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James Talarico's crazy Gospel of Thomas teaching: 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 72)
01:28:20
Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference: 0:00 - Intro1. 0:16 {James Talarico & the Gospel of Thomas} Can you offer your thoughts on James Talarico and his teaching relating to the Gospel of Thomas?2. 28:58 {Converting from Judaism} I’m a 19 year old Jewish believer. I want to get baptized and go to church, but my rabbinic/secular family is against it and some don’t know about my faith yet. How can I wisely share my faith without messing up?3. 33:36 {How to Walk by The Spirit} Regarding Romans 8:4-6, how do we walk according to the Spirit and set our minds on the Spirit?4. 39:21 {Denomination Boards = Eldership?} I’m wondering if elders are solely a local church function/office/role. Is a woman who is serving on a district or national denomination board biblically considered an elder?5. 43:38 {Biblical Justification: Works Based?} I’m struggling DEEPLY with James 2:24 vs. Romans 3:28. Your best argument in the video you did on this 7 years ago was the definition of "justified." But...
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Transcript9 lines
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It is when. Well, I mean, in general people misuse the Bible, but in particular when politicians do it, when they do it, that is a particular pet peeve. And this is a good example of that. It's a very egregious example of James. I think his name is Talarico. Now I've been very, very busy for many months. I have not been paying a lot of attention. I don't know a lot about this guy except that I see headlines like, oh, he's going to turn Texas Democrat and things like that. Which would be, as a Christian who has a biblical worldview, that would be a tragedy. But he also says crazy stuff and he's a good looking dude and he speaks very well and he's very confident and assertive and all that. But man, he says some nutty things. And we're going to talk about one of those nutty things about Christianity, about the Bible, about the truth of, of God, of the Gospel itself. Today it's about the Gospel of Thomas. Now for those of you who've never heard this, let me set this up a little and then I'll play the clip for you and then I'll respond to it. We're going to look at the Gospel of Thomas today. We'll look at a good chunk of it and I think you will find it rather interesting. Okay, for starters, James Talarico goes to a church service and there he is, a politician, you know, speaking at a church service, which I'm not inherently opposed to, that there can be a way to do that. Well, it usually is not done well in my opinion, but I'm not saying it's completely wrong. Oh yeah, I gotta get my counter up. I'll do in a second. So he goes to the church service and he wants to defend LGBTQ, AIGC, 3PO, all that stuff. And in defending it, he's going to quote the Gospel of Thomas. And because the Gospel of Thomas is not in your Bible, he adds in there that it was basically, it should have been as the implication that it was removed by authorities. All right, here's the clip. Then we'll walk through it. I'll get my light going while I play this very short clip and then I'll respond to it in detail.
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In the Gospel of Thomas, which was later omitted from the Bible by church officials, the Gospel of Thomas quotes Jesus as saying, when you make the male and female one in the same, when the male is not male, when the female is not female, then you will enter the kingdom of God.
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It's so Crazy. So the Gospel of Thomas, which is not shouldn't be in the Bible, it was removed by authorities, he says. In other words, the implication is it was taken out of the Bible, but it was originally part of it, like it was something God had for us. And then, and then probably white men, in his opinion, removed it. And then you've got this claim about male and female. You'll finally understand the gospel. You'll finally get the true nature of the gospel. When you accept trans ideology. That's what he's honestly saying. That's what he's telling us. Obviously trans ideology was not a big thing in the early years of the Christian church, but we're going to talk about that by going into the Gospel of Thomas itself. We're going to read a couple pages worth of quotes from the Gospel of Thomas. So let's get started. All right, this on your screen is the Gospel of Thomas, not written by Thomas, though it claims it was. It was written later. It involves thoughts that were clearly not from Jesus, clearly not from the apostles, and that were actually in opposition to the apostles and the authentic truth of Christ, by the way. Later on I will answer the controversy of how large my coffee cup is. For those of you who follow me on X, yes, I received a lot of reamings for my coffee cup photo. All good hearted, but anyway, funny stuff. So this is the Gospel of Thomas. Now we're going to look at a bunch of it. I'll start by saying it was. We consider this like, you know, a gnostic type work. Gnostic, from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And it has to do with like secret knowledge. Now this can sound weird to people, like what are you talking about? What is secret knowledge thing? The, the idea of the Gospel of Thomas is kind of like Scientology. Today with Scientology, while the doctrines are different, but the style is the same. Scientology has all these weird theologies and beliefs about aliens and alien wars in space and stuff like that that you don't get to find out about until you're very, very far in, you're very deep in. Then you finally get to find out. And usually people are a little freaked out. They're kind of disappointed. They're kind of like what we're believer, what. So you really have to get them fully sold and fully committed before you can tell them the weird stuff. Right? That's Scientology. Because there's secret knowledge that you don't tell the initiates, that you can only tell people when they're really fully invested. Then hopefully they're committed. They're what gamblers call pot committed. Right. There's too much invested in this. I'm all in. Even if I lose. That's what I see going on here with Gnosticism, and that's what I see going on in the Gospel of Thomas. So I'll put on your screen again, I'll show you an example of this. These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke, which Didymus, Judas, Thomas wrote down. Again, they're secret sayings because the guys who write this already, the Gospels, are already in existence and circulating. The person or people who wrote this work are trying to say they were kept secret, even from the disciples, even from the early Christians, because ultimately they're starting a cult and they want to assign their teachings to Jesus. Then it says in saying two, Jesus said, let him who seeks counsel. Excuse me, let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished and he will rule over the all, which later is a reference to Jesus himself. You're going to rule over Jesus? He says, I am the all, and if you look under a rock, there's me. If you split a wood, there's me. So why does it say he becomes troubled? Because once you find out what these secret teachings are of the Gnostics, which you won't actually get in this text, Right. You would have had to get it from the teachers themselves. They're not going to write it down and make it easy on you. You're going to be like, this is creepy and weird, man. And it is creepy and weird. So let's look at some more examples. Let's look at saying number seven. Jesus said, blessed is the lion which becomes a man when consumed by a man. And cursed is the man whom the lion consumes and the lion becomes a man. What does that mean? It's obviously not a saying of Jesus, but what does it mean? Well, as best as I can tell from like, some cursory examinations of the Gospel of Thomas, there's this obsession with a focus, I should say, on not eating dead things or some problem with eating dead things versus eating living things. And if a lion consumes a man, the man is. Now I'm reading into it here, but this is based on other things. They say if a lion eats a man, the man's alive when he does it. So blessed is a lion, he becomes a man. But the man who consumes but cursed it is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes a Man. There's some sort of exchange of natures that is happening in the eating. Maybe you are what you eat would be a simple way to put it. Later. There's a complaint about eating something that's dead. So I don't know. I don't know. Weird stuff. This is Gnosticism. Now you obviously don't learn anything from the text. You have to have the teacher who then tries to tell you what it means. That's the nature of these types of writings. Now, Gnosticism, I should add, for those who are really deep in this stuff, there's what they call proto Gnosticism, then later Gnosticism. It was developing during this season, it was continuing to grow and change and have more of a foothold, and then it pretty much died off. But the basic idea of Gnosticism, when it's fairly well developed, is that you've got the God of the Old Testament and now there is only the God, right? There's only God. But when people go the God of the Old Testament, they're leaning into Gnostic teachings when they separate the God of the Old Testament from like the God of the New Testament. That's Gnostic type stuff. And we see this in the Meritorian heresies. But the idea is that there's this separate being that is the God of the Old Testament who created the world. And he's actually not a good guy, he's a bad guy. And he's called the Demiurge. And you had like basically this sort of source of all things. And out of this sort of powerful source, emanations started coming. And then those other things or beings, they emanated more beings and emanated more beings. And eventually you get to a being that's really far out, several, many generations, just separate from the initial sort of source, the like the ultimate God, the all you might call it. And you get really far out. And that guy, we call him the Demiurge, this being and the Demiurge, he's not a good guy. Even the name Demiurge doesn't sound very good. He created the world and that's the Old Testament God. And so now you're stuck in this world and you're stuck in your body and the body is bad and flesh is bad. And so you get things like Jesus didn't really have a real body that's part of some Gnostics at least. Or Jesus actually wanted Judas to get him crucified. And Judas was the secret