[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome in. I got to make sure we're live. And so I'm going to talk here for a minute. But it's Jack and Joe and Will on a rare Tuesday Night Live. Think deeper. How you fellas doing?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Doing good.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Doing good.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: Doing great. Doing great. We want to apologize to our listeners for not having an episode out yesterday, but some sickness and just honestly kind of taking in this debate has led to the delay. So we're excited to be talking about this on Tuesday night.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Shockingly, Jack was not ready to record an episode on Friday morning. Thursday or Friday morning. I don't know why. It's not yet anything else going on. But yeah, we went to record or we were going to record. I thought, let's wait. We'll talk about this, see how the debate goes. You made it nice and easy for us because I think he kicked his rear end, but we'll get to that. I suppose so. Makes our job easy where it's not a wow, what went wrong? Jack lost. I don't think so, but, yeah, we're looking forward to this.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate it. Yeah, that's. We're going to talk about, I guess, the. The result, how we feel like it went, some of the arguments. We're gonna have a guest or two hop on to give their takes on some of what went down in the debate itself. The idea of debating and whether there's value in it. There's. There's a lot to cover here, and so I'm looking forward to it. I've gotten just an insane amount of feedback, so I really appreciate that. I want to thank everybody who has sent a message, dropped a comment, commented on YouTube. It's. It's been really nice to see. And there is kind of a sense when you're doing it, like, man, are we gonna be sitting here for four hours and like, 20 people are gonna see this? And now it's. It's. It's gone over well. And so I'm excited to see that
[00:01:39] Speaker B: some Marco's video had like 1400 years. Had over a thousand. I think Jeremiah's had over a thousand. This just in the first day.
So not bad views, and that includes anybody else that may have been listening live. And so that's great.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, Jack, if you want us to go ahead and just kind of give our introductory thoughts, I've got some. We got some questions that we don't want to treat it just like an interview of interviewing Jack about, but I genuinely have some. Some just kind of questions for you that I think would be interesting to discuss. But Joe, I don't know if kind of we want to give our takes on how we thought the debate went. Of course, Jack, I'd love to hear, you know, kind of what are we now, three, four days past kind of your Monday morning quarterbacking, so to speak, on how you think it went. But yeah, for me, I mean it was, it was interesting. It was fascinating on so many different levels.
The, the setup, obviously it being virtual was different.
I had never been a part or seen a debate with a specific section for cross examination and maybe that's super common and I was just unfamiliar with it. But obviously I know the opening statement, the rebuttal process, but the cross examination one was interesting to me as kind of like asking pointed questions and looking for certain answers. I'm curious kind of your thoughts on that. But yeah, overall, I guess to just give a quick spiel on how I thought it went. Man, I'll try to save the glaze too much as the kids say, but I thought you did a great job.
That is something that I don't know that I would at least in the next few years have the confidence to do of like, man, with debates you got to be ready to think on your feet. You got to be prepared to answer everything.
And so it's just really challenging. It's very difficult. And so I want to shout you out for each other, even having the desire to do so and obviously all the study that went into that. So kudos to you, thought that was great.
Again, I'll save the glaze for now, but great job as far as overall where I thought you did the best and hopefully everybody who's listening or watching has at least seen some of the debate. A lot of what we're going to be talking about will probably not make a lot of sense if you haven't. But I would encourage you to go watch it either way.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: A lot of the.
[00:03:39] Speaker C: I thought you did a great job of painting him into certain corners that he seemed to have a hard time getting out of.
Sure, we'll get to it. But obviously the typological comparison with Naaman, I thought your Romans 10 point about which you got to Romans eventually. But the confession thing of like, hey, you're calling baptism a work is confession also not an external. You know, by your definition I thought that was great and to be honest, I was obviously, I fully agree with you on everything and tried to observe it from an impartial bias or impartial observer perspective. Didn't seem like you had a great answer for your confession point. I thought that was one of your strongest points. I think that was on day one as well.
Um, and so, yeah, I think, you know, to give it the other side, I think you could tell Jeremiah was a little more seasoned on the debate front. I think this was your first time doing that. You could tell he had done it before. He seemed a little bit more comfortable. But I think, again, the way that you pose certain questions and I think specifically not allowing him to rabbit chase very much like, no, no, stay here, stay here. We're talking about this, I thought was great. So I've got other thoughts, but I don't want to. I don't want to steal all of them. Joe, I'm curious, kind of your introductory thoughts on everything. I don't know. Again, as far as a winner goes, I agree with Jack that baptism is obviously essential for salvation.
And so I would say Jack won the debate pretty. Pretty handily. Pretty handily. But, yeah, I guess I'm a little biased on that. Joe, what are your thoughts?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Well, yeah, the fact that you don't debate very much actually served you very well, I think, because you didn't give into a lot of the debate tactics of kind of pulling you away or pulling you down or getting into the fallacies or anything else. It's like the bulldog. Like, no, we're talking about this. It's.
We're talking about this. And the typical debate's like, okay, we'll go with you. We'll chase rabbits. Like, no.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Well, a good debate tactic, if you don't really have a great answer is to divert away and try to correct something else.
[00:05:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: One of the things that I thought was strongest for you. I agree on all of those points of what Will is talking about. I think getting the puzzle piece illustration hit home. I still don't think he got any of your illustrations or analogies, but that's fine.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Okay. You guys watched it.
Did he intentionally miss all of the analogies or was that like.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: So I wrote that down, actually, I wrote that down.
It seemed like an intentional misrepresentation. Specifically with the football one.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: Right. Jesus catches the football. Like, that's not the point.
[00:05:54] Speaker C: The analogy for the football thing was so clearly. And the Naaman thing as well.
With Naaman. Your point was not that Naaman was justified of his sins. It was that, hey, God did the work, but. And so Naaman couldn't say that he saved himself. An obvious analogy in parallel to baptism seemed to me, to answer your question, Jack, a bit of an intentional mischaracterization of the analogy. It was my take.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I couldn't tell if it was intentional or if it, you know, went so far over his head he didn't feel the breeze. But it was just one of those like, dude, are you the. When he did the football thing for like the fourth time, it's like, I just want to like kind of do the, the stare at the camera thing. Like, are you guys seeing this?
[00:06:33] Speaker C: Like, is it Marco's comment? He just said, you guys are committing so many fallacies right now.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Word concept.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Word concept, fallacies, context. We're probably just not keeping it in context.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly.
No, the. So I thought that was really good. The other thing that from a non seasoned debater, you did a really good job of putting it back on him. And like, you started. Because I noticed on day two and you and I were talking about this after, like day two, his opening statement wasn't an opening statement. It was a rebuttal to the things that he got whipped on the day before. He didn't advance the ball. Not to use another illustration, he might, he might mess up. He didn't advance the football, you know, move the chains at all. He went back to the same thing.
And to me, you kept him on his toes. You took the battle to him and instead of them just picking apart every church of Christ, quote unquote, passage, baptism passage, you went to his passages and you won on his home court. And to me, it's kind of like in the playoffs, you know, seven game playoffs in basketball or in hockey or whatever it is. And it's like, if you could just steal that one on the road, you got a chance because that flips it, right? And you have home court advantage. And I feel like you going to Romans 10 is you flipping the court. It's you going to his passage, which is their champion passage, and going, what about this? And he was forced to cut it down the middle and you busted him on it of like, well, hold on, is salvation after or first justification? But are you splitting the two? And he didn't really have a great answer to that. So you taking it to his court was brilliant in real time.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Jack, I'm curious because that was. I thought that was one of the most interesting parts of the debate is when you were trying to illustrate Romans 10 based on his definition of a work being something externally done.
Confession fits that bill. And I thought you did a great job of like making him answer it. What was your reaction in real time to him? Basically Being like, no, that doesn't really count. Essentially paraphrasing, like, what was your reaction to that?
[00:08:17] Speaker A: That was probably my most shocking takeaway from first day is I just got a Baptist to deny Romans 10:10. Like, that's all right. And that was my goal, as you guys are saying, of like, taking it to his home field. Like, I've seen him debate a bunch of our guys and they all did a good job, but it was always him, you know, like, cross examining him. What am I trying to say? Putting us on the hot seat. And it's like, well, hang on. You've got some really shaky foundational beliefs here. Some assumptions that you come into it with. And you notice that when about the definition of works, and I quoted him his definition of works, he added a word to it and then came back the next day. I'm just using what the lexicon says. Like, no, you're not. You changed it. You added a word the same way. He says that we're, you know, we're justified apart from the principle of works. Like, like, it doesn't say that. You can add these words. You know, Abraham born again. Like, these are not textual things. You're inserting your own stuff into the text. And so that was what I wanted to do is show, like, to even begin to hold their viewpoint. You don't start with the scripture. You start with assumptions and shove them into the scripture.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Let me ask that and sorry, I'm dominating a lot of questions. Joe and Jack, I know y' all probably talked about it, like, privately. So this is the first time I've gotten to talk to Jack, actually, since the debate.
