Live Free with Josh Howerton - ICE Shooting in Minneapolis: How Should Christians Respond!? | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

In this LIVE FREE Episode, Pastors Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Paul Cunningham tackle two topics Christians are deeply confused about right now: baptism and the Minneapolis ICE shooting. They unpack how biblical discipleship shapes both belief and discernment. This episode will answer frequently "shouted" baptism questions: (Does baptism save you? Should you be re-baptized? What about infant baptism?), and explain what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If you feel confused by culture's manufactured outrage and selective footage distorting the ICE shooting narrative, this episode will equip you to reflect before reacting, submit to God-ordained authority, and respond with wisdom instead of emotional manipulation. 👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an episode!    👇 DON’T MISS OUT! Want to grow deeper in your faith? Text APP to 20411 to download the NEW Lakepointe Church app! ⛰️ Download the companion Field Guide for our BOOT CAMP series! Text FIELD to 20411 or visit https://lakepointe.church/fieldguide 🧢 The LIVE FREE HAT is now available to purchase! Text HAT to 20411 or visit https://livefree.shop   ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH: We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know Christ, Live Free, and Change the World for God’s Glory. With 7 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone.  🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://lakepointe.church/give    STAY CONNECTED: 🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/ 👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/ 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect  🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LakepointeChurch   FOLLOW PASTOR JOSH: 👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowertonJosh/ 📸 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/josh_howerton/?hl=en  🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@howertonjosh    🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO!  ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc ▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198

The number of verses that make it clear that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, quote, apart from works, is stacked a mile high. If baptism is a symbol and sign that I am beginning the Christian life, it should be for those who have begun the Christian life. If you have already decided who the good guy is and who the bad guy is before you hear anything, you are not interested in justice. You're just an activist for a cause. There seems to be a spirit that basically just rejects all authority.

And the Bible calls that a spirit of lawlessness. As Christians, we want reformation, not lawlessness. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast. Coming to you from Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. My name is Carlos Arrasen. I'm here with Pastor Josh Harriotton and Pastor Paul Cunningham. We are kicking the pig. Let us kick this pig.

Let us get... Say it in Spanish again. We're going to goopiar this serdo. It just sounds so much better. Ah, bien, bien, bien. And welcome, and today we're going to be talking about... I'm talking about it. I always do that, dude.

It's the culturally ignorant Kentucky kid. Ha, bien, bien, bien. I just became Italian right now. And so, that's probably demeaning. I don't know why I do that. It's me. I'm the problem. This is an emoji, too, by the way.

Oh, yeah. The chef's kiss. The chef's kiss. We'll take it. We'll take it. Wait, wait, wait, tell them what we're going to talk about. Yeah. Hey, we have an episode today.

By the way, heads up. Juicy episode. So heads up. Very much so. We're going to be talking about frequently shouted questions about baptism. Yep. Such as if I was a baby, if I was baptized as a baby, do I have to get rebaptized? Does baptism save you?

Responding to Father Mike. Is his last name Schmidt? Yeah. I think so. I think it is. The handsome Catholic priest. It's a really handsome Catholic priest. The dead come guy, we can't be at number one on the religion podcast on iTunes.

It's hard to beat a handsome Catholic priest. Sad Comet. It's really hard. And we're going to be talking about is baptism of the Holy Spirit thing. Yes, we are. And we're going to be wrapping up with the ice shooting

in Minneapolis conversation. Yes, we are. Pester Josh. Juicy episode. Before you go anywhere, I want to give a shout out, and you guys have not seen this video. I have permission to show this video.

So let me set this up. If we have a podcast listener who sent this in, if you've ever been to a Lake Point service whenever I do an invitation, at the end, I always do the same thing or what makes fun of it, where I'll be like, hey, on the count of three, if you pray that prayer from a sincere heart, raise your hand.

And, you know, can anybody remember the three things I say? I say one. Oh, my God. I do remember. What are you? What is it? One, God loves you. Two, do you remember Trinity?

Oh. You came here for a reason today. Three, raise that hand of it. Lock that elbow. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. Now, check this out.

So this is Steve Hardin's niece. I guess I'm going to make the details wrong. had a bit of a medical issue or something, a little scared of taking her medicine, that kind of thing. So they texted me, they're like, she found a way to get herself to take the medicine, and this is the video she sent. Check this out. Two, you are here for a reason. Three, drink it.

Lock that old. Come on. I love it. She said, one, you gave me for a reason today. Dude, God loves you. Three, lock that hell off. And then she just throws it back. She did.

That's amazing. That's awesome. It's incredible. So shout out. We love you, Steve Hart's niece. Hey, man. That's amazing. That's great.

It's awesome. Did you know that we are now on video on Spotify, by the way? That's a new thing. Oh, my. So fancy. So you know, technology keeps advancing. It's actually my preferred way of watching video podcasts. Really?

Yeah. Spotify. Yeah. I don't know why Apple is so behind. I don't know how they don't have video at this point. I don't know either. Hey, man. Every single week we do a hat giveaway.

Yes, we do. And we got a winner. And we got a winner shout out to 9KC. Roe from last week's giveaway to comment on this week's giveaway. We got a hat for you. Comment hat below on YouTube with the little cap emoji because, you know, because we can't. Hey, also do this. So by the way, we're moving tons of these things.

That's right. By the way, somebody comment, I don't keep, I don't get any of the money from the hats. I think some people thought I was like pocketing at money. Wait, we don't get money from the hat. What? Are you getting money? No, I'm not really money. No, we're not.

That's just helping fun of the podcast. So anyway, if you get one of these, tag me on Instagram, like do an Instagram story and tag me in it. or a post. And I'll reshare it. We can spread Live Free Nation. And by the way, if somebody's like, where do I get a hat? Online store for Live Free is available as well. You can get that hat.

If you text hat to 20411 or go to LiveFree.com. And by the way, do you want to hear something exciting? Oh, I would love to. If you are part of the Live Free Nation. I've been waiting all day to hear this exciting thing. That's why I'm hearing this. If you're part of the Live Free Nation and you come visit us in person to any of our physical locations for the first time, and you tell us,

that you came because of live free, we got a free gift for you. Oh. So is it a hat? I will not say because it might, you need to find out. I understand. So basically they go to the first time guest tent and just say,

hey, I came because of live free. That's right. And we give them the gift. We got a gift for you. Stop by. And if that's you, that's right. It might be a hat.

It might be something else, but that's happening. No cheating. Not like you've been here for 10 years. Don't, first time guests. That's right. Honor code.

That's right. Last thing. You can also participate for, if you're here, one thing you need to know that a lot of people have been asking us about, man, people want a daily Bible reading plan. And so here's what we did. We basically re-engineered our LP Lake Point app to help our listeners basically align their discipleship rhythms. And so when you download the Lake Point app, you can find a daily Bible reading plan plus the weekly sermon, plus an early release of the live free podcast and a discipleship guide with discussing questions you can use for your group. to help you with your discipleship so go to download the Lake Point

Church app, text the word app to 20411 or go to Apple or Google Play Store you can get it now. Good job, Carlos. Thank you, man. You know, we're going to help some people. No, no, no, there's more. Oh.

Like, the podcast is just starting. Hey, Pastor Josh, I have a question for you. Yeah, I will allow it. I just want to say I was looking forward to hearing you say that. What did I make into the sermon? Okay, so this is week two. This is a big week.

Obviously. This is a big week. This week two of the boot camp training for Team Jesus series, we're basically walking people six, seven weeks through how we make disciples at Lake Point. This week was a disciple is baptized in the water and spirit, in water and spirit. So we're going to talk about that. So obviously, message was on both water baptism and whatever you want to call it. I'm going to talk about this later on the podcast. What are you going to call it? I don't care what you call it. You can call it baptism, Holy Spirit. You can call it being filled with the spirit. You can call it Presbyterians can call it. Presbyterians can call it unction. I don't care what you call it.

But whatever that thing is, that happens to a Christian, after they are saved where they get a fresh encounter with the Holy Spirit, you need that. So that was the whole sermon this week. Unction's got to be the coolest way to call it. The Presbyterians. They got the corner on cool terms. They do.

Unction, man. Unction. He's got the unction. They may not show. They may not show the unction always, but they have it sometimes. That's right. That's right. They don't show it.

You walk into their services. It's like, man, if y'all are happy and you know it, tell your face. We love our prostituary brothers and sisters. All right, so here's what did to make into the sermon. A few things. Number one, obviously preached on Jesus baptism. I preached from the gospel of Luke. So I do want to show this.

Hey, Trinney, will you go ahead and toss that up there? So I've been here. This is the reported or likely location of Jesus baptism. The reason that people speculate this is in John 128. So this Jesus baptism account, this is actually very, significant. It is one of only, I think, four or five events that are recorded in all four Gospels, the Synoptics and John. It's recorded all four. So it's obviously like, this is a big deal. Okay. And we're going to talk about why here in a second. The Gospel of John only in John

only, in John 128 says that the baptism of Jesus happened at, quote, Bethany Beyond the Jordan. It's the only gospel that specifies a geographic marker. So this is people's best guess. And I've been here. This is people's best guess. Heads up, if you guys, there, it's kind of a downer. It's honestly, like, you get there and you're like, huh, I thought it'd be better. Seriously, it's like a glorified puddle. I'll be honest.

It's one of those things where in like four minutes, you're like, all right, let's find a McDonald's. And there's a billion Israeli guards all over the place. So anyway, it's called Al-Maghtas. That's that spot right there. So that's just kind of cool. Number two, obviously interesting. that the Holy Spirit descends as a dove.

Dove is obviously a bird that represents peace throughout the scriptures. And as we'll talk about here in a second, that is one thing that he felt experience of the Holy Spirit does, is he brings a peace into your life that surpasses understanding. This is thing, honestly, man, I almost built a whole sermon around this last year, and I may do it at some point. So this is one of two events in the Gospels

where the audible voice of the father speaks to the son. Very interesting. A lot of Christians miss this. Both times the father says the exact same thing to the son. So we only hear him twice, and both time the father says, I love this. The dad says to his boy, you are my beloved son. And with you, I am well pleased. Now, this is, I don't want to do a whole sermon.

Let me just say a quick thing on this. what I think one thing the scripture's showing us is that the heart of a good dad is towards his kids you are my beloved child and with you I'm well pleased so what should our presence like three of us are dads what should our presence feel like to our kids it should feel like you are my beloved child and with you I am well pleased I will say some this was like real popular like 10 years ago Christians especially in like counseling world they'll get is mixed up where they'll be like, oh man, I had a bad dad, and so I can't understand God as Heavenly Father. I do just want to gently say, hey, man, we're not supposed to live earthly Father up.

