Okay, we are now live. Just want to say hello to everybody out there. It's been a wonderful day here in St. Louis. Good fall weather. Spent the weekend in Southern Missouri down at my place on the Current River. Had a good time there camping. If you get an opportunity to take a look at some of the pictures I took, I think you'll find them to be stunning. It's a great time of year to be there because there isn't anybody else on the river. Nobody else likes to camp at that time it seems. Let's see here. I don't have a lot to say today, but we'll see where this goes. I didn't really prepare much for today. Like I said on my previous videos, I work a full 40 hour a week job and it just makes things difficult for preparation and I just don't have the time I'd like to put into these messages. So there are going to be some weeks where I don't really present much of anything and I think today might be one of those days. Okay, so I've got a few things I'd like to talk about. One of them is Facebook itself. Let's see, there were a couple encounters this week or a couple incidents that occurred this week on Facebook that They seem to be recurring incidents. First of all, people get offended all the time on Facebook. And I would just warn anybody who spends any time on social media, you're going to be offended. It just seems to be that way. And you're even going to be offended by well-meaning brethren, people who don't mean to offend you. And there's been some instances out there where that's occurred. And so I would just like to remind everybody, please be careful about what you post on Facebook. Sometimes people post humor that other people find offensive, and we just need to be very careful about what we post. And we also need to be very careful about what we read on Facebook. Oh boy, sometimes we... We get offended where we shouldn't, because we're not reading what the person posted truthfully. We read into it, into the text, something that wasn't there. We are guilty of isogesis and improper exegesis of Facebook posts. And so there's all kinds of problems going around on Facebook. And I don't think that problem is ever going to get resolved. But I just think the saints, brothers and sisters, we need to be very careful with our brethren out there, very careful about what we post. And we need to think before we put something on Facebook. And we need to ask ourselves, when we post, are we doing this for the glory of our Lord? We need to ask ourselves if what we post is inconsistent with the message of grace and godliness. Will I bring reproach upon the gospel I profess to believe? Those are some questions we need to ask ourselves when we post. Truthfully, honestly, myself, going back and reviewing a lot of my Facebook posts, I don't really measure up to the standard that is probably required. I fail. I fail that test. So I'm going to make it my resolve to improve upon what I post online and also be very careful about what I read into others' posts. Okay, so that's just one thing I want to talk to you about today. The second thing on Facebook that I want to talk to you about today is a young man. I'm just going to call him Mr. T, because I don't like talking about too many people here on this livestream. I don't like calling people out, especially by their name. And I do that because, well, I just think it can cause problems, and I know what it's like to be called out on videos myself, and not be able to defend myself, and that video's out there forever, and I just, I just, that's what I'm gonna do from now on. I'm not going to attack too many people. Although, I'm not going to say I won't attack some people. There's one man, I might mention his name today on this live stream, that he deserves to be called out for a lot of the things he's done. But let's go forward with that. So Mr. T came to an epiphany in the last month or so. And his epiphany was that He believes that if you believe in any form of eternal justification or justification from eternity, you don't know the gospel. You don't know the gospel. And not only that, he goes on to say that if you are tolerant of anybody that holds to justification from eternity, you too don't know the gospel. So we've got one of these guys going out there again. I don't think he's popular like a former online zealot named Mark Carpenter. There I am, I'm saying his name, but he's, oh boy, he's got a lot of misery in his path, his weight that he's left behind. But this is a dangerous road to go down, in my opinion. So I'm just going to read a little bit of what he posted on his wall, and I'm going to attempt to explain why I think he's wrong, and we'll go from there. All right. Okay, so he wrote about eternal justification professors. He says, This is the gospel of justification by faith which is denied as conditionalism by proponents of eternal justification, slash justification at cross. Instead, they separate justification from conversion, not by a split second, but by thousands of years. The ramifications are huge. In eternal justification, the elect were never condemned, In a consistent view of justification at cross, the OT elect were never justified in their lifetime, and the NT elect were never condemned. In any case, justification by faith is stripped of its weight and reduced to only about assurance of a justification that happened before you were born. A large category of born justified but unconverted sinners thus emerges in the system, something utterly foreign to the Bible, which looks down upon unbelievers as condemned already, children of wrath, under curse, under law, slaves of sin, not righteous, not under grace, not free from law, not belonging to Christ, not children of God. This leads to another problem. If the unbelieving elect have been truly justified, then what is wrong in speaking peace to them? After all, what God calls holy, do you call unholy? Some have gone so far as to see that the doctrine of conversion is optional to the gospel. And there are still others positively affirming that many elect will not be converted in this life. In the opposite direction, if truly justified