I thought it was a bad day for Greek expertise, if that makes sense, you know, like how. You'll see, like, it was a bad advertising campaign for Greek expertise. The reason I say that I believe the Greek adds value. I think it illuminates the text in a way. And I think people who are very knowledgeable about the Greek. Mike Haistall comes to mind, can really shed some great light on it.
He hit that nail with his hammer. It seemed like time and time and time again about the Greek and the etymology of the word. And you're not, again, ignoring even the context thing bringing up. I was curious if you ever grew frustrated with the just repeated.
[00:10:07] Speaker D: I don't know.
[00:10:08] Speaker C: I feel like Greek is something you kind of overdo sometimes. And I think you did a good job of saying, like, the text doesn't say that. Like, it didn't translate it that way. So, yeah, I was just Curious. Kind of your reaction to it. What seemed to me as a. Again, trying to be impartial observer, an overuse of the Greek rhetoric, so to speak.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it was like, what does that do for you? Does that change the obvious meaning? And as I said a couple times, like, every major translation committee on every major Bible all translated it one way, but you've got the. The inside scoop on what it's supposed to say. I mean, like, that's pretty impressive. And that's where he does the word concept fallacy with Acts 22:16 of, you know, why, Terrius, thou arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. Well, that's a word concept fallacy because it's the ceremony of baptism. Like, all right, let's rephrase that. Why tarriest thou arise and undergo the ceremony of baptism, Wash away your sins. Like, you're still washing sins away.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: You know, just because you say something doesn't mean. I mean, it's true. You can say it's a word concept, House. It doesn't mean.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: I declare.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Right. He didn't say it. He declared it.
The other thing about it. And again, I wanted to expose the. The Baptist, the denominator, the Reformed, all of these people bringing again, their presuppositions to these things. And so he would just say, straw man argument or begging the question. Like, that means something, though. You have to say what question is being begged. You have to say what the straw man is and what your real view is. You've got to say, just saying that doesn't hand wave everything away. And like, oh, I guess I don't have a point, because the word baptism and the concept of the ceremony of baptism are different. And so again, this is one of those. Like, I keep telling people, the blessing of that debate was, you know, I had to prepare really hard and all that, but I had the plain truth on my side. Okay, you have to come tell me why this, this verse, this verse, this verse, this verse, this verse don't mean what they clearly say. And you just. And as I said in the opening statement, you're gonna see him get his scissors out and start cutting up the text to fit what he wanted to do. And you see that, that 1st Peter 3, 21, baptism now saves you doesn't mean that wash away your sins. They're already washed away.
Confess with your mouth. Jesus says, lord, you don't have to do that. You are already resulting in salvation. Oh, you already were saved. Yeah, like, all of these, he's saying, yeah, that verse says that, but it means literally the opposite of what it says. And that's the denominational view of so many things.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Which was the brilliance of your opening statement, because your opening statement basically laid the foundation for exactly how it went. He's gonna say this. He's gonna say that.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: Legs out from under him.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Correct. He's gonna do this, he's gonna try that. And it's like he walked into every one of those. Best I can tell from what I remember of your opening statement, he walked into every single one of them that you laid out. They're gonna say this because you know their side, and you're not trying to straw man their side. You're, you know, you're steel manning it. You're bringing it to the. Like. I think your preparation for this was significant. I know. Because you and I talked about it, and you were completely prepared, and it just seems like you walked into it and didn't give you. Which I guess is kind of a question. Sorry, Will, I am curious. Like, did that meet your expectation? Was that what you.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: I was gonna ask. Yeah, I'm sure you had an expectation, but, like, how did it compare?
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I've seen Jeremiah debate, and it's one of those, like, how serious is this guy?
And not terribly serious. And I mean, the thing is, you realize. And he's so much nicer off air. He's kind of doing a wrestling heel bit. Right. You know, the playing to the crowd, the apologetic dog and the bearded dog and the. The barking dog on his YouTube channel. Like, he's playing a character for all this stuff, and then you turn off the thing, like, hey, man, you want to do another one? Let's. Let's get together sometime. Like, wait, what?
Why would you be so disingenuous? Like, you're a different person on screen and that to me. So you say. Was it what I expected? No, I thought I was actually engaging with a person who, like, I'm bringing my scholarship. Not scholarship, my study. You're bringing yours. No, he was just trying to win in public opinion. And that's where you said the debate tactics and the fallacies and that stuff. He's not making an argument. He's just trying to win the public opinion.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: You called this out very well early on in day two.
And I don't know Jeremiah, I never met him. As you said, he seems like a nice guy off air.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: But it very much seemed. Especially if you watch the debate over the course of the two days, he has a Bit of a vendetta against the Church of Christ. We were talking beforehand that he equated you and I guess the rest of the Church of Christ guys that he debated. And so he dropped like church, I gotta tell Jack and the Church of Christ so many times, like probably 40, 50 times. And like, Jack, you never at once said, man, these reformed Baptists, like, no, you were debating Jeremiah. Right. So that was frustrating as a listener of, you know, obviously again, somebody who sides with you, Jack, of like, listen, man, whatever previous, you know, like, this is not an opportunity for you to get up here and flex on the Church of Christ. Like, your, your goal here is to try to convince the audience of your position. And it felt like a lot of what he was doing. And I'm curious if you, I'm sure you did pick up on that. Is like, no, this is more of a commercial for me to once again kind of flex on the Church of Christ.
And you were just kind of a stand in for that, I suppose.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Yeah. If you feel the need to do that. I mean, like, obviously I'm saying here, I think they bring assumptions to the text. I think they make mistakes. I'm not saying, oh boy, these. I have to explain to these Baptists how to read their Bible, you know, like, that's.
That there was a lot of kind of patronization.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Just trying to drag you into the mud kind of thing. And you know, I, I don't know how much you guys saw like the video of it, but after I had said, hey, could you stop like patting us on the head like we're stupid little kids, you know, and, and so every time he started going in on Church of Christ, I just started, you know, patting myself on the head like, oh, these dummies. And you know, like, debate the, the facts. And, and so you kind of see the flustering, the, the, the just kind of getting almost emotional, getting a little bit not out of control, but you know, like taking the shots and things like that. Like, yeah, you don't need to do that. And so that's when you have these discussions. It's very emotional for these people. It's a very, it's a thing he's held for a long time, but that doesn't make it true. And just saying, well, you're dumber than me, so this must be true. That doesn't work that way.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Well, I actually thought you handled that really well of saying, like, okay, stop the condescension. You know what I mean? Like, we're Not a bunch of country bumpkins type of thing. Like, we have some serious scholarship on our side. You're willing to concede they've got scholarship on their side. Like, let's all just come to this with a good faith understanding, have a good faith discussion on their scholars on both sides that believe this. And he was willing to undercut everybody and be like, well, you. You kind of stupid little church. Chryslers is how it felt from the Church of Christ perspective. Now, you go to his channel and people don't act that way. You know, like, people don't think that that's seemingly what he was doing. But I don't see it any other way other than kind of the pat on the back. But, Jack, I was going to ask you, what do you think was the strongest. What do you think was the weakest part for you throughout this?
You got four hours of content or three hours, whatever it is. I mean, it's just a significant amount of content in that.
So even as I was kind of prepping for us doing this again and going back and listening some things, man, I'd forgotten how much was discussed. So as you look back, what was the strongest? Well, maybe start with the weakest. What was the strongest point?
[00:17:13] Speaker A: The weakest. It's kind of funny. It wasn't from Jeremiah. It was from the listener who sent in the question about Cornelius. I mean, we have to admit that is the most challenging text in the Bible to us on baptism because it
[00:17:25] Speaker C: talks about the Holy Spirit being received before baptism.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: But the funny thing is, if you watch Jeremiah in his other videos talking about Acts 22:16 or Acts 2:38, he'll say, the church of Christ thinks that. I got to stop getting into my accent here. The Church of Christ thinks that the things that happen in Acts are prescriptive, but they're descriptive. It's just saying what's happened, and it's not. It's describing it, but it's not prescribing a doctrine. Therefore, we got to go to Romans 4 for our doctrine of salvation. And yet the funny.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: But not Romans, just Romans 4, not Acts 10.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: The other thing is, yeah, the single outlier in the whole book of Acts, the one time that happened, that one is prescriptive, but the rest of them are descriptive and don't count. Like the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip and the Philippian jailer and Acts 22:16 and Paul and Acts 2:38. And like, all right, man, it's almost
[00:18:15] Speaker C: like that other biblical topic where it's like, if it's bad. It means this if it's good, right? Anyway, yeah.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: What are you talking about?