We're supposed to live Heavenly Father down. And what I mean by that is we shouldn't be looking at our earthly dads who are all flawed and imperfect, and then transmuting that up and going, well, God must be like is the exact opposite. We should be looking at a perfect heavenly Father and then transporting that down and going, this is what a good earthly father should be like. So I will just kind of quickly say that. One last little thing that. Can I have one more thing on that? Please do.

It's interesting because you know, you probably heard this before, but at this point where when Jesus hears this from God, there's no miracles, no ministry, no healing, no cross yet. And yet the father is basically already telling Jesus, hey, like, I'm your dad, you're my son, I'm pleased with you. And we've heard that before. And yet people forget, Jesus is 30 at this point. And so he's been living in hidden, faithful service to the Lord for 30 years.

And so, you know, if you think about what he's been doing, and he's been basically practicing faithful, ordinary, not flashy, unseen obedience for 30 years. God sees what you do in secret, quiet, faithful obedience, honors the Lord. That's exactly right, man. It's the perfect, it's the perfect picture of the gospel that in the gospel, the verdict comes before the performance. And before he's done anything good or bad, the father's like, hey, I love you.

I'm pleased with you. Yeah. Let me keep going on two other quick things here. Um, little side note, this is, this is kind of a fun one. So only the gospel of John records that, uh, I think it's in John one or two. It, uh, it records that whenever John the Baptist looks at Jesus and goes, behold the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. Only the gospel of John, it sort of mysteriously records. There were two people who became Jesus disciples at that moment. Uh, it mentions in verse 40 the Andrew Simon Peter's brother was one of them. And then the other, the other, one, it doesn't give a name. Almost all Bible scholars are assuming that's because it was John himself that wrote the gospel, because in the gospel of John, he refuses to say his name. You'll notice that when you read the gospel of John, he'll say the one whom Jesus loved. He'll do the thing where he tells Peter, it'll say that the two of them took off sprinting towards

the empty tomb. And then he'll just say, you know, the other one outran Peter. I don't even need to say my name I don't need to say my name the other one now ran Peter and it's like it's him it's clearly him but he won't say his name so it's interesting that

John who wrote the gospel this was probably the moment he saw Jesus for the first time and became a disciple Jesus that's a little interesting one last thing that we touched on but didn't deep dive into

that is just crazy cool So, okay, so this is like one of the coolest things in the whole day testament. So, all right, John the Baptist sees Jesus, and he goes, behold the Lamb of God that takes ways since the world. We've done the whole deep dives on lamb imagery before. There's one thing we have not mentioned that this is explicitly referencing. All right. So if you go back, this is so awesome.

If you go back to the Day of Atome in the Old Testament, remember, the whole day of atonement revolves around two goats, right? and what you got, just get this in your head, this can be really important in about 10 seconds. What you got is you got two identical goats, bookmark that, two identical goats. They end up having different purposes. They cast lots on the Day of Atonement. One goat becomes the sacrificial goat,

where they place the sins of the people on the goat and then slaughter it on behalf of the sins of people. The other goat is called the scape goat. In fact, there's a very, mysterious word in the Old Testament. Nobody really knows what it kind of meant, if I understand correctly. It's called the Azazel, is what they call it.

And it's called the scapegoat. So one goat gets slaughtered for the sins of the people. This other goat, the priest lays his head, hand on the head of the scapegoat, and then the scapegoat just is released to go free out into the wilderness, okay? So, all right. Fast forward to the crucifixion of Jesus.

John the Baptist says, Behold the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. Fast forward to the crucifixion of Jesus. So the guy that was supposed to get crucified was a guy named Barabbas. Some texts, it's really interesting. Homework assignment. Go in your Bible and go read

that account in the gospel of Matthew only. And some of your Bibles are going to have a little footnote. And if you go down to the bottom of the footnote, it says that his name, check this out, was Jesus Barabbas, Jesus Barabbas. Okay? Now, so what does Barabbas mean? We've briefly hit this before.

Barr obviously means son of. Abba means father. So bro, here's what you have. You have Jesus Christ, the son of God the father, and then you have a sinful criminal whose a literal name is Jesus, son of the father. Guess what you got? Two identical lambs. One gets slaughtered, and one goes free.

goes back to the day of the Potomac. So cool. Wow. Ball lamb God takes away the sense of the world. Now,

let's get nuts. Let's just, let's go, baby. So we're going to hit a few controversial things on this pod. We talked a lot in a sermon

about the necessity of water baptism and I don't care what you call it, being filled with a spirit. So let's do this. Let's theology nerd out for like five,

six minutes here. Chachipal Tea. Will you please give a quick rundown of the, there's three primary theological positions on baptism. There's the Catholic position, which I'll let you articulate and respond to you here in a second. There's what's historically known as the

Pado-Baptistic position, which is infant baptism, and you can talk about who does that and why they do it. And then there's team Lake Point. There's team correct. There's put our cards in the table. There's what's called Credo baptism. Now, will you please, for a list, just explain the three primary positions and why we are what we are. Yeah, I'd love to actually start with what we all have in common, what these positions have in common. And this would be brief. All of them believe that baptism is a step of obedience.

So like— Wait, I'm sorry. I'm going to say one more thing. All right, as you're listening, here's what I need you to do. While he's talking in the next few minutes, so there's some very emotional questions that people—that's why we call them frequently shouted questions. There's some very emotional questions people will ask about, okay. okay, my parents sprinkle me as a kid.

Are you saying that I got to be baptized? There's a bunch of questions like that we're going to answer. Yeah. If you have any of those questions, I need you to have those questions in your head while Paul is explaining the positions because that's going to help deemotionalize it and help you get a biblical answer to your question. 100%. No, just a few things that they would all hold in common.

Number one, they all believe that baptism is a step of obedience. So in the New Testament, there's no such thing as an unbaptized Christian. That's right. Pause. Just let's say that one more time. Yeah. Say that one more time. That's important.

For all the views. what they would all say is that in the New Testament, there is no such thing as an unbaptized Christian. Interesting. I'm not sure I agree with that. Except you say the man on the cross. I'll give a couple. We'll come back to it.

This is fun. It's fun. Number two. I'll say this. There's no such thing as a Christian in the New Testament who intentionally chooses not to be baptized. That's probably a better way to say it. I was trying to say it way too simply and clean.

That's a bunch better way to say it. Number two, it's a one-time event. All of them would say it's a one-time event. Number three, it demonstrates our, union with Christ and his death, burial and resurrection. So we all have some things in common, but we do differ on basically kind of three different categories. Who it's for, how it's done, and then what it does.

Who it's for, how it's done, what is. I actually think we have a chart that we're going to put on the screen. It's going to be a great episode today, man. Oh, baby. We've got to bring a table out. Let's chart, baby. If nothing else is just to help keep it simple, especially for those of you who are watching. Yeah, so three views, Roman Catholic.

Although, as I'll go ahead and say now, Lutherans and Church of Christ also believe some of what Roman Catholics believe, but I won't focus as much on them. Roman Catholic, Protestant Pado Baptist, and Protestant Cretobaptists. So I'll actually just go through each category when it's time. Who is for? A Roman Catholic would say infants of those who are already in the Catholic Church or believers who come to know Jesus, but they warrant a part of the Catholic church as an infant. And so for Protestant Pado Baptist, soon would be again. That is up. Here, if you're curious, here in a second, we're going to respond to a quick video from Father Mike. Maybe Schmidt. I can't remember. I think so.

where he articulates why Catholics believe that. Exactly. And we lovingly... Disagree. We lovingly know they're wrong. Yeah. And maybe even after I go through these three, I'll give kind of three big reasons while we land where we do. How about that?

Protestant Pado Baptist also would baptize infants of those who parents are already in the church and then believers come to faith outside of the church. Protestant Cretto-Badus would say, nope, only believers who have themselves personally placed a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. So we would not baptize infants. How it's done, Roman Catholics typically pouring. Protestant Pado-Badus would be typically sprinkling or pouring, although sometimes immersion. It's not completely universal. There are some exceptions. Protestant Credo-Baptists almost completely by immersion, except in extreme circumstances.

So if you're out in the Middle East or some place that it doesn't have water, you can completely submerge in. There's allowances allowed. But the reason we do that is because Baptizo, the word that baptism comes from, most commonly means to dunk, to immerse. Can I all interrupt and ask a question? You may know the answer to this question. Is the reason that Pato Baptist do the sprinkling,

maybe answer my own question of my head, do they do that because of old, do they do that because in their minds, it's an old covenant, new covenant continuity thing, and in the old covenant, they did that deal where they would sprinkle the blood on the P, is that where they get that?

I think that's some of it. I don't know enough of all the details. I have a confidence over the top of the head, but that would be one. Others that I've heard that talked about it. It was actually referenced in John 3, which Father Mike talks about some, about the idea of cleaning with baptized. Sorry, he doesn't say baptized.

Basically, you have to be born again by water and spirit. That's actually referencing Ezekiel 36 where it talks about, I will sprinkle you with clean water. So that's actually a reference to that, not to baptism. But that's why they do it. Gotcha. And, okay, yeah, so let's talk about what it does. This is where I'd even say the bigger differences really start.

Roman Catholics would say it initiates the person into salvation. It removes original sin and confers regeneration and saving grace. Put it shortly, baptism actually saves you. But I put it, initiates the person to salvation because people have to understand Catholics and Protestants have a very different understanding of salvation. For a Catholic, it's more of a state of grace that you can go in and out of. And so you can initiate a person in salvation, but they can fall out of that state by what they would call mortal sins, which you deal with by confession and penance, kind of a thing.

But basically, I believe that baptism saves you, and it brings that person into the Catholic Church. A Protestant Pado Baptist would commit differently. Baptism doesn't save a person. It points expectantly to their salvation in the future that must still happen. So a Protestant Pado Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, some others, they would say this isn't saving this baby, but we are doing this in faith as a family and the expectation that one day they will be saved. Is it true, true, false, or neither that what, what, dedicating your child is to a Baptist, Pato baptism is to a Presbyterian. I would argue it's very, very close.

Because I've heard them, I've heard Pato Baptist kind of half-jokingly make fun of people like us. Yeah. When actually we don't do baby dedications at Lake Point. We do parent dedications. And there's theological reason for that. But I've heard them sort of half-jokingly make fun of Baptists that dedicate their babies. And they call them, oh, that's a dry baptism. Yeah.

It's close. there are some slight differences, but that's actually, I'll go ahead and say it now in case I forget to say it later. For my fellow Cretobabaptists out there, for people who had only baptized believers, one of my pet peeves is when those who would agree with me would look at a Pato Baptist and say, oh, well, that was stupid and it didn't mean anything. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, man, your parents were dedicating you to the Lord.

They were doing that and what they believed was obedience, and they were doing it with the expectation and hope and prayer that you're one going to day, you're one day going to have a faith of your own. That's great boss. So please, if you're a fellow creative about it, is don't mock it, don't be a jerk. We can say, hey, in a minute, like we were going to talk about it, we don't believe it's the biblical model of baptism, but still affirm what the parents were wanting to do for their child. The other big thing it does in the Pato Baptist tradition is it brings the person into the visible local church.

