment doesn't love your God He throws them into a pit of fire for eternity. Does that sound like I created them? You don't love the Creator and you don't want to spend eternity with them. Uh-huh. I desire I It's his universe. His word says it, and I believe his word is true. I think there's good evidence for the Bible is God's word. You believe that's a just thing? When I was 21, I thought like you. Okay, so do you think it's a just thing to send somebody to burn forever for the simple fact of not loving somebody else? Do you think that is a just and fair punishment? Yes, if that somebody else we're talking about is the infinite infinitely good god that's not aided the heavens and the earth and created us how in the world is that a good thing to send someone to hell for eternity you tell me explain to me how that's a good thing would you want to be in heaven serving god for all eternity i'm not going to be a slave to your child killing deity okay well then you've got your choice that is not his choice he's not the one who's going to use for that he'd like to have a new he'd like to have it you know that yourself he's good that you're not going to you said you're not going to be his slave throughout all eternity. So you said it, not me. You said that you choose hell. If there is a hell, you chose that, because you won't serve God for all eternity. It's your choice, bro. It's your choice, bro. Okay, dude. He could have created a place that was not full of fire for eternity. He could have created the eternal couch that I sit on. But no, instead, he wants me to suffer, be tortured for eternity. So tell me I have chosen eternal servitude for your deity or eternal fire. Those are my only two options, and you're telling me this is a good guy? Yeah, the only two options. You can have eternal joy in heaven with God. How is that joyful? You say you resist that. I refuse to worship, to bow down, or be a slave to a child-killing deity. It makes no sense to me. Oh, listen to you. Listen to you. I listen. I'm listening. I listen to myself all the time. I know you do. So, why would he not create a couch for me to sit on, such as, I don't know, purgatory, some place just to sit forever that's not hellfire? Why does he need hellfire for me to sit in for not loving him? That doesn't make any sense. That's not a good thing. That's not loving. There's no love in that. I think true love is going to give the choice to accept or reject God's love. Obviously, you've rejected it. And the alternative to eternal joy, the alternative to eternal joy is eternal suffering and torment. Show me the love. Show me the love, Phil. Show me the love. Love means seeking the greatest good for another. And I think God seeks God's love. Yahweh seeks the greatest good for you, and it's a place called heaven, and obviously you don't want to go there. Or I'm a slave to his every will. Yeah, Paul rejoiced in being a slave or a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul thought he was going to go to heaven during his lifetime. He thought he was going to see Jesus in the clouds. You know, again, that's not the way the church for 2,000 years have interpreted it. Oh man, every church for 2,000 years thought they were going to be the ones. I think God made the end time prophecies. so vague that each generation would think they could see Jesus return in their lifetime, and then that would encourage them to live godly, but then he made them so specific that the last generation will definitely know. That's confusing. Now, Jesus doesn't say to head to the hills until the Antichrist is sitting in the temple proclaiming himself to be God, so then that's about halfway through what a lot of Christians call the Tribulation Period. So it's kind of late in the game for me, but whatever the case, I think it spurs us eagerly awaiting the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to the planet Earth. That spurs us on to do good things. What's that? Every generation of Christian has been waiting for it to happen, waiting for that trumpet sound that never happens. Yeah, well, now there are ancient writings like the Epistle of Barnabas, and one of the Apostolic Fathers, where he accepted the Jewish view, and it seems that many in the early church did, to where the messianic age would actually not begin until about a few thousand years after the first century AD. So in the Epistle of Barnabas, he's still waiting for Christ's return, and he thinks it's going to be in 2,000 years. Now, I don't know how common that view was in the early church, but there were some Christians. I'm just addressing when you said that all Christians No, no, every generation of Christian has that. Yeah, no, but also Paul was one of them. He was obviously one of the first here. He says we're going to be still alive and we're going to be left where we caught up together with all the dead people who are rising. but here is one of the last day to be that we don't know who's going to be a people he's talking to so he has already made the church