Larry Eiss

The speaker discusses the growth of their ministry, particularly on social media platforms like Facebook and Threads. They also talk about their shift towards Scripture exposition and teaching, specifically focusing on the book of Revelation. They mention using video as a new medium for their ministry and the challenges they face with software and editing. The speaker expresses excitement about young people getting involved in the pure gospel, but cautions against throwing away important doctrines and traditions. They also share their enthusiasm for studying the book of Revelation and discovering its symbolism and interconnectedness with the rest of the Bible. We're back? Oh, I wasn't supposed to say that. Well, if you say it wasn't supposed to say that, that's just as bad as it is anyway. We're not back, but here we are. Yes, here we are. And I've been anticipating this interview since we decided to do it again this year. Oh, boy. Larry Ice. No pressure. Thank you. Thank you, Larry. I know you were on last year, and it was a really good interview, but I don't remember any of it. So tell us about your ministry. Yeah, so I think last year we kind of did a little bit of the back story, too. Yeah. So we don't need to, you know, rehash the old stuff. But, yeah, so the ministry, interesting. You know, we talked some about that before. Yes. But, you know, ministries morph and change, and the Lord always has new ideas. Right. So this year, you know, we've gotten, I don't know, we're up around probably 12,000 followers on Facebook now. Oh, my goodness. We've got other platforms that are growing like mad, including this new one that Metta put out called Threads, which was designed to be a Twitter killer. Oh, it's like X. Yes, X killer. I haven't done anything with that one yet. Well, I started it just to see what it was all about, and I had no followers. It was terrible. And now I've got almost 4,000. Stop it. That's great. But most of them, I think, are bots. Bots. The numbers look good. Bots need the Lord, don't they? They sure do. So we've been doing that. So there's been some growth there. That's been great. You know, we're reaching 66 countries or so, and the website's doing good. But the Lord has been kind of redirecting the ministry a bit, and so I'm much more focused now on what I would call Scripture exposition, almost preaching in a way, or teaching Scripture rather than teaching ideas. And so I'm working on a Revelation study, which has been a little bit, it's been very ad hoc, because I've been preoccupied. It's springtime, and we're gardening and all these things, and it just takes all the energy I've got, and I've got nothing left. But we'll get back to Revelation. In fact, I put up a couple this week, and we'll get back to that in earnest, I hope, before too long. And that's been great fun, man. What a neat book. What an amazing statement about Christ, how much we learn there. So the ministry has kind of shifted in that way. It's also shifted away from, I had a real strong focus for the first five years on being daily, and that became such a... Oh, that's a grind. It was a weight to carry. And I was afraid that if I didn't do it, people would just start, you know... And then it doesn't show up in their feed all the time either. And they're not reminded. Right. But that hasn't really happened, and that's been gratifying to know. Good, good. But the changes have also included, I'm doing a lot more video work than I used to do. I never did any. I was like, I don't know how to do it. I can't edit the stuff. I can just put it up there. It's going to be what it is. I mean, I just... You're taking walks a lot of the time when you're doing it. Oh, so you're doing it on your phone. Well, I'm doing short ones on the phone that are walks, and then I'm also trying to do the revelation study on video right from my office. So I have a microphone and stuff that I set up and just do it video there in my office. So what software are you using to capture the audio? I'm using one piece of software that captures both things at the same time. It's something from Logitech. I can't remember the name of it. Okay. Is this Tech Talk or is this Letter AI? Yeah, it's Tech Talk. I discovered Descript, and their recording is called Squadpod, and you record in Squadpod and edit in Descript. Anybody else about to snore? Yeah. Back to Jesus, guys. Yeah, I mean, I was in the software industry for my whole career, but I cannot make this stuff work. That's funny. I'm too old now, I guess. So I just do it very simple. So video has become a bigger part of it, and that's been gratifying, too. I think a lot of people, you touch people there that you can't get to from anywhere else, and I'm just so glad about that. So let me tell you what's exciting me. Oh, yes. A couple of things. One of the things that's exciting me is what just happened in this room. We have a new guy speaking here named Kyle Winkler, and Kyle is a younger fellow. Young people are exciting me because this is where the future of the pure gospel lies. It's like