people are still practically seen as unholy because of their spiritual conditions, then this means justification has very little practical significance and the practical focus should be on one's experience of regeneration. Despite this total mess, the proponents of eternal justification at the cross will not give up their views on the timing of justification which some actually consider to be the crowning jewel of the gospel, even the essence of the gospel. At least they see difference on timing of justification fundamentally changes the gospel. Okay. Boy, there's a lot wrong with that. And that's just one snippet of his essay. And I don't know where to begin on that other than I think he needs to go back and watch the video that I gave two weeks ago on what is eternity. First of all, I do not deny justification by faith alone. In fact, I consider that the gospel. We are not brought into a relationship with God without the experience of being justified by the gift of faith alone. Faith is a gift which God gives his people to see that Christ lived and died on their behalf. If you don't have faith, you don't have life. Everyone of God's elect out there will be given faith in the gospel. There's just no ifs and buts about that. And so I consider it a necessity, if you will. Not necessity in that it brings about salvation by God. It doesn't cause God to consider me justified because I have faith. It's necessary because it's a necessary consequence of Christ's work on behalf of his people. It's necessary because it's a necessary consequence. Now do I believe God's mind is changed at the moment I get faith? No, no. He planned for me to have faith long before I ever got it. And so, no, God's mind is not changed. And in fact, if you say that God's mind is changed, like this man, Mr. T, as I'll call him, says it is, well, then what you have there is a mutable or a changeable God. God's mind does not change about anything. His mind is set, okay? It's not changing. He is immutable. But I think there are a couple of things wrong with this. He's viewing only one perspective of justification. And a lot of people, when they look in the scriptures at the doctrine of justification, they see only one perspective or one aspect. But there are actually multiple perspectives. And I just want to clarify this for everybody out there. You can't look at justification in the scriptures and read it from just one perspective. You have perspective as in if there's a future perspective, there's a past perspective. You have perspective of God in relation to justification. You also have the perspective of the sinner and the elect individual who's being converted to the gospel. You have his perspective as well, okay? So, when I speak of eternal justification, I am really only speaking of God's perspective. That's all I mean by eternal justification. I am the Lord, I change not. So God's perspective is not changing. That was Malachi 3.6, and I seem to quote that one a lot. Okay, Revelation 13, eight, he is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Now, do I believe that there was a time before the world began that Jesus died on the cross? No, there was no time. What this is referring to is God's perspective of what occurred, okay, on the cross. Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world in God's perspective. God's view. His mind hasn't changed. He's seen everything at once. He's viewing all things at the same time. He's transcendent. Meaning he's above and beyond what time is and our physical presence. He's in every moment. I mean, I'll give you that. I mean, he's in time in the sense that he's controlling all the events of time and he's causing all the events of this world to happen. But he's also transcendent and outside of time. Okay, let's go back to my previous analogy that I gave of us standing on a ruler. We're walking in time from one inch to the next and God's holding this ruler. He's holding this ruler and He sees it all at once. He's transcendent of this ruler. He's transcendent of time. Okay, that is what I mean by justification of eternity. It is strictly God's perspective, His aspect of of justification. All right, then we've got a second perspective. Okay, and this is the timely perspective. And when did when did when did the work of justification occur in time? Well, it's all of all of all the work of justification is by Christ alone. It's one of the five souls of the Reformation. So Christo. Okay, so was Christos. Christ alone. Matthew 1.21 He shall save his people from their sins. Romans 5.9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. Okay, in spite of the obedience of one shall many be made righteous Romans 5 19 Okay justification in time. This is this is the work of justification that occurred in time and it was Christ's entire life and active obedience even in death. You still don't have the gospel alone. You still don't have the gospel unless you include at least the third aspect of justification. You have to have justification by faith alone. I agree with that premise. You gotta have it. When I say justification by faith, I'm talking about the experience. You have to experience being justified. You have to be brought to faith in time and experience peace and assurance. This is being converted as necessary. It's not necessary in terms of bringing about salvation, it's a necessary consequence of salvation. I think I already said that. When men are brought to faith in Christ, the object of their justification is Christ on the cross. They're not looking at their faith. They're not looking at their faith as the basis for their justification, but they simply recognize it as the means by which God reveals their justification to them. So, justification by faith alone. One of the five souls of the Reformation. Soulified. I don't know how to pronounce it. I've always gone fide. Okay, it's only and that's only experiential and this is not forensic. There is no court of God that's watching the individual, and then all of a sudden when he sees faith, all of a sudden there's been some sort of illegal exchange in the