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Edit my notes. I almost used that.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Yeah, Exactly.
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[00:19:33] Speaker C: So, Jack, what do you think was your strongest point to piggyback on Joe?
[00:19:37] Speaker B: It was.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: It was the things I got him to admit in the cross examinations and namely, we're going down. You might have to help me remember him, number one, that naming healed himself by obedience. I mean, that's incredible.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: That was shocking.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: He came back and amended that in the opening statement the next day and kind of changed. Well, he didn't heal himself, but he was as obedient, you know, like, okay, nice job, buddy. So that Naaman healed himself and the Israelites defeated the Egyptians by going through the water, by going through the Red sea, that Romans 10:10, when it says result, confess with the mouth, resulting in salvation. No, the result of salvation already had happened. This is just parallelism and in context, like it just says resulting. I mean, so that one, the Galatians 3, 27, that there are such a thing as Christians who you've been saved, but you're not clothed with Christ until you're baptized. So you're just walking around. If your baptism is six weeks after you are saved, you're a Christian who isn't clothed with Christ.
Like, what is that? And then of course, Acts 22:16, that it says, wash away your sins. But that's just ceremonially. He didn't have sins so when Ananias told him to wash him away, it was not. He didn't need to do that, but it was Ananias's sake.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: It's where the cat and mouse game started in the crossings. Because you, you were very persistent about. No, what. What was he washing away then? And it was just kind of talking in circles.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: And I thought X2216 was the strongest, like of all things, the Damon. All of those things were shocking. The X22 16 I remember listening because that one I was listening live. The other one, I listened to the recording you'd sent. And I remember thinking at the time, like, oh, you could tell he just had no answer to it, like, okay, what's he washing away?
[00:21:08] Speaker A: And he gets it like, well, where does the Bible say there are sins and ceremonial sins, right?
[00:21:14] Speaker B: And the judicial versus ceremonial. And it's like, now that you've gone outside the Bible to describe what you find to be judicial versus verse ceremonial. That is not biblical language. That is a, you know, that's added language later. And that to me is where you really got him, is you had to take him. He had to go out of the text, explain what. Why the text didn't say what it said through his understanding of it, which is. That's judicial. So he had been judicially. And you just kept hammering it. Well, it's, it's of course, you know, for the church. And it's like, well, only Ananias is there to see it the same way. Philippian jailer, if this is for the glory, like baptism Sunday for everybody to be able to see, why is he getting baptized at midnight? Why is the Ethiopian unit getting baptized on the side of the road? Why is this, you know, why is Paul having to immediately get up with only Ananias seeing? Those were some of the strongest points. And so when he kept going to the ceremony, the ceremony, you whipped him
[00:22:00] Speaker A: even on that one.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: But the whole judicial ceremony, he lost me because it's like, where, where are you coming up with this? Where's this? Where's the understanding of a judicial sins washed away?
[00:22:11] Speaker C: It has to be done right?
[00:22:12] Speaker B: And so they have to go extracurricular, extra biblical in order to get there. And to me, you've lost the debate. If you have to go outside the good Book, you've lost the debate.
[00:22:20] Speaker C: We've got some great comments, Jack, if you want to read them here in a second. I've got two. We got a guest coming on in a few minutes. So, Jack, I got two questions I want to ask you.
The first one is kind of the inverse of the question we just asked. What do you think was Jeremiah's strongest point? And I know you said that the Cornelius one was kind of a bit of a challenging one in the Q and A, but obviously that was not his point. So I was curious if something jumped to mind right away and maybe, of course, how you would answer that. And then the second question that I was, I think, maybe most curious about is, like, Monday morning quarterbacking here. What do you think you would do differently? Like, if you had to, if you got to go back and do it again, what would you do a little differently?
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah, the strongest point, I didn't really feel like he had anywhere he could walk away. Like, I got him on this. He's kind of running around holding up the trophy of. He wouldn't say that Abraham was born again. And it's like, that's just not biblical language. Obviously, born again is a term, New Testament term, born of water and the spirit. In John 3, First Peter talks about it. And I know he was trying to get me to say Abraham was born again. And so he could go and say, well, Abraham only did it by faith. And it's like, these are whole different covenants. We're doing the thief on the cross again. We're doing. As I said, Abraham never observed the day of Atonement. Like, these different things happen to people in different times. This is a nonsense question. And so he's real proud of that one. But it's one of those, like, did anything really happen there? Did you. Did you have a point? And.
And so with that. And then the first Peter. One Peter. And trying to get context. Yeah. First Peter one and then the second day where he tried to go to first Peter 2. And this is the problem that you see him keep doing. And this was one of his biggest, like, fallacies, I guess you could call it. Is we're looking at something and it's like, is it A or B? And of course, we're looking at, like, well, the Bible says both. So it's A and B. Well, he's saying it's A. It's got to be A. It's got to be A. And so when we say A and B, all he hears is, well, it's B. It's only B. It's only B. It's only B. And like, I didn't say that. He says, jack doesn't believe. If you believe with the heart, you know, it'll result in righteousness. Like, yeah, I do. I believe all of the Verses, I don't pick and choose some of them. But he sees it as a black or white. You have to pick one or the other. And so that was a problem that he kept coming back to was, well, you believe this? Like, no, I don't. Stop putting words in my mouth. I will take all of these verses.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I thought the reason why I love the name and point so much is because. And you know, this was how it was going to go with anybody who doesn't believe that baptism is essential for salvation is they try to turn you into almost a villain by saying you're trying to save yourself.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:24:47] Speaker C: That's just a, you know, that that's basically the point number one on just about everybody's anti baptism, you know, agenda there. And that's why the Naaman point and why it was frustrating. It seemed to me like there was a bit of a purposeful misunderstanding there because it's like Naaman could not accurately say he saved himself. And anybody. Trevi. Nice. Anybody who is legitimately looking at that, you know, and, and, and being honest about it is not going to say that Naaman could say he saved himself. God clearly did the savings.
That's exactly how it relates to baptism, is nobody's gonna go get baptized and say, look what I did. No, it's God doing the work. And so I once you kind of use that and of course the Red Sea to kind of debunk that point. I did notice that the conversation moved pretty far away from that, moved to the ceremony, it moved to some of the other stuff because I think that's a pretty easy rebuttal again, that you nailed and did a great job of. But I am curious still about what you would change if you had to go back. Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: What I would change the knowing now where he was going with his cross examinations, I would have shut him down a little bit sooner where that's all he was doing was the this passage or that one? This one or that one? This one or that one? Well, in First Peter, you know, one it's saying this, but in First Peter three it says the other thing. So it can't be like, yeah, it can be both things. And so because I'm sitting there going, where is he going with this? You know, I kind of figured he would go to Romans 4 and Abraham and all that. And, you know, we got a comment here that Colossians 2:12, and I'm not sure about Hebrews 11:30, but Colossians 2:12, you know, where baptism, circumcision, you know, made without flesh or without hands and that we are buried in baptism. All the things that Colossians 2:12 says. I thought we were going to get there because he referenced the circumcision in Romans 2 and it's like, yeah, let's go there, because that's going to get us to Colossians 2. And then he got away with. From some of his best passages. So. Hey, we got Jake joining on with us. So good to see you, man. Appreciate you coming on.
[00:26:40] Speaker C: What's going on?
[00:26:40] Speaker D: Hey, sorry, Yeah, I didn't realize that by joining, I.
My bad. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: You're good. You're all good, man.
There's no waiting room on this. I should have told you that. But yeah, I appreciate you coming on. So this is Jake Hisaw, Progressive Primitivist on YouTube. Him and his dad do really great work there. And his dad had dated, debated Jeremiah and he's.
Did you ever get that Taco talks guy to agree to debate you?
[00:27:05] Speaker C: No.
[00:27:05] Speaker D: And actually I've got some content coming for Taco talks. I interacted with him one time because before it was basically he was all ghost and wasn't responding to my debate call out. And eventually I got him on a TikTok live and I was talking to him and man, at first it was like he didn't see my debate call out. And then he's like, oh, wait, yeah, I saw your debate call out. So he's a little, he's dodging. And then he's like, well, what is your view? And I said, well, I believe that, you know, baptism saves. And he's like, well, what about John 3:5? And I said, well, that's very clearly a baptismal text. He's like, well, obviously no honest person would say that's a baptismal text. And so for that reason, you're arrogant and I'm not going to debate you. And so.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Okay, that was very, very convenient. How that works out.