right that all that we were alive to see the church we were it says he had what he's talking to christians right he's talking to give you know how we christians talk not future because you would see that you would see that i'm correct christians is a future generation you will all be knows as we we were still alive and are left will be caught up together with those were you know those dead people who are rising from So now you're switching. First off, I just thought it was going to be just an interview. I didn't know, and it's probably my fault for not looking into it to seeing that this isn't a friendly Christian dialogue. But now you seem like you'd like to shift from the law and now go to eschatology. Dude, we are all over. So what's that? I said we are all over. That's how it works. That's how it always ends up. Well, I was willing to stay. with the law. Yeah, we can go back to the law, no problem. Absolutely. And so with the law, the first four commands, and the law is a summary of all the Old Testament commands, and the first four is our relationship with God, and the last six, our relationship with man, and then Jesus sums up the entire law even further by loving God with everything you got, and loving your neighbor as yourself, Mark 12 and 31. And so I think that the whole intent of the law is to show us that we're sinners and we need to be saved, and then once we come to Christ, is to give us direction on how we should act to love God with everything we got, and love our neighbor as ourself, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can obey God from the heart. Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense to me, Phil. You know, I wouldn't expect it to make any sense to you, because if you don't embrace the gospel message, and you're not trusting in the Lord Jesus for salvation, none of this would make sense to me either. I did at one point, Phil. You know, I thought I believed. I was a follower, a worshiper even. I did everything I was supposed to. And then I started reading further into it, Phil, and I had more questions than answers. And as it turns out, The answers that I get don't really make any sense either. And the people who give me those answers know that those answers don't make sense and yet continue to follow it anyways. And so do you assume that I've been sitting on my butt before I got saved in 81? So you assume, you ask me to be your guest, but you assume that I've been sitting on my butt the last 38 years? Or are you assuming I'm one of the charlatans that know this isn't true? I'm not assuming any of that. I'm not assuming anything actually, Phil. Okay, so you open to the possibility that there may have been some people who believed they were Christians, and then did the in-depth study, looked into the deeper things, and it only strengthened their faith, like me. Right. Faith. Exactly. You have to use faith in order for this stuff to make sense. You have to pretend that this is real. You have to use faith. You have to insert that invisible piece. You're using faith right now. Where? Where am I using it, Phil? Where are you using faith? Yeah. Did you or did you not call me up? There's no faith involved in calling you, Phil. There's no faith in that. So you had no faith in man's technology to build telephones so that conversations could be transmitted. No, Phil. You had no faith in that at all, no faith in man's technology to build phones. I know it either works or it doesn't work, Phil. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, actually, on this end. But there's no faith involved. I'm just going to push a button and see if it works. No, no, that's a faulty definition of faith. That's a faulty definition of faith. It's like Richard Dawkins said that if you could prove something, then it's not by faith. And John Lennox responded to him and said, well, surely now, Richard, you must have good reasons. for having faith in your wife. What is faith to you? Do you have good reasons for having faith in your wife? Oh, you're confuting trust and faith together. No, no, trust is probably a better definition for pastels and pistachios. You're just trusting that this is real, in other words. So we're going to switch the word faith to trust so that I can understand a little more where we're coming from. Does that sound okay? That sounds perfectly fine to me. I like using the word trust more than the word faith, because we water down what the word faith means. The word faith means a lot of different things in the Bible, and it's very confusing. So if we're just going to use it as the word trust, that makes things a lot easier, I think. I think when it comes to saving faith, That's what it means. It means to trust in Jesus alone for salvation. You don't even know he's there. You can't even tell that he's there. You're trusting something. You have to trust. We have to go way back. We have good, solid eyewitness testimonies that they saw him alive from the dead. We have good eyewitness testimony. That's why guys in your