disciple who was actually secretly doing the will of God because Jesus Is like, I need to get free of this terrible body. Judas betray me so they'll kill me so I can get rid of this body. Because the body is considered bad and the soul of the spirit's good. And so you get this sort of aesthetic bent and this, this attitude against the physical, the physical. And you get some of that in there too. Then you have, like different paths of salvation. And paths of salvation have to do with realizations and not just believing in the Gospel, the simple, known, not secret gospel. And then they leverage stuff like there's the secret in Mark, the secret in Matthew, but this is a secret being revealed. This isn't a secret. Nobody knows, right? This is the revelation of the Gospel of Christ. There's light on it, not darkness. Anyway, so that's some of the things. Let's look at number eight, the parable of the fish. And he said, here it is. The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Sounds familiar. So far they're obviously using their Gospels as a source. Among them, the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. What does that mean? Well, I mean, you'd have to ask your special leader in your local gnostic like, group who believes the Gospel of Thomas and be like, what does it mean? And I don't know, it could mean something. Let me give a hypothetical. Having looked into cults a lot in the past. Oh, yes. Well, Jesus gathered in many, many Christians, but only sometimes are there the ones who really know the true secret message. And the rest get thrown back. But you, sir, you could be one of the. One of the large fine fish that I'm going to. And yes, a lot of people are turning away. They're saying that we have a false gospel. No, no, no. We have the secret words that Jesus gave Thomas. Don't pay attention to all those Christians calling us heretics. They don't. It doesn't matter. They're just mean. They're just mean. Sounds like Mormonism, doesn't it? Anyways, number nine. No, no, I'm not number nine. Number 11. Let's do saying number 11. This is all backdrop. Then we'll get to James Tallarico. I think that's how to pronounce his name. Tallarico's comments about women. And we'll see that the Gospel of Thomas isn't as progressive as he would like it. To be. It's craziness, but it's entertaining craziness. All right? Those who are living won't die. It says here. Then Jesus said this heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. See this, this death and life thing where you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do? Does that sound like Jesus to you? Like, if that sounds like Jesus to you, it's because you don't study the Gospels. Like, this is clearly not Jesus. This is just weird. Like, you know, Confucius say stuff like, just weird. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? I'm not going to try to explain that one. All right, let's talk about James the Just. This is an interesting one. The disciples said to Jesus, we know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader? Right? Who is to be our leader? Jesus said to them, wherever you are, you are to go to James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being. What? For whose sake? James? For James the Just. For his sake heaven and earth came into being. Now, he was not a leader early on because he probably wasn't a follower of Jesus. It seems as though he would have been cynical and skeptical of Jesus at the time. Later he became a leader. This is written hindsight. Someone's adding stuff later on. Maybe they're trying to say, see, we have a prophecy here of Jesus about James rising into a leadership position. Maybe that's what they're trying to do to validate the other stuff they do. I don't know. It's weird, man. Now let's show what's the real agenda in the Gospel of Thomas. I think this kind of helps. Saying 13 helps us a bit. And it says here, Jesus said to his disciples, compare me to someone and tell me who I am.
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Like,
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I don't know. It's a weird way to say it. It's like a junior high girl would say, simon Peter said to him, you are like a righteous angel. But that's not what Peter thought, right? We know what Peter thought. We have the actual Gospels. Matthew said to him, you are like a wise philosopher. Wait, what? This is contrary to what scripture actually says about this moment, when who do men say that I am? Which is different than, compare me to someone, tell me who I am. Like Thomas said to him, master, and remember, Thomas is supposed to be the secret disciple who really gets it, right? The other guys don't get it. Simon Peter doesn't get it. Matthew doesn't get it. Only Thomas gets it. That's their belief. Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying who you are. Like, ah, so Thomas, he knew. He didn't know, and he knew that he had no clue. And then you want the disciples, the followers of your cult, to think they have no clue who Jesus is, like, so that you can tell them. Jesus said, I'm not your master because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out. And he took him and withdrew and told him three things, just him and Thomas. This is where Thomas gets the secret teachings. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, what did Jesus say to you? Thomas said to them, if I tell you of one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me. A fire will come out of the stones and burn you up. Okay, why is this here? Because they're a cult, right? They have secret teachings. They want to pretend Thomas knew the teachings, but the natural question is, hey, guys, why did Thomas never tell anyone these teachings? Why did the actual disciples not seem to believe these things? Why is it that all of the Gospels and the Epistles and everything we have disagrees with these teachings? How do you explain that? And you're, oh, well, Thomas couldn't tell them because if he did tell them, then God would kill them. They would stone Thomas because they'd be so offended. That is the teachings we have make the actual Christians angry. That's what they're really admitting there. And if they did this, then God would have slain them. Fire would have come out and killed them. It's these convenient explanations where you get again, the Book of Mormon and the history of the plates and how they disappear. And then there's. There's, like, threatening comments and stuff like that. Joseph Smith wants his wife to accept the polygamy stuff he's doing. And so he's like, God says you have to accept this or he's going to punish you. It's that kind of thing. All right, let's look at the next one, which I'm going to actually go all the way back. Wait, I think I already did. Saying two. Yeah, I did that one. Okay, we're getting close to where we'll talk about the passage that, that James Telo used, but let's talk about number 21. Saying 21, Mary said to Jesus, whom are your disciples? Like, make sure you guys can see this. He said, they are like children who have settled in a field which is not theirs. When the owners of the field come, they will say, let us have back our field. They will undress their presence in order to let them have back their field and give it back to them. So they take their clothes off. The disciples are in the. See here what this is. This is saying we are actually in opposition to the authentic disciples of Jesus. So we have to say we are the owners of the field, us and these. We are the real followers, right? Thomas knew the secrets. He passed them on to us. The disciples couldn't tolerate them. They just weren't wise enough. They weren't enlightened, they weren't large fish. And now we are getting the field back. We're trying to steal Christianity for ourselves. We're the true, true Christians with the secret teachings that got passed down through the years. Sound familiar? There's lots of groups that have said this kind of thing. Well, here it is back in the second century. They will undress in their presence in order to let them have the field back their field and give it back to them. Therefore, I say, if the owner of a house knows that the thief is coming, he'll begin his vigil before he comes. And he goes on and has like a really similar saying that's actually from the Gospels. But this is the meat of it right here. The real agenda of the Gospel of Thomas is to steal Christians away from authentic Christianity into a cult. That is the actual agenda. Now we'll look at saying number 37. Okay, last one before we go to the James Tellarico one. It says his disciples said, when will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you again? Secret knowledge, right? Like, Jesus hasn't been revealed. He's unrevealed. And then they're going to reveal the real truth about Jesus. Jesus said, when you disrobe, that is when you take your clothes off without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them. Then you will see the Son of the Living One and you will not be afraid. Now I'm going to go maybe out on a limb. I think that the leaders of this cult liked to get their people unclosed in front of them, and that's why they wrote this. And they put it in the mouth of Jesus as blasphemous words that they have now been judged for to some extent There's a future judgment, of course, but. You guys want to really experience the true, deep things of God? Yes, I want to. You want to know the truth of what Thomas couldn't tell the disciples? Even I want to know it. You want to understand how to access the all and how to be really, truly initiated into the mysteries of Christ? Yes, I want these things. That's great. Now take your clothes off. That's what this is. This is normal human sickness and perversion couched in religious cult doctrine. This is James Talarico's gospel. He says was taken out of the Bible. And then he quotes saying 22. Okay, taller Eco, this guy, he's almost certainly a heretic, but I haven't looked into him enough to find out all the details. But come on, we've seen this before. All the LGBTQ stuff, It just is their gospel. Saying number 22. I'll play the clip one more time and then we'll do the same.
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In the Gospel of Thomas, which is later omitted from the Bible by church officials.
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It was never part of the Bible. It was never even seriously considered. Okay.
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The Gospel of Thomas quotes Jesus as saying, when you make the male and female one in the same, when the male is not male, when the female is not female, then you will enter the kingdom of God.