So they are actually a part of what they would consider the new covenant community. So big thing here. They believe that baptism is the New Testament equivalent of circumcision. In the same way that circumcision was the entrance into the covenant of the Old Testament people of God, baptism is now the New Testament equivalent of that. So again, they're not saved, but they are apart. Now, Cretel Baptists believe that as well, just with a nuance, right? With a little bit of a nuance.

We would say that they are a part of a... Because we still say it's a covenant symbol. Yeah, we would... Oh, big time. That's why actually... What makes this conversation really tough is that there are caricatures and straw men in every direction, and then we lean into those, and it's hard. We end up talking past each other instead of actually having meaningful conversations with

each other. Okay. A Protestant Cretem. Baptist is different. So whereas a Roman Catholic would say we're baptizing and therefore saving them, a Pado Baptist that's Protestant, say, no, no, we're pointing to their future salvation. A Cretto Baptist, say we're pointing to their salvation that's already happened. So they're not being saved right now. We're not hoping they're going to be saved. We're doing this because they are already saved. That's the huge difference. I'll tell you why we do that here in just a minute. And then finally,

it signifies that a person is part of the invisible universal church. They're already a part of the global people. of God. You're talking about in creedo baptism. Yes, in creed baptism. We're saying baptism is the public symbol. You are born again in the invisible heavenlies. Yeah, and part of the, that's right. Exactly. They're already a part of the universal church when they place their faith in Jesus. And now they're going into a local church. Good. Yeah. For listeners, Paul's using, he's using a little theological distinction that's really helpful is, theologians will often distinguish between the visible and the invisible church. And the visible church is when you walk into a church, all the people you see. That's a visible church. But all of us know, Jesus said, hey man, I'm going to

separate wheat from tears, and you're not going to know who those are until the end of time. So when Paul is talking about the invisible church, he's talking about people who are actually regenerate, born again, saved, and really until Christ returns, we're not going to know who among the visible church were also a part of the invisible church. That's what he means there. Sorry. No, it's good. Let me just give a brief reason, three big reasons why we land where we land at Lake Point and we believe creed of baptism is the right way to go about this. It really three big things.

Number one, it has the strongest scriptural case. Number two, it preserves the meaning of baptism. And then number three, it protects the gospel. Now, let me kind of double click on each of these. It has the strongest scriptural case, both in the sense of the clear pattern that is there is that baptism always follows personal faith and repentance. But then also there's a lack of a clear command. So there's the presence of a clear pattern.

Literally always. Always. Literally every time of the New Testament, baptism is subsequent to salvation. Some people would throw out there, well, what about the household baptism? That's an argument of silence. You're talking about the Philippian jailer. It says that he and his whole household. But what we would say is, bro, you know nothing. That's an argument from silence. It's an argument from silence. What we would say is that good dad went home, shared the gospel with his family, and they came to faith. Exactly. And in some places, like in the book of Acts, Cornelius and his household, it says they all spoke in tongues. So if you're saying an infant was

there at that point you're going to have to believe that so an infant was speaking in tongues so that's not every case i mean hudson there were things that i wondered just saying it's a stretch well but so maybe so again what is there is a clear pattern what is not there is a clear command so here's if like let's say i was sitting down with either roman catholic or presbyterian at this really anyone who's paid a baptist here's the conversation of how to go with them is i say okay so do you think an infant can be baptized or should be baptized Oh, that's good. They're going to say should.

They're not going to say that. They should. So I'm like, okay, so what you're telling me is you're binding not just my conscience, but the conscience of every Christian everywhere, that this is something they have to do and should they say yes. I'm like, but you're telling me there's no clear command to tell me to do that. Whereas in the Old Testament, there is a clear command to circumcise children. And not even, by the way, alternate, just boys.

But now you're saying me that I have to do this, even though there's no clear scripture from a command. And by the way, anywhere else that people do this, you would say they're illegitial. legitimately binding someone's conscience if there's no clear command. And they would say, yes. Yes. And then they would probably fire back at me and say, well, Paul, it's because it's so obvious that this is the New Testament version of circumcision. So of course they don't have to say it because it's not there. My response to that would be, well, if it's so obvious, why do we have no record of infant baptisms until the late 100s and early, I'm sorry, the late, yeah, late 100s and early 200s? Interesting. The first references to infant baptism. And even then, Turtulian at that time, actually wrote a treatise against infant baptism. I didn't know that. So if it's so. obvious. Really? Why is it that we have no record of infant baptism, clear records for the first 150

years after Jesus in the early apostles. And when we do have records, there's some early church fathers who are actually saying don't baptize your infants. If it's so abundantly clear and obvious. Well, somebody might say to that. And we're about to respond to Father Mike Schmidt. But then the church did for like thousands of years, right? Oh, it did for thousands of years.

The Catholic Church. Oh, for sure. It did. But this is actually one of the classic. They also had popes and they also did indulgences. and they also had a bunch of artifacts. Yeah. One of the classic things like Mr.

Oh, Protestantism is new. Well, it is in the sense of it is a renewal movement. When you renew something, you're actually trying to go back and take it back to the way it originally looked. And so I'd say, yeah, it's longstanding. But again, if I don't have a clear practice, let's say it again, for the first 150 years after it was done.

So like, let's just, oh, yeah, there's no clear record of us having a Congress or a president or whatever for the first 150 years of the Constitution. At that point, it's like, that's a long. time. That's a long time. Between the two Protestant groups, what's the majority right now? What would say that again? Between the two Protestant groups, Credo and Pito, what's the majority? Numerically, I would say Crito. Cretto, not close. Yeah, it's not even... Among Protestants, it's not close. I would guess. Yeah. And even for those lists, maybe not familiar these terms,

Credo typically would be Baptist or large non-denominational church, or the any non-dominational church would be one. By the way, we should have done this first. Can you just explain what those two terms, why it's called Pato Baptist, which... Pato comes from... sounding. Pato baptism. Bad actually. Cretto baptism. Explain that real quick. We need better words. We pick the worst words sometimes. Unction, okay.

These others, whatever. Unction. Ah, the unction. Marveloso. Pato literally comes from the Greek word that means child. You know, in this case, they would say infant. Credo literally just means the idea of belief, the idea of profession of faith or belief.

Kind of a thing. That's what that's referring to. So it's, we've got, I think, the best scriptural case, the other thing, it preserves the meaning of baptism. If baptism is a symbol and sign that I am beginning the Christian life, it should be for those who have begun the Christian life. Like, ah, that's good. That's really it. Also, it's a picture of our union. I said this earlier.

Of our, basically our union was Christ and his death, burial and resurrection. That doesn't apply to infants. It doesn't apply to infants. Finally, it protects the gospel. Now, we'll be careful here because Roman Catholic, even Church of Christ and Lutheran, who also believe in baptismal regeneration, they would say, this isn't a work. rather this is the means by which God works to give a salvation. I'm like, okay, even if that's true, that is such a fine line that is incredibly difficult for this to not basically go to where Paul goes in Galatians.

And what I mean about that is in Galatians. There are people who are saying, this is a really good point. This is a huge point. They were saying, hey, in addition to having faith in Jesus, you also have to be circumcised. And so now these people would say, hey, in addition to having faith in Jesus, you also have to be baptized. I'm not saying that they all actually believe it. It's just hard not to get there and have it not to slip into that. Whereas you also see, and this is why it's important, not just to read isolated verses,

but I'm all like, Paul and Romans 10 talks about whoever confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that he was raised from the grave, they will be saved. So he doesn't add, oh, and if you're baptized. We're not saying baptism isn't important, by the way. We believe it's a command that has to be obeyed. We're just saying that it doesn't actually save you. Yeah, and let me just double click on this. And then I'll let's go to the Father Mike deal.

Please do. So to Paul's point, let me just summarize. There's no such thing as a command in the New Testament to baptize your child. There's no such thing. There is further, there is no example of an infant being baptized that. And then you also have just the nature of what baptism is. Like even just think about the symbol. It's, okay, it's, you know, dead, buried, raised.

It's clearly implying unification with Christ and the cleansing of sins. we all know from about a hundred a billion verses, you are not united with Christ and you are not forgiven of your sins until you place your faith in Jesus. That's the entire gospel. So you stack those three things together

and then I'll just add one thing. So you have, this is why I objected to what you said earlier. I think you have at least three examples in the New Testament of unbaptized, saved people. You have thief on the cross. This is a little cheating,

but can anybody remember any of the others? I've been like Googling my brain I found they figured out. So the thief on the cross, when Jesus does the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the tax collector does the prayer, Father, you know, he does his, beats his breast and makes the prayer. And then Jesus says, I tell you, this man went home justified. So Jesus in the parable is saying, the guy that was penitent and had faith, went home and he was, present tense, is justified. No baptism.

Ah, yeah. No baptism. And then the third one, I think, is Zacchaeus. So you have Zacchaeus's regeneration. He immediately does his whole, he clearly has faith in Jesus. There's evidence of repentance. Remember what Jesus says. Salvation.

That's it. Salvation has come to this house. No baptism. So, by the way, let me just say this. What we're not saying is that it's not important. It's real important. We'll talk about it here in a second. Let's debunk Father Mike Schmidt.

By the way, man, this is a shout out. If Father Mike watches this, bro, we're trying, we can't beat you on the podcast. rankings. I think didn't we ping up to number two once? We were like, ah, no. We were number two or number three? We got three's highest. But we can't get old Father Mike, man. So we're coming for you. And he's got two. He's got like a daily one and like another one. So maybe maybe this will help. I don't know. You know what we need. We just, what we need is like however many trillions of dollars of the Catholic Church has, putting paid ads behind our podcast. And then we'll crush. We'll take it. That's a joke.

That's a joke. All right. So this is, Paul, I want you to respond to this. This is his explanation of the Catholic position that essentially baptism saves you. And so watch this, and then I want you to respond to this. A lot of times there are some non-Catholic Christians who see baptism as merely symbolic. It's not efficacious, is the word. It just is an expression of an already pre-existing faith.

That's right. The interesting thing about that. is that that was never expressed in the Bible. In fact, the Bible talks about it like this. You know, actually, well, how about this? In John chapter 3, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. And he says, unless you're born again of water in the spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Can you respond? Can you. Can you. So oftentimes that is taken by people to mean baptism. But it's actually not referring to baptism. It said that it is referring to Ezekiel, chapter 36, where it says, I will give you a new heart and the new spirit I will put within. you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, which sounds very much like what we hear in John 3 and

cause you to walk my statues and obey my rules. And I will sprinkle you with clean water and cleanse you. And so really what you get there is Jesus is alluding to Ezekiel, which is both about really the idea of the new covenant coming out and the idea of him pouring out his spirit. And it's about the new birth. It's not about baptism. Okay. So then in Ezekiel, what's the water represent there?