[00:27:47] Speaker D: It was very convenient. So, yeah.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, one of the things I wanted to have you want to talk about was this concept of debating. Joe and Will don't actually know this. I got a second invitation to debate Jeremiah again this summer.
Today on Losing your salvation. Losing your salvation.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: No way.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: On. On Chris's radio show again. Are you gonna do it back with Chris? I, I'm not gonna do it. I had to put off my book project to do this one. And so I'm. It wasn't. It's Jeremiah. So I, I, But I think there is Value in debate. And so I was gonna run that by Jake. What do you think?
When is this valuable? When is it a waste of time? I guess is what I want to ask.
[00:28:23] Speaker D: I think it. That really is a case by case basis, you know.
Well, let me put it this way. So Trey and Jeremiah both wanted to, at different times, debate my dad, although Trey kind of backed out, but after debating Jeremiah, which Jeremiah definitely seemed to be at the time, a more good faith debate opponent.
Although since then, I think he's just become a bit more of a troll.
Although I do still think because he has such a grip on some members of the church that he's worth engaging with. Trey Fisher, on the other hand, I'd say he's.
[00:28:55] Speaker C: That's.
[00:28:56] Speaker D: That's not a debate you really want to go down. Unless you're just down to.
Yeah, down.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: So to some extent you're saying it depends on who is you're engaging in the debate with? Essentially, yeah.
[00:29:06] Speaker D: I'd say that's probably one of the primary things that you need to look at when you're looking to debate.
The next thing I would just say is the topic. Is it something that's worth debating? I'm.
You know, a baptism debate is something that I'm. I'm all about. I'd say that's the big thing that we as churches of Christ contend that we for with the denominational world that, you know, we need to view it as this. This moment in which God is saving us, which so many in the denominational world get incorrect. And so my focus would be more on a debate like that as opposed to like another topic that maybe unique to churches of Christ, but if that makes sense. And so I'd say it depends on kind of the opponent and the topic.
But yeah, I mean, just in general, that's.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: So you've been around debates a lot more than I have.
How often do you see this change people's minds? Because I go on Jeremiah's page and I'm reading the comments and it's like, oh, man, he whipped Jack. And it's like, are we watching the same debate? You know, I am always curious about that. You go on Jack's page and everybody's on Jack's side. And so it's like, you know, everybody's pumping their own tires, so to speak. So do you ever see in all the debates your dad's been a part of? Several, I think, and you've been around this. Do people change their minds? Do you see this produce fruit?
[00:30:19] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:20] Speaker D: Yeah. We had at least two known baptisms as a result of my dad's debate.
Several people, like in the comment section, we weren't able to follow up with them just because, you know, they're user 22986 whatever.
But several people in the debate, live chat, I think said, you know, I walked in believing Jeremiah's view and I'm walking away really questioning that and seeing the validity of Mike's view.
[00:30:45] Speaker C: That's pretty cool.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: That's really.
[00:30:47] Speaker D: Yeah. And so, like, I've had some moments there in TikTok. There's a lot of debating going on on TikTok presently amongst members of churches of Christ.
I've seen a lot going on over there where people are actually seeing the validity of the other side. And so I think it really just all depends. I mean, sometimes a debate really hits and I think Jax is going to be one that the more people watch it, I mean, what on earth does being ceremonially saved mean?
I think that's going to be a really impactful moment where people are going to look at Jeremiah's side and be like, oh, maybe that's not what the text is actually saying. And so I think there's real fruit. And I think obviously you're gonna have people who are kind of just like, you know, they're rooting for their guy. They're die hard.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: But I think it does produce that middle, middle ground.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that perspective. And my dad has done a few debates, it's been a while, but he. I remember because I did basically, you know, a very student version of debate in Lots to Leaders when I was growing up. And one of the things my dad, I remember him telling me is like, when you are engaging in a debate, do not make it your goal to change the mind of the person you're debating with. Because that's almost never going to happen. Instead, the target needs to be the audience. And that's where your point about Fruit Jake is.
Sometimes what a debate can do is reveal for the other person's position kind of the shallow ground that it's on, the faulty reasoning, the fallacies, to use his favorite word here.
It can reveal that if you're just kind of, if he's just kind of, he or she or whatever is on their own podcast just kind of sharing their stuff. That's not necessarily going to come out as much. It's in the cross examinations, it's in the, hey, we're in the same place and we are debating and we are, we are uncovering things at the Same time. That's where, again, shallow logic, faulty reasoning, poor scriptural analysis or poor exegesis or whatever it is can be shown to the masses, like you said, and go. And people can go, oh, wow, okay, that wasn't illuminated for me when I was watching Jeremiah on his own channel, for instance. But because Jack engaged in this debate, you might see it better. So I do love that perspective. I mean, again, initially, as I'm watching it, I'm like, well, neither one of them is giving any ground, so what's the point? Well, again, it's not about the other person giving ground. It's about the audience.
[00:33:08] Speaker D: Absolutely. And one thing in the debate prep that I did with my dad in preparation for his Jeremiah debate, one thing that we kept kind of going over was the fact that it's not about changing Jeremiah's mind, because Jeremiah's mind is not going to be changed. I mean, he's. He wouldn't come to debate if his mind was able to be changed, but it's to cast enough seeds of doubt in the mind of the audience. And quite frankly, and I don't know if we even mentioned this in our debate review, the audience, whenever, you know, they were going back and forth and debating, the audience is really receptive. And they weren't receptive to Jeremiah. They were more receptive to my dad. Like, they were like, well, that's right,
[00:33:53] Speaker C: because you guys did a live debate. I forgot about that.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:56] Speaker D: And so, like, yeah, I was there in the audience just kind of looking at basically all of Jeremiah's cronies. And, you know, they thought, oh, yeah, we're. Jeremiah's really going to get him. And in fact, like, leading up to that, they were kind of patting us on the back, like, yeah, welcome to the lion's den where you're about to.
You're about to get it. And then, you know, the debate started going on and it became clear that, like, yeah, Jeremiah is sharp in debate and rhetoric, but, like, my dad just knew some of the arguments a little better than what he did.
And my dad has critiques of his own debate, but, like, the tension was palpable there in the audience. And so, point being, it's not about changing the mind of your opponent. It's about changing the mind of those around you. And that does happen. You know, I heard someone say that debates are, like, fruitless because of that and, like, because that you're not actually changing the mind of the person. But I'm like, no, like, people's minds are actively being changed in debate. This isn't an old thing of the past. This is a really good thing that we can bring into the present.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Well, and as you guys said, you know that Jeremiah on his own channel is going to say things. We're going to say things on our own channels that gets way fewer views like this, people come streaming. You know, it's a three hour debate and it's incredible how many comments. I'm sure you guys got the same of people going. Yeah, I watched the whole thing. I'm like, man, nobody's gonna watch this whole thing. And a ton of people have and people I don't even know. And so, yeah, it's putting eyes on this discussion in ways that if it was just us sitting here talking about, it would not happen.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: One thing I appreciate the most about what you guys do, specifically you and your dad and something Jack, obviously you did. Marco does a great job on this of entertaining the other side. Like Taco Talks is.
That's a pretty big channel. Like, from what I've seen, that's a decisive. Marco's got some guys on that's like, man, that's we might in the church Christ, like that's reaching type thing. You know what I mean? Like, he's getting up there, good for him. And I love that. I love to see on this engagement front us going after some of these big guys because to me, it brings a legitimacy to the Church of Christ that has been taken away. I feel like people don't view us as legitimate and I was curious to kind of get your thoughts. Well, sorry, you may have a question.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: Just real fast. I was going to say it's parallel to what Charlie Kirk did of like, I'm going to engage with you. I'm not just going to like stand here and, you know, preach my sermon and never engage with anybody else. Like just. Sorry, Joe, to kind of piggyback on what you're saying. I think that's what why Charlie Kirk resonated with so many people is because he's like, no, come talk. And my answers and my rhetoric and my knowledge is going to absolutely put yours to shame because we, you know, he had the truth on his side when it came to, you know, the ethical and moral stuff that he did. And so that's why I think it's so powerful just to piggyback on that, Joseph.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no doubt. And I was going to ask, like, do you see more of a future in debating for the Church of Christ to try to bring people in? Marco, we talked about on our podcast, like putting A ton more content out from the Church of Christ. You guys are doing a great job. He's doing a great job. We're trying to put more Jacks. Doing a lot of stuff now.
Yeah. What are your thoughts on kind of raising the view of church Christ in the minds? Do you think that's actively happening? Do you think that's kind of working and they're being forced to engage? Do you think that's a long way off? Like, what do you see the future being here?