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LGBT just is his gospel, right? Until you accept trans ideology, until you embrace homosexual stuff that, that. He also says the Bible never, never condemns consensual same sex relationships. I could do a video on that. Maybe next week. I'll tack the tackle the other telorico clip that's floating around. This is false teaching. This is seducing God's servants into fornication. And it's evil. And it's disgustingly evil. It's also comically stupid. Like, it's both of those things. It's really evil and comically dumb. All of the above. Let's look at the passage itself, and I know some are like, mike, please don't use that strong language. Comically stupid is not. It's not like foul language here. That's just an accurate description. It's the most accurate description I can come up with. And I think it's appropriate. I'm not just acting off the cuff here. All right, saying 22. Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, these infants being suckled are like those who will enter the kingdom. They said to him, shall we then as children enter the kingdom? Jesus said to them, when? When you make the two one, when you make the inside, like the Outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below. And when you make the male and the female one and the same so that the male not be male, nor the female, when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye and hand in the place of a hand and a foot in the place of a foot, and a likeness in the place of a likeness, then you will enter the kingdom. Then you will enter the kingdom. It's just brilliant. It's so amazing. Wow. So when you remove all distinctions, right? The inside's like the outside, the outside's like the inside, above is like below. You just remove distinctions altogether. This is like a nirvana type language here. Then you will enter the kingdom. This is clearly unbiblical teachings. Now you can say, but, Mike, there's no male or female in Christ. You're not reading the passage, you're just throwing out phrases. This is a dangerous, dangerous, hazardous way of doing the Bible. There's no male or female in Christ as pertains to how you get saved. We all have the same rights as children of God, which is why women and men are both called sons of God. God. But not because women are now males, but because they have the rights of a son. They have full rights in their inheritance in Christ. But yet women are still told to submit to their husbands and men are still told to lead their families and be the heads of their wives. All those things are absolutely true. Only men can be leaders in the church. And that distinction remains as pertains to salvation. No male or female, the equal rights in the kingdom. But we don't have the same roles. And I am still a man and my wife is still a woman. And you're supposed to behave like that. That's why Scripture's like, you can't have a man laying with a man the way that he lays with a woman, because that's evil. Because those distinctions actually matter. But this idea here, it is A, from a heretical cult text. B, it doesn't say what he wants it to say and he ignores everything else it says. See, it's a bunch of hogwash. Like Splinter from the Ninja Turtles had far better sayings than this fake Jesus saying you have in saying 22 on the gospel of Thomas. Okay, now I'm going to skip down to the very last saying, because this is. Think about this. This is how they ended the book. This is their big. Their big climactic end at the very end of the Gospel of Thomas, all the way down to saying number 114. Simon Peter said To him, let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. You like that, James Taller Eco, did you read the book that you're quoting? No, man, come on. The guy just googled stuff. Or he got it from a friend or he read it from some pro LGBT resource that are often full. The Christian. Supposedly Christian ones are often full of absolute craziness. And here I'm going to read it again. Simon Peter said to him, let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Do you guys think Simon Peter would have said that? Do you think Peter believed that for women to have life, the ultimate life, Jesus has a solution. Not faith in Jesus. Right? Where there's no male or female in Christ, where it's like, hey, you just believe in Jesus. Doesn't matter if you're male or no, no. He goes, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male. Ah, so women have to become men. They have to become males in order to experience the fullness of what God has for them. This is maybe the origin of trans ideology. Actually, now that I think about it, it's because women thinking, I will become whole and complete and I will step into who I'm really supposed to be if I become a man. There are plenty of women who really do believe that about themselves. Wrongly, wrongly. But. But there is a connection to this. But it's obviously false teaching. So that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. But this writer obviously would have been opposed to men becoming women. That would have been. He would have greatly. The only trans they may have supported would be women becoming men, but not men becoming women. Because women are obviously this, like, lesser being, not worthy of life, and they have to become males in order to gain that life. Yeah. The Gospel according to Thomas. Yeah, right. That's James Tallarico. Homie doesn't care about the truth of Christianity. It's a tool in his tool bag for his other ideologies and agendas. And that's why it's a pet peeve of mine. When I look at politicians trying to get all spiritual, sometimes they do a great job at it because it's sincere and genuine and they don't always do it perfect. And I don't expect them to. Just like I don't expect a layman who starts quoting the Bible to always get it right. Like, I want to see that they're trying and they're, they put some effort into it and they might make some mistakes and you give some grace there. You know, there's. But there's the abuse of scripture that is prominent in these circles. And James Tallarico is, he's a piece of work when it comes to that. Maybe I'll cover more of his stuff later, but I'm going to go to your guys questions again. This is the Q and A. My name is Mike Winger. If I haven't introduced myself, I often just don't even think to do that. But I'm here to help you. I hope, I pray, learn to think biblically about everything. And that means trying to go to scripture and trying to reference the Bible and ask good questions about scripture. I spent many years in the local church just teaching and doing ministry in various ministries. I took that teaching online and it kind of kept growing and growing until I realized that the biggest benefit I could have for the kingdom would be to focus on this full time, which is what I do now. And I'm going to go to your guys questions. So first one, let's see. We have all 10 already loaded. And the first question from you guys, which is question two for today's stream, comes in from anonymous girl who says, I know I'm supposed to serve, but to be really honest, I'm always tired and would rather go home and relax after church. Wait, I think I answered that last week. Let me skim down. Aha. Aha. My bad. Here's question number two from Ben Kaur. This is this week, right? I just scrolled up too far. Ben Kaur says I'm 19, a Jewish believer and want to get baptized and go to church. But my rabbinic secular family's against it and some don't know my faith yet. How can I wisely share my faith without messing up? You say you're 19. Obviously I haven't walked through that myself. My family was like Christian ish, you know, like if they were asked are you? What are you? They would have said Christians. But there was not like a real faith that was obvious in Jesus. I went to church on my own when I was a teenager from like 12 forward. I started going just a youth group at first and eventually I went to Sundays. I didn't know have a clue. But my family did not go. I went alone to church. So I get that. But that was from a different perspective than a Jewish family who a lot of times it depends on your family, of course, but in some Jewish households. The one thing you can't do is embrace Jesus. You could embrace elements of Buddhism or you could even have a Messiah figure that you believe is the Messiah, even a current modern rabbi. But if you think Jesus is the Messiah, that's considered like, you know, you're not a Jew anymore. And so that's something you'd have to prepare for. I recommend starting to research and look into resources that talk about this stuff. And I know Michael Brown, Dr. Michael Brown, who I did a video about, because there were some really serious concerns and issues that had to do with covering up some stuff. And you guys can look that up if you want. You just type in my name and his name, it'll probably pop right up. But at the same time, he wrote a five volume series that I think is very so useful for you that I would recommend you look at it. And it's a series called Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus. And the benefit that it's going to be for you as you're wrestling with these issues is pretty unique. If I knew of another resource that was the same, that had the same value, I would recommend it, but I don't know. So I recommend you check that out and you're going to be ready for all kinds of debates and conversations. They may want to bring in rabbis. And my encouragement to you is hold fast to your faith in Jesus. Hold fast, move forward with getting baptized. That is something every Christian ought to do. But be very patient and very reserved about how you witness to your family. And I don't mean you don't tell them, but what I mean about being reserved is don't say things that you don't know for a fact yet. Wait until you suss it out. Because the way in which you approach your family initially becomes the permanent way in which they always remember you. And it might be 10 years from now, you're wiser and older and you have tons more info and you can defend the Christian faith against every possible objection coming from like a non messianic Jew. Maybe that's the case later on. But they're no longer listening because what happened is early on, maybe you spoke too soon, or you spoke too firmly, or you didn't really have all the details, you didn't really understand where they were coming from. So I mean tactfully, I think a smart thing to do is listen. You gather objections, questions, concerns, you humbly take them, you don't get offended, you're not shaken by them, and you say, that's a great question, dad. I'm going to look into that. That's a good question, Mom. And you let them push on you and you receive it and you research. When you get deeper into your understanding of these things, you can maybe bring and push back with responses that are humble, that are respectful to your family, especially your elders, especially your parents. And so pride will be the thing, because our pride gets mixed into our faith very easily, where it's like, I'm confident Jesus is true. And then that becomes I'm confident I can represent him perfectly well. And that is where we can mess up. So that'd be my counsel to you is slow and steady wins the race here. Don't get intimidated. Don't feel insecure. They may hit you with stuff you've never heard before and you don't know how to answer. And that's okay. That's just part of the process, right? Then you go do some research. I have a video I'll Recommend on Isaiah 53 where I answer Jewish objections to Isaiah 53 being about Jesus. And I cover some other stuff, Jewish objections in that same series of evidence for the Bible. Whenever I talk about prophecy, I usually about Messianic prophecy, I usually look at some Jewish objections to it. So maybe those will be helpful to you. I'll link some stuff below for you to check out. It'll be there like, you know, in an hour and a half or so after everything's over and I have some time. There's my thoughts on that. God bless you. Have courage. Don't panic. All right, number three. This is coming in from Brian P. Miller, who says regarding Romans 8, verses 4 through 6, how do we walk according to the Spirit and set our minds on the Spirit? Romans 8, 4, 6. Upon your screen in order. Let me back up a little bit here. I'll just back up to Romans 8. 