we need these people. Yes. But there's also a problem, and the problem is that there's also a movement among a lot of young people called deconstruction. They look at their faith and they say, well, that was nonsense, and so probably all these other things were nonsense. This is the result of secondhand theology that got handed down over years and years that we've just become to believe as baseline truth, when in fact it's not. And so they want to deconstruct rightly all that wrong stuff out and find out what is the real core of the gospel. The problem with that is it can be a pendulum swing. You remember when you first began to understand the pure gospel and kind of came out of religion, there was this pendulum swing, right? And you were way over here toward freedom, freedom, right? And then it slowly came back and you got a little bit more reasonable, and there's lots of freedom. Well, not about it, but it's not militant freedom. And so this is the way with deconstruction. Too often we find people that they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And I mean, Drew Farley made a comment yesterday in his session where he said, you know, just because something is old doesn't mean it's true. That's kind of their motto. But just because something is old doesn't make it untrue either. So we need to be very careful about that. Old things have typically been proven over time, and they've stood the test of time. So that doesn't make them wrong either. It doesn't make them right. Some of them are wrong. But let's not throw out things like, say, the Trinity or the inspiration of Scripture or, you know, some of these things that people are starting to attack. When you say old things, can I interrupt just a second? Are you talking tradition? Well, I'm talking about, I'm really talking about doctrine. Like take the doctrine of the Trinity. Take the doctrine of the Trinity, right? Tertullian came as the first one to express that. And Tertullian expressed a lot of other really strange stuff too. But so it is with all of these so-called church fathers, right, the old people. So it is with us today. I mean, I don't know one teacher, I don't think, that hasn't said something that I went, what? Maybe I know a few, but not very many. And so we don't just throw everything they ever said out because they said something wrong. And so I see this happening. So young people, I want to see that so badly. But I want to see it like this guy we just saw, who have a, they've been in this for a while. They have some maturity behind them. They have a good view of Scripture and the value of Scripture. And they know how to look at Scripture without just throwing things away that are really meaningful. So that's kind of got me excited. Wow, that is exciting. And we've brought with us, I didn't bring them, but she has been working with a young woman from Michigan. And she came. She came from Michigan. That's really great. And then I've been working with a young man in Oklahoma City, and he came. So your point about the young people is very exciting because they are hungry for this information. They are hungry for the grace message. And they're tired. I mean, I know you said they can take it to an extreme, but they're tired of the same old, same old. It's just not working. And that's a good thing. And that's it. And that was part of my story, right? When I grew up in the church, I did all this stuff, and I got to a point where it's like my faith doesn't work. I don't want anything to do with this. This is ridiculous. I know right where they're at, but I can't speak to them. I don't speak their language. I don't talk the way they talk. I don't think the way they think. I don't even know how they think. So we need young teachers, but we need strong young teachers. Strong young teachers. And I'm seeing some of them, and I'm really encouraged about that. What's the other thing that excites you? You said there were two. Man, you know, looking at the revelation with new eyes, looking at the revelation and understanding its symbolism, and then seeing the interconnectedness. And it isn't only about revelation, but just the interconnectedness of Scripture is blowing my mind lately. The way that the Old Testament foreshadows and foreshadows and retells and tells in a different way and from a different light and from a different perspective, and it keeps coming through all of these parts of the New Testament that show it in its fulfillment and how it's all met in Christ and how every one of those things in the Old Testament pointed to Him, just like you told those guys on the road to Emmaus. And then we see this wonderful book at the end, which everybody's all been freaked out about or don't want to preach because they don't understand it, or they do want to preach it, and you're not going to hear it. And that's all they preach. Yeah, and it's just this enormous end-time destruction. No, this book is, you can call it the Cliff's Notes of the Bible. The whole thing, the whole story is told in the book of Revelation. Wow. But it's told in Jewish