The following message was delivered by John MacArthur Jr., of Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-1, titled "Bible Questions and Answers." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. I have made every effort to ensure that an accurate transcription of the original tape was made. Please note that at times sentence structure may appear to vary from accepted English conventions. This is due primarily to the techniques involved in preaching and the obvious choices I had to make in placing the correct punctuation in the article. It is my intent and prayer that the Holy Spirit will use this transcription to strengthen and encourage the true Church of Jesus Christ. Tony Capoccia Questions and Answers #7 by John MacArthur Jr. Copyright 1984 All Rights Reserved Question #1 This question is about Genesis 3:1, and 3:14, In what form was Satan when he tempted Eve? It says something in here about "cattle" and he was put on his "belly" to go in to dust. Answer #1 The form that he was in was a snake. It says, "the LORD God said to the serpent." Somehow Satan manifested himself through that serpent. Now that is getting into something we really don't know all the details about, but back in verse one of chapter three, it says "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field." Now to be honest with you, we don't know what form the serpent had in the garden--we just don't know. There are some who believe that at that point in time the snake might have been up in the trees or whatever, because when he was cursed, he was cursed to crawl on his belly in the dust, you know "all his days" and so forth. Probably, there was some distinction between the first serpent and what he was after he tempted man. But that distinction could not be explained by the "Fall" because Satan was equally evil before he tempted Eve and Adam, as he was afterwards. So we don't know what the change was, but any way it says "because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of thy life." At least the cattle and the other beasts have their belly up off of the ground--propped up by their legs. Question #1 (continued) He wasn't cattle? Answer #1 (continued) Oh, no, no, he was a snake. He was cursed worse than them because he would craw in the dirt all of his life. In other words, the curse impacted all animals, but his curse was more severe than the cattle's curse; more severe than the beast's because he was left to crawl in the dirt. Some people think that maybe before that he had legs. I really don't know, but maybe there was some way that he was erect, or some way in which he traversed the trees or whatever--I don't know. But his curse was more severe just by virtue of the fact that he would crawl in the dirt--a more humiliating stance. Frankly, if you would take a vote on the most unpopular animal in the world, it is quite confident that the snake would win. True? I mean, how many of you are really into snakes? Not very many, it is a despicable kind of creature that slithers around and (I don't want to talk about this too much or we will lose some ladies here in the second row). Question #2 I have a question about Apostles. In 1 Corinthians 15:4-8, it says that, "He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as it were to one untimely born, He appeared to me also,"--the Apostle Paul. What confuses me is that I have always understood that the Apostles were the twelve and Paul, and perhaps James. So what I find hard to reconcile here is that it says He appeared to all of the apostles, at least to the twelve, and then it mentions James and Paul specifically. But it also mentions that after He had appeared to all of those, except Paul, then to all of the apostles. Why would he mention extra apostles again there? Answer #2 I think basically it is chronological: "He rose the third day, and He was seen of Cephas." I believe there is a certain chronological thing: 1st - He was seen by Peter 2nd - He was seen by the Twelve 3rd - He was seen by 500 brethren 4th - He was seen particularly by James Now these two, Peter and James, indicate some private audiences, and I think there is reasons for both of them. First of all, I believe the Lord appeared specifically, in post-resurrection form to Peter, to confirm Peter, because Peter was to be so absolutely critical for the future of the Church. In fact, Peter is the main character in the first twelve chapters of the Book of Acts. And, Peter vacillated so much, and Peter denied Christ on three occasions, and Peter had so many difficulties in confirming his commitment to Christ, that I think there was a special time when the Lord appeared to Peter. All right, so that's noted. James was the Lord's half-brother, and James here, is not James the Apostle, but James the half-brother of the Lord, most likely, who became the leader of the Jerusalem Church. This probably was an indication of the initiation, if not the consummation of the conversion of James, who prior to this, along with the other half-brothers of Christ (according to John 7) didn't believe in Him, so it may have been that special time. All he is saying is, He appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve, then to the 500, then James, and then the Apostles again. In other words, it isn't so much that it is listing all those He appeared to as much as it is kind of giving you the flow of a chronology. That's probably the best explanation. You could take it that "The Apostles" is used here in a very general sense, but I like to think of it in a more chronological thing. Do you remember what He said to them, when he appeared to them the first time, He said, "Now, go into Galilee and wait there till I come, and I will appear to you in Galilee." So He appeared to them in Jerusalem, and went to Galilee later. He went to Galilee and appeared to them again. In fact, after His resurrection He never appeared to anybody but believers--never. People have always wondered why, if the Lord wanted to confirm the resurrection, He didn't appear to unbelievers? The answer to that question is, because Jesus said to them, "I am going to go away and you are never going to see Me again. If you don't believe what you have seen now--why would you believe that? I mean, if they wouldn't believe that He could raise the dead, and they didn't believe when He did all of the miracles, that they knew He did--what would resurrection mean to them? In fact, when they did face the resurrection they bribed the soldiers to lie about it, so it is pointless. To try to bring apologetics to someone who's a rejecter is silly, "He that is convinced against his will is unconvinced still." So what you want to do, apologetics, or a defense of the faith, are a way to strengthen the believers who have to go out and evangelize. So that is why, if you wanted to pin me down to extrapolate a thought out of this--I don't think that apologetics is that strong an argument to an unbeliever who has turned away. I think apologetics strengthens the faith of one who is interested in Christ, and one who is committed to Christ. Question #3 I have two questions, both related. During the time of the crucifixion the Jews were looking for some kind of a "knight on a charging horse," who would come in and throw the Romans out and kill the Gentiles. But the priesthood, the Jewish priesthood, as opposed to the Jewish people were teaching the Jewish people this kind of thing, in other words, they weren't looking for a God! So my question to you is, "Were the Jews guilty of killing a God or killing a man? Answer #3 Well, from their viewpoint they would have been guilty of killing a man, I mean from their perspective. Question #3 (continued) So then the Jewish mob, that is, the mob that we see here; they wouldn't be guilty of killing a God--they would only be guilty of killing a man? Answer #3 (continued) When you see in the Gospel of John, "and the Jews cried this," and the "Jews said" this, and the "Jews said, `we will not have this man to reign over us,'" and "the Jews said, crucify Him," an so forth--John uses "the Jews" primarily as an epithet in reference to the religious leaders, it is not dominantly used of the people. In fact, most of the people hailed Him as the Messiah when He rode into the city, it says, "The Jews stirred up the people," the religious leaders stirred up the people and there was sort of a mob thing. But it was not primarily by the large consensus of the population of Israel, but rather by the Jews themselves, who in John's terms refer to the leaders. Question #3 (continued) My second question is related and it is short. What are the Jews looking for today. What are they looking for in terms of the Messiah? Answer #3 (continued) Most Jewish people today, well there are four different groups of Jews: you have what are known as Hasidic Jews. Hasidic Jews are very, very orthodox- they are Pharisees, they are the modern Pharisees and they are as Pharisaical as the Pharisees were. I mean they have all the same kind of approach as the Pharisees. Then there would be the Orthodox, and by the way there are all different sort of branches of this and sects. Then you have the Orthodox who go strictly by the Old Testament law and the traditions. They aren't quite legalistic as the Hasidics. Then you