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law the weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death. But to Set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Then he goes on. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you. So this passage, how do I process it? As far as your question goes, how do I walk according to the Spirit and set my mind on the Spirit? And I would encourage you. There's a sort of. Okay, this is from my perspective, like, I'm not the guru of all, like, spiritual things, for sure. And others would have, you know, great wisdom on this that you should probably ask other people as well. So I would say there's. In my mind, I think of it as two different areas. One is there's this sort of, like, longing after God, seeking after God, where I may have to sneeze here. I don't know, man. It's just, like, lingering. Okay, so there's this idea of, like, you're desiring after God. There's this part of you that is choosing to chase after God. Now, I don't mean that you look into your heart and you're, like, overwhelmed by, like, wow, look at how much I love God. Look at how much I desire God. I just happen to. No, no, I mean, like, intentional. Have you ever pursued something? There's a commitment that's there. I commit to seek the Lord. I commit to walk in his ways. I commit to these things, and I choose to commit to them whether I like it or not. Like, we went to the gym this morning, me and my wife, and we go to the gym, we work out for a bit, and it was like, I don't feel like going. She doesn't feel like going. But we have, like, chosen to commit to that. And so I went there and I did some exercises, did some Pilates and some yoga. I'm joking. I don't. I would not do either of those things. I just know that that's what David Wood thinks I do. So anyway, the. So we go to the gym, and I bench press, like, £7,000 and stuff. But the. The reason I brought this up. Sorry, I'm distracting myself with my own humor and my internal jokes that I think I probably shouldn't say that. But the reason I brought it up is to say that's one side of it is like, this sort of. You provide this impulse of, I will choose to seek the Lord. I will choose to Set my mind upon the Lord. I will choose to walk in the Spirit. And you ask God to help you in that you seek. And you lean upon him and you rely upon him. And you're like, lord, help me walk in the Spirit. Help me set my mind upon you. And then there's another side that's all pragmatic. Okay. There's like the decision making thing that I. When I went to the gym at home, I made a choice. That's the part that I'm saying. Internally, you make these decisions. But then I went and actually worked out, right? So now you actually do the thing, how do I walk in the spirit? Like, that's easy. You do the things that are godly and righteous. Like, no one says, how do I walk in the flesh? Like, everybody knows the answer to that question. Oh, I'll be petty, I'll lie, I'll manipulate, I'll be deceitful, I'll be selfish. I'll put off responsibilities. I'll steal things. Walking in the flesh is super easy and not mystical at all. Walking in the spirit can become too mystical to us. Walking in the spirit is like love. You exhibit love towards others. Joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, self control, goodness, kindness, holiness. Walking in holiness. He is the Holy Spirit. So you do the holy thing. So if you wake up in the morning and you're like, I've really been wanting to read the Word or maybe listen to the audio of scripture in the morning, and I don't feel like it. What is walking in the Spirit and setting your mind upon Christ? Well, do it. Read it. Do the audio of it. Seek the Lord in that. Show up at church. Volunteer, serve, do ministry. When someone's going through something, you go, hey, can I pray for you? And that's because you're setting yourself upon the things of God. So I think it's very pragmatic and practical in its application. And if it becomes that way to you, it's demystified. And you're no longer, like, waiting for something to happen to you. Instead you're like, no, I'm intentional, I'm thoughtful. I'm going to do this stuff and I'm going to do it well. All right, number four, question number four. I'm sure there's more that could be said there, but Kelsey says, I'm wondering if elders are solely a local church function, office, or role. Is a woman serving on a district or national denominational board biblically considered an elder? Oh, that's a really good question. So I've mostly served In Calvary Chapel environments, right, where there is no real controls, the denominational head, I mean, people try to say, oh, you're a denomination because you are a group of churches that identify under a label and stuff. But, but there are some distinct differences. So Calvary Chapel, for better or worse. And I used to say for better and worse because in some ways it's better and in some ways it's worse. There's nobody overseeing the local church. That's just at least historically, okay, maybe it's changed in the last 15 years or something, but there was nobody overseeing the local churches for the most part. Now things develop over time because crisis will happen or crises will happen, and then they're like scrambling, like, what do we do? And then you start developing more structures and policies and it'll eventually move into, probably move in towards more of a denomination structure. But so what I'm, I'm saying this though, to not to say anything good or bad about Calvary's. And overall, I like Calvary's and had wonderful, wonderful experiences as a Calvary Chapel, a tender member, although they're not official member, but, you know, part of the church or as a pastor, coffee chapel pastor, great experiences for the most part. But I bring this up to say that I have a limited experience in this. So when I think about denominational boards, I've never served on one, I've never interacted with one, except for like a zoom call I had with a group not long ago. So that being said, I may have some misunderstandings in my mind as to how they actually function in the real world. And that misunderstanding could mean that my discernment here is off. So I submit to you my answer. Now, in that context, Scripture says the elder role, which is ruling in the church, right? They have authority in the local body. They have pastoral leadership authority that, that is reserved for men. My understanding is that a denominational board, if they are functioning with authority over those pastors or over those churches, not just like administrative kind of organizing things or trying to work on like sometimes a board might, maybe they're like, they help with council, they help with meeting information, but they're not like a voting member. I don't know. I don't know how that's going to work. But if they're ruling over elders, I don't think that someone who's not supposed to be an elder can rule over the elders. That doesn't make logical sense to me. So I don't think, I would think that what would be more biblically faithful with what we read in 1 Timothy 2 would be if my understanding of a denominational board, a district or national denominational board is accurate, would be that that should be men. Now it doesn't mean that a woman shouldn't or couldn't be involved in various aspects of that. Maybe they're getting women involved, especially in relation to other women in the ministry, in the denomination towards women or in relation to investigating or dealing with or assessing let's say reports of sexual abuse. And now you've got a woman, maybe there's like an 18 year old woman or 15 year old girl basically who's reporting sexual abuse at the hands of a leader and then she's going to go in front of a group of just a bunch of men to like report. And I'm like, well I think you guys should assign like a woman to come alongside her and be her advocate and represent her to them and have some actual authority in that. So I'm saying it's complicated. Right? But in general authority over elders, it doesn't make sense that if we're going to be actually be, I think biblically complementarian, that that role would have, would be women's. If it's authority over. Now if it's a non authority position, I'm open to it. You know, there's my two cents. I hope I'm not missing something because I just don't know the context. Okay, let's go to question number five. Riley Lastow has a question. Riley says, struggling deeply with James 2:24 vs Romans 3:28. Your best argument in the video you did on this seven years ago was the definition of justify. But my niv Bible says considered righteous. Yeah, well, let me. I'm going to give you a short answer on this because you have already seen my whole video on this, right, where I walk through it and I don't think that's my best argument. I think the argument is the context of James. That's the best argument. And that James, let's look at James. Well here, okay, maybe I will spend more time on this, but let's look at the dilemma for everybody to catch up. Okay, so it says you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. They're justified by works and not by faith alone. That's the phrase. And then when you take that out of context and compare it to Romans 3:28 you get