[00:37:03] Speaker D: Also, shout out to my brother. I think he just left a comment saying, the real Christian Avengers.
Definitely not me.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: I'm.
[00:37:09] Speaker D: Yeah. Anywho, I definitely think we're seeing more of that happen. And I mean, talking about that. I mean, my dad, at one point, we were in talks to debate James White.
It's a point being, though, I mean, which. That was James White. He was trying to get a bunch of people to debate. He's trying to reach. I don't even know how many debates either way.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:31] Speaker D: I think, yes, there are more debates happening, and I think more people are willing to engage with it.
If I can say this, and this is. This isn't about Jack. I think some people, and I think we're seeing it a little bit on TikTok.
We're seeing members of the church who really want to get out and to defend the truth, who are getting out there, though they may not be skilled enough in debate. And we're seeing people who really ought to be out there on the front lines debating, who are kind of in their ivory tower, cowering.
And then, like, there are guys like.
Like Jack, like my dad, who are there just kind of in the middle ground, who are just, you know, we're. You know, we're learned, we're active, and we're here, and we're ready to stand in the gap. But, like, there are other guys who could do a far better job. And there's some guys who were just like, hey, take a beat, you know, study a little bit longer. Be sure you're doing your study. And so I do think we're seeing more debates in churches of Christ. I think right now we're in just kind of a weird stage. We really need to, like, circle up and be like, all right, guys, here's the game plan. Here's what we're going to do.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: And so, yeah, good thoughts.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Good thoughts.
[00:38:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: That's between that, you know, you mentioned, I hope your dad gets James White. That's kind of one of the final bosses of denominational debaters. But the issue is that he was
[00:38:53] Speaker D: putting him on two weeks notice.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: Are you saying he's the Thanos? If this is the Avengers, he's the Thanos.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: There you go.
Take the glove. Yeah.
[00:39:02] Speaker D: The issue with that debate was that James was wanting dad to debate on two weeks notice on limited atonement. And so it was just kind of like two weeks, a weird debate. Two weeks notice. Yeah.
And dad was, I mean, like, we were in serious, like, we were really about to do it and we were like, is this going to be worth it? And then dad was like, you know, ultimately, you know, we could, like, sure, we could go there and we could present stuff. Unlimited atonement, because it was going to be 2v2. And so it was probably going to be me and my dad versus James and Jeremiah.
And like, that would have just been a crazy two weeks. And if we're going to come and, you know, take out the king, we want to be on top.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: We want to make sure that we're best not miss.
[00:39:46] Speaker D: Absolutely. And like, that's one thing, like, we, we, we don't want to miss.
And so, yeah, there were just some, some shady things with that, with that debate. But man, you know, get, get James White debating Ralph Gilmore on like, like Calvinism or something like that. Like, point being, those are the types of debates that need to be taking place. It doesn't need to be me and my dad debating James White. Like, get some of these other guys. I don't know.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: You mentioned, I saw a comment you're saying, like, because I wrote on this saying, man, maybe the churches of Christ are having a moment and saying, like, all this attention that's kind of coming our way and people kind of seeking us out to go at us, and that seems like they see us at least as some kind of threat doctrinally.
And this guy just said, well, you know, that's just debating like we did back in the day. Like, yeah, back when we were thriving and growing faster. Like, like, why is that a bad thing? Yeah, exactly.
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[00:41:21] Speaker D: Absolutely. I mean, like, let me go ahead.
[00:41:24] Speaker C: Oh, sorry, Joe, I was gonna ask, I was gonna ask quickly, Jake, especially with you kind of being around debates more and kind of obviously watching your dad, I'm very curious.
What is your perspective on within a debate is some level of condescension acceptable? And the reason that I asked that is because again, I started this episode glazing Jack and he did an incredible. I could never do what he did. The one area where I was like, man, Jack, if you could just scale that back a bit. It seemed like a bit of the kind of back which Jeremiah obviously participated in it as well of kind of the, the snide, you know, you know, condescension and stuff like that. But my question is, from your perspective, is some of that not warranted? And also maybe effective of like, because so many of the audience, so much of the audience is listening to this go back and forth. And again, maybe sometimes that, that snark or that condescension can actually bolster a point. Obviously I majorly think it can be overdone. I thought Jeremiah, I don't know if you guys noticed this as well, his closing statement on day two, I thought he tripled down on the condescension. Like it was bad for the majority of it. But that closing statement, Jack, I just watched actually about 20 minutes ago, he was just, man, just shot after shot after shot after shot, just non stop.
So it can't be overdone. But I'm curious, Jake, your thoughts on like, how useful of a tool is it and how much should it be unsheathed?
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Can it aid the audience versus take the audience out of it versus exactly.
[00:42:52] Speaker C: Kind of like cast, you know, make, make the audience kind of be repulsed by it a bit.
[00:42:57] Speaker D: I don't think there's ever going to be a moment where if you bring condescension into the debate, it's going to be effective and it's going to hurt. I don't think you can get away with it. Totally.
Yeah.
The question is just kind of how much? Because you know, you can use condescension and the overall vibe of the debate can be, oh yeah, this was a respectable debate. And then you can kind of lean into it a little bit too much and it just be like, oh, this was not a debate. This was like.
I don't know if y' all have seen, like, who was it? Was it Matt Dillahunty, the atheist and somebody else? Like, Marco did a reaction video to it. But, like, Matt, like, crashed out, like. Like, because they were going back and forth and he crashed out, quit mid debate and all that kind of stuff.
[00:43:44] Speaker C: Just take pot shots at each other, basically.
[00:43:46] Speaker D: Yeah. And like, at that level, like, no, But Jeremiah is notorious for being just kind of snide in some of those things. Like his line about what he did go ahead.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: When he was like, to Jack. All right, let me say this again. I'm going to say it real slow.
[00:44:01] Speaker D: Like, look at me. Look at me on camera. Yeah, yeah, that was. Oh, I heard that. And I'm just like, Jeremiah just. Well, anyhow.
But, like, what was one line he used? He's used this consistently.
You'll need a muscle and a shovel to do some really hard work.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: I caught. Very proud of that line.
[00:44:20] Speaker D: Yeah. Which I'm like, we need to change that title right now.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:25] Speaker D: Somebody call it Michael Shank.
Yeah. And so, like, with that, like, he's notoriously gotten away with some of that stuff. And, like, one of the big issues that my dad has with his debate was just that he wishes the cross ex would have been different. Although in his cross ex men, he pinned him down in that he was pointing out the fact that Jeremiah was misusing the lexicon, that the core of his argument, like, was on a misinterpretation of the lexicon.
[00:44:50] Speaker C: Your dad is so great at that. Kudos to him.
[00:44:53] Speaker D: Yeah. But the issue that he wishes is that he would have at least acknowledged that kind of what Jack did. Jack, I don't think there's been a single person who's debated Jeremiah who's kind of matched Jeremiah's level and where Jeremiah really kind of felt it in the moment. Like your cross ex with Jack.
I mean, like, I'm. I'm doing a video soon. Just because it was masterful, just because you didn't allow Jeremiah to get away with some of the tricks that he typically does. And part of that was you added a little personality. Some may call it condescension in there, but I felt like in that moment, there needed to be some of that. You showed humility throughout the debate, but you added enough condescension in there where it was like, hey, look, this guy is not who he claims to be. And you met him at that level. And so I thought that was tasteful condescension, if that makes sense.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: It's just really just pointing out like, I see what you're trying to pull, dude, we all see what you're trying to get away with here. And I'm not gonna let you get away with it. And again, like, this is the frustrating thing is, man, I feel like if we just sat down and it was a Bible on Bible discussion, it's just completely clear. And so what does it say about a guy that he goes into these and goes, I'm going to use these rhetorical tactics to get it away from being a Bible on Bible discussion. That's not great. And I think most of the audience is smart enough to know when he was completely intentionally missing the metaphors when he was doing the football. Oh, you didn't catch the football.
Alright, everybody else gets what I'm saying there. And so you don't look good. He thinks he's scoring a point, but just engage honestly, just straight up, you know, and where he's like, well, what's this Greek word? I said I don't know, tell me, you know, like, I don't need to like, just, just be honest about what you got. And, and that really, to me is, is a frustrating thing to deal with is like, are we being honest here because we're talking about the Bible. I think if we're going to talk about the Bible, we should probably be coming at it honestly.