I think it's just the idea of some kind of a cleansing. Yeah, the cleansing act. And also what you see sometimes, even in the book of John, that oftentimes it'll use the spirit and then another metaphor up aside, but it means the exact thing. It'll do the same thing with fire. Spirit and then wind. It's referring to the same thing. It doesn't have to mean there's a completely different things.

Just because it says spirit and fire. That doesn't mean I've got to go hop in my fireplace. Exactly. I'm spirit and wind. I don't got to go stand in front of a windmill. Yeah, that's okay. All right, let's keep going. So this is pretty powerful.

You know, from the very beginning, the church saw those words of Jesus talking to the Gidemus, baptism, or unless you're born again of water and the spirit, they saw that as baptism. Now, a couple hundred years, a bunch of hundred years. A long time later, people had the thought of like, no, no, no, maybe that means something different. Maybe that's Jesus is saying,

unless you're born of water, that means like natural birth. You have to be born first and of the spirit. Like that's some kind of spiritual kind of a thing. Then you can't enter heaven. But for centuries, millennia now, Christians have always understood that to be baptism, the necessity of baptism. In fact, in the Acts of the Apostles, it says, be baptized then for the forgiveness of your sins. The baptism is talked about as if it actually does something, right?

It's efficacious. Pause. So he's obviously quoting Acts Chapter 2. They say, what must we do to be saved? And Peter's response is repent and be baptized. So Paul, doesn't that clearly mean that in order to be saved? You have to both repent and be baptized. Exactly.

A few things here. Number one, this actually helps set up to a huge verse that he'll throw out here in a bit, which is 1st Peter 321. Yeah, that's the biggie. And I think we need to remember the whole context of Scripture and of the Gospels in the Book of Acts. The last thing that Jesus tells the apostles to do is to go and make disciples baptizing them. And so it's a kind of, it's a couple of thing.

It is a couple of thing. There's not supposed to be this long delay between someone becoming a disciple of Jesus and being baptized. And in fact, if you look through where Peter is involved in people's baptisms, it's always immediate. it's right then. And so you don't have this distance between the two things. So that's one thing is I'd say, hey, part of it is the idea of, hey, you're repenting and being baptized because it is expected all happen now. Not that baptism is what saved you.

Baptism is the act that you take to public identify with Christ because he has already saved you. And if you don't agree with this, I'd say, okay, so let's just imagine a scenario. I've done this before. I do some Catholic brothers and sisters. And by that, I love that he called non-Catholic Christians. I call it that briefly. And not everyone is that generous.

generous that's probably why father mike is number two or three he is and he's got good hair like he's the beginning of a catholic i mean giving you a joke a handsome catholic priest comes on to a podcast if he was el salvadorian i think he might look like so here's my question so and by the way i would have brought this up with first peter three keep going i got it i'll bring us back i'll bring us back

is okay so let's imagine a scenario okay so thousands of people were saved at Pentecost, right? They get in the line to be baptized. What if one of them dies in line? Hell. Hell, Paul. Does that mean he wasn't saved? Does that mean that he wasn't regenerate, that he in that moment he didn't have the spirit? He wasn't born again. He was going to go to the hell. And they was like, well, no, of course. I'm like, so what you just told me is that it wasn't actually being baptized, that saved him. Because if he was saved, but he had not been baptized, you yourself would admit that that is not what saved you. Another thing, I'm going to go and do it here.

Actually, we'll have to do a lot less when we get to First Peter 3. This is a fancy term, but it's really important. Metonomy, metonymy. What that word means is... You said metonymy? Metonomy or mettonomy or mettonomy or... Mettonomy, it's a... I'm about to learn something.

It's a lot of metony. It kind of does something. It's a lot of dish that you would have. The idea is it is a part of something that can refer to the whole of something. So, like, for example, this is not so much used now, but if, if your business executives are walking the hall, oh, here come the suits. Now, they're not literally in that moment

just referring to the suits. They're wearing that suit represents the whole of the thing. Or even think about in Scripture, do we believe the blood of Christ cleanses us from sin and saves us? Of course we do. Scripture says, but does that mean that Jesus could have just gotten a paper cut

and bled and that would have covered the deal? No, because in that moment, his blood is not just referencing his blood, it's referencing the whole of what happening, including his death. That's great. And so often I believe what is happening is that baptism is used as metonymy. It is used as part of a game because in their mind, you repent, you believe, and you're baptized all at one time.

So it is a part that represents the whole. Those are few thoughts. It's not merely an expression of belief. It's not merely symbolic. It is actually powerful. It does something. In fact, St. Peter, when he's writing in the New Testament, he says, baptism saves you now.

This is a baptism saves you. That's it. That's first Peter two-ish. 321. Preach one. Baptism, quote, which now saves you. That's the biggie. And this is the one, again, this one, brother, you are. Roman Catholic, Lutheran Church Christ, they would say this. Like, all right, that's it. We really don't even yet to, yeah, have any more conversation. Okay, a few things there. First, the verse and passage that those words are in

is incredibly complex and confusing. Actually, let me just read them for us, because if you go back to a few verses to verse 18, it says this, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God. Being put to death. death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That is one of the most debated passages in the entire New Testament. It's a weird, like, what the heck is going on here? is what the heck is going on? People usually land in two or three camps of even what does it mean, what Jesus went and preached to the spirit. It is a very complex verse that you just took a few words from and presented it as very clear when it's actually really confusing. And then let's even talk about the idea of now baptism, which isn't a type of this now saves you. Well, a type of what? It's not referring to actually to the ark. This is what people get wrong about this.

It's referring to the water in the Old Testament flood, which is kind of weird when you think about it because the water in the Old Testament flood was not an instrument of salvation. It was an instrument of judgment. So this verse is saying baptism, which now is a type of this, saves you. So you're saved by going through judgment, which, yes, that's what this is saying. My point is, once you actually zoom out from these few words, it shows it is really confusing. And a core biblical principle is we don't build major doctrines by what is confusing, but by what is clear and consistently taught through the rest of the Bible. So one of the most important rules of biblical interpretation is, hey, let's interpret unclear passages in light of clear passages. Let's not interpret clear passages in light of unclear

passages. Exactly. And guys, the number of verses that make it clear that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, quote, apart from works is stacked a mile high. You know, it's literally as basic as John 316. Exactly. You know, there's nothing, you know. And that's, or even just as you run into these things. I'm like, does that mean that even like I quoted earlier, Romans 10? Does that mean the Bible is contradicting each other? No, what happens is you have these different verses and you've got to put them up in attention and say, okay, how do we make sense of all this? But to say this, it really, I would say contradicts the rest. If this, if you take these verses in isolation. Go ahead. I had one more point to make actually.

Okay, go ahead. Just real quickly, I would also have told him, hey, if it's just we were just sitting together at this table and say, hey, Father Mike, can we just read the rest of the verse? Because you only just read those few words. I actually read them out loud, but let me repeat him, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body. So it literally says, not simply because you got in the water and were baptized. This wouldn't have made sense if he was literally just referring to dirt on someone's body. No one would have been expecting him to say this. What this is really saying is like, this isn't about how it somehow magically cleanses your soul.

Actually, the board here is not so much. It's sarks. That it's your body's referred to as sarks. But some people would say is it's more of a moral state. But as an appeal to God for a good conscience. Well, let's think about this for a second. call us other times that Peter were baptized, it was instantaneously. It was immediately after they placed faith. Probably what would happen. It's probably what I've seen happen when other people

are baptized right if they believe. When I've seen we do spontaneous baptism, people are called. They're being baptized, and usually in that moment is when they're actually saying, Father, forgive me of my sin. Jesus, thank you for that and cleanse me of my sin. And so in that moment, this actually just said, what does not save is not the water and just magically being baptized? Is the appeal of a good conscience to God? It is pleading to God to save them, of which baptism is that expression. And so maybe put it like this briefly, sorry, Carlis, no, we got to keep moving.

When Elisha commanded Neiman to go into the waters to be healed of his leprosy, was it the water that magically healed him? Of course not. No. It was the faith and obeying the command that did that. And you think that's what's going on in the first Peter passage. It preceded that. Yeah, exactly.

It's like faith precedes the baptism. So again, going back to Pentagon, the people that were in line to be baptized, It's not like all of a sudden if one died for the guts of water that they wouldn't have been said. No, they had the faith. They were simply waiting to be able to express the faith they already had. That's great. Trinity, let's play that one last minute.

And then Pastor Josh, I have a couple questions just really practical to help people. Frequently shot of questions. That's right. But if there's a baby getting baptized, how can that baby have faith? It does. Great question, Camper. Maybe it's not the baby's faith that's operative in this situation.

If you go back to Mark's Gospel chapter two, there's this story. I know you know this story. It's the story of this paralyzed man, the paralytic. He's on a mat and he has four friends who are carrying him to Jesus. But there's so many people who want to come to Jesus to be healed that they can't get him in the house. So what do the four friends do? They climb up on the roof. They do a little remodeling, make a little skylight there, a little Chip and Joanna Gaines kind of situation. And they lower the man down on the mat in front of Jesus. The next line in Mark's gospel and in Matthew's gospel is when Jesus saw their first. faith, meaning the faith of the friends. Oh, don't do it, Mike. He says to the man, your sins are forgiven. Don't do it. Don't do it.

So it's not the man's faith itself, himself. It's not him. It's not his faith that speaks for him. It's actually the faith of the four friends that speaks for the man. And if that can happen with this man who's paralyzed and his four friends, that also is operative, that also can happen in baptism. Because here's parents who profess the faith. In fact, the right of baptism is the parents and Godparents profess the faith.

And this is the faith in which we want this child to be baptized. Awesome. Yeah. So three things here. They kind of build on each other. Number one, we have to distinguish between instrumental faith and substitutionary faith. It was their instrumental faith that led them to take the man to Jesus. But their faith was not substituting for his because actually with that, why number two, do we assume he didn't have faith?

Do we really think if he didn't have faith? Like, I don't believe. I can believe this God, this Jesus is a fake. do we think Jesus would have really healed him? In fact, some people believe that when it says it's their faith, it's not just referring to the guys, but it's referring to the guy on the mat as well. Yeah, that's right. That's what I've always heard.

All five. And when he says there, it's just a general plural. And so what's interesting is actually Catholic teaching would hold that once you become of an age of accountability, you have to have faith to be baptized. And so in other words, parents at that point could substitute their faith for them. So he used an example where it's a grown man who would have then had to have faith. but now he's saying they're substituting their faith for him and the Catholics don't believe you can do that.

