Wesleyanism (Part 1)

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Wesleyanism (Part 2)

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Before we begin, let's pray together.
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Father, we thank you for the opportunity to study.
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We thank you for the opportunity to continue on in comparing denominations and looking at systematic theology and the variations of theology which are taught throughout Christianity as a whole.
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And Lord, as today we look at the history of the Wesleyan movement and what modern Methodism has become.
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Lord, we pray that you would help us to be humble of mind and spirit to understand that we as individuals have not arrived.
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We are not perfect.
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And so Lord, it would be easy to pick apart our theology and we should, Father, be willing to always be reforming, always comparing what we teach to the Word of God.
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Lord, please by your mercy and grace give us humility and grace today as we look at this movement and this study.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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I do want to kind of add a disclaimer as we begin.
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If somebody came to our church for the first time like you are today, you may sit through the teaching today and think, boy, these people are just in the business of getting on to other people because my Sunday school lesson is on Wesleyanism and my sermon is on Seventh-day Adventism.
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So it's like, it might seem as if that's where we're just, you know, we carry around a big heavy stick.
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But really you just found yourself in the middle of two series that we're doing.
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The Sunday school series involves systematic theology which we are studying from this book.
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It's the Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine by Dr.
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House.
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This particular book provides for us outlines of theological principles and ideas and we're using it just as a, almost as a springboard because we study what's in the book.
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But as we've seen in weeks past, it doesn't always give us everything about a particular system.
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And so I often spend time studying throughout the week to add some information to what we're learning out of this book.
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And we've only gone through now four pages and we've been in it for like a year.
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So it's going to take a while for us to ever get through it.
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But this is systematic theology.
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This is what we identify this class as.
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It's an opportunity for us to look at the Bible systematically.
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And the difference in that and what we would call biblical theology is derived from exegesis of scripture.
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For instance, if you wanted to make a defense of the doctrine of baptism for believers only, like if you wanted to make a defense for the doctrine of baptism of believers only, you wouldn't go to one book of the Bible but you'd go to several and you'd make a systematic defense for that particular doctrine.
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But if you were teaching through acts, you would come across several times where baptism is the subject and you would derive your theology from that as you go through an exegesis of the text.
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That's called biblical theology as opposed to systematic theology which does more of an overview and looks at subjects rather than texts.
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And both are legitimate forms of Bible study.
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Both are necessary forms of Bible study.
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So I tend to be more of a systematician in my study and in the way that I present material.
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Jack is a verse-by-verse teacher so in his class they learn verse-by-verse and right now they're in Genesis.
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But I do a systematic approach and it's just the two different ways that there are for studying scripture.
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So today we're going to be looking at the subject of Wesleyan theology.
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We have already looked at Roman Catholic theology.
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We've looked at natural theology.
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We've looked at Lutheran theology.
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We've looked at Reformed theology.
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And we've looked at Arminian theology.
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And Wesleyan theology is is Arminian at its core.
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So those things which we spent weeks and weeks and weeks learning about Arminianism, and for those of you who weren't here I do apologize, but if you do want to hear them they're on tape, but the things that we spent weeks and weeks weeks learning about Arminianism are still true in Wesleyanism.
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Wesleyanism is more focused on personal holiness and thus out of the Wesleyan movement grew two very distinct groups.
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The Methodists, and what is the idea of Methodist? What is that word? What's the root of Methodist? Method.
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And the idea of Methodism is the idea that there's a method to live by or a methodology whereby to become holy, to live a holy life.
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There's a method and that's where the term Methodist comes from.
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If you didn't know that's that's where that term comes from.
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But the other group which tends, which does trace its roots back to Wesleyanism is the Holiness movement.
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How many of you have been in a Holiness church? You even know what it is? Okay, you have? From Texas there's a lot of Pentecostals.
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Okay, and it does have a lot of Pentecostal influence.
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My mother still attends a lot, a Holiness church, and sometimes you'll even hear them refer to themselves as Congregational Methodist or Holiness.
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It's similar and depends on what movement they're a part of.
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So again, starting from the beginning if we think of Wesleyanism, out of that group at least two movements, we could say more, but Methodism and the Holiness movement.
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Now in your books we're going to just look at these.
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I'm sorry for those of you who don't have a page if you want to look on with someone else if y'all want to share.
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Under Theology it says, Wesleyan Theology is essentially Arminian.