for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. So it's apart. I'm justified by faith apart from Works of the law. Now, one way in which, like, let's say, like, say Roman Catholics, this is how I would understand their perspective, is they would say, well, yeah, that's why we have two stages of justification. We have the initial stage when you first get saved, and that's purely by faith, apart from works. But then later on, you know, like if you say you're a Catholic for 10 years and you sin a lot of times in there and you do things that are bad, and. And in that, if you want to be justified when you die after that, like, you got a clean slate. But the stuff you do later, you got to add some of your works in there to merit more grace. You get the grace of Jesus, you get the grace of Mary that she merited, you get the grace that Peter and Paul or other people have merited, and you get some grace that you merit. And it's all under the umbrella of Jesus's grace. But you have to do works. So they have this two stages or two different, like time periods of justification they talk about. And so initial justification and then later justification. So they can go, yeah, well, Paul's just talking about initial justification here. He's not talking about something later. James is talking about later justification. I don't think that that's possible. I think that when Paul in Romans discusses the way in which we are saved, he describes it as being not of law but of faith. He's justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Oh, another, another Catholic response is Paul is. This is a different response entirely. I should mention Paul here is not saying you don't use works to merit grace or something like that. He's actually just saying you don't use the law. We're not under the law. And for this I've painstakingly gone through, like the catechism. And I show where the works that merit grace are the Ten Commandments, that it is in fact the law that you're obeying to merit grace. And so this is like a dodge. This is not. I don't think that's solid Catholic doctrine. I think that's a dodge. You're going to be Catholic, be a real Catholic, really believe the stuff that's written there. So otherwise it makes it hard to talk and have conversations. But later in Romans where Paul, he lays this out, you're forgiven, it's by grace. Then Romans 5, it talks about later justification, since we have been past tense justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. Ah, continued justification. The justification that happens ongoingly on my life. It is the same as that which I initially had. I've been justified by faith, and therefore I continue accessing grace through the same method. Just by faith. I just believed. Right now, belief involves an attitude of turning towards God, relying upon God not just going, I intellectually assent, Jesus rose from the dead, and then I go do whatever I want with my life. But yeah, and I could give other verses on this in Romans as well. Romans 11:6. I don't think there's a good Catholic response to Romans. This is a key verse to me, but I always tell people that, and then they're like, wait, I don't understand. How's that a key verse? So I'll try to explain it. Well, Paul, talking about salvation here, says, if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. And then he adds the idea that if we do it by works, right? Can you mix the two? He says, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. So you're saved, chosen, you're forgiven. It's all this. It's by grace. It is no longer on the basis of works. That is an ongoing statement about reality today. You are not forgiven based upon your works. That's ongoing teaching in his extensive epistle, where he goes through justification in detail and shows us that we're given the righteousness of Christ and he takes our sins away and all that. And then he gives this amazing statement, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. That is, if you add works to grace, that is a definitional destruction of the term itself. Maybe I can illustrate. Let's say I was going to give you some coffee. Here's the. Oh, boy, that's hot in the bottom. I got a little heater over here. And I was going to give you this cup of coffee, which people were like, at the very end of the stream, I'll deal with the coffee controversy. I'll explain it and stuff. I have some examples I can show you. And I'm going to give you this coffee. And you say, well, why are you going to give it to me? I said, all I want you to do is just believe that I'm giving you a good cup of coffee. And you go, well, I do believe that. I trust you, Mike. I go, well, here, you can have it. And then you start drinking it. You get halfway through drinking it, and I go, that'll be a dollar. And you go, wait a minute, you were giving it to me free, right? Graciously I said, yes, initially I was, but now that you're halfway through, you got to pay for some of it. And you said, well, then it was never really free, was it? That's what Paul's saying. If it's grace, it's not works. If it's works, it's not grace. You can't mix the two. I think Romans 11:6 is a key verse in this. And I know there are some answers I've heard some I just haven't heard what I believe are good ones. Okay, Back to James 2. 24. Then what is James saying? Let's back up and look at the actual context of James, not just the word justified. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says, he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? Can what faith save him? The claim. I have faith, but he also doesn't have works. He's not living out his faith. I believe in Jesus, but he's sleeping with his girlfriend, he's stealing from his employer, he's sinning in all kinds of ways, and he lives in a lifestyle of ongoing continual sin. Not remorseful, not repentant. What if it's that guy? He doesn't serve the Lord. He doesn't show any fruit of salvation. There's no work of the Spirit visible in his life. But he says, he claims he has faith. Is that faith going to save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and he gives an analogy here, and one of you says to him, go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things that are needed for the body, what good is that? This is the reality of, like, yeah, you could give people your well wishes. I wish you well. But if you have the ability to help them and you refuse to, then does it even mean anything? Right? Like, hey, I see a starving guy. Oh, I hope you get food. And I'm like, dude, I could feed this guy right now if I wanted to. Do I really hope he'll get food? Or is there something dishonest about my claim? Be warm and filled. Go in peace. Am I being honest? Is my claim to have faith real or is it not real? That's what I think. James is dealing with fake faith claims. So works prove your faith claim is real. They prove that you mean it. I'm demonstrating to people the genuineness of my faith. I'm not adding faith and works to earn some kind of grace. Seventeen. It says so. Also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Right? The problem Is the dead faith? Oh, your faith is dead. You have just mere intellectual belief. But someone will say, they'll complain to James, you have faith and I have works. Again, they're seen as two distinct issues. Which one is it? Are you saved by faith or saved by works? And he's going to say what he's actually doing. James reveals, show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. Who is being justified in this? Well, James is going to justify his claim to have faith by showing you his works. This seems really plain, really verse by verse. Just reading the passage, he says, how will you show and prove that you are really a Christian? That you mean the things you believe? Well, I'm going to show it by living it out. Matthew, the tax collector, great example. He says, is it Matthew? No, it was Zebedee. And he says, I'm going to restore anything I've taken from people wrongly, and anybody can come to me and I'll give you even more than I took from you. He's a tax collector that basically extorted people and he repents. Now, he was forgiven before God. Now, was he forgiven because he said, I'm going to give back the money, or was he already forgiven? And we just know that his repentance was real because he said, I'm going to give back the money. That's what it is. We just know it was real. How do I know your claim to have faith is real? You show me by your works. It's the only way to show me. Verse 19. You believe that God is one. You do. Well, even the demons believe and shudder. And he shows the kind of faith that doesn't save faith of just intellectual belief. I do believe Jesus really did rise. I think that's probably true. You're not saved, bro. You need to put your faith in him. You need to actually put your faith in him. Well, how do I know I've done that? You can show it by your life being changed. You look at your life and you go, is my life different today than it would be had I not been a Christian? What are those differences? And that will show you the genuineness of your faith. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless, Right? What's useless? The faith. Because faith is ultimately what saves you, like, brings you actual salvation. But when you have no works, it's showing that you have a faith that doesn't do anything. A faith that you don't mean. Was not Abraham, our father, justified by Works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar. An interesting thing because he was counted righteous before this, right? In Genesis, in 22, he offers his son. But it was earlier where it says, Abraham believed God and God accounted it to him for righteousness. So in what sense was Abraham justified? It was in offering his son. It was proven true that he really believed God. It was shown to be true. But he was already declared righteous earlier. You're just showing the genuineness of your faith. You see that his faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works and the Scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, which is, of course, far, far earlier. But he was already righteous before he did the work, right? Yeah, of course he was, but he was. It was demonstrated, it was proven. It was, I would say, justified. His claim to have faith was justified and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Now, what is being justified? The claim that you really have faith, that's being proven true. That is how the person's justified. It is not the forensic justification that Paul talks about in Romans, where he's talking about, I am taking. Your sin is being taken away and you're being given the righteousness of Jesus. That's not happening by works or by faith. And works that's just happening purely by faith. What justification is happening in James? It's