Lesson 2: Inspiration - Verbal and Plenary, Part 2

Kootenai Church

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The Promises of the New Covenant, Part 3 – Hebrews 8:12

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Alright, so if you have your books if you're new here and you want to follow along with us You can grab a copy of the the notebook

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It's in the box there at the back If you don't have one of those or if you forgot to bring yours with you Or if you need to pick up another one because you've lost it since last week.

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That's where you can get your copy All right, so I'm gonna begin by reading 2nd

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Timothy chapter 3 verses 14 and Following and then a passage out of 2nd

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Peter 2nd Timothy chapter 3 beginning of verse 14 You however continue in the things you have learned to become convinced of Knowing from whom you have learned them and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom

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That leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction for training and righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work and Then 2nd

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Peter chapter 1 verse 16 for we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power

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And coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty For when he received honor and glory from God the

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Father such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain so we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as To a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts

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But know this first of all that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation

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For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. Let's pray together My lord, we do ask your blessing upon our time here in this study of Sunday school help us to understand the doctrine of inspiration and as I as I teach

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I pray that you'd help me to make it clear what it is and what it is not and that you would bless this time our fellowship and our understanding and our thinking that it may be that we may think your thoughts after you and We may honor you in the way that we think about the word that you have given to us

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And we pray your blessing to this end and the assistance of your Holy Spirit to that end as well in Christ's name all right, so we started talking about the doctrine of inspiration last week and I'm just going to give a little bit of quick review we

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I gave you a definition of inspiration actually two different definitions of inspiration and then we saw that the doctrine of Inspiration and the process of inspiration basically has three essential and key elements divine causality

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Meaning that God is the prime mover in him making revelation of himself to men Second human or prophetic agency that is the individual instruments through which

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God Spoke or moved to give us his word and those two things added together divine causality and prophetic agency

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Give us a written authority. That is that what is written what is given by inspiration? What is inspired has an authority behind it because it is

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God's Word. It's God himself who has breathed it out and then we looked at the difference between Revelation and illumination.

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Those are two related concepts Revelation is the truth for the content of what is revealed Inspiration is the process of revealing that truth and then illumination is the understanding of the truth as it has been revealed

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And then I gave you a few brief Clarifications on the doctrine of inspiration that the Bible is inspired and not the writers when we say that something is inspired

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We're not talking about the inspired writers It's the product not the people that are inspired so that what is breathed out is not the people themselves

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But the written revelation is what we refer to as being breathed out Inspiration is the process by which that happens so that what we have is an inspired product.

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We don't have inspired writers We have an inspired product and then the second clarification I gave you it gave you was that inspiration extends only to the original autographs

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That is the manuscripts the autograph that Peter wrote that Paul wrote that John wrote that Isaiah wrote those are what is inspired

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And so the question that concerns us is do we have reason to believe that we have an accurate copy an actual?

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Representation of what was originally written since we do not have any of the original documents that the

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Apostles wrote Or that the prophets wrote and then the third clarification was that in inspiration is in some sense inexplicable

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There is a mystery to this. There's questions that we can't answer in terms of inspiration we take as an article of faith in some ways because God has revealed that this is the case that Scripture is inspired and given to us and God breathed and the same pertains to the doctrines of infallibility and preservation

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There is an element of mystery here or unknown when we talk about the doctrine of inspiration All right

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Then there was a question that I want to clarify because Brad asked it and I didn't understand the question I think he asked he asked the question just fine, but later on Sunday after the lesson we were kind of going over and he said let me clarify my question because I don't think you got it

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And I didn't his question was Are the is Illumination involved in the translation of Scripture and I didn't understand what he was asking later on I did what

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Brad meant was in order to get an accurate translation of Scripture is the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit necessary to that In order to get an accurate translation and the answer to that is yes

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It is the translators have to have some understanding of the written text What it is that they're translating the argument of the author the context what the author is trying to say, etc

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You have to have some understanding of that because they're trying to they're trying to translate as best as they can

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Not just the word -for -word Translation of the text the translators are trying to give us an understandable

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English equivalent of the original text And so they have to have some understanding of the book of the context that they're translating in order to do that So illumination is necessary to an accurate translation of Scripture.