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I've already said that.
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And very quickly, what is Arminian Theology? Arminian Theology believes in the freedom of the will.
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That is the kind of the hinge upon which Arminian Theology turns.
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It is on the freedom of the will.
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We spent five weeks in here talking about free will and how the reformed or Calvinistic view would differ from the Arminian view.
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Not to say that man isn't free or doesn't have a certain amount of moral freedom or ability to make choices, but Arminianism sees man as totally free.
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Calvinism sees man as bound in sin and not free until God so chooses to make him free.
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And Arminian would say a person is essentially free from birth, that they are not.
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Though they are sinners, they are not by nature unable to make choices towards God.
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That's the to make positive choices.
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Essentially not unable to please God.
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So that's where the difference really lies.
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Wesleyan Theology would teach Arminianism and yet has a stronger sense of the reality of sin and the dependence on divine grace.
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It was Wesley, I believe, who coined the term prevenient grace.
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Let me try that again.
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I think I'm right.
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Prevenient grace.
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What is prevenient grace? Well, Jesus said, no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.
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That's the words of Jesus Christ.
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So the Bible teaches very clearly that before man can come to Christ, and when we know what coming to Christ means, it means coming to him in faith or coming to him as a disciple.
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Before man can do that, God must do something in his heart.
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Why is that? Well, it is because man is sinful and his natural proclivity is towards sin.
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His natural proclivity is opposed to God.
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And so his very nature is opposed to the things of God.
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And God must override that or overcome that through grace for us to even desire to come to him.
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Wesley did not deny that.
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Wesley did not deny that God must act first in the position of the saving relationship.
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Where Wesley and we or Calvinism would disagree, and I would just, you know, obviously people know where I am on this.
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I'm Reformed.
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Where we would disagree from Wesley is Wesley believed in what is called prevenient grace and that is that God has essentially given every single person, every individual in the world, just enough grace to make them no longer totally depraved.
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They're just enough grace to rise them up out of their deadness to where they can make a positive response.
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So essentially Calvin would argue that God chooses to whom he would give his grace and to what extent he would give his grace.
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Wesley would say, no, God has chosen, he still says his choice, but God has chosen to give everyone at least an equal starting point of grace to where everyone has the ability to come.
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It's man-centered.
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Well, it becomes man-centered over time, but you see at least, you see the differentiation of the starting point.
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Calvin is saying God chooses to whom he will give his grace and there are those who are vessels of mercy, those are those are vessels of wrath, that's the Apostle Paul saying that Romans 9.
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And he makes the distinction between Pharaoh and Moses in Romans 9.
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He says Pharaoh was hardened, Moses was given grace, you know, there's a distinction there.
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No one would argue that Moses received the same grace that Pharaoh did.
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I hope no one would try to argue that.
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Maybe you would, but I don't know.
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But if you want to argue that Pharaoh received the exact same benefits that Moses did, I think that you would be arguing against the text.
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But essentially, Wesley said, no God, he does.
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He gives everyone equal position to start from.
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Well, I've often labeled this, and it's not from me, it was actually from Dr.
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White, peanut butter grace.
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Because when you put peanut butter on something, you want to make sure it gets everywhere, right? You don't put peanut butter on half the bread if you're making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right? You want a peanut butter spread over the whole piece of bread, because at least I do.
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I don't like it.
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First of all, why would anybody want only one half a sandwich? No, no, okay.
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But if you're putting peanut butter on bread, you want to get it everywhere, right? Well, that's sort of the idea of this prevenient grace, is that it sort of spreads out everywhere.
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It's intended to get everyone receives this prevenient grace.
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Partially the bread, not totally the bread, which is what he believes.
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And he wouldn't say such a thing, but essentially that's what it becomes.
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Everyone is given enough grace at least to be lifted out of the deadness to be able to give a response, okay? And so that is how they would deal with John 6, where Jesus said no one can come unless it's granted him by the Father.
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And they would simply say, well, everyone has been granted this ability by the Father, and thus...
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Exactly.
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It does come back to the question, well, why would Jesus even mention it then? Why would it be a necessity for us to know that if everyone already has it? But, you know, yeah.
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Yeah, it really does, it leaves a lot of things to question.
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But prevenient grace is the big Wesleyan teaching regarding some of the subjects that we've talked about over the past few weeks as far as how the will interacts with salvation.