have the Conservatives who would accept the Old Testament as the Word of God. Then you have the Reformed, who don't even believe the Old Testament is the Word of God. All they have is the tradition. Now all of them are looking for something different. The Hasidic Jews and the Orthodox are actually looking for a Messiah, but they are in the minority. Question #3 (continued) [Looking for] God or a "man" from God? They are not looking for a God even now? Answer #3 (continued) Probably a man from God. You say, "a God," they only believe in one God. The fact that we claim Christ to be God, to some of them a blasphemous statement because now we have two Gods. So they would be looking for a "man" who was a deliverer. They are looking for a David, they are looking for a Moses. The Conservatives, some of them are looking for (I suppose some could be looking for a real Messiah), but most of the Conservative Jews today are looking for a Messianic Age; they are looking for a Utopia; they are looking for a world where their nation is the Messiah. You see, the way they read Isaiah 53 is that it refers to the nation and not to a person. So they are looking for the Messianic fulfillment, the Messianic Kingdom--not necessarily for the Messiah--the Conservatives are. The Reformed are not looking for anything--they don't even believe it. So it depends on what group that you are talking about. Question #4 In Malachi, chapter two, this has been bothering me for quite a while. In verse eleven, it talks about the people of Judah who have divorced the wife of their youth and have married the daughters of a foreign god. And it goes on into verse fifteen where it says that the people who have done this--not one of them have had any remnant of the Holy Spirit. What I was wondering, how does this carry over into the New Testament, as far as a person who claims to be a born-again Christian, if they were to do something like this--is this saying that they were never really saved to begin with? Answer #4 Not necessarily. You see what he is doing here is pronouncing judgment upon an ungodly, unregenerate people, for the most part. Because over in chapter three, there is a very interesting statement made in verse sixteen. After all these pronouncements of judgments, it says, "Then they that feared the Lord spoke often one to another, and the Lord harkened and heard it and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name, and they shall be mine." In other words, the Lord knew out of the nation who were the true believers, and He says "They will be mine in the day that I make up my jewels and I will spare them as a man spares his own son that serves him," and so forth and so on. But the other people are going to be judged: In verse one, chapter four, "When the day comes it burns like an oven," and all of that kind of stuff, and so forth. So, He's sorting out the wicked from the saved, the wicked from the redeemed, if you will, and when He writes all these indictments, and there's a whole bunch of indictments for different things. Back in chapter one, you notice in verse six, He says "even a son honors his father, and even a servant honors his master, why don't you honor Me?" He is therefore revealing these people as unregenerate people--they don't honor God, "and the priests despise My name. And then you say 'What way have we despised Your name?' 'You offer polluted bread upon My altar.'" In other words, they were giving lame sacrifices, instead of bringing the first of the flock they were bringing some crippled lamb or some diseased lamb that they wouldn't eat anyway and offering that to God. Then further, He talks about some of the other things they have done, and He comes down into chapter 2, verse eleven, and He says, "Another thing you have done, you have committed an abomination by profaning your marriages," in other words, you have divorced your wives and gone off and married the daughter of a foreign god--you have married pagans, and again He's marking out these as those who don't honor God--those who offer polluted sacrifices, those who have defiled hearts, so He's talking about unredeemed people, and that's what He means down in verse fifteen, just like you said, when He says, "None of you possess the Holy Spirit (is one way to translate that verse). So He is talking about unregenerate people. Now, having said that, let me say this, this is characteristic of an unsaved person, but it doesn't mean that a Christian couldn't do the same thing, because any sin that could be committed, short of denying God and denying Christ, could be committed by a Christian. Right, I mean, none of us is completely invulnerable to committing any sin. I mean, we would respond differently to the committing of that sin than this person would, and we might repent and turn from it, but any Christian could commit that sin. So divorce is not a sin, that when you see it being committed you can say, "Well, that's not a Christian,"--not necessarily true. I'll tell you another illustration to prove it to you. The Corinthian church was full of people, he calls them "saints" in chapter one, 1 Corinthians, "saints, holy ones, you come behind in no gift of the Spirit" he says, "you lack none of the Spirit's ministry, but many of you," he says, "have committed fornication, and some of you (he says in chapter five) have even committed incest with his father's wife. So those kind of sins can be committed by believers, and that is why we are warned in 1 Corinthians, chapter six, "not to join ourselves to a harlot, because if you join yourself to a harlot, you join the Lord to a harlot. If you are one with the Lord and you unite with a harlot, you have made the Lord one with that harlot, that's to say then that a Christian could do that. But the Lord is undefiled--it's kind of like--I've used the illustration of a sunbeam shining into a dump--the sunbeam can shine into the dump, but the dump isn't going to affect the sunbeam. So a Christian could commit any sin but these people in Malachi were definitely people to be judged by God, because they were dishonoring His name--an unbelieving people. Question #5 There is a very popular Charismatic TV program that promotes the "law of reciprocity," as far as tithing goes--giving money to the Lord. In effect, that whatever you give to the Lord, you are going to receive it back while you are on earth. I just want to hear you views on that. Answer #5 They teach that if you give something to the Lord then you will get it back (in greater amounts). Open your Bible to a very important portion of Scripture that has to be considered in any discussion like this, on that question, and that is 2 Corinthians 8-9, because this is where the issue is discussed. The principle that is laid down here has to be brought into thought. The whole section of 8 and 9 is talking about giving, by the way, there is nothing in here about tithing--there is nothing in the New Testament anyplace to advocate tithing, and just as a starting point before we look at this. Tithing, are you familiar with the concept of tithing, you know, "Give 10% to the church," you know, that kind of thing? Tithing, basically, is never, ever advocated in the New Testament; it is never taught in the New Testament--ever! It is referred to a couple of times, that's all, as a historical fact: it talks about tithes being offered by Abraham to Aaron, you know, "in the loins of Abraham," it says, Aaron paid tithes to Melchizedek--it is just an historical reference. It talks about the fact that Abraham gave tithes, also of a tenth of the heap, which he took in the battle with the kings. So it is only an historic reference, and then in the gospels it talks about the fact that the Jews tithed to their government, again a historical reference. No place in the entire New Testament is it ever advocated for us to give tithes, that is, for us to give 10% to the church. You say, "Well what was it in the Old Testament?" Every year a Jew had to give 10% of all of his crop and all of his produce, and all of whatever he had. He gave 10%, which was called the "Levite's Tithe," and what you have to understand is that the nation Israel was a theocracy, that is, it was ruled by God through priests. There were 24 different orders of priests, with thousands upon thousands of priests--they were the government officials, they were the Senate, the Congress, the whole thing, only they different have to vote on anything--they just sought God and God told them what to do. So it was a theocracy ruled by God and that rule was disseminated through these people. Well, since they were the agents of the government, they had to be supported. Do you remember that the twelve tribes were each given land, but they split the tribe of Joseph into two tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh to make up twelve, because Levi was taken out, because Levi was the priestly tribe and they owned nothing. So they had to be supported by all the other tribes. They were given cities in the locations of the other tribal areas and people had to give money to support their livelihood--part of their sheep, part of their crop, and everything had to go to support Levi's tribe, because they were the ones who represented God in the government. So when you gave your 