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All right. So now today I want to give a few I Want to contrast this doctrine of inspiration with three different views of inspiration that are unbiblical or wrong

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So we're on letter E in your notebook three views of inspiration There is first the modernist view and this is the view that says the

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Bible contains the Word of God The Bible contains the Word of God The modernist view says that certain parts of Scripture are divine and true other parts of Scripture Are human and they have error

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So this is the modernist view that that within the pages of Scripture God's Word is in there And you have to get to figure out what what part is

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God's Word and what part is just man's idea or man's word So the Bible is it's like sifting through the haystack for the pins and the needles that are there

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You're looking for truth amongst its pages because not everything in there is true But there is things in there that are true

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And so the Bible as we have it those 66 books Contained the Word of God. Our job is to find out or figure out what parts of it are the

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Word of God That was my next question.

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How do you think they determine that? Yeah, how do you think they determine that Preconceived notion, you know what ends up being human and filled with error in their determination

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All the stuff that they don't like all the stuff that doesn't fit our cultural conventions or the spirit of the age

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That's usually the stuff that ends up being man's contribution to it. And so what in today's day, what would that be?

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anything about homosexuality Anything about women in ministry or women's roles in leadership in a church

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Right the definition of marriage Creation or evolution Anything that's in right that Anything convicting

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Yes Any kind of message of judgment right Sean the sovereignty of God Okay, so you can see how it becomes

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Scripture then becomes something it becomes the the tool or the piece of play -doh for the interpreter Right when you when you have a modernist view of Scripture that inside these pages are gems those gems are come to us from God That's divine truth, but it's

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Surrounded and kind of clouded over by a whole bunch of elements of human error. That's the modernist view The second view is the neo -orthodox view and we're gonna spend a little bit more time on this the neo -orthodox view and this is the

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View that says the Bible becomes the Word of God The Bible becomes the Word of God There's a little slight rhetorical sleight of hand here that I'm gonna explain here in just a moment

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This this view says that God speaks to me through the Bible when I encounter it personally God speaks to me through the

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Bible when I encounter it personally The Bible is not Propositional truth true in and of itself

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Rather the Bible is an experiential truth It is it is true when

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I encounter it as truth when it it strikes me and it comes alive to me Okay, so this is the view that says

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I'm reading through Scripture And when a verse jumps off the page at me and grips my heart and I hear the

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Holy Spirit speak to me Through that verse that verse in that moment becomes the Word of God to me when it comes alive

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Now what what is the problem with that view of Scripture? Can you identify it? What if I'm reading through the

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Bible and it doesn't jump off the page of me? Is it still the Word of God? What if I'm reading through the

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Bible and I don't have any kind of subjective emotional Spiritual encounter with its truth or its pages or its message.

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Is it still the Word of God? Not according to the modern day neo -orthodox view The Bible becomes the

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Word of God only when I encounter it in a subjective Experiential or spiritual way When Scripture strikes me then it has become the

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Word of God to me This is neo -orthodox because it comes out of a sort of a liberal Protestant movement from the early 1900s

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Karl Barth, I don't know if you've heard of his his name in theological circles. It kind of came out of the the

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Would you call it the? It's the higher critical higher critical school of theology and thinking that was birthed in Germany amongst liberal

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German theologians Kind of in Bonhoeffer's time and around that era right prior to Bonhoeffer's time

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And it's this is a higher critical view of Scripture It says the Scripture only becomes the

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Word of God when it or Scripture It becomes the Word of God when I experience it or I encounter it in some sort of a subjective way

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So when I'm reading a verse and it speaks to me and I get an emotional feeling and the Holy Spirit bumps Holy ghost bumps or a liver quiver or something that really strikes me then then that's when that's when

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I'm hearing God speak in that Moment and just in case you think that this is odd or or crazy or it's something that's just relegated to some fringe movement

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I Spent an entire chapter on this subject in my book coming up because this is the way that most of evangelicalism

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Approaches the scriptures today and I'll give you an example by naming a few people that you may not like to hear me name

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But here we go Priscilla Schreier She is

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She has made Much out of this idea that God is speaking and whispering constantly and in your ear and all these various means

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She writes this in one of her books discerning the voice of God She says this again is another reason why staying deeply in God's Word is so vital to discerning his voice

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The more scripture you hide in your heart the more opportunity you give the Holy Spirit to bring it quickly to mind

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Punctuated at a specific moment with a personalized message for you You see the

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Bible not only provides the boundaries within which everything he says will fall It is the chief mechanism through which

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God will speak close quote Now if you don't understand exactly what the hearing from the voice of God people are teaching by that Here's here's what she means

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When you are reading scripture, it is the mechanism through which a personalized message for you will come

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So as your you need to immerse yourself and constantly be reading scripture I'd agree with that. We need to be reading scripture read it a lot.