It just kind of goes in circles it goes against you there. Number three, if the guy didn't have faith, which I believe he actually did. But if he didn't have faith, then my question is, so what's the limits here? Yeah, can I have faith on behalf of the entire nation of China? Yeah. Can I have a behave on behalf of an unbeliever? My friend. That's right.

Like, if you're going to take this and apply it to a context that, as we just showed, doesn't have a one-to-one comparison, then there are no limits. Can I have faith in behalf of someone who actually doesn't believe in Jesus? Of course not. So those are a few points there. Frequently shouted questions. That's right. So let's get practical.

So Pastor Josh, if somebody says, this is honestly, I hear this a lot. Oh, that's huge. If I was baptized as a baby in the Catholic Church or whatever, should I be baptized again? Yes, you should. Here's why I'd say that. So first of all, we've got to go back to what is baptism. Baptism is an outward expression of an inward reality of grace. I have placed my faith in Jesus.

By my faith, I have been cleansed of my sins and united with Christ. The old me is dead. And then I've been raised to newness of life. I don't got to do the things I used to do because in Christ I'm not the person I used to be. That was not true of you when you were an infant and you were baptized before you had faith. So just be really honest, baptism is an expression of your faith. When you are, in fact, I would object to using the word baptism. So what I would say is, man, I would just lovingly say, I would just lovingly say that, man, when you got water sprinkled on you as an infant, you got wet, I would not call that baptism.

because that was not an expression of your faith. And by the way, to Paul's point, this is a good thing. That was an expression of your parents' faith. And just heads up, God didn't save last names, he saves first names. So I would say, yes, you absolutely do need to be baptized again. Now, the question that especially Catholics, and I've just said this, and Carlos, you can object to this if you'd like and correct me here, you're not hurt my feelings. What I've noticed is especially Hispanic Catholics because there's such, by the way, and this is a

good thing that we need to learn from them. there's such a high value on family and Hispanic culture. A lot of Hispanic Catholics that were baptized, that were sprinkled as infants, they honestly have a guilt because they're like, dude, I feel like I'm betraying my mom and my dad by doing this now. What I would say is, no, no, actually it's the opposite. Is you're ratifying and dignifying what your parents wanted for you. I would just reframe that in your head.

No, no. In fact, when you go talk to your mom and dad about it, what you should say is not, mom and dad, you really screwed up as a kid. You know, what you should say is mom and dad, thank you so much for from the time I was an infant pointing me to Jesus, and I have now made my own decision to follow Christ and be baptized. And so I'm ratifying the decision you made when I was an infant. So yes, they do.

I was sprinkled as a baby. There you go. By the way, that's my wife's story. Jana was sprinkled in the, I think it was Methodist Church as an infant. and then when she was converted in senior year at college, baptized again. No shame. There you go. I'm a parent and my seven-year-old trusted Christ last night should I just baptize him immediately.

Yeah. So let me just say this. And this is one where it's like it's more wisdom than Bible verse. There's not a Bible verse. I can point and go, here's how you do it. So then I've got to use pastoral wisdom. This is a warning I would give to parents. is I do feel like sometimes at really, really young conversions,

is what you said. My six or seven-year-old, I prayed with them to believe Jesus before bedtime, and then they'll rush them into baptism. And, man, honestly, with kids more than adults, hey, man, we really don't know the why. We need to be discerning about the why of why they prayed with you. Hey, man, was it because they saw three of their friends

get baptized at church, and they want to, man, I want to be like, like my friends, that's how six-year-olds work. So again, let's go back to what baptism is. It's an outward expression of an inward reality of new birth. So what I would say is what you don't want to do is you have a very young child that expresses faith in some way. I would, caution, don't rush them into the water and accidentally potentially give them a false assurance of something that wasn't genuine conversion yet. What we did with our kids is after they expressed faith, we were watching as parents for age appropriate signs of genuine

conversion in their life. So it's like a couple things I'll tell you to watch out for. Do they keep asking? So hey man, if they're like consistently like, hey, mom and dad, I really feel like I need to do this, that's a good sign you got evidence to the Holy Spirit convicting them to do what God wants them to do. Are you seeing age appropriate remorse for sin? Born again, people have remorse for sin, age appropriate. Are you seeing age appropriate love for the Lord? We're not talking about they're acting like John Owen when they're seven. You know, it's like, no, no, like eight in a seven-year-old way, are they showing love for the Lord?

And as soon as you see it, I'd say go for it. That's great. So somebody still wrestling and just trying to bring clarity to everything that was just shared right now. Okay, so Pastor Josh, are you saying that I do not need to be baptized to be saved? I am saying that. I'm saying that. Again, we're saved by grace apart from works. In fact, I'll go back to this actual passage.

So John the Baptist, the guy's a little baptism line going. And then he looks up, he's like, oh, dang, Jesus is in the line. And John the Baptist goes, he essentially has a, you know, who am I? I need to be baptized by you. What the heck are you doing? And Jesus says, this is fitting, quote, to fulfill all righteousness. I think what's going on there is the whole purpose of Jesus living his sinless life, his perfect life, is for him to live a substitutionary life so that every work required for a person to have been perfect,

Jesus accomplished with his perfect life. So Jesus was not baptized because he needed his sins cleanse. He didn't have any sins. I think Jesus, I think Jesus was baptized for the sin. sin, and it is a sin for the sin of saved people who never get baptized. And he did it on their behalf to fulfill all righteousness on their behalf, if that makes sense. So again, I'll point back to thief on the cross, not baptized, tax collector that went home justified, not baptized. Zakia, salvation has come to your house today, not baptized. So no, we're baptized. You don't

got to be baptized in order to be saved. But what I would say is this real dang important. Yeah. Can I add something to that? And again, it's not at first like I'm contradicting, but I'm really not. It's like, and Christian thought, especially in Protestant thought, it's like, are good works necessary for salvation? No, if by that you mean we have to do a certain amount of good and not do a certain amount of bad in order to be saved. But yes, if you mean that after you are saved, man, you seek, you want to please God and you want to obey Jesus. And so there has to be some kind of evidence. Like the thief on the cross is an example that you have to do any good works to be safe because he couldn't. But he's right. But he's He's also, he died after that. Whereas them, the evidence that Jesus has done a work in your life is that, man, you're going to want to want to obey him and change. And so I will say for those who are like, it's one thing that maybe people weren't baptized because of fear of the water or whatever. But if you're like, no, I just won't do it.

I refuse to. I'm like, I would have the same level of fears maybe too hard over. But if I met someone who's like, I will not give up this sin in my life. That's not, not the baptism, but another one. I refuse him. Like, you got to really ask yourself, man. Did I refuse him to obey Jesus? Did I really bend my need to the Lord's supposed?

Not that you're not going to be saved because, no, it's just, hey, it's probably, if you're just refusing to, it's probably a good to something to ask, why am I refusing to obey Jesus right now? What made that show the Mike say to my heart? Last one. I was baptized a long time ago and when I got saved. I was baptized a long time ago when I got saved when I was younger, but I straight from God. Now I'm recommitted my life to Jesus. Should I get baptized again? No, you should, man. Baptisms one and done. We already mentioned that. And a lot of people do this. Let me just say, it's a well-meaning mistake. Yes. Let me just honor. It's a well-meaning mistake. Nope, nope. If you have been baptized subsequent to your salvation, it doesn't matter if you strayed and our comeback to the Lord. That's not how you rededicate your life to Christ. Baptism is a visible symbol of salvation, not a visible symbol of rededication. So no, man, just repent. Start following Jesus. You're going to do great. That's great.

Amen. So Jesus was baptized with water. He was a model for us. And the Bible says that the spirit descended upon him. But then John said some verses literally, like right before, he said that Jesus would baptize you and I, if you're a Christian, that's you as well, with the Holy Spirit and fire. So is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I think?

Yeah, this was, let me just talk about some things that didn't make it into the sermon here. I'll try to do this briefly, but I will be honest. Some of this stuff, this is the exact, this is why I do this podcast. Because this is the stuff, I would die to fit in a sermon, and I just never got time. Okay. So,

So quick theology of this. First of all, a ton of unnecessary denominational fights happen over quote-unquote baptism of the Holy Spirit. And again, I'm going to go back to whatever you're going to call it. You want to call it baptism spirit, being filled with the spirit, unction, I don't care what you call it. Whatever, rededicate in your life, I don't care what you call it. So let me just say where Pentecostal people can get it wrong. And let me talk about where some, especially like my team, I come from a Baptist team, where we can get it wrong. So here's what's wrong.

When you'll hear some Pentecostal people say things like, well, if you haven't been spirit baptized, you don't even have the Holy Spirit. Wrong. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Romans 8.9 specifically says if anybody doesn't have the Spirit of Christ, they don't belong to Christ. And in fact, you go back to the beginning of the Gospel of John, I'm going to shoot you really straight, man. No one would ever even get saved if the Holy Spirit was not actively at work in and on their life.

you would never have chosen to believe in Jesus, and you never would have chosen to repent of your sins, unless the Holy Spirit had done a renewing work inside of you. So it's simply wrong when a Pentecostal person is like, oh man, you haven't been spirit baptized, says when you're going to salvation. You don't got to Holy Spirit. Nope. Everyone who belongs to Christ has the Spirit of God at work inside of them.

Okay. Now, here's where my team can get it wrong is some people say, no man once you're saved you've got everything there's nothing else to get stop seeking something you've already got okay and dude i want to point this out and this does get me in a little hot water you know because the team you come from but i just point this out that is simply not the pattern of the new testament it is simply not um in fact i'll have you i'll point this out i'll give three examples um you have jesus breathe a lot of people miss this jesus breathes on the disciples in John chapter 20.

And essentially, I think the gospel is signifying. This is the moment when it was clear, all of them had saving faith and understood the worship of Jesus. And he breathes on them, and he says, receive the Holy Spirit. This John chapter 20, just 50-ish days later in Acts chapter 2,

after they have already received the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 2, the Spirit of God descends on them, you know, in the form of, you see wind and fire, and Acts Chapter 2 specifically says they were filled with the spirit. Question, Paul and Carlos. How did people who already had received the Holy Spirit in John 20, 50 days later, how are they filled with the Spirit?

Because there is something that God has for Christians subsequent to their salvation that is a unique encounter with the Holy Spirit. I'll do two others real fast. In fact, take those same people. Those same people in Acts of Chapter 2 are filled with the Spirit. do your homework later and go read Acts chapter four. The exact same group in Acts 4 is, quote, filled with the Spirit again in Acts 4.

So some impartation of the spirit they did not have. They receive an experience in Acts chapter 4. And then the big one that makes it really clear, and pop quiz, this is not a trick question class. When Paul writes the book of Ephesians to the church at Ephesus, is he writing to people who are Christians or people who are not Christians? Christians. What is Christians for?