10% each year you gave it to the government for the care of the country, the nation. Secondly, you gave another 10% every year, which was for the festivals and the religious convocations of the nation. In other words, all of the big things that were held in Jerusalem, all the things that had to be done to prepared for the feasts and so forth in Jerusalem, and all the holy days, and all the sabbaths, and all the everything else that went with it. So you pay 10% to the Levites to support them as they operated in behalf of God in the government; you paid 10% to take care of the national festivals, which were many, many. Then you paid another 10% every third year, which went to the poor and the widows. So if you broke that down, you are about 23.3% per year. Now what that was, was an income tax system. That was a system of taxation to fund the government and its religious activities and its welfare needs. So when people today say, "We want to tithe now like they did in the Old Testament," they can't stop at 10%, they got 23.3% to start with. In addition to that, you paid a half shekel temple tax every year, in addition to that, if you had a field, you had to harvest the field in a circle and leave the corners open for the poor. It was a profit-sharing plan. If you dropped a bail of hay off your wagon, on the way to the barn, you had to leave that for the poor. So you start adding that up and you are looking at about 25% of their income went to fund the national entity of the government. Now when you get into the New Testament, the Jews were still doing that, because they still had a nation, even though they were an occupied nation, they were still a nation. They were occupied by the Romans, but they weren't run by the Romans. They had their own religious hierarchy, they had their own school systems, they had their own festivals, and all that stuff, and so they had to take care of that. They had their own priesthood; it all had to go on, that is why Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," in other words, pay the Romans what they asked, and render to God the things that are God's. So just to clarify that at the very beginning, when you are talking about a tithe, you are talking about the "taxation." Now when you translate that over into our time, it is kind of interesting to me that the base tax system in our country is about 20%, you add sales tax to that and you probably get another 5%, we are on about the same level they were then--about 25% of our income goes out for taxation, if you are in the normal tax bracket and with normal deductions, unless you are really doing well, but then they get you in different ways, because the more money you have the more things you buy, the more things you buy, the higher sales tax you pay, so maybe it comes out even harder for people who have more. Nonetheless, that's taxation. OK? Giving was always something different, always you gave whatever you wanted, like when they built the tabernacle and God said, "Let every man bring whatever he purposes in his heart; let him do it willingly, whatever he wants to give." And they kept coming, bringing so much that finally they said, "Stop, don't bring anymore--that's enough." So giving is always a "freewill," it's always an expression of love and appreciation--whatever you want to do. Now you come to 2 Corinthians, chapter eight, and you learn how the church gave. The church knew there was a need so the church gave. How did they give? Well, it wasn't 10%, it says, "The churches in Macedonia, 2Cor 8:1, gave abundantly out of deep poverty. It says that their deep poverty abounded to the riches of their liberality." Here was a very poor church in Macedonia, very poor, but they gave generously, out of their hearts liberally. In fact, verse three says, they gave beyond their ability. They gave more than they should have given--more then they could of given, and the reason they did that was in verse five, because they first gave themselves. I mean when you give yourself then everything you have belongs to the Lord. So, Paul is saying to the Corinthians, "If you want a lesson in giving, look at these people--out of deep poverty they gave everything they had." In fact, they gave more then they should of, but they did that because they had already given themselves to the Lord. Now you have the key motive in giving; what is the right motive in giving? It is not to get anything. It is in that whole hearted abandonment, "they gave everything." I worry about this Charismatic "Health and Wealth" prosperity business, where you are just simply saying, "Well I am going to give my money so I can get it!" That is not the spirit of the Macedonians, they didn't even have enough to give what they gave, but they gave it anyway, because they had already given themselves to the Lord. Their whole program was a "give myself away" program, not a "get for myself" program. We are suffering today, in Christianity, from an absolutely pervasive greed. Our contemporary Christianity is so self-indulgent it boggles the mind. That is why we don't reach out to people, because we are consumed with feeding ourselves. It's a mentality that all of us fall prey to. A guy in our church told me the other day that he was meeting with a group of Christians, and all they could talk about was their latest investments. You look around you and you see people all around the world, you know, who have need. I was talking to Mitz (sp.) and he was telling me there are about 32,000 people in the city of Los Angeles who are homeless. We have been strategizing the last few days about what we are going to do about that. Some people are talking about how they can get another Mercedes, and there are some people who are trying to get up out of the gutter to feed their family. So, we have a mentality, and of course, what we have done, see, we justified our materialism by developing a theology to accommodate it--you know, "Jesus wants you healthy and wealthy." There was a book called "Prime Time Religion" about Oral Roberts, and it showed how he has become a multimillionaire by the way he works things. In the book it points out, for example, he writes a book or has someone write it for him, and then he publishes it with his own publishing house (it describes all this, one of the guys on his staff wrote the book--unhappily for them); it shows how he publishes the book and then sells it to the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association--sells them about two million copies so they can send it out to all the people on their mailing list, who send them twenty- five bucks, only he sells to them for a dollar profit on each book. So he writes a book, publishes the book, makes a buck profit selling it to his own organization, pockets two million dollars and then they distribute it. Now, those are the kinds of people, for the most part, who are on television begging you for your money, and telling you that God is going to make you rich and so forth. So there is a theology that has developed, and then what they do, trying to live with that is very difficult, so in order to live with that kind of thing you develop a theology that says "Jesus wants you wealthy," and that's how you deal with your conscience--"God wants you rich!" I mean, you read in a magazine--we were in Israel and we find people, who go over there to lead tours to Israel, demand $1,000 per day rooms, they demand limousine service everywhere, they go into these little shops where they take their tourists to buy things, and one guy told me that one group went in there and the leader wanted $12,000 worth of jewelry to bring his group to their store. These are the people who develop this kind of accommodating theology, "Jesus wants you wealthy, Jesus wants you rich, Jesus wants you prosperous, He wants you healthy and all that kind of thing," and I really believe that it is a "back door" means to justify a materialistic attitude, and the Lord needs to deliver us from that. These people [2 Cor 8:1] gave out of their deep poverty, not because they wanted anything back because they were so abandoned to the Lord. Having said all of that, all right--this is a long sermon--I want you to look at chapter nine, verse six, "But this I say, he that sows sparingly shall reap sparingly; he that sows bountifully shall reap bountifully." In this sense, we have to admit that they have a kernel of the truth, because if you sow a little bit you reap a little, if you sow a lot you reap a lot, and it is true that when you give to the Lord--He does give back, but if that is your motive--it's warped. It is true that He does that, but if you come to the Lords work and say, "I'm going to put this in, because I know that I am going to get back multiplied, then your giving is illegitimate. But if you can do it with a free, clear conscience, and even though you have to fight yourself, you know, sometimes you say, "Boy, I know the Lord is going to return this but that's not going to be my motive," you know, you kind of go back and forth, but if you have a clear conscience about that then it is ok. So, "you sow sparingly, you reap sparingly; you sow bountifully, you reap bountifully." There is the fact that God will bless, Luke 6:38, Jesus says, "Give, and it shall be. . . ." what? "Given