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That is all good Most of us evangelicals would agree with that. We need to be reading scripture a lot. That is a very good thing

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But for them reading scripture a lot They recommend reading scripture a lot because it is while you're reading scripture that God speaks a personalized message for you

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That is something jumps off the page and you hear that voice of God To quote

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Shire again when God's Word leaps off the page This is quote when God's Word leaps off the page and grips you

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I mean stuns you as though you were awakened from a sleep by a thunderclap Don't rush ahead with your

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Bible reading stop right there lock on those words that have already locked eyes with your souls

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This isn't some random occurrence or coincidence. It is God himself speaking through his word

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It is the living Word of God at work close quote So what does she say is

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God himself speaking through his word? When it what stuns you grips you locks eyes with your soul, right?

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It is in that moment that you have an experience a personal experience with that. That's God speaking to you

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Let's see I would disagree with that when I am reading through the genealogies of 1st Corinth Chronicles chapters 1 through 11

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That is God speaking to me as well And I don't need a name to jump off the page that oh, that's what

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I need to name my grandson. I Don't I don't have a grandson. I don't have any plans for grandson anytime soon

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But I mean, I'm not naming kids anymore. So I got to use this that is an illustration so It is not what

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I'm reading through that and some name jumps off the page or I get some personal message through every other word or or some phrase that leaps off that tells me to go to the store and buy a turkey

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Or whatever That's not that itself is not the Word of God. The genealogy is the

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Word of God That is the Word of God and even When I hear a message where the Word of God is preached where I hear the

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Word of God read or I'm reading the Word Of God or I'm listening to the Word of God being read to me in some way Even though I may not have a personal liver quiver or get

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Holy Spirit bumps or feel something that really strikes me that is still inspired authoritative divinely given

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Word of God Scripture is the voice of God Not amongst the hearing the voice of God crowd

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For them scripture becomes the voice of God when it leaps off the page and grabs a hold of your heart and get your attention

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That's when it becomes the Word of God to you Let me give you some more quotes

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Priscilla Schreier quotes and Graham Lotz Quote when he speaks it is in a language of our personal lives through a verse or passage of Scripture that just seems to leap

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Off the page with your name on it close quote Shire writes this therefore the more acquainted you become with the word the more act

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Accurately, you'll be able to hear from him The Bible provides the framework into which his messages to you will come

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Anything the Spirit says will fall within the boundaries of what has already been written Scripture provides the close quote

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Scripture provides the framework into which his Word of God will come so it is in reading Scripture Those are the words that the

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Spirit of God is going to use to jump off the page to get your attention It's the framework into which the

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Word of God comes. No, it is the Word of God See, this is radically different view of Scripture and I'm emphasizing this so that we don't get caught up into a neo -orthodox

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View of Scripture, which is not orthodox at all. It's actually a heretical view of Scripture I want us to understand the difference between these things so that we're not caught off -guard

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We don't fall into this trap of thinking that that's this is what we mean when we speak of Scripture being the Word of God I'm looking for another quote here.

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I know I got a couple more Henry Blackaby From experiencing

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God quote the Bible describes God's complete revelation of himself to humanity It is a record of God's dealings with humanity and his words to them

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God speaks to you through the Bible Have you ever been reading the Bible when suddenly you're gripped by a fresh new understanding of the passage that was

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God speaking close quote That's Henry Blackaby. Henry Blackaby is a Southern Baptist. He has done more to advance the hearing the voice of God theology

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Among Southern Baptist and otherwise known cessationist than probably any other single individual in the history of humanity

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Henry Blackaby experiencing God Listen to what he said the Bible describes

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God's complete revelation of himself to humanity It is a record of God's dealing with humanity and his words to them

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The Bible is a record of God's words to them to people There's there's a there's a little sleight of hand that's going on and what

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Blackaby says is the Bible does the Bible describe God's complete revelation to men

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Or is the Bible God's complete revelation to men? See there's a difference between a description of my wife and my wife

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There's a difference between a description of God's words and God's Word The this the subtle distinction that is being played out in his words is a subtle distinction

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But it is a demonic and deceptive one. The Bible is not a record of God's Revelation the

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Bible is God's revelation and that difference is is that difference is important According to Blackaby quote when suddenly you're gripped by a fresh new understanding of the passage

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That was God speaking when you come to understand the spiritual meeting and application of a scripture passage. God's Spirit has been at work

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Let me give you an X. I'll give you an illustration That Blackaby provides

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Quote Earlier, I told you about our daughter Carrie's bout with cancer That was a difficult circumstance for our whole family

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The doctors prepared us for six or eight months of chemotherapy plus radiation. We knew God loved us we prayed what are you proposing to do in this experience that we need to adjust ourselves to as We prayed a scripture promise came that we believed was from God Not only did we receive the promise but we received letters and calls from many people who quoted the same scripture