proving to other people that you're really a Christian, that your faith is real. I'm justifying it. This is the same thing your family looks for when you get saved. And they go, we'll see if it's real. If he sticks with it, if it changes his life, then we'll know he's a real Christian. But you're already a real Christian, but they don't know it. It's not justified until you do that. All right, I did spend longer on that than I intended to. The NIV saying, having a footnote there. Please don't let that be your only source as you're weighing a massive and important theological doctrine. If you want to look up, like a real source, it's. It's called B dag B D A G. And you can look up all the uses of justification, but your most important resource is always the direct context of a passage, not just the word studies. It's the context of the passage and James's context. This is the strongest argument he's talking about how to prove that your claim to have Faith is real. How do you prove that? And that's what he addresses. And that is clearly not what Paul is talking about, although he believes it, because later he says things like, are you guys even Christians? To some people because of the way they're acting. He's like, are you guys. Is this even real? The way you're acting? Is it even real? So he seems to operate from that same perspective. So salvation in the theological sense, I'm saved by grace alone, period. Proving it to other people, proving it even to my own self, that my faith is genuine, that comes through works, that's part of it, but it's just evidence. A way to put it, I like is it's the fruit, not the root. The root of the tree that makes it alive, that gives it nutrients, that just. It exists because of this. That is different than the fruit. But if you have a real apple tree, like a real Christian, that real apple tree will produce apples. But the apples on the tree don't make it an apple tree. Right? The fact that it's an apple tree and it's real, that makes the apples. The fact that you're a Christian will produce fruit. The fruit doesn't make you the Christian. All right. There's some things. I hope that helps. We'll go to the next question, number six. All right. Joshua Harding says, I feel drawn to teaching God's word, but also afraid. How can I tell if it's truly a calling from God and not just my own desire? I understand the responsibility, and that scares me. Any guidance? Well, first, your fear is healthy. Your fear is good in that sense. That's a healthy fear to have. But those kinds of fears shouldn't just paralyze us. They should inform us so that when we get in the word, we do so with deep respect for God's word. I know there was a young guy that was teaching for a while, he doesn't really teach now, but who wouldn't really study much. And he would just kind of go. I think he thought because he sat under some good teaching that he had just sort of absorbed everything. And so he would read a passage and he would just kind of quickly come up with some explanations. And he would go up on stage and it was like, oh, yeah. He doesn't realize, like, how much work study is. Like, people have asked me to share my study process, and I'm like, it's super boring. You just sit there and study for hours and read the passage and take notes and ask questions and look at resources and look at the context and reread the larger area and then go to references, and it's super boring. Like, it's work, right? It's like digging for gold, right? Coming out with gold is exciting and fun. Digging for gold is laborious. It's difficult labor. It's long. That's Bible study. Bible study is hard work. And then you come out with the gold, and you teach, and people are like, oh, look at all these gold nuggets. And you're like, yeah, man, go get your own. And they open the Bible and go, I don't really feel like I'm getting all the gold. But that's like walking into, like, a gold mine and expecting the gold to just fall out of the ceiling. Like, nah, man, you got to go work for it. So study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. I'm quoting the Bible there. So, that being said, if you desire to be a teacher, there's two things I would share with you. One of them is I'll go to James 3, the fear one. It says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness, for we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble at what he says, he's a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Then he goes on to talk about the danger of the tongue. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire, and the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is so set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by. By hell. Okay, There's a warning. I am on the hook for my teachings, for my words, and that's scary, and I'm scared by that. I should be. And you would be, too, as a teacher. But it doesn't say. Not any of you should be teachers, just not many. Like, you need to make sure you understand the truth and that you also have a skill at communicating it. Well, do you have. That would be the question I have for you. Are you able to. Because some people love studying and love learning, but they're not very good at communication. Okay, but, you know, teaching is inherently a communicative skill, right? I have to get it across to you. Not just I love studying. Some people want to be teachers because they like to study. And if you like studying, that's amazing. I always have to, like, push myself to do stuff. Some guys, it's like they just enjoy it. And that's, that's great. I wish I was wired that way. Right. I enjoy the fruits of it, but not always the study itself. Studying scripture is easier than studying other things though, because it is, it is more life giving than like for instance, the work I'm doing right now on Cover Up Culture. I hate that. But that's one warning. The other thing though, I'd say is that God has given people the gift of teaching. It is an actual gift from the spirit. And if he's given you a gift of teaching and you can labor hard at it and do it well, the body does need you. We need good teachers. We need more good teachers, not just presenters. We need people who can teach the body of Christ who have like a heart to care about people and can also communicate these truths and get them across. We need more teachers in the body. And there's plenty of churches where they've hardly got a good teacher on staff or they've only got one, like the senior pastor, the lead pastor. He's like a good teacher and he's the only guy. And you're all thinking like, if he died, nobody could step in because the church is not seeking to create opportunities to develop teachers. So we do need that. So, Joshua, I'm just going to put it back at you and say there's a great need in the body. You should feel scared. That's appropriate. But if you have that gifting, I think it's good to pursue it. If you think you can honor the Lord in it and it's not just for you. Do it for the benefit of the body and not for any selfish reasons and that'll set you up. Well, number 7k Mojil says I'm really bad at serving without complaint. I resist change even when I know I'm gonna get on board in a day or two. May I have counsel to let me my selfish guard down? Thank you. Lots of. Yeah, well, you probably are going to have a. I'm just going to speak person to person here. You probably are going to have a hard time changing that instinct to resist change. So what you can do is you remind yourself in a day or two, I may feel differently about this. And then you just be slow to speak. Let every man be slow to speak. Quick to hear, slow to anger, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James says. So I would say be slow to speak, especially when you're dealing with these things that are changed. Be slow to speak when you get an impulse to complain. And it can be like sort of a catharsis thing. Like if I just say out loud the thing that's bugging me, it makes me feel like some sort of satisfaction. And the scripture says, you know, whatever is true and noble and just and good and like, you know, these are the things you should think of, you should think about and spend your time on, and so just be encouraged in those things. I think when it comes to complaint, we may not realize the effect it has on us and the effect it has on others. So I remember hearing a teacher, a pastor, and I was a younger believer. Now at my current age, I'm 47, by the way, guys, I'm older than you probably think, or maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm exactly what you thought. In my old grandpa age that I'm at now, I am able to see a teacher and see flaws in the man and still receive from his ministry, because I see that in myself and I see it in everybody. To a point. Right? Flaws to a point. Obviously, some stuff's disqualifying, but I expect there to be flaws in my leaders and not get things right sometimes or to handle something incorrectly. And I can tolerate that, and I can still support them as much as possible. But at a younger age, I had a harder time with that because I probably thought too highly of them. You know, you put. What happens is you put a leader on a pedestal and you think they're just like this amazing, amazing man of God. They're just like the godliest man you've ever seen. And then you find out they're not. And then now you're. So it flips upside down. And now you're so disappointed in them that you can't appreciate who they even really are. And so that does happen. And I've learned to take it as to be concerned when I see people who look up to me too much, because I think, well, they're going to find something wrong with me, and then they're going to really despise me more than I deserve because they used to love me more than I. Or I should say respect me more than I deserved. And so it flips. So when I said all that to get this when I was young, I remember a pastor I really looked up to and thought highly of and somebody just off the cuff, one casual little complaint about them. It wasn't a big deal. But hearing that complaint at that younger age, it affected the way I heard that person's teachings and how well I would receive from Them it wasn't a huge deal. It was just like a normal. You know, this person has character issues just like we all do. Not like disqualifying. And I remember that. And I know in ministry, I've seen people grow very bitter. I've seen them grow very bitter towards people in leadership because of complaints. They'd have them behind the scenes that were never brought to the leaders, never brought to the leaders. Now, some leaders do it to themselves. I know because that one time you brought a complaint or an issue, they went in on you hard and they basically taught you, don't you ever bring stuff to me. And some leaders do that to people, and it's their