What is Christians for Christians? And yet, in Ephesians 518, he says, do not get drunk on wine, but, and he says to Christians be filled with the spirit. And the verb tense there is an active verb tense. It's continually seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And he's talking to people who are already saved. And it's a command. is a command. You are commanded as a Christian to, for the rest of your life, be seeking a fresh encounter and a fresh feeling of the Holy Spirit. I hit this real fast in a sermon, but if you've never

notice this, I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough. Jesus in the Gospels never does a miracle, never heals a person, never gives a prophetic word, never preaches a sermon until after his baptism, his spirit baptism. It's power. Jesus did all of his ministry in the power of being filled with Holy Spirit. If Jesus needed it, heads up, bro. You need it. You need it.

So kind of do this real quick, and let's move on and talk about ice, and we'll lock her down. So this is what didn't make another sermon that I always wish I had time. Would you mind if I read to you some quick encounters of towering figures throughout church history that most people do not know recorded their filling with the Spirit subsequent to their salvation. Carlos, would you mind if I read some of these real quick? I will allow it. You jerk. Now, keep this in mind.

Keep this in mind. What does being filled with the Spirit do in the New Testament? Acts 1 says it gives you powerful witness. Romans 8, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. It gives you assurance of salvation, a direct assurance. you are my child. And number three, Ephesians 3, says, I pray that the spirit may strengthen your inner being so that you may able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. So the third thing is, it gives you a unique encounter with the love of the father.

Now, as I read these, I'm going to do these real fast. This is D.L. Moody. One day while walking on Wall Street in New York City, Moody was suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful sense of God's presence in love. And then he wrote, One day in the city of New York, oh, what a day, I cannot describe it. I can only say that God revealed himself to me. Listen, and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand. And then Moody records that after that experience, he was preaching the same sermons he had preached before that experience, but before nobody got saved. And after that experience, the Second Great Awakening had.

happened. Love of the Father, assurance of salvation, power for witness. Let me do another one. Jonathan Edwards. So heads up, if you think the only people talk about spirit baptism are like, wild, emotional charismatic, this is Jonathan Fregan Edwards. He read his sermons. He read his sermons monotone. He was arguably one of the most brilliant Puritan minds in history. Jonathan Edwards said this, the spirit of God, this is an experience he had subsequent as salvation. The spirit of God seemed to be poured out upon me with an extraordinary influence. My soul was led away in a kind of vision, and I had a view of the glory of the Son of God, and it was that experience that led him to write religious affections,

which is arguably his most famous book on how, essentially it's how the role of feelings in the life of a Christian. That's John the Embers. John Wesley. Here's John Wesley, and one of a biography about him. About a quarter before 9 o'clock while he, this is the guy, he was in a spot

where somebody was reading the preface to Martin Luther's commentary in the book of Romans. Like you do. Yeah, as one does on a Friday night. As one does on a Friday night. About a quarter before 9, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,

listen to this language. I felt my heart strangely warmed. Now remember, what if what did Ephesians 3 says when the spirit fills you. I pray that you may be strengthened in your inward being by the power of the Holy Spirit that you may be able to know how wide and long and high and deep are the love of the father. That is what Wesley says. I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I did trust Christ alone for salvation. And an assurance was given to me. that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. Love of the Father, assurance of salvation. Let me do my favorite, too.

So Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, not exactly your wild emotional Pentecostal. French mathematician. This is honestly the most mysterious one of them all to me. So Blaise Pascal later in his life had a radical, a radical salvation, and he stopped all of his mathematics work. You know, you learned some things that he postulated when you were in high school. He stopped all of his math. And at the end of his life, he wrote something called the Pencys, which is essentially it's like a Christian apologetics book is what it is. I read like half of it in college.

And nobody really knew, like, why did he stop doing math? and just start writing about Jesus for the rest of his life. When he died, they found inside of his cloak that he was wearing on his horse, a piece of paper that he had sewed into the inside of his cloak. And on it was his journal entry from Monday, November 25th, 1654, where he had recorded his experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit. And no one knew until he died. And this is what he wrote.

And bro, this is fascinating. This is what was written. Monday, 23rd November, from about half past 10 at night until about half past 10, about half past midnight. And this is what this way it says, all caps, fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not the God of the philosophers and of the learned it. Watch. Certitude. certitude. Remember what do we say? Baptism and Holy Spirit results in assurance of salvation.

The Spirit of God testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, Romans 8. He says, certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace, God of Jesus Christ, my God and your God, your God will be my God, forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God. He is only found by the ways taught in the gospel. Grandure of the human soul, righteous father, the world has not known you, but I, I love this, but I now know you. Joy, joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. This is a French mathematician. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I have departed from him. They have forsaken me, the fount of living water. My God, will you leave me? Let me not be separated from him forever. This is eternal life that they know you, the one true God and the one that you sent Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Now, what he does right here, this is the last part, is he starts confessing who he was and describing his salvation.

I left him, I fled him, renounced, crucified. Let me never be separated from him. He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the gospel. Renunciation, total and sweet, complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. eternally in joy for a day's exercise on earth. May I not forget your words, amen. And they found that sewed into the inside of his cloak after he died. That's a man who was, in the words of the New Testament, sealed with the Holy Spirit of the living God.

Now, I'll do one last one. It's much shorter. For our Catholic brothers and sisters, let me throw you a bone. So Thomas Aquinas, who Protestants have a love-hate relationship with, Because Thomas Aquinas, he's the, I think basically every Catholic would say Thomas Aquinas the greatest Catholic theology in church history. He wrote a massive volume. It's called the Summa Theologica. And what he did is he took Aristotle's Aristotelian philosophy, and he tried to like make it have a baby with Christian theology is what he tried to do.

And basically his whole thing was, man, actually you can't have a direct experience with God. So you kind of got a reason up to him. So if you've ever heard like the eight proofs of God, Thomas Aquinas came up with the original postulation of the eight proofs of God. But then, this is really interesting, at the end of his life, something happened to him, and he stopped writing the Summa Theologica and never wrote again. And this is what it says in his biography. Then, after spending the whole of his life demonstrating how man has no direct content,

with immaterial reality, Aquinas, shortly before his death, had such an overwhelming direct experience of God that he wrote no more. Urged by a friend to complete his great work, the Summa Theologica, he answered, this is really interesting, this way said, I can do no more. Such things have now been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw, and I now await the end of my life. He had a direct encounter through the Holy Spirit with God. Amen.

And I'll just real quick say this. This happened to me. It was now 10 years ago. I read, I'm going to show it. I read this book, Joy Unspeakable by Martin Luther, who's a Presbyterian. There's our shout out for Presbyterians. Oh, sorry, Martin Lloyd-Loy Jones. Martin Lloyd-Loy-Jones.

Joy Unspeakable. It's about power and renewal of the Holy Spirit. And I was a few years into my ministry in Nashville. As I read that book, the only way I can describe it that Jana would say is it was as if an agony overcame me. And I mean an agony. Like I couldn't sleep. All I could do was keep reading.

He makes this argument in the book about how being filled with the spirit is something we should seek. And it was an agony. It was like the pain of childbirth. I was in my car driving circles around cool, Springs Galleria in Franklin, Tennessee, listening to sermons from two pastors that I won't name about being filled with a spirit. And all I can say, I don't how I say it, something happened to me. I don't care what you call it. Something happened to me. And I started weeping uncontrollably

in my car and shouting out loud for God to fill me with a spirit from the top of my head of the bottom of my toes. And it was like a presence of God filled my dagum car. And the only way I can describe it is it felt like I was being attacked by love. And dude, honestly, when I read D.L. Moody's story, I'm kind of the same. Before that moment, I honestly, I was kind of a failed youth pastor. I shrunk the first youth ministry I had. It grew from 160 students to like 120 students when I led this ministry. I was a few years into my church plan in Nashville. And before that moment, the ministry had grown moderately, a few percent.

per year. After that happened to me, and I'm not going to tell a story here, rehash. You ever heard me tell the story of the lady getting healed of near total deafness in the middle of my sermon.

That happened right after this. If you've ever heard me tell the story of like, sometimes God will give me genuine prophetic words while I'm preparing a sermon. And I'll know, I got to say this in the sermon. And there's that story where, you know,

God told me to say, somebody came in high today and you know, and sure enough is like a kid that stumbled in high. that happened right after that. After that moment, the supernatural manifestations of the Spirit's power have intermittently, not always, intermittently,

marked my ministry. And I don't know how else to say it. Ever since that moment, I have been unable to lead a ministry that did not explosively grow and see radical amounts of salvation. And why? Acts 1-8.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in the Anzirah. So what I would say is every Christian ask, seek, and knock, your Heavenly Father wants to give you this gift. And I will just put it, put it to you. That this right here is why we do prayer and worship night at Lake Point. Yeah. The reason we gather that night is I will lead everyone in praying for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit.

And every year we see thousands of people have a new encounter. Holy Spirit, teach us how to want you more. Come on, man. Well, hey, Lifer Nation, let me share something exciting with you. We want to invite you to the most important night of the year for our church. That is our night of prayer and worship. This is a night where we come believing that God still heals, he still restores, and he still moves.

And so on January 21st from 7 to 8.30 p.m., that's central standard time. We'll gather to worship and pray with faith, for miracles, for breakthrough, for the next generation, and for the one more God is still reaching. And so this is a night to bring your need, your burden, your unanswered prayer, and trust God to do what only he can do. We are believing as a church for chains to break, for hearts to be renewed,

and lives to be changed in the presence of God. And so to hear more about this event, text the word events to 2041. Or you can visit lakepoint. Church slash events and select night of prayer and worship. If you are in the DFW area or maybe you live in a different state or city and you're willing to drive or fly and come visit, join us in person at any of our seven campuses or you can also worship with us by joining church online via YouTube, Facebook or lakepoint. Live. Hey, come expecting, come hungry, come believing. Mark your calendar January 21st and be a part of what God wants to do.

We're going to shift gears a little bit here as we... Hard emotional gear shift. Very hard. Now we got to do a quick. If you're needed a live free podcast, we want to address practical discipleship issues every single time, such as baptisms like we just did. We call that ground war. But we also want to address things happening in culture and society.

From a biblical perspective, we call that air war. And just recently something happened in Minneapolis. That was pretty significant. And a woman was shot and killed by an ice agent. And so some are saying it was murder and what happened to her was totally unjustified. Other people are saying the woman was using her vehicle as a weapon against law enforcement. And so what the ICE agent did was self-defense. And now there are protests and vice president speaking into this right now.