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The verse reads the sickness is not into death But for the glory of God so that the Son of Man may be glorified through it

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John 11 verse 4 our sense was that God was speaking to us our sense that God was speaking to us grew stronger as The Bible prayer and the testimony of others believers began to line up and say the same thing

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So close quote now, do you see what Blackaby just did there? People began to give him the verse

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John 11 for this sickness is not unto death But it's for the glory of God so that the Son of Man may be glorified through it

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What does John 11 refer to does anybody know? It's the resurrection of somebody who was dead

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Lazarus yes So is John 11 verse 4 a promise that everybody gets to claim the sickness is not into death

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It's not is it it was a promise a description of a historical event that applied to one person in one circumstance and that was

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Lazarus and To one historical incident, which was Jesus's resurrection of Lazarus That's what it applied to But Blackaby started getting this from people and he felt the

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Lord speak this to him that this was his own personal message That the death of the sickness of his daughter was not into death

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That she would be healed from this and so he took this as God's Word now Thankfully and I am thankful for this that sickness did not result in death for his daughter

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His daughter did come through that and was healed of the cancer and and came through just fine and lived through it

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But does that validate Blackaby's use of that passage as his own personal message from God? It was taken out of context.

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You should never take anything out of context See the fact that everything worked out for Henry Blackaby in that situation, which is great

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It's not just does not justify him thinking that that was his own personal message How many people read those words from Blackaby faced a similar situation and heard

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God speak to them the exact same thing through John 11 verse? 4 but then it turned out that Their loved one died

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Right because that is not God's promise and just because it strikes you and you say oh This is God's personal message to me. You don't we don't claim scripture verses that way

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See this is a neo -orthodox view of scripture And it is a perspective that says it becomes

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God's personal message to me when it jumps off the page and warms my heart That's God's personal message to me and then he confirms it when other people abuse the passage in the same way

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That's God's confirmation to me, which is basically what he did Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah his observation. It seems as so much of this is experiential and emotional and not a detached Orthodox view of scripture in an intellectual sense and it is and I'm not

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I'm not suggesting We should never have emotions or that scripture should never impact us I'm not suggesting when I read through scripture and I get emotional

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I see a truth and it warms my heart that I should say. Oh, no, I need to suppress that emotion That's not good. That's not what

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I mean. But what I do mean is that when that happens this I'm not I'm not getting anything different from the

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Word of God and that's it's not but it's not then that the scriptures becoming the Word of God it was the Word of God last year when

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I read that passage and it didn't strike me just as it is the Word Of God this year when I read that passage and it did strike me. It is still

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God's Word It doesn't become such by by my response to it All right, my response to scripture or what happens to me emotionally does not make it the

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Word of God It doesn't that's not how inspiration works. Yes, Ken Right, they could they could hear

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God speak to them through that you mean? Yeah Yeah, you could have the same I mean I could

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I could Look, I read I read endurance earn it Ernest Shackleton's voyage across and I failed

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X Antarctic expedition And I've read that book a couple of different times I think four different times and man I just get goosebumps every time

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I read that book and the story of that does that mean that scripture? Right, we can have this kind of reader response to almost anything

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Words can jump off of you off the page of a Chinese menu a Chinese food menu to you And if it warms your heart, does that mean that God's speaking to you?

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No, that's not that's not how this works That's not how any of this works All right. So that's the neo -orthodox view of scripture.

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Let me see if I have another example I Know I cite

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I cite Mark Batterson and Dallas Willard That's good.

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It's most of it's covered by red ink. Anyway, I'm still revising it. All right, so That's the neo -orthodox view

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And like I said, I wanted to take a couple moments on that just so that you're able to hear the subtle distinction When we talk about scripture, it's not becoming the

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Word of God. It is the Word of God. Yeah, Jess Yeah, yeah

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Jess's comment was that Phil Johnson did a critique of experiencing God and it was it was right on I've heard I've heard the message where he says that Henry Blackaby basically teaches you need to have some sort of a subjective experience to hear

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God speak So I I won't ruin too much more of the book for that way you'll have a reason to read it when it does come

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Out. So let's move on to the demythologizing neo -orthodox view. So we talked about the modernist view the

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Bible The Bible contains the Word of God the neo -orthodox view the Bible becomes the Word of God the demythologizing neo -orthodox

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View a bunch of different bunch of big words there. The Bible is made the Word of God Made MADE made the

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Word of God. We make it the Word of God through something that we do And here's what we have to do to the Word of God in order to here's what we have to do to scripture in order