unto you, " That's a great statement, "pressed down, shaken together and running over." Did you ever buy a box of crackers and shake it, and open it, and you got about a third of a box of crackers? But that isn't how it is going to be when the Lord gives, it will be pressed down, shaken together, and still running over. He'll give. Now, you say, "Yeah, I know what will happen to me. I will give all of my money and the Lord will give me back all spiritual blessings." That might happen, but in verse seven it says, "every man according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, nor of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." And, he will minister (verse 10) "He that ministers seed to the sower will minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness." Verse 10 is really key: He says He will not only give you back what you sowed; He'll give you back bread for your food--He'll take care of your physical needs when you give, and He'll increase the fruit of your righteousness. It doesn't say that He'll make you wealthy, does it? It says, He'll meet your needs, and He will fill your life with righteousness. So maybe that gives you some answer--I hope. Question #5 (continued) I did notice that most of the verses they used to promote this were out of the Old Testament. Answer #5 (continued) It's very popular doctrine--people want to be rich, they want to be wealthy. The hottest new cult there is, is Terri Cole Whittiker (sp.)--I don't know if you've seen her? She is nothing but a slick Doris Day type Reverend Ike! She is in it for the money. She comes out of "Science of Mind." She's manipulative--she has figured out how to make a fortune and she is "milking" it for every dime that she can get out of it. And she can do it because people will do anything to get rich. People will do anything to get two things: money and health--and if you can promise people health and wealth, they will follow you off the end of the pier--believe me, they will. Why do you think Jesus told the disciples when He sent them out, "Take no money when you heal," because if they would have taken money, they would have become instant millionaires--people will pay any price for healing--and they could really do it! And they [people] will pay any price, they will invest anything, if they think that they can get rich. You see, this is what "Reverend Ike" did for years. What he did was, he told these people, "You send me money--you might get rich." And he told story after story, after story about it and what "his" company did was, at random they would pick out people off their mailing list and deliver a new Cadillac to them. They would do that to 100 to 200 people a year, with the millions that were coming in, and then they would have them get up and give a testimony, how that one day there was a new Cadillac delivered in front of their door. And it becomes a lottery system--that's all it is. It is like buying a ticket in a raffle, and you know raffles work and people are gamblers--look at Las Vegas. So if people think there is a way to get either health or wealth they will do anything, and that kind of doctrine will be popular and people will send money to it like "gangbusters." Oral Roberts has been doing that for thirty years. You ought to read his letters, "If you will send me $25 today, right today, the day you get this letter, I'll promise you that Jesus will give you back $250 within the next six months from an unexpected place." Very typical letter. And you know, you are liable to get $250 back somewhere you didn't expect it. Right? You old Aunt died, or you got an income tax return, or you got a social security check you didn't expect, or whatever. In the long run it hooks people--it's really tragic. Question #6 My question is from Exodus 3:2, "And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed." My question is, Why do some people, older in the Lord, say that the "angel of the Lord" is Jesus Christ? Answer #6 I have to reach back and pull together so many things. There are many places in the Old Testament where the "angel of the Lord" is mentioned. In many of those places He appears in a form and accomplishing a mission that is so unique to deity that it appears as if He must be deity. And if, in fact, He is deity, then He must be that person of deity who is manifest in some element--maybe in fire, maybe in a human body, or whatever. It is due to the fact that His appearances seem to be the manifestation of deity rather than a created being, even an angel, and the unique holiness, the unique deliverance mode. The "angel of the Lord" is often seen as a savior or a deliverer, and there are some passages that may be even more explicit than that. Those are what we call "Christophanies" that's a technical term, but it means a preincarnate appearance of Christ. Now, we shouldn't have a problem with that because we believe that Jesus Christ is the second member of the Trinity--and always existed. Right? There is no reason not to believe, that before He was incarnate in human form and came into the world, He was certainly busy doing something. Why not these kinds of things? The word "angel" should not trip us up, because "angel" simply means "messenger." Sometimes it could be used in a technical sense referring to an actual angel, a created angel; but sometimes it can be used in a nontechnical sense, referring to a messenger, such as many believe it's used in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd chapter of Revelation. So it would just be by virtue of the form, the power, the holiness of this being, that He appears more to be deity than He does to be a created being. Question #7 Does God "punish" the redeemed people? This is a question I just found out yesterday. . . .it amazed me, because my Bible Study leader said, "That He does not punish redeemed people." I always thought that He did. The Bible says, "To whom the Lord loves he scourges and chastises." Answer #7 It depends what you mean by "punish." He scourges, He chastises. I don't think anywhere that the text translates the word "punish," but it is basically the same thing in one sense--it's not a final punishment. The best way to say it is, in terms of Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." There will be no ultimate punishment. The ultimate punishment has been already given to us. Where? On the cross. OK, to say that we had to be ultimately punished would be to say that Jesus Christ had inadequately borne our punishment. 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, talks about the fact that the Lord chastens those who have defiled His table. Hebrews, chapter 12, which you are referring to says, "To whom the Lord loves He chastens, and every son He scourges." Then in 1 Corinthians 11, it says that if we would chasten ourselves then we wouldn't be chastened by the Lord. So, yes we would like to call it a "remedial chastening" rather than a punitive or a condemning chastening, in other words it is to conform us more to Christ. It's remedial, in the sense that it instructs not to do that. So, yes the Lord does bring chastening into the life of a child of His, in fact, if He didn't it would be tragic, because we go off on some tangent of sin and we would never want to turn back, because we would never feel His chastening. Question #7 (continued) He said that there was a difference between chastising and punishment. Answer #7 OK, then he's making a distinction that he can make if he explains what he means. There is no final, ultimate damnation, obviously, but there certainly is chastening. Question #8 In James 5:13-18, where it told about anointing with oil, my question is kind of a four-part question: 1. Is this for the church today? 2. If so, when is it appropriate for someone to call the elders of the church? 3. What kind of sickness is this for--is it only for sin sickness? 4. How does someone at Grace Community Church call the elders of the church if a serious circumstance should come up? Answer #8 I think that it is for us. I don't want to get into some kind of dispensational thing and throw out the Book of James. It says, "Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." Now, that last statement is the "hook" that this whole thing hangs on. I believe this has a reference to those sicknesses which are directly related to unforgiven sin. Not unforgiven in the sense of ultimate forgiveness at the cross, but unforgiven in the sense of our immediate relationship with the Lord. In other words, all your sins are covered in Christ, and this is back to what you were saying. That's why there is no ultimate punishment. But there sins in our lives, right now that are not dealt with, and we will be chastened for those, they need to be treated too. So, where you have a believer who has sin in his life there is the potential of sickness, and if you don't think so then you haven't read 1 Corinthians 11, because if you're sick "because of your defiling of the Lord's Table many of you are weak and sick, and some of you are dead," he says (the ones who were dead obviously weren't able to hear what he was saying, but the others did). So yes, First John even talks about a believer who goes beyond the point of being recalled back from sickness because of his