Governor Walts has issued an order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. Don't pull my punch. I want to get into this. Here's the big idea. The big idea is as of the moment we're recording this podcast, I'm texting what pastors in that city. The big deal right now is this getting spun up into like they're telling me, hey, man, it's starting to feel like the beginning of the BLM thing right now, like riots are forming. So I actually, y'all want to talk about, you ready for you? Is it good for me to talk

about this? How should a Christian respond and make sense of this? All right. So what Christians need to understand is heads up, man, the same dag-gum play is getting run on you a million times. And if you don't start to under, this is why this is really important. If you don't start to understand the play that's getting run on you. Bro, it's like the football team. It's like the defense is playing against the football team. And, hey, man, we keep running up the middle every single time. And they keep getting eight yards on that run every single time.

And you're not adjusting your linebacker. Hey, man, you need to know the play they're running so that you can adjust your defense. So, man, they're trying to run the same dag-gum play. So here's what I'll point out. And some of this stuff is a little, I'm always nervous. I'm going to say something you guys don't want to be associated with. But I'm just going to go there and you can disaval me later. So heads up.

Here's the same dag-gum play that's getting run. All right. So here's what it is. It's manufactured outrage in service of an activist cause. Here's the play that you need to know is getting run over and over and over. Manufactured outrage in service to spin people up in service of an activist cause. So like, heads up. If you go back to BLM, all right, so you go back and there was a whole deal, how do BLM start?

It's 2014, 2015. You had the Michael Brown deal where he was kid. by a police officer. And then immediately, everybody was like, hey, man, he said, hands up, don't shoot. That's what the narrative was. He said, hands up, don't shoot to the police officer. And this police officer just shot this guy down in cold blood. And so all over the nation, you remember this, all over the nation, protests and riots

happened here in Dallas. Like, we had two or three city blocks that were set on fire and destroyed. I think it was like 13 police officers in Dallas. were injured or murdered. And remember what the battle cry was. The rallying cry was, hands up, don't shoot, hands up, don't shoot. Okay, so that's what happens.

And everybody just reacts instead of, they just react instead of reflecting. And then it gets spun up, all right? So that happened. Well, then, whoopsie daisy, the Obama, remember, I want to highlight this, the Obama administration, the Obama administration,

the DOJ does the investigation into a thing. And guess what they find? Okay, go to that. first one eventually they find out this is the Obama administration the Obama Democratic DOJ it was oh actually we're really sorry hands up don't shoot didn't happen in Ferguson they started they start interviewing all the eyewitnesses actually that that's not what happened it sounds like it actually was was a justified self-defense thing on behalf of the officer officer was not

charged and that's the Obama administration saying that you saw the same thing go to the political article article Politico same thing years later no no yeah go go go go back to the last one yeah this is actually NPR NPR years later hands up don't shoot movement built on false rumors columnist says go to the Politico one years later after massive riots and enormous amounts of damage and murders all over the country Politico hands up don't shoot ranked one of the biggest Pinocchio's of 2015 so here's what happens you get you get an immediate false claim this based on just, we're just reacting instead of reflecting.

It's then leveraged to spin people up into a destructive sort of activist thing. And then way after the fact, people are like, man, we're really sorry. That's not actually what happened. I'll give you another one. Let me, yeah, yeah, okay. This is from, this is from the same incident up in Minneapolis. This is, I think, two days ago. Show the proud socialist.

Okay, so this is one. So this post, now, first of all, notice the title, the handle of this ex account is at Proud Socialist. I don't have time to talk about this. Essentially what they're doing is a play out of a book called Saul Olinsky's Rules for Radicals. At some point, we should do an entire episode on Saul Olenski's Rules for Radicals. It's the playbook of progressive deconstructive socialists on here's how we're going to destabilize societies and us read in. What they're doing, this is right out of the Saul Olenski's Rules for Radical. radical. So this gets, by the way, this tweet has, as of right before this podcast, 14 million views.

Wow. So 14 million people, here's all they see. Okay, here's all they see. It reads, another horrifying image out of Minneapolis. Look at the terror on this man's face as a federal agent points a gun at his face and threatens his life. Enough is enough. Our government is committing war crimes abroad and murdering and terrorizing citizens at home. Listen to this last sentence. We need a revolution. Okay, so we're trying to manufacture outrage to spin it up. Why?

Because we need a revolution. And what's that handle again? Proud socialist. Okay. So if, no, no, keep it up. So if that's all you saw, you'd be like, bro, that actually does look really bad, man. It looks really bad, okay? It does look really bad until you see what actually happened.

Go to that first video. Here's the reality what happened. Watch. This dude is over a line that they had already drawn. The agent is pushing him back peaceably. He grabs the agent's firearm. He initiates contact with the agent's firearm. And then it just incidentally, because he grabbed it,

points at his face for one second while the agent is trying not to point it at him. But they freeze frame one little moment from the thing and use it to manufacture outrage. Now let's go a layer deeper. Here's what we also note. This tweet says the agent was pointing a, quote, firearm at the man's face, implying he's trying to shoot him in the face. Okay, let's see the actual video. It's not even a firearm.

Check this out. Boom. It's pepper spray. I was wondering. It's pepper spray. So that's it. You can take it down. So here's the point.

Somebody will free, go back to the original image, the first one we showed. Somebody will freeze frame a deceptively edited moment for the purpose of manufacturing, outrage. Why? To destabilize law and order so that we can usher in an activist moment that we want. So I've given you two examples of this. So here again, bro, if you're a football team and the offense keeps running the same running back at the same gap in the line every single time and they keep getting eight yards every play, move your linebacker. So this is what Christians need to get better at having actual discernment discernment when stuff happens so i want to show you how this exact same thing happened in this whole minneapolis ice thing okay so first of all what you have i'll set it up again

christians are a law and order people romans 13 and the book of first peter we are commanded to quote be subject to governing authorities okay that's what we are commanded to do we can talk about this at sometime uh on a different episode of the podcast there is such a thing as a Christian theology of civil disobedience, that is where Christians disobey laws. Christians have done that all throughout truth history. But the only time that Christians should do that is when the government either commands something

the Bible forbids, or when the government forbids something the Bible commands. Otherwise, we should be law and order people who are subject to governing authorities. I'm just gonna tell you like how I do it with my kids. We teach our kids all the time, I will regularly do this. Actually, let me get to that later. I'm gonna get to that later.

All right, so let's set it up. What you have right here in Minneapolis is you have lawful governing authorities enforcing just laws with lawful warrants for lawful arrests. That's what you have. All right. Now, the play that I told you was getting run. It's the exact exact play they got run this week and that is getting spun up into a mass hysteria deal. So now, heads up, by the way, if you are a pod watcher, we're going to show a video right here of the incident. A woman is killed in this video, but you can't see the woman.

I don't watch videos of people. I don't like seeing people die. You cannot see it in this video. But if you don't even want to see a shot fired, you do see a shot fired. I totally get it, and you can skip forward. But here's the, so this was the first video of this incident that went viral. So go ahead and play this guy. So she's the one in the Honda right there, and she's blocking,

ICE agents to try to keep them from doing the job that they have been committed to do by government. So these guys come up and we're going to bleep out some things. And they're telling, hey, get your car out of the way. You're impeding law enforcement. Okay, so there it is. So do it in front and then she, you can stop right there. So if that's all you see, it's honestly, it's a little unclear. It's like, hey man, it's hard to see the officer in the front.

She ends up, the car ends up swerving to the right. And so it is, it leaves you with a question. like, hey man, was that, was that necessary? It left you a question. Now, when you first just see the unclear video, again, remember the play that gets run. It's deceptively edited or unclear image or video, wept, let's spend people up into something so that we can activate for an activist cause. And that's exactly what happens.

So unclear video comes out, and instead of reflecting, everybody just starts reacting with, like, anti-law enforcement rhetoric. So show that one from Tim Walz hops up, and he literally is using language that Minnesota is quote, at war with our federal government, okay? So this is before any investigation. This is before any more footage has come out.

They've just seen one thing, and we're just firing from the hip and using words like Minnesota is at war with the federal government. I'm gonna read some quotes from the mayor of Minneapolis. This guy's name is Jacob Frey. He said this was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying. And again, no investigation has taken place.

He's seen unclear footage. Another quote, they are already trying to spin this as an act of self-defense. That is bull, and I won't read what he said. He gives another message to ICE, get the F out of Minneapolis. He's cursing these guys. And then he encouraged citizens to, quote, show up in front of ICE before the shooting. So he was instructing the citizens of his city to impede legal law enforcement before they came.

And heads up, somebody did it. Somebody did it. You have a million other things. Jimmy Kimmel, you can toss that up. Jimmy Kimmel, again, no investigation is taking place. Jimmy Kimmel just hops up and he says about President Trump. He isn't just about President Trump. He's saying he isn't just.

just killing people overseas, get the bad word, out of Minneapolis, get the bad word out of all these cities. And then he holds up a t-shirt on national television that I think it said President Trump will try to kill you too. So again, these are just no reflection, just reaction. Immediate assumption, police officer was obviously wrong. Then, just as happened in the other two incidents, then the next day, a little more clear footage comes out.

And this shows you the incident from a different angle that somebody got footage of. Show that slow motion deal, and you can kind of see it. So, wait, wait, pause it, pause it, and go back at the beginning. Now, it's grainy, so watch really closely, and you're going to see. So again, here's the question. What everybody was saying was, oh, man, she didn't even hit him with the car. She was trying to avoid him.

And there's no way this is self-defense until you see a different angle. You can play that guy. Boom. I mean, you see it right there. It's a hard smash right into his body. Boom. So you got it. There it is.

But wait. It's too late. The damage is done because everybody took an unclear footage and just spun it up immediately to destabilize society and weaponize them against them. law enforcement and then I'll go a layer deeper. Then it came out the next day again no investigation is taking place. Then it came out the next day, throw the next thing up. That exact same, if you're wondering like, man, why did that guy act in self-defense? I know he was hit by a car and a car can for sure kill you, but I wonder why it acted in self-defense. Came out the next day, that exact same

ice agent that had to defend himself when that car got rammed into his body, that same dude was dragged 300 feet attached to somebody else's vehicle while executing an arrest warrant on an illegal immigrant resulting in 33 stitches not six months ago and this guy they had to arrest was a convicted sex offender. So it's like dude it's like dude this guy literally was just dragged 300 feet on pavement six months ago. Exact same thing starts to happen here. So here's a deal man. Let me just like as Christians how do we need to think about this kind of thing? Number one two things can be true Two things can be true. Is it a tragedy anytime somebody is killed?

Yeah, man. Yeah, it is. That's a tragedy. It can also be true that her choices resulted in that tragedy. Those two things can be simultaneously true, okay? So let me just talk about like how Christians, because listen, man, I have a feeling you're going to see that same play get run over and over and over. And notice this. it is always in service of galvanizing people against God-ordained sources of governing authorities.