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To make it God's voice or God's Word When the Bible is stripped of all of its myths, then we get to the real message, which is the

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Word of God So the truth of scripture is shrouded in all of the mythology that is attached to scripture

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And we need to demythologize it. We need to figure out. What is the mythology of scripture? Remove that out of the way and once you take off the veneer of the mythology of it all of the stuff that we can't

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Trust, you know the the miracles the supernatural elements the allegories and the poetry and all that so once you get rid of all of the mythology of scripture, then you can see the

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Word of God for what it is and Once you get to the truth you do the demythologize it and arrive at its meaning and you get to then you get to the truth

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And that truth is the Word of God so in some ways the Bible contains the Word of God, but the demythologizing view says that in all of scripture you have to strip it of its mythology and then you when you get to that when

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You stripped it of its mythology and then you understand the meaning behind it that meaning. That's the Word of God This is an inquiry

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This is just as subjective as either of the other two approaches because you end up once you demythologize it

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Then whatever meaning you come up with by whatever means you use to strip away the mythology That meaning then becomes the

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Word of God and and we could have different approaches and if we could demythologize Passages of scripture in different ways.

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So this is what this approach would look like the demythologizing neo -orthodox view The resurrection of Jesus Christ is just a myth

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But that story illustrates the fact that through our own personal faith we can become new inside That is the

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Word of God in the resurrection account, right? whether as Spong was his last name.

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He was an Episcopal John Shelby Spong He was an Episcopal preach priest and I'm not sure if he died or if he's still alive

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But he was within recent years. He said that it really doesn't matter whether the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened or not

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What really matters is that we understand the meaning of the resurrection accounts their historicity is up for grabs and we don't care about that We need to understand the meaning of it.

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So what's the meaning of will you strip all of the mythology of the resurrection away? And all the stuff about new bodies and empty tombs and women running and all of that stuff all of that stuff

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It's just all myth. It's just the myth around it The central truth is that you and I need to be made new

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Like Jesus was made new in the resurrection account when you and I are made new inside When we realize we need to be made new inside.

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That's the Word of God. That's the message the message you need to be made new That's the Word of God in the mythologized resurrection account.

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See how this works Yeah, so you can see how this becomes a ball of play -doh that you can just twist into any shape that you want, right

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What is the they do the same thing with the creation account? The creation narrative is only a legend Can't be taken.

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Literally. It's not history. It's just a legend We can't understand anything about the age of the earth or the order of creation or the significance of men or the role of animals

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Or or the purpose behind creation all of that just that does none of that matters All that matters is the meaning of the creation account

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So they would say what creation really shows us is God's care for what exists and The reality of evil in our world which threatens to harm us personally.

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That's the meaning of the creation story It's it's God's care for his creation and that there's evil in the world that threatens us

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That's what you're supposed to take out of the creation account So you strip away all the mythology of seven days and the order of creation and man and this talking snake

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Come on, who believes in a talking snake right the serpent that talks seriously and one man one woman naked in a garden

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Right. Is that really paradise to anybody? No, so that's that's a myth That's all that's mythology We strip away all of that get rid of all that and what do we come up with God really cares for his creation?

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See that message behind all the mythology. That's the Word of God That's the demythologizing neo -orthodox view

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Any questions on any of those three before we move on Yeah, Brad are all of those me really hung up on this illumination thing

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Aren't you are all of those may be examples of misapplication of illumination? Well, no,

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I would say that those those three views are going to be different than Misunderstanding illumination or not understanding illumination because illumination is gonna look differently in each one of those three views

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So those are really found These are really foundational ideas that would would affect how one thinks illumination comes about So for instance, if I hold to a demythologizing neo -orthodox view of Scripture My way of demythologizing that illumination is going to be different than your way of demythologizing that and coming to some understanding of what it means

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Right, maybe maybe my demythologizing of the creation account Maybe the message behind the creation account is

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I went after I demythologize it is that people should be eating animals Because we're a higher order of creation from that see that that then becomes the

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Word of God. Amen Right So you see it? You're what you think is the

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Word of God in any demythologized account or passage ends up being your assessment of what you think that means what you say that that means and Then who's to go to who's to go to battle over what that passage really means?

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Because your perspective on my different your perspective and your perspective and my perspective and we could come up with whether there's 60 70 people

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Here we come up with 70 different ideas of what the creation account means and who's to say who's right? And this is the point behind those for those doctrines

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There's nobody to say who is right because that Word of God is for all of us, right? It's my personal understanding of the

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Word of God and you can't take that from me and you can't second -guess that Does that answer your question

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Brad Okay, if I did if I got it wrong again come up to me afterwards and I'll correct at the beginning of next week

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Sean Would these views be considered heretical views?