sinfulness. Yes, I really believe that the fact that this is tied into to the "sins," and it says in 5:16, "Confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed." And, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." And then, "Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit." So, he's simply saying that pray on the behalf of one, prayer before God on behalf of one who is sick due to sin--God hears. When the prayer is offered and the confession is offered. So I believe that those are the circumstances. The fact that it says that the "prayer of faith shall save the sick," is such a gilt-edged promise, with no conditions, that it would have to be referring to a sickness related--to something that could be dealt with, and soon as it was dealt with the sickness would be removed. Now, the question about, "Do we do that at Grace Church?" Yes, we do, and we have for all the years that I have ever been here. Every Sunday morning we meet over here in the Prayer Room at eight o'clock for a half an hour of prayer, and very frequently we have folks come in who want to be prayed for. Now the one element that is kind of introduced here into the text, it's a little difficult for us to understand, is the anointing of oil. There are two possible explanations for the anointing of oil. Explanation #1 - Is that the oil was the symbol of the Holy Spirit, and that is true in the Old Testament. On many occasions kings were anointed with oil, priests were anointed with oil, as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, just a way to identify it as if the Holy Spirit was touching that life--special anointing. In fact, "anointed" is a beautiful word in the Old Testament, isn't it? The priest was anointed, the king was anointed, as if God was putting a "touch" on him. So, it is very possible that, that is a symbol of identifying the fact that we desire the Spirit of God to do a work in the heart, a work in the soul, a work in the body--of healing. Explanation #2 - The other possibility is that it has reference to medicine. "Oil" is a very general term and could have been used regarding medicine. So, it may be what James has in mind is--"Pray for the person and tell him to take his medicine." Either way, I am not sure, but since we can't resolve that, we customarily, through the years, here, on Sunday mornings have anointed people with oil when they requested it, and just done as the Scripture says. Not only that, but very frequently, groups of elders go to the hospital and do this very thing--whenever someone calls us and says, "Would you come and do that?" We do that. All you have to do is call the church office, ask for any pastor and they will set it up and do it. I mean, if we can't figure out what the oil meant--we can still be obedient to it. Question #9 How do you know when you are being "tempted" by Satan or "tested" by God? Answer #9 How do you know when you are being "tempted" by Satan and "tested" by God? And the answer is that they are one in the same. If you fail, Satan succeeded in tempting you, if you pass, God gets the victory for seeing you through the test--in a sense. Now, there are some things that are not a test by God at all, but are purely a temptation--it depends on where you are--it is hard to define that. The word "temptation" and the word "testing" are the same word--"peirasmos" (Greek), same word, no difference. It depends on how you respond. For example, if something comes on the TV that is evil-- it will either demonstrate my strength or demonstrate my weakness--true? So, it is either a test by which God is able to show me my strength, or it is a temptation by which Satan shows me my weakness. It depends on what I do with it. That's an over simplification, in a sense, but you understand what I am driving at? The "trying of your faith works patience, and patience wants to have its perfect work," James 1. So the Lord is going to bring trial, trial, trail. Now, none of those trials is a direct solicitation to evil. A direct solicitation to evil is not included in those, and that is why in James 1, it says, "God tempts no man." The Lord will bring trials into your life, which if you fail those trials will turn into temptations, but the Lord will never bring a direct solicitation to evil. So, having said what I said initially, when trials come into your life, if you fail them, they turn out to be temptations in which Satan was victorious. If you pass them, they turn out to be victories, in which God was trying and strengthening you, but a direct solicitation to do evil is always from the enemy and never from God. Question #10 Knowing that all children belong to God--during the Rapture, what's going to happen to all the children? Answer #10 What happens to children in the Rapture? The Bible doesn't say anything, but whatever happens to them, God will be absolutely loving, and absolutely fair, and absolutely just, and right, and gracious, and merciful, and all that. I personally believe that every person has the opportunity to come to know Christ. I believe God gives each person that privilege, and God does not condemn people to Hell for an ignorance. He didn't create people to populate Hell. People go there, to "a place prepared for the devil and his angels,' not even prepared for people, but for the devil and his angels, because they choose not to believe at one point or another. So, even if it is at an early point, they are not led to the fullness of the truth. But in the case of children, the Lord may take the children of believers, [or] the Lord may leave them and allow them to come to the age when they can make the right commitment. And if you worry about that, remember that the greatest period of evangelization that the world has ever seen, will be in the time right after the Rapture. Even though it will be the hardest time, the lines will be drawn so clearly that there will be so many people saved, it says in Revelation seven, they won't even be able to be numbered--and if heaven loses count--that is a lot of folks. So, we only have to trust that to the Lord. Question #11 I know that a man is supposed to have only one wife, [then] what is the reasoning by Solomon having 600--but God still blessed the men that had more than one wife--like Abraham. Answer #11 Just plain stupid! Just plain disobedient! What you have to understand is that God never blessed anybody for having more than one wife--all it did was to bring cursing. There was other reasons why God blessed them--that wasn't one of them. When you study the Old Testament you find that out. You go all the way back to the beginning in Genesis, and it says "one man, one woman for life," and that's the way God always wanted it. Now, I don't want to be personal, but have you sinned? [reply: "yes"] Yes, me too. Are you alive? Yes, me too. Are you blessed? Yes, me too. Get the picture? But we didn't get blessed for that--did we? Not for our sin--we got blessed in spite of it, because God is a loving, gracious God. So, we don't want to conclude that because David committed adultery with a whole bunch of women, that adulterers get blessed. We want to conclude that in spite of that, God was gracious to him, and there were periods in his life, and times in his life when he was obedient to God, and God blessed him for those times, and God was patient in the other times. So, God's standard never, ever, changed. And if you really want to find out, you just find all the polygamists in the Old Testament and watch the pain they went through. Everybody thinks that Abraham had it good, no he didn't--he had a very painful life. He had a disastrous life. The very fact that he went in there a had a child by Hagar and produced Ishmael--the Jewish race, ever since Abraham, has been upset that he did that, because that produced the Arabs. It's true, the Jews they don't like that he did that, and the Arabs, the children of Ishmael, have always claimed the right to the land as the sons of Abraham--that's what the conflict is all about. So, God blessed Abraham, but He didn't bless him for that. God blessed David, but He didn't bless Him for his many wives. God blessed Solomon in parts, but when you read the Book of Ecclesiastes you get a feeling that Solomon went through some times in his life when he was anything but blessed, and that was written by a man in deep pain. Question #12 I was brought up Lutheran and it appears that there are inconsistencies in Luther's Small Catechism, in relation with the Bible, primarily Baptism and Communion. If Luther was truly a man of God and the Lutheran Church is really following him, why is the Lutheran Church today so liberal and caught up in man's tradition? Answer #12 Martin Luther, if he was alive today wouldn't be a member of most Lutheran churches, so we don't want to blame him for what they are today--they have come so far from Lutheran theology. Martin Luther was obviously God's anointed man in many ways. No man is the reservoir of all truth. Martin Luther was the product of years, and years, of years of Catholicism. It is a work of God that he could ever see through it at all, because it was so absolutely oppressive and overpowering. But, he started to read the Bible and he wrote a commentary on Romans, and when he got through Romans, he realized