[00:46:48] Speaker D: And I think there's a, there may need to be a distinction between condescension or maybe adding some ribbing. Maybe that's a better word for it. Like ways that we like kind of talk to each other in snide ways and then like slimy debate tactics like him asking you like unique Greek questions, like I felt was just an attempt to make, you know, I mean, I don't know, kind of your level of Greek or kind of what you do, but like, I mean, trying to discredit you in your knowledge of the Greek language as if he is just this Greek whiz, right? And it's like, I don't know, like I. There was one debate or interaction I saw where this guy was trying to make a Greek point and bless him, he was doing a good job. But the guy who knew a little bit more Greek, he's like, okay, well, if you want to talk about Greek so much, well, parse Amy for me.
And he just kind of made him pause for a second and I just kind of wish in that moment Like, I don't know. You would have just said, okay, well, parse me for me just to show, like, okay, you're trying to make it seem like I don't know what I'm talking about.
You don't know what you're talking about here. And so let's just acknowledge the fact that this is a group discussion, be clear about what you're trying to do, and don't be slimy about your tactic. I'd say slimy debate tactics need to go. Condescension and maybe some ribbing that can be useful in the debate.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we got an interesting comment right here. Says ad hominem is unavoidable and doing it well is an art. That's an interesting way of putting it. Like, you're going to be saying, hey, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. But you. The whole point of, like, hey, he's an idiot. And the Greek things like, you don't know this off the top of your head either, dude, this is from your prep, okay? And if I didn't look at this specific verse and I don't know the ver. Sorry. Oh, man. I guess I'm so stupid, you know? Like, I don't. Again, just, like, I think we should
[00:48:40] Speaker B: be more honest to me, it works against him. Oh, sorry.
[00:48:43] Speaker D: Or I might say this. I know his Greek teacher. Like. Like, he. He has a pastor in his local area who they've been doing these group sessions for Greek, and that guy was really trying to prep him for his debate with my dad. The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He asks a question in, like, the Q and A on my dad's debate, and he totally fumbles the Greek language. And so point being, like, not trying to be mean in this, but, like, if Jeremiah is wanting to sit here, go toe to toe for Greek, like, maybe have someone who knows Greek to teach you Greek.
Anywho, I'm sorry, I just. Yeah, I just wanted to let that out a little bit.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: You're all good. What I was thinking is it works against this point, in my opinion.
Sorry, comment from Marco.
But no, it goes against him in the fact that, okay, we got to parse out, like, deep Greek. And this is a double reflexive or whatever it is. And it's like, okay, we went from discussing what the common man can understand, which is. I'm just reading Acts 22:16, man. I'm saying what it is. Like, well, let's break out the deep Greek on this. Like, there are certain Things that are worthwhile. Your guys debate on mdr. Yeah, you need to bring out some Greek on that one, because there's a lot going on. This ain't one of them. And so for him to run to the Greek and to try to make Jack look dumb, it's like, to me, it works against him because Jack is looking, talking to the common guy who doesn't know Greek either, and just saying, look, man, Bible says this. What do you think? Well, if you look at the Greek point, Joe, come on.
[00:50:04] Speaker C: Like, if you have to go to the Greek for every single verse, maybe you're okay.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: Correct. Like, maybe you miss the general understanding of it.
[00:50:11] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I mean, like, I felt as if, you know, obviously, you know, our. We believe that inspiration lies within the autographs of the Greek autographs of our New Testament.
And so obviously, there's value in Greek, but you can definitely tell when.
I mean, it's like the old adage, Greek is like your underwear. You don't just want to show it off to everybody, but it does support you.
But he's getting off into these Greek arguments that ultimately do nothing. Like, I mean, like, you know, in. In my dad's debate, and I only use this just because I was thinking about that, like, he tried to do some of the weird arguing, essentially, that repentance is connected with. For the remission of sins and not baptism and all that kind of weird stuff. Well, the issue is that, you know, you may have that argument, but the deeper you dig into those Greek arguments, even the Greek scholars disagree with you. And that was one thing that, like, Jeremiah's been pressed on, and he doesn't want anything to do with it.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's. I remember watching that. And it's clearly one of those, like. All right, no translator ever said that in the same sense of Acts 22:16. No one ever said, ceremonially, wash away your sins. And, I mean, they could have. They. They've got the same. Like, these are the foremost Greek scholars we've ever had that have given us all these translations, and they all decided to go with that. And, like. Well, you're just supposed to know that it's. It's that, like. Or you're reading it into the text.
[00:51:36] Speaker D: Absolutely. Like. And I mean. And I wanted to say this one thing. I know y' all mentioned this a little bit earlier, but props to you, Jack, for. For bringing up just the fact that, you know, we're not a bunch of country bumpkins.
Just because, like, I want to shout
[00:51:50] Speaker A: out to you for giving me Some names to drop on him, but I appreciate that.
[00:51:52] Speaker D: Well, I mean, like, it's just the truth. I mean, like, he really wants to posture churches of Christ as if we're not intellectual. We're, you know, KJV Toten.
[00:52:02] Speaker C: It's exactly what evolution is with the intellectual intimidation. That's exactly what proponents of evolution will do.
[00:52:09] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's just. It's ridiculous. Like, again, and Jack brought it up, you know, we've got plenty of scholars that can quite frankly run laps around Jeremiah in every single category that you would want to debate them on.
But, no, he'd rather just kind of posture us as if we're KJV Toten. We got three teeth shared amongst the denomination.
[00:52:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:31] Speaker D: You know.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Well, I have to explain context to Church of Christ. Like, do you have to explain it to Everett Ferguson? Like, the guy that, like, every denominational scholar of every stripe defers and, like. Yeah, that's the guy.
[00:52:41] Speaker D: Which.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: That's what was, you know, that's what
[00:52:44] Speaker C: was so frustrating about him. Like, equating all of Church Christ with Jack is like, listen, yeah, there's a lot of Church of Christ preachers that prove text and just rip verse out of context. That's not who you're debating. You're debating Jack, who clearly understands context and is, you know, does not share the same weaknesses when it comes.
[00:53:01] Speaker B: This circles around toward the ad hominem thing, though, which is why it's important sometimes, Jake, to your point, to bring somebody off the pedestal because he positioned himself on the pedestal, it's like, I'm up here, you guys are down here. There has to be a level of condescension on Jack's part to be able to bring that down a little bit and cast the doubt in the hearer's mind. On, like, okay, Jeremiah says he's up here. The rest of us country bumpkins are down here.
So you do have to kind of reach up to some degree and be like, no, actually, you're way down here. You're. You're down here with us type of thing. Or from your understanding of Greek and everything else, maybe a little bit below on that side. But to me, that's where.
[00:53:34] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: That's where it comes in, I think, is being able to almost use that condescension to your point and going back to the art form as that great comment.
Like, that's when it's important, because he had positioned himself on a pedestal that Jack had to bring him down off of.
Okay, I got a question for you, you Talked about on TikTok. A lot of people are looking to debate or a lot of people are getting into these discussions, what would you say? Maybe, Jack, this would be a question for you, since you did a lot of prep.
What sort of tips or tricks would you give to the average guy, average church of Christ or who does want to debate? Maybe it's his buddy, his Baptist buddy, that wants to just kind of pick his brain or talk about it or use some of these tactics.
What, I don't know, two or three pieces of advice might you give somebody who's kind of just getting started at discussing, maybe just with a buddy to start, but may want to get into something like debate?
[00:54:21] Speaker D: Well, I think there are two different approaches. If you're wanting to debate your buddy and you're wanting to kind of enter into the big realm, if you're debating your buddy, you're talking to another human being.
Like, that's kind of the level that you're at. There's no one watching.
It's you having an honest conversation with your friend.
And if you're going to do that. My biggest thing, and this applies, I guess, to both is man, pray, pray, pray, pray that there is no pride coming into this, that you are just trying to let the Bible speak.
Is it a Spurgeon quote that says that equates the Bible to a lion? You don't need to. You just need to let it out more or less.
[00:55:01] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:55:02] Speaker A: Doesn't need defending.
[00:55:03] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't need defending. I think there's a lot of truth to that to some degree.
You know, in that moment, just pray that you are representing scripture accurately and trust that God's word is not going to return void in those moments. And so prayer ahead of time. Absolutely. Biggest thing. If you're not studying, get out.
If you're not studying and you don't. If you can't fairly represent your other person, your opponent, get out.
And I think we're seeing too many people kind of get into that area and they know kind of some of the Church of Christ quips to different arguments with different things. But like if you're just looking to kind of regurgitate lines and you're. This isn't actually coming from real study that you've done and like a real
[00:55:54] Speaker C: heart for the Word of God, absolute sides. Extremely.
[00:55:57] Speaker D: Well, absolutely.
And so prayer study.
Yeah. And I mean, I might just circle back around to prayer. I mean, like, make sure that you are not approaching this.