mind of God, or the court of God. It's almost like saying he's reacting to the faith of the individual, and I know he's not saying that. because he's very careful. Mr. T is very careful not to say that God's not reacting to the faith. He's saying it occurs simultaneously with the faith. And I have some brethren that deny the doctrine of justification from eternity. And that's okay. They still believe that redemptively that salvation is strictly by imputed righteousness alone. And it's not based upon the faith of the individual. Now, I don't understand how they manage to get that to sit in their mind, how they bring the timing of justification. I hate the word timing. The timing of justification to the time of faith. I don't get it. And when you go there, even though you're still agreeing that it's by imputed righteousness alone without conditions, It almost seems like there's a condition and it almost seems in my mind that there is a misunderstanding of who God is and his attributes are. So I don't want to be wrong about what I think of God. I don't want to be wrong about what I think of who God is. And so I would hope that people would If they're unsure where they stand on this topic of justification from eternity or the timing of justification, that they at least keep investigating until they have some sort of understanding of where they are. Some solid assurance of what they believe. Because it's important to understand who God is. and what his attributes are. Who do we worship? Well, you can just say you believe in God, but what does that mean? What does that mean? It means, you know, what are the attributes of God? For a young four year old, when you're trying to teach the gospel to a young child, It's hard to get into all these theological terms, but the easy way to Describe God is he's big. He's big. He's huge. He's he's the master. He's the creator He's he's sovereign over all things Okay, you start from there But then, and even immutability, that's an easy doctrine to explain to a four-year-old. It just means God doesn't change. His mind is always set. Everything's working out according to his purpose. Okay? You can teach this, you can teach the gospel to a child. But, even as adults, even as young believers who are adults, we don't, We need to be careful that we get our understanding of who God is right. I'm rambling and I said I wouldn't have a lot and here I am already 20 minutes into my dialogue. So there you go. Okay, so justification by faith. I'm going to go back to that again, okay? Romans 5.1, therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice the words faith and peace are there in the same verse. Hebrews 11.1, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It's a necessary consequence. Faith is the evidence. Faith is assurance. Hebrews 10, 22. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. Faith is assurance. Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Okay? Faith. And our bodies washed with pure water. Okay? How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? This is justification by faith alone. It is a necessary thing. It's a necessary consequence of God's redeeming love and his redeeming work. Romans 8, 24, we are saved by hope. And of course, here's the crown jewel, for by grace you are saved through faith, and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Okay, you're saved through faith. But when Paul was speaking of salvation there, he's talking through faith, you're saved in your experience, you're saved to a living hope. You were saved to know that you were redeemed by Christ. You don't come to a knowledge of salvation by any works that you do. You can't boast that you know what God's done for you because you went out and worked. No, it's through faith alone. I would never ever minimize the work of faith alone. Now do I change God's mind? Does God's perspective change based on my faith? No, not at all. God's mind didn't change and His work in sending His Son to live and die for us If there was any faithfulness that saved us, it was Christ's faithfulness, not ours, in God's perspective. And of course, we also have a future justification. The Old Testament saints, they had a future hope. They had a hope that the Messiah would come and redeem them. They were still every bit as saved as New Testament saints. They looked forward to the cross in the same way that we look back towards the cross. There's no difference between us and those folks in the Old Testament that share our faith, other than that we, in many ways, have a clear view of the gospel because the testimony of Jesus Christ The work of the apostles and of course the greatest apostle in my opinion, the apostle Paul. The gospel didn't change by their work, but in my opinion it became clear. And so we have the benefit of the Apostles work and of course the history of Christ and his redeeming work, the knowledge of his redeeming work in a clear way. We actually know the actual events. We know that, for example, the names of the name of jesus we know we know his historically uh we know the facts of him his parents uh when he was born and uh where he was born and well a lot of the old testament states knew a lot of that too but we just have a clear view okay and so they have a few there's a future view for the old testament states and we also have a future view and we have a future a declaration of judgment, of justification when we enter into the kingdom of heaven, when we pass from this world into the next. Or if we're blessed enough to actually be raptured, and I don't like using that word rapture, but to actually meet the Lord Jesus when he returns from heaven and the second coming, which would be pretty neat. So in Matthew 25, 34, the king shall say unto them on his right hand, come ye, blessed of my father, inherit the king to prepare for you from the foundation of the world. From the foundation of the world, this king has been prepared for his people. And that will be made known in a more meaningful way, I suppose. We'll actually hear it from God Himself, not just by faith, because that's how we hear it