camps won't accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as four different accounts. They've got to come up with wild, speculative theory. Were you there when Napoleon lived? I don't know about Napoleon, but I don't worship Napoleon. Were you there when Napoleon lived? I don't worship Napoleon, sir. I didn't say you worship Napoleon. You believe Napoleon existed because you don't realize that history is based on authority. I don't care, Phil. And you have to decide whether you have faith in that authority or trust in that authority. I don't really care, Phil. And so everything we know about history that we did not witness ourselves... I don't live by history, Phil. But you believe in history. Are you going to go on record saying you don't believe that Napoleon ever existed? Watch this, Phil. I don't believe Napoleon ever existed, and I don't really care. So you don't believe him? Okay. Well, then that's good, because then anybody who's listening to this should know, here's a guy who's denying Jesus, but he also denies the existence of Napoleon. Get back to it, Phil. What about the Civil War? Do you believe the Civil War occurred? Come on, man. Do you believe the Civil War occurred? I'm done playing the game, Phil. Oh, done playing my games? What are you talking about, man? I'm not playing games. We're talking about faith and about trust. And if you trust in historical sources, why would you not trust in the historical sources that give us the report of Jesus? Did you hear when I said I don't care, Phil? Did you hear that part? Yeah. I think that's a true assessment of you. You don't care about Jesus. It's not that the evidence isn't there. You just don't care. This is impossible, Phil. We're gonna be stuck on this all night. Okay, so we're gonna get back to the trust. You trust that the Bible is true. That is where the original basis comes from. Is that the Bible and everything in it is truth, correct? I do believe that, but that was not what I believed at the moment I got saved. At the moment I got saved, it was more what C.S. Lewis would call mere Christianity. I don't know what you're asking. Are you asking, do I believe now? Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Now. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. That's what I believe now. Okay. So, so all of it's true. Everything in there is true. And you trust that it's true, correct? Yes. Yes. I trust that it's true. Yes. So in real life, outside of that book, have you ever heard an animal talk, Phil? No. No, I haven't. Okay. I haven't heard an animal talk. So we've got talking animals in this book. Have you ever seen a guy come back from the dead, Phil? No, I haven't. No. So that's kind of kind of out there, right? Talking animals, guy coming back from the dead. I would want good, reliable eyewitness testimony to believe things like that. And I would want good, reliable testimony. That the Bible is God's word before I would believe stuff like that, yeah. There's a bunch of other books out there that claim truth, Phil. They have a lot of astronomical weird things in it as well. Why this one in particular? Why do you believe that these animals talked in this book, but not the Disney films? Men do not die for what they know to be a hoax. Then why have they died for so many other religions besides the Christian religion? I mean, yeah, but the thing is they didn't know it was a hoax. Oh my God, Phil. With Christianity, well, the Muslim hijackers, they believed they were sincere enough to die for their beliefs. Right. So does that make it true? No, because I can give you lots of good reasons why I could give you... Hey, dude, let me answer the question. I can give you lots of good reasons why Mohammed is a false prophet, and Allah is not the true God, and the Quran is not the word of God. I mean, when you think Mariam, the sister of Moses, is also Mary, the mother of Jesus, and you put the entire Bible chronology all in the same generation, that shows a biblical illiteracy, and that's what the Quran has. But the difficulty thing, the difficulty for you guys is what you got to do is you have to show how, if men do not die for what they know to be a hoax, how could the apostles have been fooled into thinking that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead and appeared to them on numerous occasions? You think you're the only religion that has a crazy story that people believed? I'm talking, I think Christianity is the only religion with a with a crazy story that people believe because it's based on the evidence. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. It's not logical. This guy who starves children, drowns children, tortures children is a good guy. This is the father figure that you look up to, that you love. That doesn't make any sense to me, Phil. You're trusting that this is all good, but I'm seeing nothing but bad. The eternal God, the I am who I am, the eternal God created a good creation. But he gave man free will. And humans and angels abuse that free will. And we brought sin and its consequences into the world. And then God provided a way of salvation for us. Does he have a plan for your life? I believe God has a plan, yeah, a will for my life, and I don't perfectly live up to that. Does he direct your steps? I think he does direct my steps, but most of the time I'm not listening, to be honest with you. How is that free will, if he's directing your steps? No, no, I mean directing, I'm not a... I'm not like a five-point Calvinist or a hyper-Calvinist. I just believe that God has a plan for my life, and God leads me. The Holy Spirit guides me. I don't always obey Him. He gives me free choice, and I freely chose to come to Him. I don't free... Do you believe everybody gets free will? Yeah, I believe... I believe that everybody who reaches the age of accountability has free will, yeah. Romans 9, 18. Yahweh has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. He hardened the Pharaoh's heart way back in Exodus several times. That's not very free will. Yahweh does whatever pleases him. Psalm 135, 6. So now you shift, and this is really good. We started with the law, and we went to eschatology. Now we're going into Calvinism versus Arminianism. You chose the topic, and you're doing a whole lot of dancing tonight, Michael. He does as he pleases with the powers of the heavens and the people of the earth. Yep, and I think Paul is emphasizing God's sovereignty. But I think in God's sovereignty, he gave human beings free will. He knew that God knew that by bringing the 10 plagues on Egypt, that that would soften the heart of the Jews toward Yahweh. But he also knew it would harden Pharaoh's heart. God foreknew it would harden Pharaoh's heart, but Pharaoh wasn't going to come to him anyway. Right. So he went down and killed all those kids in their sleep during the Passover. What a great guy. Well, you know, you mess with the God of Israel, and you have their children 40 years earlier, or actually 80 years earlier, thrown into the Nile River. I wouldn't want to take off the God of the Bible. You don't have problems with that. You don't have problems with that. I've got problems with messing with the God of the Bible. So he's going to kill your kids. He's not going to kill my kids. No, their kids, because, you know, they're pissed off. That doesn't make any sense, man. He's pissed off. God's sovereign over life. What's the alternative? Here's the choice. Find it out that you're really not concerned about the Bible. Find it out that you just don't believe in God. Here's the choice. Either in the beginning, a miracle-working God created the universe, or, your view, in the beginning, nothing created the universe. There's no assumption. Well, nothing is nothing. Therefore, nothing can do nothing. Therefore, nothing can cause nothing. If the universe had a beginning, something else caused it to come into existence. I never claimed to know how the universe began, Phil. I don't need to add magic to know something. I'm going to tell you, I don't know, Phil. But if all of... Do you hold the Big Bang cosmology? The words, I don't know, Phil, just came out of my mouth. Or even second law of thermodynamics? Basically, all of nature had a beginning. So all of nature needs a cause. And if all of nature needs a cause, guess what, Michael? It's got to be a supernatural cause. It's got to be Jesus, right? Because you run out of natural causes in nature. Why can't it be my invisible, magical dinosaur deity? Oh, you want to argue for that? Go ahead. Go on tour. Start a church. See how big of a following you get. That's not a bad idea. Go for it. But yeah, but you... Yeah, and then what you should do is compare your concept. What did you call your... your fabricated god? What did you call him? Oh, my invisible friend is a dinosaur deity that's magical. Okay, a dinosaur deity that is magical, and you write theological works on him... Okay, her. It's a her. It's a she. And to her, okay, good, good, you're being good, there you go, there you go, being politically correct, they're good, good. Oh, it makes sense that a female would give life to something as opposed to an egotistical child-killing maniac. And then you can compare your magical dinosaur with some of the... theological speculation and thought, like from somebody like Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine. How about I just come up with my own stuff? Yeah, this is like Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins is probably one of your heroes, I don't know. I don't like Dawkins. He said, do you like Dawkins? You quote him a lot here. No, I don't like him, but I'm wondering if you like him, but whatever the case, Richard Dawkins talks about the God of the Bible being equivalent to the flying spaghetti monster. richard dot how much how much money is there how much money as a flying spaghetti monster only my magical invisible dinosaur d okay how much money has as uh... okay at the end of the day to start a great do anything they listen to your radio show all