Like, this was one thing that My dad would tell me, you know, whenever we'd come into the office and we'd talk about the debate, he would just tell me, and I can say this, he probably wouldn't want me to brag on him or anything like that, but he would just say like, I prayed, you know, I pray every morning that if I'm wrong and Jeremiah is right, that right there in that moment in the debate, like that God hits me with it. I'm convicted by it. And man, I change this. This needs to be a pursuit of truth above all else. And so don't just approach the debate as if you're wanting to for the sake of bolstering another side, but approach the debate as a search for truth. And so I don't know, don't know if those are helpful, but there you go.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really good about knowing, knowing your opponent is really important. Like you don't want to, you don't want a straw man. You want to, you know, go after what they say they believe. That's really important. And I feel like so much of our stuff was straw man like crazy.
And so that you don't appreciate that. And that's not a way to win anybody over. And so make sure like that principle of when you get done explaining their belief that they can say, yep, amen, that's what I believe. And that makes you better prepared to defend it. And then of course one of the other things, and I've had a lot of well meaning comments, but a lot of folks in the churches of Christ actually did kind of support works based salvation. Like we're kind of. Yeah, well, because it's, this is obedience. That's obedience. And going to church is obedience. And like. Yeah, but we're, you know, this is like how you become a Christian versus, you know, the justification sanctification point that, that we were focused on so much. And so you don't want to accidentally overplay your hand and you know, push an actual heresy and trying to push back on the other side. And so it's a bit challenging in that way just to make sure you're consistent with what you're saying.
[00:58:01] Speaker C: I was just going to say, Jack, that's why I really appreciated the way you started the debate, which is basically stating up front, hey, I believe we're saved by faith alone. I just believe that includes baptism because that by itself. Again with kind of the way that maybe unfortunately the decades old Church of Christ arguments have been is, you know, say by faith alone. Well, no, that includes, you know, got to go to baptism. Got to jump to. And so I do think it has fed the, well, you guys just think you save yourself thing, which obviously you did a great job debunking, but not running from that. Like you said at the start of this episode of, like, you know, when those two verses would come up against each other, you know, and you would say, you know, hey, I agree with both. I'm not trying to, you know, pit one against the other. I believe we're saved by faith. I think that's such a strong point because once again, so many people in the Church of Christ, well, it's like, is it faith alone or is it baptism? Like, it's both. And so I appreciate you giving credence to that and giving, you know, just such a great, you know, vocalization of that point, because unfortunately, I don't think it's been represented super well over the last couple decades or so in the Church of Christ.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm gonna pull these up from Marco. We're gonna block our faces. Again, he said in Jeremiah's live stream on him, he said that we. We. He seriously said, we don't believe the Bible needs to be interpreted. Talk about not understanding your opposition. Unfortunately, there are a couple church Christ preachers say, I don't interpret it, but again, that's one of those. Like, he's picking the bottom of the barrel and saying, see, they don't. We know. We interpret. And I said in the debate, of course we interpret. We interpret and use all of the puzzle pieces. You are going this or that. And so we acknowledge there's interpretation, but again, you can't insert your interpretation is the biggest difference.
[00:59:45] Speaker D: Yeah. The issue is that we're contending for the fact that the Bible is clear. Like, I mean, to that point.
And I'm not sure how the rules work on Facebook and kind of what you can and can't say, but how much interpretation does thou shalt not commit Unaliving.
How much interpretation does that truly require? Like, clearly there's interpretation, but also, clearly there's some passages of Scripture that are just plain. And so that's the point that we're kind of emphasizing. Not that, like, a passage like Acts 2:38 doesn't need interpretation, but we also need to look at Acts 2:38 and just say, okay, that's a pretty clear passage of Scripture. And so let's. Let's look at that and understand that, you know, it could just mean what it means, and it says what it says. And so I think it's a, it's a both. And like obviously we need to interpret scripture, we need to interpret scripture faithfully. But also we can get so in this mindset that there's a deeper meaning to everything, as if every single passage of scripture is the book of Revelation.
[01:00:42] Speaker A: Right. And so anyhow, well, in that thing where he was trying to get me in first Peter 2, 5, he who believes in him will not be disappointed. Like up. We got that. And it's just, you got just believing.
Okay, now I've got one that says, you know, all these other things, you know, as I said, you got verses. A baptism saves repentance, saves faith, saves confession, saves all of these things. And again, he denied it. But it's very much. You think the Bible contradicts itself. And you, and you, the way you get around that is by going to all the baptism verses and going, well, they just must not mean that that doesn't. You, you do think it contradicts itself.
[01:01:17] Speaker C: Well, you, I think you highlighted this in the debate, Jack, and that is your two viewpoints represent a fundamental difference in the way you approach the Scriptures. We are seeing this in real time on other issues, on social media, on Facebook right now. But essentially I'm going to approach the Bible with my view already established and then I'm going to do whatever again, mental gymnastics or Greek etymology or whatever it is to make the Bible say what my position is. I'm so dug in on it. You know, you see it in sports debates, right? Like, you know, people get dug in on a position of this person's the, or this player's the greatest or whatever it is and no amount of evidence is going to change their mind. That's why, Jake, what you said about, about your dad kind of having that perspective, that's the perspective you need. And obviously you need to stand strong in your convictions and you know, not go in wishy washy or anything.
[01:02:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:02:09] Speaker C: But again, you see, you see it within the church Christ, you see what Jeremiah is like. I know my position is my position and I'm going to go to the Bible to try to find that position and fit it in. Right. It's the puzzle piece thing. I'm going to force it in there as opposed to going to the text and what, what does it say? Like what, what can I derive from the context, from the verses themselves? And so it's just a fundamental difference of the way you approach the text. And that's where I think, again, not to bash the church of Christ. We do struggle with that sometimes. I think of what's my position? Let me force the text to say what it says. And again, they do it to, you know, people like Jeremiah, they do it as well. And so everybody does it. That's. Everybody does it, but that's why it matters with the way that you approach the text.
[01:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to talk about one more thing. You finish up.
Yeah, yeah.
[01:02:52] Speaker D: I was just saying, you know, he kept saying that, you know, you're approaching it from this woodenistic hermeneutic, which. Woodenistic. That's an interesting word.
But I'm like, you interpret the Scriptures the same way that we interpret the Scriptures. Like, I like, that's one thing that, you know. You know, right now, we're kind of having a discussion on hermeneutics on our channel, like, about whether or not sini is a valid part of our hermeneutic.
And everyone agrees that it is. And everyone interprets scriptures the way, like, pretty much the same, unless you're Greek Orthodox and you add a little mysticism in there or a little mystery. But we're all approaching the Scriptures the same way. You just are bringing some extra baggage. Granted, we bring our own baggage, but at least in this moment, on this topic of baptism, you are bringing a 500-year-old heresy that was not taught prior to Ulrich Zwingli and the Reformers. And so I don't know that's exactly
[01:03:53] Speaker A: where I was gonna go on this. And we might do a whole episode on this maybe. I don't know how much time we'll spend on it, but I had a post about this after the first day of the debate. This is the beauty of restoration versus Reformation. Reformation is still yelling at the Catholic Church, saying, you're not my dad. Like, get over it, man. Like, that's. We're not Catholics. We're not, you know, saying that you got to have your. Your seven sacraments, all that stuff. That's not what this is, but that's what he has to make it. And so every. It's that whole. You know, the only tool you have is a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. Everything is a Reformation battle. And it's like, it's not. Paul wasn't. You know, his scriptures certainly handle the. The.
The things that came up in the Reformation, for sure. But he wasn't writing to the Pope. He was writing to a Jew gentile, you know, conflict in the early Church and all the issues that raised. And yet they just come to all of these verses inserting Martin Luther and all those guys and their battles into It. It was just crazy.
[01:04:50] Speaker D: Absolutely. I mean, I think that's.
[01:04:52] Speaker C: Jack. Not to jump off. Sorry. Not to jump off of that.
[01:04:54] Speaker D: You need.
[01:04:55] Speaker C: You need to highlight Caleb's comment that he just made. Highlight Marcos, too, about me ditching.
Ditching the. Ditching his episode. I did not. That's propaganda that's being put out. I would love to get on with Mark.
[01:05:05] Speaker B: He's ditching us tonight, so. Way to go, Mark.
[01:05:07] Speaker C: I was not able. I was not able to. Yeah, no, I absolutely did not ditch it. I would love to be there, but. I would have loved to be there, but. Yeah, we need to have him on. But, yeah, Caleb's comment, Jack, I'll let you speak to it since you did the debate.
Yeah, I thought this was a great comment and great addition to the idea of, hey, just because you believe something, there are still external things that are supposed to follow for it to be legitimate belief.
Yeah.