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Yes, I believe these are heretical views because it comes to the nature of Scripture itself What I think is happening in modern evangelicalism is you have people who do not understand that these are heretical views of Scripture That adopt some of the language and the practice that comes from that unknowingly or unwittingly

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Am I saying that black be and Shire are heretics? No, it's not what I would say based upon how they treat

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Scripture I think that they have been inculcated and indoctrinated into an approach Scripture and understanding Scripture That is in itself heretical, but I think that is unknowingly.

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They're not They're not material heretics. They are What's the other view?

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There's two ways of describing heresy material heresy and They're accidental heretics

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What they're what they're expressing is heretical doctrine in the same way that if I asked you to define the doctrine of the Trinity to Most people in here.

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Well, no, I wouldn't say that most people in here Probably most people most evangelical churches if you ask them to define the doctrine of the

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Trinity what you would get from them would be heresy They don't understand it. They say oh, yeah God's like an egg You know that there's the yolk and there's the white and there's the shell and the three things make up the one

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God or God's like A piece of piece of pie that you split into three. That's all three sections on the outside But all together it's the same in the middle a nice Juicy apple pie

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God is like that or God is God is the Father and then he's the Son and then he's the Holy Spirit You know all these examples are giving you a heretical view of the

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Trinity unknowingly They're communicating heresy, but it's not that they have adopted this and and they should be open to correction to correct the heresy

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That makes sense, so yes, these are heretical views of Scripture. They're not Orthodox views of Scripture They're not

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I would even I wouldn't even call them aberrant views But but one of the things one of the advantages that you have in going through this and listening to this is that you're gonna be

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Able to identify hopefully when when somebody is not using proper language to describe an

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Orthodox view of Scripture Peter Yeah, well, we'll deal with that later on in translation the translation issue

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Cornell. Do you have something? Yeah, yeah, this is a this is a postmodern view of truth

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That everybody arrives at their own version of the truth and what's true for me is not necessarily true for you so you and I can read the same passage of Scripture and you come up with one idea and I come up with another idea and These are both the

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Word of God to us That's postmodernism at its finest and who's to say that you're right and I'm wrong or I'm right and you're wrong

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Nobody can actually say that It becomes a self -interpretation see then the then the standard here for our view of what is

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Scripture and what is God's Word becomes the response of the reader and We don't believe that we believe that that the meaning of Scripture is not determined by the response of the reader

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It is determined by the intention of the author Can't catch that difference The meaning of Scripture is not determined by the response of the reader what

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I think about it It is determined by the intention of the author and the Bible students

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Number one concern should be to ask the question. What is the intention of the author in this passage? What is the author trying to communicate to his audience using this language these words

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That's the meaning that I want to get to what it means to me is completely irrelevant. See that's neo -orthodoxy That's that's the demythologizing view.

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That's the modernist view what it means to me You don't sit around and I call them SYI Bible studies share your ignorance We all sit around and we share our ignorance on what a passage scripture teaches

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We read it and say what does that mean to you? Tell us tell us how you respond to that. It's quite frankly It's irrelevant how you respond to it.

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I don't care about that. You shouldn't care about that. Nobody should care about that It doesn't matter what anybody feels about it Well, how many thinks about it how anybody responds to it that that is irrelevant to the number one primary question was what does the author?

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mean in this passage of Scripture, what is his intended meaning and and and Bible students who differ on that issue ought to be able to offer their

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Perspectives and their arguments for what they why they think this is the intended meaning of the author, but see Then what we're talking about is something objective.

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It's outside of us, right? We're talking about what is true of him in that situation and what he means in that situation

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We're not talking about how we respond to it. We're talking about what he intended. That's objective. It's outside of us

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It's not subjective dependent on me the subject and how I subjectively in my emotions respond to it

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Thomas, okay good

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Yeah, good because I said that the Trinity is the Father the Son the Holy Spirit that what I meant to communicate was the heretical view is

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That God is the Father and then he is the Son and then he is the Spirit in a chronological fashion

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That's modalism God being three different modes or presentations of his being the Trinity is

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Father Son and Holy Spirit But Father Son and Holy Spirit coexist at the same time all sharing fully the divine nature

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That's a biblical doctrine of Trinity But the idea that that God became the Father and then he becomes came the Son and now he's becoming the

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Holy Spirit That's modalism and that is heresy. So good. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify that All right.