symbolic language. That when you look back, when you take that symbol and you see where else is that symbol in the Scripture, suddenly, what? Yeah. And you know, some of the numbering and how that's used and 666, you know? It's like everybody freaks out with this number. Oh, don't give me that on my license plate. Oh, please. What does it say? It says it's the number of a man. Yeah. And it could be, it's the number of men. Oh. It's the number of men because it's one less than seven. Seven is this perfection, this completeness, this totality. And six is just not quite there. That's interesting. And it's in there how many times? Six, six, six, three. Three times. Like, you know, the Trinity. It's like God but not like God. It's the whole Adam and Eve story wrapped up in a number. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. That's good. So stuff like that. My mind is just getting sparkled like crazy with this stuff. And you just started like in the last short period of time, hasn't it? Yeah, but I've been working on the study of it for a couple of years. Oh, I bet. I bet. But, I mean, so it's not hard to go and catch up. But the real in earnest stuff where I'm digging down deep and, you know, really writing it up, that's all happening live now. Nice. Yeah, I'm just getting started. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, please. Well, so I was going to say I've probably published 18 posts, I think, and I've gotten through five verses. So it's a commitment. My wife said, you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life. I don't expect them all to go this slowly. I think once I get through explaining a lot of the symbolic stuff, I can take it in larger chunks. Because I don't really want to break everything down. Right. That'll take forever. Well, and who knows the answer to some of these things. Yeah. No. Yeah. Here's the tools we use to try to figure it out the best we can. And we need to be humble approaching this book, because let's face it, it's not crystalline. Right. Yeah. It always occurred to me that John, when he was on Patmos, writing this, and I think he wrote it pretty early, didn't he? There's some debate about that. I tend to think of this as a later date. Do you? But a lot of people tend to think of it as in the 60s or so before 70 AD. I don't really see that. Okay. It doesn't matter, because he did. But he sees these things that the Holy Spirit shows him, and his point of reference is 2,000 years old. And so when we read it now, how can we recognize what his point of reference is? Right. Because he invokes Scripture to make the points. Yeah. And if we go back and pay attention to Scripture, we start seeing it. It becomes so much more clear. I'm not saying that suddenly, oh, I have all the answers, and I know all these things, and when they're going to happen, and when they happen. That's not really what it's about anyway. It's about Jesus Christ. Yeah. And because it's about Jesus Christ, it's also about his bride. And there is some amazing news for us in there, and amazing comfort, and it builds us up. It does what we expect the Father to do, loves us, builds us up, encourages us, equips us to withstand all the trials and turmoil of life here on this planet as ambassadors in a country not our own. But it also seems to me that there's a lot of passages in Revelation that teaches us about how important it is to worship him. Yeah. And how natural it is. I mean, think about this for a minute. The disciple Jesus loved, he called himself. He knew he was loved, John. He knew Jesus. He had met him and touched him, and he says in 1 John, and we talk about him who we've touched with our hands and we've spoken to, and we know he was real and he was there. And when John sees him in the vision, what does he do? Whomp. Right down on his face. I mean, worshiping him is going to be inevitable. Yes, we're just going to go, clunk. And then he's going to reach down with that big gentle hand. He's going to scoop us up. He's going to say, fear not. And we're going to live with him in this relationship that is beyond what we can dream, just so perfect. Now, I'm not big on judgment, but it seems to me there's a lot of verses in there about judgment. Sure. And what have you unpacked in terms of? Well, you know, I don't think there's anything new really in there. I think it's all about there's two groups of people. There are people who want to have a relationship with God and have trusted him, trusted what he said, and said, yes, I'll have that relationship. I'll enter into, let's love one another. And then there's this other group of people who says, I don't think that's correct. I don't think that's for me. No way. I don't want anything to do with him. That's really the judgment. I think the judgment is all about that these people are going to find the natural end of their choice, which is remaining in separation from the source of life eternally. Right. And that's a scary thought. Man. Well, we don't have to be worried about that. Wow. That's exciting. I think. I mean, that is