probably nobody don't worry about it uh... now that i'm not i'm not worried about the act got with you i'm having a good time up in jersey and enjoying a conversation but it's but uh... uh... if we haven't sold a pizza be even better but or whatever the case uh... The reason why I'm asking, though, is because I think if you have a program, Bad Mouth and the God of the Bible, you'll get a lot of listeners. If you have a program slamming the Flying Spaghetti Monster or this Magical Dinosaur, you're not going to have any real listeners. Richard Dawkins hasn't made a dime. speaking out against the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That's a bummer. He's made lots of money speaking out and debating about the God of the Bible, so I think it's a really bad analogy. I think it's a great one. So... No, I think it stinks, because nobody... No, you place God in the category, a Creator God, in the category of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or this magical dinosaur, There's billions of people on the planet that don't. How do you know it's not? How do you know it's not my magical dinosaur deity? How do you know she's not up there protecting you right now? Okay, does your magical dinosaur deity have self-existence? It cannot not exist. It must exist. Oh no, she created herself a long time ago because she was bored. No, now you're in contradiction. In order for something to create itself, it would have to pre-exist its own existence in order to bring its own existence about. But she's magic. It doesn't matter. How can you do magic if you don't exist? Because she's magic. No, no. No, you need an eternal being, an infinite being, a necessary being, a being that cannot not exist, that is the ground of all the finite existence that exists. You should read Aquinas. and study Aquinas, don't just read his five ways, you've got hundreds of pages of Aristotelian thought that leads up to that, and then hundreds of pages of Thomistic conclusions that he draws from that about the attributes of God, and you will see a far superior concept of a first cause, an uncaused cause of all else that exists, that is far superior than your magical dinosaur. I don't think so. Yeah, yep, yep. Oh, Phil, this has been fun, man. I really appreciate your time today. This is good. It's good because I'm usually, usually formal debates, and I didn't expect, for some reason, I just assumed you were Bible-believing Christians. I was not really, my guard was down when it started, but had I checked out your website like I should have done, I would have at least been in a better mindset, but whatever the case, I'm from Jersey. We don't get much of this in academia, where it's like a free-for-all, but I actually enjoyed arguing with you and stuff. Do you know any of the guys I've debated personally? No clue, man. I hate formal debates myself. I don't think enough gets done during formal debates. I think it's too bad you can't actually just talk to the person. I think you just need to talk things out sometimes, you know? Yeah, yeah. formal debates are not added to the place for him but i don't think it says uh... as effective as it can be a very late i thought i don't think i thought would have been a good debater uh... i i i i and uh... and uh... uh... joe schmoe down the block who shoots the baloney real good would probably defeat einstein in the debate even though he really doesn't know what he's talking about and uh... so so i think a lot of people confused that the they think of it as a good debater he's automatically a great scholar and that's not always the case. Awesome. So I got your email so then we'll contact you when you post this and stuff and maybe post it on our site as well. It'd be a lot of fun. Absolutely. I'm totally down for that. I'd love to grab that pizza and soda, man, if you were closer. That would have been cool. Now where do you live? What part of the country? I am in Las Vegas. Oh, okay. So you're not too, too far. Being from Jersey, Yes, me very specific standard time for some reason. I thought he might have been out out east or something and all But yeah, I won't be in Vegas for for a while. I don't think so but but yeah, so if our paths cross we'll get I We'll get maybe a cup of coffee and a large New Jersey pizza. Perfect, man. Sounds awesome. Thank you so much. All right. You have a good one. I usually tell guys, God bless you. So if in our correspondence I say, God bless you, it's just the way I am. Don't offend me, sir. No worries. All right. Good deal. Well, nice talking to you, Michael. You too, sir. Talk to you later. OK, bye. That's all the podcast there is for you today. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show or if this podcast has helped you out in any way, please let us know by giving us a rating and or comment. And if you really enjoyed the show and want to help us keep the recording light on, then stop by our Patreon page today at patreon.com forward slash BSW the podcast. 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