that the doctrine of salvation was all fouled up in the Catholic Church. They were teaching "salvation by works" and he hated it. They were buying their way into heaven through the indulgences and all that stuff. So, Martin Luther was basically used by God to develop, what theologians call "soteriology" the doctrine of salvation. He was a "soteriologist" and the truth of the matter is that the Reformation was a soeteriological reformation, that never touched the field of ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church). That is why the hot bed of Lutheranism--Germany, went completely liberal and produced a guy like Hitler. Though his [Luther] soteriology was right, he didn't live long enough or whatever--God could only use that man to fight one battle. My grandfather use to say, "If you do one thing well in your life, you would be ahead of most people." That is right, he did one great thing extremely well, in understanding the doctrine of "salvation by grace through faith"--the "just shall live by faith." It never really impacted all of ecclesiology; it never really impacted the church at its widest possible range and definition. Consequently, there was the potential of its disintegration in the system. You know, Martin Luther never even got out of the Catholic Church--he was a priest. So, we don't want to fault Luther--Luther did what Luther did, and we can all be greatful for that, and those people who understood Luther, understood that he was saying something about salvation that had never been said, at least in their experience in the Catholic Church. Now, having said all of that, it is important to point out: Luther's basic emphasis in soteriology never really touched very much else--it never really did. So, the Lutheran Church that developed, had weaknesess built into it--two of those you pinpointed. It is interesting, in your paper, that you came to Baptism and the Lord's Supper, because they never quite got over the "baby baptism" thing. They never got out of that, they never followed to a logical conclusion what Luther was really teaching, and today, there are many Lutherans, in fact, most Lutherans, I would think, believe that their place in the kingdom was initiated by their baptism as an infant, and then confirmed at the age of twelve or whatever. And that is what we call "sacramental Christianity" as opposed to "personal Christianity," it is that you are there because of the sacrament. The second thing is, in communion, Luther made a quantam leap, because the Catholic Church taught "transubstantiation" and "transubstantiation" says that in the mass the host and the whatever, the cup and the bread, are, by the priest, literally transformed into the very body and very blood of Jesus Christ, so that what is left has to be protected and cared for and put away and all of this, because it is the real body and the real [blood]. Now, that made Luther angry and so he moved away from that to a view called "consubstantiation," which you probably read about, and what Luther said was, "No, it has the spiritual presence of Christ, and the spiritual body of Christ in the cup and the bread." Well, that is nothing, I don't know what that is, but it was a big step away from where they were, but he wasn't all the way to where we are today, where we say it is only a remembrance. So, we don't want to fault Luther, he made some tremendous steps, and theology coming out of the "dark ages" from 500 to 1500, when he pinned his thesis on the Wittenburg Church door, coming out of those "dark ages" I mean, that was a massive step for him. He went as far as he could and it has been taken beyond that, unfortunately, some of the Lutheran people are more concerned with holding on to their roots, and holding onto to Martin Luther--they will quote him more than they will the Bible, and he was limited in his understanding, because he was so much of a pioneer coming out of that kind of theology. Question #13 Occasionally, you will mention in one of your sermons, and especially when I listened to a few tapes, that you would leave a word or a particular verse out. An example, would be in the 23rd chapter of Matthew, I think the 14th verse or somewhere around there, you said, "was not in the better manuscripts." What are the better manuscripts and how do we determine which manuscripts are better than others? Answer #13 You are going to have to trust some other people on this one. This is such a difficult issue, not difficult for me to understand, but difficult to communicate to you in a way that is going to be understood, because it is such a long, drawn out thing. You have in your hand a Bible, maybe you have like I do, "the Holy Scolly," Scolfield's notes, you know, "My hope is built on nothing less than Scolfield's Notes and Scripture Press" or "Moody Press" I guess. Some of you have the New American Standard (NASB); some of you have the NIV (New International Version); some of you have the Amplified Bible, I don't know what all you have. Some of you may even have an old Confirnity Version, or Douay Version, you got from your Catholic days with the Apocrapha in the middle. You may have a Living Bible, which is not a Bible, but a commentary on the Bible--a paraphrase. But, there are all kinds of things like that. Some of you have a 1901 American Standard--all these various things, alright? Now, the Bible you have is in our culture. In Latin America they have a Spanish Bible and it's going to be translated out of the original languages into Spanish. In Europe they are going to have a French one, they are going to have a German one, they are going to have an Italian one. You go to the Orient, they are going to have Japanese one, a Chinese one, a Korean one, etc. So, these people who come along and say that the "King James" is the only right Bible--that's not even thinking clearly, because that is an English translation, what are we saying? That is almost like Hitler's "Doctrine of the Supreme Race," as if we got all the corner on all of the truth, and the rest of the world is limping along without the full revelation. Let me just back up from that by saying this, all the Bibles that we do have are basically translated into the languages in which we read them from "manuscripts." The Bible was written in the Old Testament in Hebrew, with the exception of several passages in Aramaic, which is a Hebrew type language. The New Testament was written entirely in Greek, not classical Greek like Ceaser's "Golic Wars," but "koine" or common Greek, which is a "street Greek." So, what we have to do then, to find out what the Scriptures really say, is to collect the ancient manuscripts. Point 1. We have no original manuscripts, we have none. We don't have the original Isaiah, we don't have the original John, the original Acts, the original Romans. What we have is copies, and we have copies, and copies, and copies, because once the Scripture was given everybody started to copy it. It was a perfect opportunity for people to change it, as it went copying along--they could put in something here, put in something there. And maybe a scribe made a mistake, I mean, sitting down to copy the whole Old Testament would be a tough job--right? Especially, do you know what they did to help themselves? They took out all the vowels--they took out all the punctuation, all the paragraphs and all the spaces, and just wrote consonants in big long strings. So scholars just have to come back in--and it is not hard to do if you know Hebrew well. But anyway, they wrote, and wrote, and wrote, in fact, they say Ezra could write to whole Old Testament from memory (he was a scribe) without error. And many of them would write one letter [single character], they were so precise--they would write one letter and wash their pen, because they didn't want to change one single letter. But, there were some who more careless than that. Through the years of history we have had scholars that are working in a field that is known as "lower criticism" (that's just what they call it). Who have collected and studied all the groupings of these various manuscripts, and they have come down, basically, to two groups of manuscripts. But these two groups of manuscripts; one of them has produced the King James and the other has produced all of the other modern translations. That second group, that has produced all the modern translations, has had the benefit of all the years of study since 1611 when this King James came out. In those 300 years there have been many other manuscripts found, which we now know were the better manuscripts, because there is a science of comparing them. For example, if you find two manuscripts and one makes something very difficult, like one manuscript says, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to get into heaven," and this manuscript family says, "It is easier for a thread to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to get into heaven,"--which is the right one? The "camel" has to be right. Because a scribe would change a camel to a "thread," but a scribe would never change a "thread" to a camel. So, one of the laws of lower criticism is you always take the more difficult rendering, because you assume people would try to make it easier, not harder. So, there are many, many