now, but we'll actually be able to hear it from His own lips to our ears. And it will be a declaration before all men that we are His people, that we are justified in Christ, and It's going to be a great day. That's all I can say about that. Okay, so let's go back to Mr. T. Okay, and he wrote some things here. He said, God's love for a sinner is the motivating cause for giving Christ to die for that sinner. He says, this love is not based on seeing the righteous by the washing of the blood of Christ, which would be putting the cart before the horse. Okay. This guy, in my opinion, is an infralapsarian, even if you were to say he was a superlapsarian. He says, Now you likely object that God can have no love for a sinner apart from seeing him righteous in Christ on the ground, that God's love cannot stand in opposition to justice. But this is failing to understand God's love and giving to Christ's die for a sinner. This redeeming love is not taking delight in the sinner, but God's resolution to glorify God's resolution to glorify himself in the redemption of sinners. I agree with that. God's love doesn't begin with us. It begins with him. God's love begins in his love for himself and his desire to glorify himself in the redemption of sinners. But God's mind did not change. You know, this is where I'm going to criticize Mr. T. Mr. T has been a so-called believer up until this point. He had an epiphany, he says, a couple weeks ago. And all of a sudden, he became a believer because he denied justification for eternity. And he also says, if you are tolerant of anybody who's who believes in justification from eternity, you too are not a believer. Now this is where I'm going to criticize him because where do you draw the line at least on tolerance? I've heard people like Mark Carpenter from outside the camp many years ago. I'm going to go back 15, 20 years ago. I met Mr. Carpenter online and he used to have a website called Outside the Camp and he had this little movement called Carpenterism. And he would go out there and say, if you're an Armenian and you don't know the gospel, well, you know, there's some truth in that. You don't know the gospel if you believe salvation is contingent upon your work or your faith or something that God does in you. That is not the gospel. But then he'd go on and say, well, if you're tolerant of anybody, then you don't know the gospel either. And if you're tolerant of any free willer, you don't know the gospel. And if you call them brethren, you don't know the gospel. And see, this is a dangerous road to go down, because where do you draw the line on tolerance? What if you're tolerant of somebody who's tolerant of somebody who is tolerant of somebody who is a free willer? Are you then now unregenerate? And that's, you know, you could have fifth generation peace speaking and work your way out of the kingdom of God according to Carpenter or just prove that you aren't in it. And once you've repented in the way that he is content that you've repented of your fifth or sixth or tenth generation peace speaking, You have then entered, you have then become regenerate. And this is taking our sight off of Christ. It's placing our regeneration, our our justification or experiential justification based on our tolerance of doctrines or people who haven't really thought through all the implications of their theology. And so we need to be very careful with that. Obviously, somebody who's holding hands with a freewheeler and declaring some sort of ecumenicalism, they've crossed the line. They probably don't know the gospel. I'm actually going to venture to say they don't. There are a lot of free willers out there. There are a lot of people in churches out there that I don't think they have, some of them don't have the same faculties as others. I know there are some people that are, and I hate to use this term because I know I'm going to offend somebody with it. Some people are mentally retarded. I'm not going to condemn anybody at all because they go to a free will church. That is not my job. And I don't know the status of anybody's election, even after death. I don't know, because those are secret things that belong to God. And so if I say that you can be a believer that attends a free will church, well, You know, I'm not going to say it's impossible, and I might get tongue-lashed out there on Facebook for saying that, but you just You don't know everybody's circumstance, and you don't know what's being preached everywhere. Sometimes people get up in these freewheeler churches, and they preach a bunch of gobbledygook that you just don't understand. And if you're a young person in the faith, or you don't have the mental capacities to understand what is being preached, but you believe that God saves you, and you're resting in Christ alone for all of your righteousness, you know, I can't condemn everybody that goes to a free world church. I just simply can't do that. And God's got his elect scattered all over these churches. And he will bring them out of these churches. Okay? He will bring them out. He will bring them out. And they will rejoice in the gospel once that clarity is brought to them. But I don't know. I just think this is a dangerous road to go down. And that's my dog. She's a little crazy. She's a sweet dog, but she likes to bark when my wife comes home. So I know my wife's home now. Anyway, that's where I am on this. I pray for Mr. T that he would get his theology right, that he'd at least, before you start writing articles on the regenerate status of people who believe in justification from eternity, that you at least study it a little bit more in depth. Based on what I've seen, I don't think you understand it. you know, I don't deny justification by faith alone. I don't deny it, and I think it's wrong to say that I do. So anyway, that's my message for today. I hope you all aren't disappointed in it. I hope to see you again next week. I really enjoyed doing these live streams and I hope that somebody out there is getting something good out of it. I love all of you in Christ and I'll talk to you again next week.