[01:05:32] Speaker A: And that, I don't know, there's just so many things like this, again, the belief. And I was saying, like the mental ascent. Belief is mental ascent. Like Jesus is Lord. And he said, well, the difference between faith and belief. But he doesn't separate his terms well enough. And like, you see that when he was doing the born again thing with Abraham, like, the Bible uses these terms very specifically. You can't just overlap them in all these ways. And so believe sometimes is very limited. It's people who just say, yeah, okay, Jesus really is real, but don't do anything else with it. And so when you say, well, it's only by our belief. And it's, as somebody pointed out in my comments, I think it was Caleb Kelsey said, like Jeremiah keeps saying, you just got to trust in him. You got to look to him. You got to do all these things. Like those are all things you do. And you can just say, well, they're internal rather than external. Which that was another part of the debate. Like, you use your mouth, you use your ears to hear the gospel, like your body is involved in response to the gospel. And it's ridiculous. It's very gnostic. We didn't get to chase that point. But it's very gnostic to say that it's not.
Because I remember asking one of my preaching school instructors, Wayne Berger, like, why are they so opposed to baptism? Like, all of these other things are works if you're following their definition. And he just said, it's the physicality of it. That's the only thing to it is the water itself, the physicality. And you get that, well, Old Testament was physical. New Testament was spiritual, which is a total hoax. It's a myth.
And so you end up with just jumping through hoops and adding, as you saw, definitions or words to the lexical definitions. What'd you say, Joe? No, no, you're good.
[01:07:02] Speaker B: I had another thought on that. No, I was gonna say, though the Gnostic is what came out to me.
There's another point I was gonna make. It'll come back to me. But the Gnostic point of light, that's what hit me in the debate, is they are very afraid of anything physical.
[01:07:14] Speaker A: And.
[01:07:14] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's what I was gonna say is I was talking with a client yesterday, and he's a Baptist and nice kid, but we actually got on this topic and I'm like, boy, do I have a debate for you. Actually, let me send you the link.
But we are actually discussing this, and that's not really what I do with my clients. I'm a therapist. I'm not trying to convince anybody in those moments, but just happened to be talking about it and we were talking about his, like, man, now I'm losing my train of thought. Sorry, it's been a long day. I'm losing it as to where I was going. But the Gnostic point here, jumping back to that one, they seem very afraid of the physical. And anytime where you go to add it, it's like, well, that can't be possible for salvation. That can't come into it.
And I don't know, I struggle with that one. Because, Jack, as you said, where would you go in the New Testament to prove otherwise? Because, Jack, you just said that's not true. Where would you go to prove that? For something that says, like, well, we know it's more spiritual than physical. Like, how would you prove that?
[01:08:08] Speaker A: Again, you still have a body. Like, you don't leave the body the minute you become a Christian. And so.
And again, like the Lord's Supper, the idea that this is all spiritual and not physical, they had physical things like sacrifice, but the fact that we take a physical representation of the body and blood of Jesus every week, that's a pretty physical thing. I mean, there's all kinds of external singing is a physical thing. As he said, confessing is a physical thing. And so these are not justification things, but they illustrate the point that Christianity didn't. It's not all in the brain. I mean, that is such a weird hill to die.
[01:08:42] Speaker C: Well, it never has been from the beginning of time. Again, physically.
[01:08:47] Speaker A: It can't be.
[01:08:47] Speaker B: Well, that's what I was Going to say, coming back to it. Sorry. He was talking about inviting Jesus in his heart. Sorry. Long way around. And I was saying, how do you know when. Because he's kind of struggling in salvation and wondering if he's saved. And it's like, how do you know the exact moment? And what I'd love to ask Reformed Baptists and such is like, when you grow up in the church, as we all did. I'm assuming, Jake. I'm assuming you did.
You just kind of know these things. Of course Jesus is Lord. Like, I don't know. I just kind of accept it. So this concept, this, like. Well, it's. It's when I accepted Jesus as Lord, like, there's never been a time in my life where he wasn't Lord, because I grew up as such. And so I don't. Yes. When I put Christ on a baptism, I have that definite. Well, that was. This kid's story is like.
I think it was at this point, because I asked him, like, when did you come? Well, I think it was at seven.
Like, okay, well, what happened at seven? Well, I remember being at camp and it was just kind of this discussion and things like that. And it's like, it's so ethereal, like, we just don't know because there is no physical element to it. There is no ceremony or whatever else. You get baptized, three years later, they don't care. And so it all stays in the mind. And it's only your word versus anybody else. Like, your word versus yours. Basically, nobody can ever say you've been saved because, like, well, I had it in my heart. And to me, it's the same as people that do this with marriage. We don't actually need a ceremony in front of people. Like, we just said it in our head, basically, you know, like, we married one another. Like, is that gonna stand? Is that legitimate? Can you just say that? I declared myself married and it just stuck. And it's the same thing for me.
[01:10:12] Speaker C: Like your bankruptcy thing.
[01:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I had that in my notes. To ask Jeremiah is like, if a couple at your church said, yeah, we're living together, we're sleeping together, but we told each other we're committed. So it's. It's, you know, because, I mean, ceremonies don't do anything, and it's all esoteric,
[01:10:26] Speaker B: so they never really know when they're saved is what it feels like. And I know that they say otherwise, but to me, it's like, you could get people to question, when did you actually accept? Especially people that grew up in it. So I'd love to ask somebody that. I don't know if you guys have talked to them, but.
[01:10:38] Speaker C: Which is why the Acts 22:16 thing is such a slam dunk, because Paul already believed. He had already like that, you know, in his retelling of the scenario at that point point, he had already spoken to Jesus on the road. To me, he'd been blinded, all those things. He'd been there for three days, praying and fasting. He hadn't been baptized yet. He already believed. Why did the sins need to be washed away then at that point? And so that was where, once again, the. When. When you tried to pin him on that Jack, pin Jeremiah on that, it felt like he was super squirrely about it. Like, kept trying to, again, play word games and kind of shadow box a little bit, and there's just no solid answer for it. If you oppose the idea of baptismal regeneration or the baptism being the point of justification, to me that, yeah, Acts 22:16, bit of a slam dunk spot there.
[01:11:27] Speaker D: Absolutely. One of the things that I enjoy, and y' all kick me off whenever.
[01:11:31] Speaker A: No, no.
[01:11:34] Speaker D: One of the things that I enjoy from the Lutheran tradition is something that they say, that which we kind of do. We provide baptismal certificates.
But they constantly say, remember your baptism. And I think just we ought to hit on that more, maybe say that a little bit more, because that does point us back to a definite moment when God worked on our hearts, where he replaced our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh.
And I think, you know, to that point, when you don't have just kind of that concrete moment, you do wind up getting a little wishy washy with, you know, am I saved? Am I not saved?
And so I think that was spot on. There was something else I was going to say, but I totally forgot about it.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: But my. My mind bug must have hit you.
[01:12:17] Speaker A: That's good stuff.
[01:12:18] Speaker B: Struggling to stay on.
[01:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you might not be able to tell it, but I'm quite sick. And so I've just been gutting it out. I'm going to have to wrap the stream here, but thanks a bunch to Jake for coming on. It's been a lot of fun. For sure, man.
[01:12:31] Speaker D: Thanks for inviting me.
[01:12:31] Speaker C: And we're going to have to have
[01:12:32] Speaker D: you on to talk to my dad about, you know, the debate. Maybe y' all could share some more stories.
[01:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah, some Jeremiah commiserating.
Yeah, we. We got close to having Marco on, but he had some family obligations, so we'll give him a pass for that.
Take care of little ones. So.
Sorry. What's that?
[01:12:51] Speaker C: Sorry. I was gonna say, now he's dodging being on with me.
[01:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, he had his chance. That's it. That's right. But no, we appreciate it. And again, I appreciate all the support. Jake was a big help in prep and Marco and a lot of people have sent well wishes, sent notes, sent stuff, helping me get ready for the debate. And again, you just never know. As you said, baptisms might come from this. People that gain a better understanding. And again, hopefully we're raising the profile of the churches of Christ. Obviously, we believe this is important. We believe this is stuff everyone needs to know. And so, again, thanks, Joe and Will for wanting to talk about it. Obviously, I.
I was happy to come on and chat a little more about the. The experience that it was, but I'm glad they wanted to as well. Anything before we get out of here?
[01:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you, Jake. Great work, Jack.
[01:13:39] Speaker A: All right. Yeah, we'll be back with another. So again, we didn't have a Monday thing deeper episode this week because of the debate. This is our thing deeper episode for this week. We're gonna try and have one out for next Monday and get back on our regular schedule. So keep an eye out for that and we'll talk to you guys on the next one.
Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate. Thanks again for listening.