principles that they use in the study of lower criticism and what they have come up with is these two families of manuscripts. The King James was based upon the "best" available stuff in 1611, but now the stuff that the NAS and others have based upon, the NIV, is now manuscripts that are older than the King James manuscripts, and the further back you get, in most cases, the purer you are going to be. Right? So, that's why, from time to time, we say, "That the better manuscripts indicate" such and such. The newer manuscripts have the benefit of all that was in the other set, and all that has been added to that since that time. You can thank the Lord that there are men who spend there whole life just fussing around with these manuscripts. Question #14 I have a question about the "works of the Spirit," from Judges 14:6, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily." My point is this, "the Holy Spirit coming upon Samson," the question is [about] the Holy Spirit indwelling people before Acts, chapter two. Also, I have another question referring to the same thing, in the gospel of John, chapter 20:22, "He breathed on them, and said, 'Receive ye the Holy Spirit,' and, only eleven of them received Him. Answer #14 I deal with that in my book on the Charismatics [Book: "The Charismatics"], by the way, in one of the chapters. No, in the Old Testament you have many, many occasions where it says, "And the Spirit of God came upon" so and so, "The Spirit of God departed," and "The Spirit of God came," and "The Spirit of God departed." Let me see if I can make it as simple as possible. No person at no time, now or then, could ever do anything that would please God apart from God's power. I mean, if we are weak in the flesh, they were weak in the flesh--understood? In the flesh you cannot do anything, "No flesh can be justified in and of itself," in the flesh we cannot please God. That's why the Old Testament says, "Not by might, nor by power, but . . ."--what? "'By My Spirit' says the Lord." So, in the Old Testament, for anything that was done of a divine nature the Spirit of God had to come and to do His work. Now, this is simply an indication of how the Spirit of God worked: the Spirit of God came and went and moved in these ways. Now, when you come to the key verse, you come to the Gospel of John, because in the transition the Lord gets together with His disciples and, it says in 14:16, "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever." Now, that's the new part. He came and He went, and did His thing, and moved in a unique and marvelous and miraculous way in spiritual intervention, but now He comes to "abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him: but you know him; for He dwells with you, and shall be in you." So, I see that as the distinctive, now that is not to say that they didn't have the Holy Spirit, it is to say that in the Church there is the "fullness" of the Spirit that was not neccessiarily the same as it was in the old covenant--the fullness of the Spirit is released. Remember Jesus said, "I cannot send the Holy Spirit unless I go to the Father," in the same passage, "When I go to the Father, He shall send you the Comforter, the Holy Spirit who will come, and He will teach you all things, and lead you into all things. Now, that's back to that ladies question about polygamy and all that; that's why God was patient and overlooked some things in the Old Testament that He doesn't in the New Testament, because the ministry of the Holy Spirit is so unique; it is full and complete only after Christ has done His full and complete work--that releases the Spirit to an indwelling kind of ministry in us. That's why He says to us, "He shall be with you," or, "He shall abide with you forever." Now, when He said to them, in John 20, "breathed on them, and said to them, 'Receive ye the Holy Spirit," I think at that point He was merely giving them a promise. He was giving them a symbolic illustration; I don't think they received the Spirit there, I think they received the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. That was simply a promise of what was going to come, because He was still saying in Acts 1:8, "You shall receive the Holy Spirit," and "You shall have power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you," and the Holy Spirit, if he said that, couldn't have come upon them already. Question #15 In Psalm 119, it says, "Your testimonies are full of wonder: therefore my soul observes them." And in 2 Peter it says, "If moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness; and love are increasing, you will not be unfruitful." So, the question is, "Is the increasing spiritual awareness and meditation of the treasures of God's Word the requirement for a truly obedient walk?" Answer #15 I think it is. I think that obedience is a direct product of meditation on the Word of God. I do not think that you can behave in a certain way independent of how you think. I do think you will behave in accord with how you think, and you think on the Word of God and you behave in response to that. No question about that, a continual growing, meditating on the Word of God is going to alter your behavior. "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Question #16 I would like to ask a question of Luke 8:16-18, "Now no one, after lighting a lamp, covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, in order that those who come in may see the light. For nothing is hidden, that shall not become evident; nor anything secret, that shall not be known and come to light. Therefore take care how you listen: for whoever has, to him shall more be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him." What does it mean? Answer #16 I tell you it is a great, great parable. Very simply, when a guy lights a lamp he puts it out where it can be seen--he doesn't hide it, he sets it on a lamp stand. I think, in a sense, what you have here is the Lord, and you and I are kind of like the lamps, and He lights us. Some day He is going to put us on display--the Lord didn't light our lamp to hide us, the Lord lit our lamp to put us on display. It may not be here that we show who we really are, but it will be there and that is verse 17, "nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, neither anything hidden that shall not be known and come to light." What happened to the early church; what happened to the early believers; what happened to the Apostles was the world didn't know who they were, and He says, "the day is going to come when the light is going to show and the world is going to see." It is the same thing He says in the tenth chapter of Matthew, He uses the very same terminology, the very same illustrations basically, He says, "The world may hate you now and the world may persecute you now, but don't fear that, because the day is going to come when the Lord is going to reverse everything and the secrets are going to be made known," which means that the lights are going to get turned on; the world is going to see who the shining lights are, that God has lit, and the people who are to be blessed and who are to be rewarded. "Everything is going to come to be known," verse seventeen, and verse eighteen, so you better listen very carefully, because if you try to get it all now, you know, for it says, "whosoever has," if you have it now, if you have a relationship with the Lord now, if you are lit now your light is going to get brighter, and if you don't have the light now it is going to be just as black then, only blacker. Question #17 My daughter asked me a question and it is out of Joshua 2:3-7, 18-21, and it's talking about Rahab. Her main question is: that God forbids us to lie, and she said, "Mom, Rahab lied to the king and she hid God's people, but God said that it is a sin to lie. How do you reconcile the fact that she lied and God honored her lie?" Answer #17 No, she sinned and God honored her faith. God did not honor her lie; she didn't have to do that, God would have saved His people anyhow, but she had very little information. All she knew about God was what she heard as they moved from Egypt into Canaan, and she heard the exploits of this great God, and she believed in the true God. In fact, if you follow the story and you follow it all the way into the Book of Matthew, where she's listed among the heroes of faith--Rahab believed God, Rahab believed God. She didn't know all that there was to know about God, but she believed God. Maybe she didn't understand all there was to the morality that God had identified as what is right, maybe in her culture lying was acceptable, but what she did know she believed and adhered to. She knew this was the true God and she wanted to stand with the true God against her entire society. God honored her faith, God didn't honor her lie, and if she would have told the truth God would have equally, in fact, more gloriously and wonderfully spared His spies. In fact, I have often thought to myself, if she hadn't lied and David hadn't played the fool, and if other people in the Bible had just done just what is upright and truthful, think of what things God would have that He was not able to do because they lied and covered up something. So God didn't honor her lie. Question #18 I wasn't raised