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How do they look at revelation? Well, the Bible is divine revelation, the ultimate standard for faith and practice.
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However, there are four means by which truth is mediated.
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Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.
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This is called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.
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Even though the scripture is inspired, there are four ways by which we receive truth.
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Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.
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Now, I didn't plan to spend more than one week on this on Wesleyanism, but they're pushing my button here.
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Looking at the Wesleyan Quadrilateral for a second, is there anything wrong with reason, or tradition, or experience? Okay.
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Yeah, you gotta be careful because it leads you in the wrong direction many times.
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Okay, so we say there's something wrong with all of them, right? Potentially.
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Is there anything good about those three things? Yeah, so I think, and like I said from the beginning, I want to be fair when I'm talking about, for instance, on the prevenient grace issue.
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I think that this is probably the only way that you can explain if you take an anti-reform position or an opposed to reform.
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I think it's the only way you can explain John 6.
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If no one can come unless the Father grants it to him, then everybody has to be granted, and thus you come up with the idea of prevention.
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It's the only way to explain it.
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Because here's the position that's taken by the Pelagians.
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Pelagians believe that everybody's able to come by nature.
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They don't need grace, essentially, and that was condemned as heresy in the fourth century.
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And that's the thing people confuse Wesleyans with Pelagians.
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They are not.
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Wesleyans do believe in the necessity of grace.
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Pelagians do not.
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I can point you to the fact, though, that most modern Arminians are at least semi-Pelagian.
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They believe in, essentially, that grace is, while it may be necessary, it's really not sufficient.
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So that's part of the problem.
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Oh, I know, exactly.
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It's called the Wesleyan quadrilateral.
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Four means by which we receive truth.
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Yeah, four ways to receive truth.
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One is scripture.
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The second is reason.
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Now let's talk very quickly about reason.
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When man fell in the garden, several things happened all at once.
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One, he was able to experience shame, and we know that because what was the first thing that Adam and Eve did after they sinned? They clothed themselves.
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Well, actually, first they tried to hide themselves with fig leaves, right? They tried to clothe themselves.
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For what purpose? Because they understood, now, shame.
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They understood that they were naked, and they were ashamed.
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Up until that point, it says they were naked, not ashamed.
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Everything changed mentally.
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How they saw themselves, how they saw God, how they saw the world around them, everything changed.
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Was man's reason affected by the fall? I would argue, absolutely.
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We have, in theological terms, what we call the noetic effect of the fall.
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Noetic does not mean Noah.
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People think, hey, he's talking about the ark.
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No, wrong Noah.
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The noetic effect is the effect on our mind, the ability to reason.
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We see this primarily in the New Testament, where it talks about the fact that those who seek after wisdom, right, they deny the truth of God, and they suppress that truth, and replace the truth of God with a lie.
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They replace it, and they suppress it, and the truth that they know inherently, they put something else in its place, right? That's part of the noetic effect of the fall.
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We are not reasonable always, and we're not reasonable perfectly.
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Argue with somebody over the subject of abortion, and you will see the anti-reason things come out.
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It's against reason, the things that are often said in that conversation.
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Just absolutely opposed to reason.
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Well, it's wrong to kill a woman who's pregnant because you're killing two people, and will condemn you, and put you in jail for killing two people if you kill a pregnant woman, but it's not wrong if that same pregnant woman goes and kills that child.
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You see? That's ridiculous, and it's unreasonable to say that in one case, it's double homicide, but in another case, it's an absolute fundamental right.
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It's always reasonable, except about things of faith.
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Except, yeah.
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Especially abortion.
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I mean, he starts screaming.
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Yeah, lose mind, and so we see...
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When I teach Genesis, that's what we realize.
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God said everything was perfect when he made it, and so man would have been perfect, and then his brain would have been perfect.
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I mean, he probably had a hundred percent capacity of his brain, or today, the smartest people may have used ten percent, you know, because of the fall of man, the decline of man over the centuries and the millennia, and so his reason would have been perfect until then, and then it was corrupted.
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His brain right there on the spot, and it began that decline, as you said.
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It's just...
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Now, reason that a person does things, you can't trust that.
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You can't trust your own reason.
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I don't trust my own reason, because I'll talk to myself and tell myself it sounds good, but then later, you know, then fortunately, I have a wife that will tell me that it's not.
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No, but really, you can't do that, you know.
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Just made me think.