own fault. But it's also intimidating to go to a leader and tell them, but it's way easier to say it behind their back. So those kinds of complaints can actually tear down a ministry pretty effectively and breed all kinds of uncertainty and problems. And so what I want to say is not like I'm blaming you for ruining ministries. Not at all, not remotely. I'm saying if you think about complaining and you think this could impact people in ways that won't help them, that might harm them, then it can cause you to slow down and not complain as much. And the way it affects you is complaint can be a expression of ingratitude or of entitlement. Where we, and I speak as someone who's fallen into this trap myself, where we complain about things because they're not what we would like them to be, but this causes us to not appreciate what they actually are. Now, there are times where it's good to complain about things, right? You could couch a lot of what the prophets do in the Bible as complaining. You could say, jesus, why are you complaining so much about the Pharisees? You're just on and on. You have this, like, axe to grind against the Pharisees. They're just trying to seek the Lord. They're trying to be good spiritual leaders, you know, and they're really giving themselves over to serving and obeying God. You could really do all that to Jesus if you wanted. And so, yeah, there can be appropriate times to do that. I'm just saying, if you feel like there may be a problem there with your complaints, keep these things in mind. And that awareness will inspire you, I think, to try to say things that are more upbuilding. And then when you do come forward with a complaint, it'll have weight behind it because you don't just do this all the time. It's not just, oh, there she goes. Again. There he goes again. It's like this person seems to care about things that matter. There's a few thoughts I'd have for you. I hope that you find that helpful. Number eight. Jared Powell has a question. And Jared says, hi, Mike. Hi, Jared. Good to hear from you. Do you think there's anything wrong with the phrase God isn't done with you yet? Can something like suicide diminish the amount that God would have used us? Appreciate your ministry. Oh, okay. Two very different questions in my mind at least. Is there anything wrong with the phrase God isn't done with you yet? Well, I mean, inherently, that is. That is always true of every person. But that's because there's future judgment. So, yeah, there's that. Because I could even say to Hitler, who's about to pull the trigger, like, God's not done with you yet. Which is also true in a very heavy way. It's a very heavy way in. Which is also true. But usually when people say, God isn't done with you yet, they mean God wants to use you in the world more. And I think that is pretty much always true of a Christian. Like, you could be laying there on your deathbed and thinking like, well, all I have left to do is trust in Jesus and pray for my family. And I'm like, yeah, well, God's not done with you yet. Those are amazing, awesome things to do. Those are beautiful things to do. So I'm not opposed to it there, but it depends on how the phrase is used, I guess. So can something like suicide diminish the amount that God would have used us? Appreciate your ministry, in my opinion. Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think that the decisions I make can diminish the amount that God will use me. I think that there are those who in ministry make choices. Or in life, I should say, let me just stick to people. Normal Christians, not people who are officially in ministry. Although we all live our lives are ministry. If you're a Christian, but, you know, you make choices and a guy leaves his wife and you're like, well, the Lord would have used you. Like, he leaves her. Like, he's in the wrong and he leaves her and they've got kids and now he's not really in their lives that much. And would God not have used him more in his children's lives had he not done that? Yeah. Does that mean his life is over? That he can't move forward? No. Wherever you're at, no matter how much you've devastated your own life with sin, get up and Move forward and serve the Lord. And, and I agree, God is not done with you yet. If you will just yield to him, right? Just get up, accept what happened, apologize, repent for it, try to make it right as best you can, and move forward and know that there is grace for you. That is the advice I would give every time. But part of accepting what happened is going, yes, I would have had greater opportunities to serve the Lord had I done things differently. It would have been greater ministry through serving Jesus in my life had I done things the right way. And of course that's true. Of course there's consequences for our sins or for our righteous actions. There are things that happen. So I don't know a way to not affirm that. There's statements from Jesus like, what if statements where he's like, if you guys had repented, then this would have happened. And so it's like, yeah, God would have used you guys greatly. What if the Pharisees had received Christ and accepted him and championed Him? Things would have been different for them. But they didn't. But God will use everything one way or another. Number nine, what is this? Is. Oh, this is from Austin, Austin Hansford, who says, what is a biblical perspective of purity culture? It is actually. Is it actually something that goes too far? I'm not just talking about no sex before marriage, but the idea of purity rings, no dating, etc. Okay. So I am always a bit at a bit of a loss because maybe my experience of what you guys would call purity culture was different than yours or different than a lot of the people complaining about it. And it gets more complicated because there's a lot of complaints online about purity culture. Has been for years now. But a lot of the people complaining are also full of liberal theology or just rejection of Christian teaching altogether. And they use purity culture as kind of a punching bag for that. And then they give examples of the most ridiculous purity culture stuff that they've experienced. Some goofy youth leader said a thing to a student and they were like, I can't believe that happened. Or something, maybe even bad happened. And I'm going, okay. But those things don't look like what I remember from those days. So that while I would have some criticisms, like, I think the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye was a mixed bag. I think it rightly tried to bring conviction about selfishly using each other for pleasures before marriage, but it also came up with wrong solutions where it just sort of disempowered Christians to seek godly marriages. And then you had the book say, hello to courtship, which most people probably didn't even read. And so I think that stuff was problematic. I think that the allergy to dating. Here's a legit criticism to purity culture. In my opinion, the allergic reaction to dating was unhealthy for Christians. And we have problems now with Christians who don't feel. They feel like. Almost like they're compromising by just saying, hey, you're beautiful. Can we go on a date? Or something like that. And they feel bad about that or something. And that's wrong. Yeah, go for it. You can go on dates. You can do that. Just keep your hands off of them. Right. Honor the Lord in this stuff. You don't have to. I'm not saying Christians can't kiss before they're married. We didn't in my marriage. First kiss was on our wedding or during our wedding. And in hindsight, I don't know that that was necessary. I think it was a safe thing to do because kissing turns into something else and turns into something else very, very quickly. And that's true. And so it helps you. It helped you not cross certain boundaries. But that doesn't mean that every restriction is a godly restriction just because it can have that helpful impact. So I think that things went, I don't want to say too far. I think that they just got off track for some people. On the other hand, people who are anti purity culture are also cool with girls wearing some really inappropriate clothes and celebrating it. Like, yeah, you go, girl. Like, that's pretty common. Modesty, including not wearing seductive attire is a biblical thing. That's a biblical good thing. I'm not ditching that. Not playing how far can I go games with a person you are dating or interested in. That's really important as a Christian, and those things are important and valuable and we just don't need to be paranoid or weird about it, but we just need to be like, I'm not doing this restriction in my life because I feel that something is icky or wrong about this. No, no, that's a bad thing. And you don't want to go into your marriage thinking like, oh, kissing is icky or wrong or being intimate is inappropriate. That's not. No, no. It's sacred. It is sacred. It needs to be inside of the covenant of marriage. It's so precious and wonderful and, and beautiful and intimate and it's so connecting and this deep connection that we're going to have together, that's wonderful that we must have it inside the covenant of marriage. We're protecting It. We're not scared of it or grossed out by it or ashamed of it. It's a glorious, wonderful thing. That should be our mentality that we should have. So in my mind, I don't know what everybody else's experiences were. I would say it was a bit of a mixed bag. And what it tended to do in purity culture, there tended to be a warning against things you shouldn't do, and there was not an empowerment towards the greatness of intimacy and what should I say? A boldness of taking steps towards marriage that are brave and that are courageous. Because I think that, like a lot of young guys out there, like, I think that you guys can just be brave and courageous and don't fear rejection and you can step out more and it's okay to go on a date with a girl. And you could say, well, no, we do courtship, not dating. And it's like, well, when I define what I think of as godly dating and you call it courtship, I don't care what name you put on it. I just think you're. The purpose of dating is marriage. And so the moment you know you're not going to marry someone, you're not dating them. There's. There's a little simple rule, right? But. But you can intentionally move into a place where you're getting to know someone because you're thinking, maybe I'll marry this person anyway. I feel like I'm rambling now, so I'll just move on to the next question. Number 10, last question. And then we'll talk about the coffee cup controversy of 2026. Hold the Mayo says, I found myself despising the miraculous due to the number of fakers out there. How do you guard against this as you've been working through exposing the fakery of the Charismatic church? You're not alone, man. You're not alone. There are so many people who are experiencing similar things, and they're like, well, how much of it's fake? Because I keep finding, especially in the more strong, charismatic, what someone call hyper charismatic circles, so many of these guys, when you look into them, you're like, there's another one that's bad. Last year I would ask people when I was doing interviews, and they'd be like, yeah, I went in, I thought this guy was great. And it turns out he was doing this, this, this, this, this. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. Maybe we can get you some counseling. We can help. And in some cases, I've made a video on somebody, but not the majority And I've asked people, I said, who do you think is legit? Who out there with next level signs and wonders and miracles and stuff? Who's legit? Who's real? And I would get a name and I would look into this name, looking for someone who's real in the hyper charismatic space. Because I think there's real people. I know people, I think they share with me what happened. I go, I believe that God did a miracle. God healed that girl, God saved that person. God gave you a prophecy for them. I 100% think that's true. And I have small scale stories of it happening on smaller scales. But we're talking about these media personality guys, right? So I'm like, who's legit? And I get a name and I look it up and I go like, I wasn't legit, right? Or there's some evidence he may have had some legit prophecies, but there's also a bunch of fake stuff in there and manipulation and lies. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not impressed by that. Or you get like David Hogan, this guy from, I think it's South America that he's in. And he does. Supposedly he's resurrected like hundreds of people from the dead. Zero evidence. I've seen and heard zero evidence and looked for some. And just all I found was his own employees, people who worked with him for years, saying, I was with him for literally years, did not see a single resurrection. But the counter kept going up of how many people he's raised from the dead. Like, it just keeps going up and up and up and up and up, and we never even see it or hear it. So you're not alone is what I'm saying. So you say, I found myself despising the miraculous due to the number of fakers out there. How do you guard against this? I think it is healthy at this stage to have a slowness to believe when there are these big stage personalities or faraway people you don't know with crazy claims. I think that it is unhealthy to have that attitude towards all the people in your local fellowship. I think you still test it, you still test them and all that. But you're like, hey, there's unaccountable people who are making a bunch of benefits out of these claims they're making in public. What do I do though, about this local person in my church who comes and they go, ah, Lord, give me a word for somebody. You're open to it. And you're like, that's great. I'd love to hear about that. But you don't just assume it's false because there's been these fakers that are out there. When it comes to scripture, I think you've got the exact opposite of these things. I think you have the real miracles of God. And this is the one, two, punch. Satan props up fakers because he knows that a, if they're in power and if they're in influence, they will lead people at least askew. If not astray, he'll at least lead them askew. But he knows that once they get exposed, it will discourage people about the authentic, about the real. We did a garage sale. I hate doing garage sales, but we did one years ago. The last time we did one, maybe it was the last time there was a woman who came up and she bought a few little trinkets and gave us a hundred dollar bill. And we were kind of busy. There was a lot of people there. You're up at, oh, dark 30. And so we didn't check the bill, right? We didn't check it to see, like, is it legit? Test it. It was super busy, kind of a rush. And she bought like $3 or something, I don't know how much, some piddly amount of money worth of stuff. And we gave her cash back and come to find after the garage sale is over, that was a fake $100 bill. Now, I don't like garage sales. I never have. I'm like, I don't. It's just. I'd rather just give stuff away. But. But we needed the money, so we did it. But the idea is, here's us, we do really need the money. We're selling our own stuff at cheap just to try to get some more money. And this woman took such a huge chunk out of all the work we put into it that it soured us on garage sales. But it didn't sour me on money. It didn't sour me on a hundred dollar bills. But it did make me think, from then on, I will always check the $100 bill. I'm going to test it and make sure it's real. I will never do. If I did a garage sale, I'll never do it without checking that $100 bill every single time. That should be. Your attitude towards prophecy, towards miracles is not. It's all fake. That would be a reckless disbelief, just like you may have had a reckless belief in the past, thinking they're all legit. Instead, you need to move to the place in the middle where you go they all need to be tested. And if I don't have the time to test it or the ability to test it, I'll just leave it in limbo. I don't know what I think about that guy or that person or their claims. If I am able to test it, then I can see what's real and I can run with it. But I'm especially skeptical of these big dog ministry situations. It doesn't mean they're all fake, because God may well use a man greatly like that. But I'll tell you what. I've seen too much fakery with Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn and even Bill Johnson and all of these guys. There's way too much fake stuff being presented as real that I think were right to say, you know, birds of a feather tend to flock together. All right, coffee cup controversy. Right. So my counsel to you is, do what Scripture says. Test all things. Hold fast to what is good. Remind yourself of this. Test all. In fact, that's what I really need to do, is take you to that passage. Just a second. This is important. So first, Thessalonians 5, verse 21. Hold on. I'm having trouble getting us there. It's my space bar. It's janky and I miss a space and nothing works. Okay, here it is on your screen. I'll start with verse 16. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not. And that's about the complaining one too. Doesn't mean you give thanks for all circumstances. You give thanks in all circumstances. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies. That's a real danger. I don't want to quench the work of the Spirit. I don't want to despise prophecies as a category. That's the temptation. I just despise them all. But test everything, hold fast what is good. That's the solution. There are camps who do verses 19 and 20, or they do verse 21. They do one or the other. But as Christians, I want to do. I'm called to do both, so I want to do both. Okay, here's the coffee cup controversy. I didn't bring it up, but I posted this picture online on Twitter. This is a bonus, bonus question. How big is your coffee cup, Mike? And it was a picture of me with my hand. And the angle of the camera was such. I don't know how. I don't think I can reproduce it. Here was such that this coffee cup looked very small. It looked like a little cup. And then I was showing that I was drinking black coffee. And then people were like, that looks like tea. That doesn't look like black coffee because it was in sunlight by the window. Let me see if we can show you this. And see, it doesn't even do it here. The lights. This is the same coffee as the light, but there's no sunlight. You can't. It's, like, really dark. But now I'm gonna defend myself against my accusers. So I was accused that it wasn't coffee. That was. It was the same coffee I have before you now. But if it's in direct sunlight, you just see right through it in a clear cup. And I was told my cup was a tea cup. I was drinking coffee out of a teacup. And I'm telling you guys, I know you're joking, but it somehow made me feel insecure. So this is like kind of more of a teacup. Right? Here's a regular sized coffee cup. Right? You can see the difference in sizes. Okay, this holds about a cup and a third. This holds, I don't know, some smaller amount. And then I measured. Oh, and then here's. Here we go. Here we go. I'm clear this up right now. David Wood. All right, so this is the teacup size. I don't even know if you can really tell compared to this one. Are you thinking they're the same? You're confused if you think that. But regular cup, maybe the same. Maybe you feel like they're the same. So I measured them today. Regular, standard, generic. You know, probably made in China. Coffee cup, dripping water on me. Yep, made in China, Nintendo stuff on it. This has a cup and a third. If you fill it up all the way, this Fill it up all the way, two cups. So all I'm saying is, while drinking black coffee out of a large cup doesn't make you manly, but it does make you feel more manly, which is misleading because it's not true. But I thought it was funny. So now I will expect to be harassed about my cups for the rest of time. Because I know how you guys are, but I don't care because I also think it's kind of funny. Anyways, that is the last question for today, guys. I have had a great time with you getting in the word and trying to point you to scripture. And it's so neat that I get to even do this ministry and have an impact in you guys. I'm literally sitting in a room in my house looking at a camera, but I know that you're real people and you're watching and your lives are impacted. I did the Bless God summit with Ruslan and the crew that was there, and I got to meet hundreds of. I think it was hundreds of people and shake their hands and just get to see their faces and hear a little bit of their lives, and it was very exciting to see that. I know that this ministry impacts your lives in real ways, and that's what it's all about. That's what it's all about. So, Lord bless you and keep you. Make his face to shine upon you. May he lift up his countenance upon you, give you peace, and let's pray, Father. We ask, Lord, for wisdom and discernment. As we're trying to navigate the Internet world has brought us together in ways that are good and bad. It brings us all together, and now we're exposed to these giant mega ministries where their online reach, even my own online reach, is bigger than what even a large church would have been in the past. And so we have to have discernment. We have to test things. We have to see who's legit or who's not or who we can trust and who we can't, who we should believe. And we just ask for wisdom, patience, and discernment for the body in Jesus name. Amen. All right, guys, see you next time.