this way and I was just kind of curious about Predestination. I have heard back and forth that God had a plan. I was just curious about my family members that aren't saved, I thought, "Does God not choose them?" Answer #18 I don't have time to go into the whole thing, just let me tell you this, are you a Christian? [Reply] "Yes." You're predestined. The point is this, when you saved you confirm the fact that you are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, until then you don't know. So, you call them to Christ. The Bible teaches both things: Predestination and Human Choice. "You will not come to Me that you might have life," Jesus said. "How often I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her brood, but you would not, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem." So, then you have "chosen in Him, before the foundation of the world." So, you have both doctrines; they coexist together--you leave them there. You try to harmonize them you will get into a lot of trouble. If you try to rationalize them you will find yourself under the bed saying the Greek alphabet. You can't harmonize them, you just have to teach both of them. See, it is like two opposite truths that have to coexist. It is the same thing that you have with Christ: Christ is God and man. What is He, half-God and half-man? No, He is all-God and all-man, you can't be that, but we believe He is. If somebody asks you, "Who wrote the Book of Romans?" and you say "Paul," and I say, "The Holy Spirit,"--we are both right. If somebody says, "Who lives your Christian life?" you say, "I do, I grit my teeth and beat my body into subjection and live it," somebody else says, "Not I, but Christ lives in me,"--both. See, you have the same kind of divine tension in all doctrine, because when you reduce God to man something is left out and we can't fill in the gap, so all we know is that if we are saved it is because God has chosen us, predestinated us before the foundation of the world, and if we are not saved it is because we refuse Jesus Christ. Question #19 I have a question in relation to Ezekiel, chapter three, God appoints Ezekiel as a watchman over the House of Israel, and He says in verses 18 and 19, "When I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his inequity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself." My question is, "If what way or any are these verses applicable to modern day believers in relation to our responsibility to tell unbelievers about the Gospel?" Answer #19 You have to go on, I think it is the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where I think all that is kind of "flattened out" and you have individual responsibility advocated there very strongly. Let me just put it this way, a prophet of God stood in a very unique relationship to God, and with high, high, high privilege comes high, high, high responsibility. It would be much more like James 3:1 than any other thing, where it says, "Stop being so many teachers, for theirs is a greater condemnation." The more ministry you bite off, the more accountable you are. That's like Hebrews 13:17 says, "Submit yourselves to those who have the rule over you because they have to give an account for what they do. In other words, when you run real fast to get in the ministry, you better stop and realize what's involved. Here you have a very unique and very special and very personal thing: God says to Ezekiel, "You are a prophet, you're anointed by me, you are called by me to a unique office--you better be faithful to that office or you will be required to pay a price. I don't think that he would have lost his salvation, I just think he would have demonstrated unfaithfulness and been severely chastened by God. Now, that is not something that can be extrapolated out of that thing and applied to every believer, as if to say that the blood of every unbeliever who dies and goes to hell, that we might have witnessed to, is on our hands. I think that it is a completely different situation. I think that you will never find anywhere in Scripture that I am responsible for somebody else's lostness. The only thing I find in Scripture is I am responsible to be obedient to the Lord to take the message to everyone. If I was responsible for somebody being lost then I ought to go to hell, but every person is responsible, and that is in the eighteenth chapter and he clarifies that there, so that where we all fit together is different from where a distinct prophet of God fits in his relationship to God. Question #20 My question concerns the end times. If I understand you clearly, last Sunday you said that, the Church will not be here before the events of Matthew 24 take place. In Matthew 24, Jesus uses the second person pronoun "you" referring to all the believers who will be around at that particular time, but in one way or another, the "you" in the future has an attachment to the "you" of that particular period--namely the Apostles. Christ was answering their question, therefore, He says "you" and He exhorts them, and corrects them, and comforts them. To me, I see that Christ saw the existing body of believers, which later were pioneers of the Church, as of the same body of those who would be around in the Tribulation time. Secondly, in Matthew 24:9, Christ says, "You will be hated by all nations on account of My name," which purports that this will be Christ's disciples, and in verse 22 and 24, He calls them "elect," and in John, chapter 11, verse 52, Caiaphas was prophesying and he didn't know it, and the Bible says that he did not say that on his own initiative, "But being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation; And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together into one the children of God that were scattered abroad." And in chapter 10 of the same book, He says in verse 16, "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold: I must bring then also, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock." If the Church won't go through the Tribulation, and Matthew 24 has some believers who will be in the Tribulation, how do we separate the Church and these people since the Bible has them as one nation? Answer #20 I think we only separate them by virtue of the Rapture, that's all. The Rapture is not dealt with in verse 24, so it is very difficult to stick it in there. I only did that because people would wonder where does this happen and who is He talking about. The Rapture is something you have to deal with; you have to put it someplace--definitely you have to put it someplace. If you put it at the end of the Tribulation you got all kinds of problems, because you got two things happening at once: you got the righteous being taken out and you have the unrighteous being taken out at the same time--it doesn't make sense. There is a lot of problems with that, so I think that there is reason to put the Rapture at beginning. Having said that, I think that the Lord will take away His Church as a restraining influence. Now, I think He then redeems people on the earth. They are, for all intents and purposes, a part of the one flock. They are part of the one group. They come to Christ through faith just like anybody else does, there is no distinction there. They are redeemed from out of all the tribes and tongues and peoples and nations, and they are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb. The whole process of salvation is exactly the same as it has always been. The only distinction I see is the removal of the Church during the period of time of judgment on the earth. Out of that judgment there is a group of people redeemed who will be brought together with the other people who are redeemed, just as we have been brought together in the future yet with those Old Testament saints. The Old Testament saints, you realize now that there spirits are with the Lord, their bodies have not yet been resurrected. According to Daniel 12, they have yet to wait the day of resurrection, when final judgment comes, and final glory for their bodies--some of them. There is going to be tribulation saints who have a resurrection at the end of the times. So, I understand what you are saying, and what you are saying is, if the church is taken out, then what is this group? I just see them as an extension of God's redeemed people, that's all. You have Old Testament people, you have people in this period of time, and you will have people in that period of time. Some of them are definitely Jews; some of them are Gentiles from all over the world, they are a part of the one redeemed people. It is the same as Hebrews tells us in Hebrews, chapter 12, where it says, "That we are also identified with the innumerable host, the spirits of just men made perfect." We are all one with that innumerable company in heaven already. So, I don't see a problem with that, all I see is that the Rapture uniquely occurs to remove the redeemed people for the judgment on the earth, and out of that judgment other redeemed people are gathered together, just as they were in the Old Testament to be collected all together in one great flock for eternity. Transcribed by Tony Capoccia Bible Bulletin Board internet: www.biblebb.com modem: 609-324-9187 Box 318 Columbus, NJ 08022 ....online since 1986