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That's why I laughed.
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I said to myself, Self? Yeah.
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But that's true.
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Our reason is corrupt.
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That's a word you use.
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I like it.
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Our reason has been corrupted, and thus, one of the ways that we see our corrupt in reasoning is when we start reasoning our own justification for misbehavior.
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Think of the man who says, well, I can cheat on my wife because my wife doesn't satisfy me.
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He's just...
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what? I'm sorry? Yeah, he's reasoning.
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He's making a justification mentally.
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I can do this because she didn't do that, or even think of even something even heinous.
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I can punch my wife in the face because she didn't make a good dinner.
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That's terrible.
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No, not even funny.
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I see your wife going to punch you.
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No, the point, you know there are guys who do that.
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There are men who abuse their wives physically.
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I think it's one of the most stomach-turning things in the world.
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Somebody who would abuse his wife physically or anyway.
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Huh? Mentally, too.
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That's what I'm saying.
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Yeah, any type of abuse is terrible.
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And so when I think about that, these men justify that in their mind with that corrupt reasoning that we use.
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We use corrupt reasoning and we justify ourselves.
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So now on the other side of the coin, and just to...
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not that I'm defending Wesleyan theology here, but I do want to say at least on the other side of the coin, there is such a thing as reason and logic, and those things must be applied to our understanding of the scripture.
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For instance, the arguments often that we have about theology, you can tell one or both sides are not using reason or logic when you're having the discussion.
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For instance, on the subject of...
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boy, I'm going to throw a big one out.
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The subject predestination, you know, is often a big issue that comes up in people's conversations.
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You want to talk about how God knows, what God knows, and all these things.
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And you'll talk to someone who doesn't believe in predestination.
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They'll say, well, they'll say the number of people who are going to heaven isn't fixed, that it's open, okay? The same person will often say, God knows for certain everyone who will be saved.
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So it can only be one or the other.
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It is either fixed because he knows it, or he doesn't know it if it's not fixed.
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It can't be both.
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You cannot have the same or two different things at the same time.
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How many of you familiar with the law of non-contradiction, the Aristotelian logic? You cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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That's the basis of all truth.
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You cannot be and not be at the same time in the same relationship.
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For instance, if I said that animal's white, and then in my next breath I said that animal's black, well, if I'm talking about a zebra, I'm not wrong.
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But if I said that animal's not black, and I'm talking about a baboon that clearly is, I'm wrong because I've made a statement of fact that's not black.
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If I said you're, maybe a better example, if I said Tiffany is here, and I said Tiffany's not here, now in an hour from now she won't be here.
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So at a different time, or in a different relationship, I could be speaking the truth.
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But if I said you are here and you're not here, at the same time and in the same relationship, that would be a contradiction, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I'm not seeing the, I'm not seeing the truth.
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That's the way that reason, go ahead.
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In the truth section? Yeah, that's the way reason operates.
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Reason operates on rules, and this is one of the reasons why I believe that God exists.
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Because the world operates based on principles of logic that without a, without a design or a designer behind those laws of logic, we'd have no reason to know anything.
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It's like C.S.
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Lewis said, if I didn't believe my mind was designed to think, then I would have no reason to believe my own thoughts.
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If I didn't think my mind was designed to think, I would have no reason to trust what I think.
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It was not designed to do that.
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If it was just, if I'm a part of a cosmic burp that happened, you know, four and a half billion years ago, and the earth just sort of spit forth some chemicals, and those chemicals sort of mingled together and created the first life form, which was simply a small single cell, and that cell grew up, and over, and over, and over, and over, and now it's me.
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It has turned into this glorious thing, which you see before you.
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All of those millions of years.
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Yeah, you're laughing.
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Yeah, that's right.
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How, why should I trust my own thoughts? Right? Well, I can't at least trust my thoughts to an extent because I know that I'm made in the image of God.
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If I didn't believe I was made in the image of God, I wouldn't have any reason to trust anything.
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I'm an a-atheist.
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I don't believe in atheists.
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That's what, a-atheist.
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I'm an a-atheist or whatever, because I think that the atheist, while he may deny God exists, he can't live in a world where that is reality.
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He'd have no reason to believe that what he believes in or thinks has any real meaning or value at all, because there's no design behind it.
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Everything is simply in flux, and it's simply the part of a, of a, of a giant cosmic accident.