exciting. I think so. Wow. What else? Yeah, what else have you got? What else have you got? Oh, they're squeezing me, guys. We won't squeeze you too much longer. I have to let you go to dinner. All that we're talking about does not match my line of questioning. I'm sure it doesn't. Yeah, so I'm just going to let you go. I sort of ran with it. That's what we like. Misbehaved podcast guests. Oh, I wish we thought of that name. Wouldn't it be great? I like it. It's too late. We've already got another name. Darn. Yeah. So a while back, I did this study on Galatians, where I started the study by examining how Saul became Paul, how he became an apostle. Yeah. And basically this was Paul's journey from religionist to apostle. Terrorist religionist. Yeah, yeah. One of the neat things that I came across there is in the account of his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, he sees this bright light. He's knocked to the ground, and he hears a voice, and the voice says to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he goes, well, who are you? That's a curious question. Who are you? Because he's been persecuting people. He's been persecuting followers of the way. So he's like, well, who are you? Because he didn't believe what they believed. That was a natural question. Right. And he goes, I am Jesus, now get this, whom you are persecuting. Do you see it? Yes. If you persecute the bride of Christ, you're persecuting Jesus. You're persecuting him. That is so true. It's the same with us, right? I mean, you know this. If somebody came and they were being mean and hurtful to Laurie, what would you be doing? They'd be mean and hurtful to you, wouldn't they? And the same for her, right? And so it is that way with Jesus. Man, thinking about him with that picture in mind, what does that do for how we can feel about ourselves in Christ? I mean, he's serious about it. And this is why in Corinthians we see Paul talking about, I think it's like 1 Corinthians 13 maybe. That can't be right because that's the love chapter. That's the love chapter. No. Anyway, in one of the Corinthians, Paul is talking about this idea of, he says that, I'm losing my train of thought. That's not good on a podcast. Don't do it. We'll edit this part out. You know, that whole pressure thing. He's talking to the Galilee. Well, it was Paul's conversion. You're persecuting the bride. Persecuting the bride of Christ. So there's this passage in Corinthians where Paul is talking about people who aren't, who are damaging the body, who are damaging the church, right? They're causing division and dissension in the church. And this is this guy that's been flaunting his sinfulness and saying, oh, it's all okay because I've got freedom in Christ. And Paul says that God takes that very, very seriously. And, in fact, a lot of people read into this about communion, right? And they say, well, you take communion and you're not worthy. But Paul is really talking there about people who destroy the body of Christ. And so a lot of people have also interpreted this, and this is really the primary interpretation out there, that if you commit suicide, it's the unforgivable sin. Because he says, you know, God's not going to take that land down, basically. But that isn't it at all. It's this dividing and hurting the church. What is the church? It's the body of Christ. We're right back to that whole bride of Christ thing. If you hurt the bride, you're hurting Christ. If you're persecuting the body, you're persecuting Christ. If you're rejecting the body, you're rejecting Christ. And it's all wrapped up in that same thing. So Christ's view of us, it's really personal. That's good. It's really personal. That's a whole different way of thinking of personal. Yeah. Yeah. The bride. I think that we're going to have to go to dinner. I think we do. Yeah. I actually have somebody I'm supposed to be going to dinner with. I'll be going, where is that guy? Thank you, Larry, for your time and your wisdom. We do this every year. Yeah. Guys, it's my great pleasure. Thank you. I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity. It's so nice to see you guys every year. Yeah. Just the aroma of Christ just coming off your faces. I just love it. You're good. Wonderful. Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Larry. We appreciate you. Tell everybody how to find you on Facebook and your website and tell everybody all that. Yeah. They don't know. So Larry Ice is a funny name because it sounds like frozen water, but it's spelled E-I-S-S. So LarryIce.com or Larry Ice on Facebook or any of the social media. You look me up and you'll find me. Go to the website and there's all links to all these things. Yeah. So that's the easy way. Yeah. It sounds to me like a completely different taste of revelation is what you're in the middle of. Yeah, I think so. So if you want to hear something that's not, like you said, crazy doom and gloom and something different, I think that'd be good. Check it out. Check it out. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Larry. My pleasure.