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Any other questions before we move on to letter F? Steve And unless they're teaching at a seminary some unless they're teaching theology at Princeton They're not gonna come out and say

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I have a neat demythologizing neo -orthodox view of Scripture That's not if you go out to jalapenos today for lunch and you're sitting across the table and you hear somebody talk about Scripture And they were at church and say oh, how do you view

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Scripture? You're not gonna hear them say I hold to a modernist view or neo -orthodox view or demythologizing neo -orthodox view

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They're not gonna say that that's typically that's the language that we would use to label those views It is theological jargon that I'm using.

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It's probably Priscilla Schreier, for instance and Henry Blackaby would never say that they have a neo -orthodox view of Scripture, but they do right, and if you understand what neo -orthodoxy is and you read their writings and I have and And you understand exactly what they're communicating in the way that they illustrated they have a neo -orthodox view of Scripture But if Priscilla Schreier would say no,

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I believe the Bible is the inspired in Fallon inerrant Word of God Her statement on Scripture would sound much like ours

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Until she starts explaining her view of Scripture then you're like no, that's neo -orthodoxy Right, and then she starts illustrating her explanation of Scripture and you're like no, that's that's rampant neo -orthodoxy

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Okay, any other questions All right. We have a seven minutes left. Let's deal with these two adjectives that must describe our doctrine of inspiration

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We have this in our church doctrinal statement verbal and plenary are the two words that we're using Inspiration is verbal.

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That's number one. It's verbal Verbal and plenary anytime anytime somebody hands me a doctrinal statement.

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It says what do you think of this doctrinal statement? This is a church. I'm thinking about going to or we're moving and I'm looking for a new church or Can you give me an assessment of this?

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I go to their statement on Scripture I'm looking for two words verbal and plenary that tells me something that they've taken the time to think through Doctrinally what they mean by this and that they're they're going to be putting themselves firmly in an orthodox

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Camp or perspective at least in terms of their written statement when they use these two words verbal and I'll get to plenary here in Just a second but number one is verbal and I want to look at some examples of this verbal inspiration of the

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Old Testament and by verbal what we mean is that Inspiration applies to the words not just the concepts and the ideas

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Second Timothy 316 says the graph a the writings are inspired not the ideas behind the writings or the truth behind the writings

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It's the very writings themselves the words that they use that are inspired And this is why when we teach or preach here at this church

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We'll make reference to the fact that Paul uses this word here or the author uses this word and issues three other times in Scripture Because we believe not just that the ideas that the words communicate that that's not what's inspired.

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It is the words themselves that are inspired It's the very word choice when when the author of Hebrews sat down to write

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To write his epistle the words that he chose to write those were given by inspiration of God So you can look at an individual word and say he chose this word instead of all of these other words

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Why because of verbal inspiration the words themselves are given by inspiration of God It's not the ideas of the truth behind it that is inspired

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It's the writings which are inspired now, of course the ideas and the truth behind the writings Those are true, but inspiration is what we used to describe the graph a the writings themselves

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So you see examples of verbal inspiration in the Old Testament X is 24 for Moses wrote down all the words of the

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Lord He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with the twelve pillars of the twelve tribes of Israel 2nd Samuel 23 to David said the

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Spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was on my tongue Jeremiah 26 to that says the

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Lord stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to all the cities of Judah who have Come to worship in the Lord's house all the words that I have commanded you to speak to them.

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Do not omit a word say what is given by inspiration in the writings and the speaking of the

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Apostles and the prophets is Written down it is the words themselves that are inspired and this this of course eliminates the demythologizing view the modernist view in the

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New Orthodox view Letter B verbal inspiration of the New Testament Jesus applied

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Jesus appealed to all that is written Matthew 4 Verses 4 7 and 10 he answered and said it is written the three times to Satan it is written.

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It is written It's the words that he was appealing to Jesus stressed the words concerning himself in Luke 24 verse 27 and beginning with Moses and all the prophets

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He explained to them the things concerning himself and all the scriptures Luke 24 44 and now he said to them These are my words which

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I spoke to you while I was still with you That all things which are written about me in the law Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled

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He appealed to the writings It's the writing and the words the word choice that we're talking about when talking about verbal inspiration

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Number three Jesus affirmed that every word will remain Matthew 5 18 for truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished number four words are included in the curse right

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Revelation 22 19 if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy God Will take it away as part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this book

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In Philippians 2 verse 6 include this example, I did not In Philippians 2 verse 6 the doctrine of the deity of Christ and A proper understanding of the deity of Christ and what it means that he emptied himself

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Comes down to which of four words Paul could have chosen Eidos icon or Skia.