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It's one of the reasons I like the reasoning that the thing...
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Yes, he, he was a didactic teacher.
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Correct.
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Because this is true, this is true, and because this is true, and that's how reason works.
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To that cultures, those cultures there in Greece and Rome and places that had that and taught perfectly, and it was beautiful.
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Exactly, and so we can't deny the place of reason, and that's my point, is I'm kind of coming to Wesleyanism's defense in a sense.
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You can't deny the place of reason, but here's where the issue becomes the problem.
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When reason is put on the same layer as scripture, when you have the quadrilateral, and when you have quadrilateral, lateral means on an equal plane, when you have quadrilateral, that means four things that are equal.
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If you're putting reason next to scripture, then what you're saying essentially is that your ability to think is right up there with scripture, and here's what happens as a result.
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I know the world couldn't be created in six days, because my reason tells me that, and so I can't believe what the Bible says, so I have to re-interpret it.
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So see that's where it becomes my reason takes the place, and I do believe in six-day creation, just want you to know that what I'm saying is I'm the, I'm playing the part of the person who says my reason is on par with scripture, my reason says this can't happen, so it actually goes above.
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Well, reason goes above scripture.
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Anytime you put something on equal playing field with scripture, and it gets to be the arbiter, then it goes above it.
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Yes.
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So do they believe? Yes, absolutely.
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What about Arminius? If you don't know the answer.
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I don't know the answer.
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I would assume, you know, let me tell you this about inerrancy.
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Inerrancy, as an issue, is more of a 20th century issue, because that's where the, what is it, the modernist movement, the enlightenment, all those things produced the critics of scripture.
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Prior to that, even our founding fathers, who weren't all necessarily Christian, still deferred to scripture as truth, you know what I mean, as holding truth.
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So the idea that the issue of the inerrancy of scripture, I'm not going to say every Christian for the last 2,000 years believed in six-day creation, I'm not going to say every Christian believed in all these things that we might debate today, because sometimes they weren't even an issue.
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It wasn't the issue of the day.
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It wasn't, you know, if you ever want to know what the primary theological issue of the day was, go back to the creeds and the councils that were dealing with the issues, and you'll find out what they were really dealing with.
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And let me tell you something, in the fourth century, nobody was dealing with six-day creationism.
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It wasn't an issue.
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They didn't care, because as far as they were concerned, God could create the world in a minute.
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They didn't have an evolutionary construct to fight against.
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They didn't have that battle to fight against.
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So the idea that 4.5 billion years versus 7,000 years wasn't even an issue.
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Who cares? God created, not a big deal.
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But who is Jesus Christ? That's what they were doing with the fourth century.
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So you see the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Chalcedon, all these councils arising over the question of, was he God? Was he man? Was he both? And how was he both? And that was the issue of the day.
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So like I said, inerrancy really became an issue after it rose to the questions of the critics.
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And so I would say, was Arminian, did he believe in the inerrancy of scripture? I would say most likely.
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I don't even know that that language would have been used, but certainly I think you would.
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You hit, you touched on the high point there about the reasoning though, and within the churches of the last 150 years, that's been a thing of elevating this human reasoning to explain away what we can't explain, quote, scientifically in the Bible.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, my reason tells me the sun can't stop in the sky.
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But yeah, the Bible says the sun stood still for three hours.
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So either the earth stopped, either the sun, the sun's not technically moving, well it is moving, but it's not we're orbiting it.
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So either the earth stopped or there was a visual effect that God used to make them see this.
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However it worked, we don't know, but that's what they saw.
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There is something we call, oh what's the language, phenomenological language.
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You ever heard that term? Phenomenological language is the language of appearance.
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What do we see versus what it's, for instance, there's a text that talks about the hare chewing the cud.
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Well, hares don't chew cud, but they do make their mouth, can we do that again? They make their mouth do that, so the appearance to the worker of the field is the cow does that, he's chewing the cud, the hare does that, he's chewing the cud.
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The phenomenological language is not meant to be overly scientific, and we use it today.
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When you wake up in the morning, you turn on your television set, and there's that guy on television telling you the sun rises this morning at seven o'clock.
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You don't call down to the station say, look here you nutcase, I know that sun isn't going anywhere, we're turning toward that sun, and we're the ones moving, and we're the ones going, and it's not rising, you're nuts.
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You don't do that because you're not an idiot, right? But we do that with scripture.