You're going to notice that. There's a spiritual reason for that, okay? So first of all, me to say Christians, Christians need people who reflect and not just react. So like, we have Bible verses for how this stuff should happen. All right. Proverbs 187. Whoever states his case first seems right until another comes and examines him. whoever states the case first seems right until another comes in examines him if you see a selectively

edited video or image one thing seems really true but we're supposed to be people who reflect and go hey let's pause let's wait until we understand the situation and then let's make a judgment i will say this just watch this so so so watch how this works so again we talk about this frequently what critical theory trains people to do is it trains them to view society through an oppressed oppressor lens, what that does is it trains you to where you already quote unquote know who the bad guy is and who the good guy is before you know any of the details just based on where they stand in the social structure. So I know this is super awkward, but I'm just going to say it. So like for instance, what critical theory does is it's like, hey man, there's, you know, there's oppressed minorities

and then there's oppressor white police officers. So then if you start thinking that way, whenever you hear a Michael Brown or whatever the situation is, you predetermine who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, not based on any evidence of the case, just based on where they fit in the intersectionality structure.

Well, heads up, if you're already... By the way, the same thing happens with a million things. It happens with abuse allegations. If you're the type of person who you have already decided who the good guy is and who the bad guy, guy is before you hear anything just based on their identities and where they fit in an intersectionality structure, you are not interested in justice. You're just an activist for a cause.

So like, you know, if there's a, if there's a shooting and it involves a white police officer and a black resident, and you're just like, why I already know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, you're not interested in justice at all. You're just an activist for a cause. Same thing. and I'm going to use a biblical analogy. You have an analogy in the Old Testament, the book of Genesis, where there was a claimed sexual assault. And Potipher's wife looks at Joseph, and she's like, he tried to rape me. Well, if you're running an intersectionality play, and you're like, well, you know, you have a woman, and women obviously are oppressed by the patriarchy, you have a woman and a man, and she's claiming to be a victim of sexual assault. and you just predetermine who the victim is and who the perpetrator is just based on the identities of the people and where they fit in an intersectionality structure, you're not interested in justice.

You're just an activist for a cause. That is why you have to, again, whoever states his case first seems right until another comes and examines him. The whole reason we do that as Christians is, so here's what people say, is if you in these emotional, charged situations. If you say, hey, man, actually, let's pause and let's wait until we know all the details to figure out if the officer acted justly. What people say is, oh, well, you're just propping up this oppressive white supremacist. Same thing with a sexual abuse allegation. If you say, okay, there's an allegation, that's really important. We take that very seriously. Now we need to conduct an investigation to make sure that we understand what actually have.

People say, oh, my gosh, you're just, you're retramatizing the victim. You're supposed to believe all. Well, think about the biblical situation of Joseph and Potifers' wife. You don't know who the victim is until you do the investigation. Potifers' wife claimed to be the victim, but Joseph actually was the victim of a false allegation. So this is why Christians need to be people, hey guys, let's de-emotionalize. We need to completely deprogram ourselves from intersectionality instincts that pre-decide who the good guys are and who the bad guys are just based on where they fit in intersectionality structure. And we need to be people who, again, it's, I don't know if people realize this, a whole different podcast. The entire American ideal

of innocent until proven guilty, guess what that came from? The Old Testament. Yeah. The Old Testament. So we need to be people like we care about justice. We de-emotionalize. We ought to be the people, people who are like, okay, we're not going to walk out in riot before we know what actually happened. No, no. We're people of thoughtful reflection, not just emotional reaction. And that's how we need to understand these things. Okay. Further, further thoughts. Agree, disagree, additional comments. You know, I hurt my feelings. A couple things. I mean, you said earlier, I mean, multiple things can be true. And, I mean, this, as you said, is tragic. I think she was a mother of three. That's right. So that's three kids

who lost a mom. That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy. And I saw another angle of the video that an FBI agent was breaking down. And from the other side of the vehicle, it looks like the wheels were turned right. So she may have been trying just to get away. And by the way, we'll never know. We don't know her intentions.

And so it's very possible that she wasn't trying to hit the guy. She was trying to get away. But she got afraid. She acted impulsively. And the rest was a tragedy. It was an accident. But you also have to remember, as you kind of talk about, there's also the officer's point of view where he acted impulsively. And I didn't even know the story before you shared that about what had happened to him is put yourself in his shoes.

That's exactly right, man. And all of a sudden, a vehicle is coming at you and she had seemed angry and aggressive. And I just imagine that most – go ahead. Not just coming at you. I just want to emphasize this. Not just coming at you. We saw the video. It strikes you forcibly.

Yes. And six months earlier, you were just dragged 300 feet on pavement by somebody who tried to do the same thing. oh by the way, why? Because progressive governing authorities are calling you things like the Gestapo. And if you're at his angle, he doesn't have time to look to see where the wheel is turned. He just know he's getting hit by car. And I think if most people were honest, they would have impulsively pulled their guns to. Like, this is not nearly the same, but I've been out hunting or hiking and twice, the bears went within 10 feet of me or I thought a cougar or a bear was right behind me. You know what I did both times? I instinctively pulled a weapon straight at him. The second time, there was nothing there. and I felt a little bit of a fool

and luckily no one was around me to make fun of me but the first time of bear I was hunting when came out and sprinted it made a right turn and ended up 10 feet away looking at my son of me

I didn't seem to think we were hunting a bear? A bear? I grabbed the rifle and put him like run away. I just like... Did you shoot it? No, I was like run away right now

and my fingers on there you didn't shoot it? If he had not immediately we were trying to get an elk if he had not immediately turned away I'm just saying I didn't think

I didn't say oh is he aggressive to me I just instinctively wins that mode and if we're going to empathize and put ourselves in the shoes, the woman, we have to do the same with the officer. That's it.

We have to do the same. I think, to your point, this has been honest thing, Carlson, we can't hear what you say. I think we all have to, you said it right, the idea of, man, reflection, not reaction.

I just want to say with that, we've got to train ourselves to be slow. That's right. To take our time. And I'd say, especially now in our day, I mean, the stuff you mentioned before in 2015

and then further riots in 2020, 2020, that was before AI. I just want to say Christians and by the way, this applies by the way to accounts that maybe you're putting out stuff that you usually agree with. Don't immediately trust what your eyes see. It's the world we live

and now we always have needed to be slow to react. We now need to be almost 10 times slower. Let do the process happen, let the truth come out and in the meantime I'd just say to people is like, don't get me wrong if injustice has been done for sure there's a place to raise our voices respectfully in a right way. But then

also I say, man, let's just Me, mind Godbury, actually has been, can I pray for that woman's family? Can I pray for that officer? Because he may have just been active instinctively. Now he has to live with that. Yeah, those are just a few thoughts. Yeah, I think back to what you're saying,

Pastor Josh, I think the situation points to something greater going on. The Bible says we don't wrestle with flesh and blood, but again, spirits and principalities, there seems to be, every time you see something like this, just overall in our nation, and you see it all over on social media, there seems to be a spirit behind all this

that basically it just rejects all. authority, it wants to tear down all the systems, it wants to rebel against everything and outrage is very nihilistic. And the Bible calls that a spirit of lawlessness. That's right. And so Jesus talked about this in Matthew chapter 24 when he was talking about the end times and he says that in the last days lawlessness and will be increased and the love of many will grow cold. And so again it's this rage. This wants to tear down everything. It's a reactive rage. It's filled with just anger. And I think back to what you were saying. As Christians, we want to acknowledge

that there's a spiritual reality to this, but also we want to be sober-minded. We want to respond, not react, we want to destroy arguments, and we want to love people. That's right. And if something is not right, we want reformation, not lawlessness. We don't just want to tear down. We want to point towards solutions. And we also want to submit to our earthly authorities,

knowing and having the confidence and reminding our earthly authorities that they are also submitted to a higher authority. Exactly right. And that's God. And so that's why we trust our earthly authorities because we know that there's a higher authority there too. And so I think, yeah, just to remind us like, man, there's a spiritual reality behind it as well. So let me connect it out for you and then we're done. All right.

So you are laying your finger on the issue underneath all the issues. All right. So what does the Bible call Satan? It calls him a spirit of lawlessness. The Bible says in the last days, lawlessness will abound. And then do you remember what the Bible calls the Antichrist? He calls him the man of lawlessness. So think about why did it say?

and I'm going to connect this directly to this situation. Why did Satan rebel against God in heaven? Because he refused to be under any authority. What is at the epicenter of the beating heart of the black heart of Satan? I refuse any authority over me. Now, if you watch, you will note that there is a spirit of lawlessness is the undergirding spirit underneath critical theory and everything that it embodies.

In fact, if you watch it, what critical theory essentially does is it, think about this. The Bible says that God has established three, he's instituted three, instituted three institutions. That's a little double there. To structure society, three authorities. What are they? The family, the church, and the state. Those are three authorities that have been established by God. The Bible commands, he commands people to submit to all three authorities, children,

obey your parents, honor your father, mother, and the Lord. With the church, obviously, it's, you know, all the Hebrew's passages about submitting to your leaders and honoring them. The state, where specifically commanded, 1st Peter, Romans 13, submit to governing authorities. If you watch, very interesting, ask this question, why is it that this entire, like, secular progressive movement, why is it that it just violently seeks to overthrow all three of the exact institutions that God gave as authorities. If you watch in secular progressivism, bro, what does it teach that instead of honor your father or mother, the whole vibe of secular progressivism is blame your father and mother.

Blame your father and mother. Blame your father and mother. What does it do when it comes to the church? Secular progressivism is so obvious. That's where the whole deconstruction movement comes in. It's the whole apostasy thing. The pastors are the bad guys, rebel against their authorities, overthrowing. the oppression, and then what does it do when it comes to the state? That's what it does.

So listen, it's the, it's the spirit underneath the situation is a spirit of lawlessness. It absolutely has a spiritual impetus behind it. And it is this, it's the spirit of the, of the enemy that refuses to submit to any authority. And so it's specifically, he specifically targets the exact three authorities established by God. family, church, state, rebellion, period. That's it, man. Pastor Josh, in light of that, would you pray for us? Yeah, I will, man.

Father, we do, even right now, we want to be people who are sober-minded, who let all that we do be done in love. And so even right now, we pray for that situation. I pray for the city of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota and the precious people who are there, that you would protect them from evil and a spirit of lawlessness and anything that would happen because you love those people

and you want their good. I pray for that woman and her children and I pray for that officer who's going to be having a hard week. So Father, would you be with them? Lord, more than that, right now I pray for everybody this listening that you would make us into patient, peaceful, peacemakers like your word says. Sober-minded disciples of the living God. Everywhere we go, we are people of wisdom and prudence, and we bring the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ with us wherever we go, salt and light in society, in our families, and our churches. Father, I pray for a lot of people to hear this and take the step of obedience to be baptized, and I'm going to go ahead right now and start praying for mass outpouring of your spirit

at prayer and worship night for us at church. Holy Spirit, come. You are welcome here. We pray those things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. They free, brother. Live free.