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But wouldn't that be foolish for us to look at somebody who says the sun rising, because we know that's phenomenological language, that's the way we see it, and we would be so foolish to call the person and say, you're wrong, you're not even a scientist, you call yourself a meteorologist, you're such a fool.
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So dumb, right? But that's what we do with the Bible.
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We see the Bible using a language, it's not necessarily modern scientific language, it's the language of the appearance, phenomenological language, and we see that and we say, oh man, they were so ignorant.
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They were just describing what they saw.
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Doesn't make them ignorant, it makes them honest.
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So, you know, we have to be able to understand, however that sun stood still, that's exactly what they saw, and however God did it, it's what happened, and we have to be honest about saying we don't know how it happened, we know it happened, and we know that God can do anything, and reason dictates that if I were to base all of my understanding of the world on how it rotates and how the scientists tell us, then it can't stop in the sky.
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Chaos would ensue, and yet I have to step back and say, but scripture says that through him all things live and move and have their existence or being in him.
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So if that is true, that means God can do anything.
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God can set water up as a heap on both sides and let the Israelites walk through on dry land.
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He can do that because he's not bound by my reason, because guess what? Water doesn't stand up.
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If you pick water up, it falls right back down.
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And if you didn't get it up, it would be muddy and a muddy mess on the bottom.
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Yeah, it's going to be mud.
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I think I'm out of time.
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What's my time look like? I have 12 minutes left? No, you have 12.
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Oh, okay, so I've got three minutes left.
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I was like, I got 12 whole minutes.
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I have no time.
33:29
All right, well, you know what? I was wanting to get to Wesleyan perfectionism today because that was the real issue of Wesleyanism that I wanted to deal with, but this quadrilateral does have some things for us to talk about because next week we're going to deal with the issue of tradition and experience because those are two things that are important.
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Traditions are important.
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People, that sounds bad.
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It's not bad.
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Traditions aren't bad.
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It depends on what they are.
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It depends upon which they are based.
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There's nothing wrong with a tradition.
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What did Jesus condemn? Teaching your traditions as doctrine.
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That was the condemnation.
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You teach as doctrine the traditions of men.
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We have traditions in our family.
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I dress a certain way because it's my tradition to do so.
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It doesn't make me say that you have to do this to be saved or anything else.
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That would be foolish, but we're going to talk next week about tradition and about experience.
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Experience isn't bad, but when experience is raised to the point of being the arbiter of truth.
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In fact, this week, if you get a chance, go to our website.
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I have an article that I wrote last year.
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It's entitled, A Man with an Experience, I think is the title of it.
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In fact, email me and I'll send it to you because I can't remember the title right off, but essentially, have you ever heard somebody say, a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument.
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You ever heard somebody say that? It's very popular in Pentecostal circles.
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They'll say, well, I've had an experience.
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You can argue all you want.
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My experience trumps your argument.
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It is unblocked section.
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And experience is in the title, I believe.
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But what they're saying is, if I've had an experience, you can't argue with that because you didn't have the experience and my experience trumps all arguments.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And that's the thing.
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If your experience doesn't line up with Scripture, then your experience is ultimately, we don't know where it came from.
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How do we know that our experience isn't demonic? You know, people talk about speaking in tongues.
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I'm going to be preaching on this in a few weeks.
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People talk about speaking in tongues and how that's such, that's like the highest point of worship is to do this thing called speaking in tongues.
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You realize that every culture in the world has people in the culture who speak in tongues, tribes, and even in certain sects of Islam and other places have these ecstatic talking.
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It's not limited to Christianity.
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If it was a true biblical thing, why would we see it imbibed even in religions which are on their face false and paganistic? Isn't there some Indian like Kundalini? I'm not familiar with that term, but I know what you're talking about.
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It's throughout, ecstatic speech is throughout all cultures as a way to express spiritual experiences.
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So the fact that it has been brought into Christianity, and I will argue in the sermon at least, that what we see today is not what the Bible describes as speaking in tongues.
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But anyhow, this is again is where experience trumps scripture.
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The scripture gives us parameters.
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Those parameters are thrown out the window because I had an experience and you can't question it.
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That's where it becomes dangerous.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father, thank you for our time to study together.
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I pray that it's been fruitful for your people and has been used to encourage them, and ultimately, Lord, that you will use all this to glorify yourself.
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In Jesus' name, amen.