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They're sorry three words Eidos icon or Skia Paul chose one of those three words to talk about Jesus existing in the form of God There are three words you could have used to describe form two of them would have been heretical uses words to use

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One of them all three of those words could be translated form But one of them communicates something about form that the other two words do not communicate

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So it's Paul's theology hinges upon the choice of one word over two other words in Galatians chapter 3

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Paul makes a Doctrine out of the fact that the Old Testament promise was given to Abraham's seed singular and not his seeds plural singular and plural and Paul took that distinction and He draws an entire theological concept out of that distinction between the singular and a plural

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So you think the Apostles thought highly of the individual word choice in Scripture? Yes, they did. All right the second number two inspiration is plenary

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Inspiration is plenary p l e n a r y and by plenary we mean all things or all of it.

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All of Scripture is inspired So some people would say well, yeah, the the doctrine is inspired but not necessarily

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The history and Not necessarily the individual details of it

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But what is what is inspired is the thoughts behind it? Not just not necessarily all of it.

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So the historical parts really not accurate Red Sea Resurrection creation account global flood those things not necessarily inspired but the ideas behind them

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Those are inspired or the religious section is inspired or the doctrinal stuff is inspired the stuff in the New Testament that that Paul writes

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That's about doctrine Jesus and salvation all that's inspired but the history not so much We can kind of offer the showers with that we can take the rest of it and all that's the really good stuff

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When we talk about plenary inspiration, we mean that all of it is inspired the history the genealogies, right the boring stuff

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Going through Leviticus that's inspired the stuff about the sacrifices and the book of Numbers the number of offerings and the vials and the bulls and the

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Shackles and all that stuff that they bring to the tabernacle All of that is inspired all the details of the tabernacle all given by inspiration all of it.

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That's plenary inspiration So not just the history of the theology 2nd Timothy 316 says all scriptures inspired by God Romans 15 for whatever was written

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Was for our instruction. Yes, even the genealogies. Yes, even the boring parts yes, even the stuff and the prophets that you don't understand where's

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Bethel and where is AI and Who is Esau and why are these people under judgment and I don't understand any of this stuff that Whether you understand it or not, it's still given by inspiration of God It's still part of inspired scripture and let her be

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Jesus quoted. The Old Testament is literal history He did this for creation account in Mark 10 He did it for Noah in the flood in Matthew 24 and did for Jonah the fish in Matthew 12

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And when Jesus quoted the Old Testament, he quoted the very words of Scripture. He appealed to the written words of Scripture He appealed to the historical details and these things which people typically say this never really happened creation

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Noah in the flood Jonah and the fish those things which are the the fodder for liberals and higher critics and skeptics

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That's the stuff that Jesus quoted as actual history and he drew parallels off of that stuff as if those things really happened so if you're gonna say well those things never really happened and it's just the ideas that are really given to us by inspiration then

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You have to account for why it is that the Son of God quoted from those things as if they were literal history Was Jesus wrong and you're right

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Is that what I'm supposed to believe you got it, right and he got it wrong Or those things are actually history

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Those things are actually history. And so all Scripture is given by inspiration of God the words and all of it plenary verbal and plenary

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So although the Bible is not a history This is how I would summarize this though The Bible is not a history of the world when it speaks of history

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It's accurate truthful and authoritative and although it's not a science text where it touches on science It is authoritative and accurate because all

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Scripture is inspired All right So we don't we don't turn to Scripture to find out how to change the oil in our car I'll turn to Scripture to find out how to do nuclear fusion

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I'll turn to Scripture to figure out what temperature water boils at sea level. None of that Scripture is not for today

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It's not given to us for that. It's not that's not the purpose. It's done to address those things But where Scripture touches on something that is scientific it is

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Scripture itself That is true, right and modern -day science the guys in the white robes They got about to that because Scripture is inspired.

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That's authoritative All right, any questions on inspiration before we close in prayer. Is that understandable?

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Okay, so if Jess at Cornell are fine with it, we'll move on to the next lesson whatever it is

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I forget I put it away already oh Yes, we'll look at inspiration but we'll look at this what the scriptures themselves say about the doctrine of inspiration that should take us that Should take us one one week to go through that.

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So we'll do this again next week unless I die Then that somebody else will teach but if I'm alive, then

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I'll be here next week. So come back with your books All right, let's found prayer Father we do.

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Thank you for this time. We thank you. You've given to us your word, which is authoritative. It is true It is divine.

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This book could never have written itself This book is not just the collection of wisdom from pious sages from the ages

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We are so grateful that you've breathed out and an authoritative and inspired infallible inerrant revelation of yourself and your will and of the history of the world and Then that you have given it to us and preserved it for us so that we might have it in our own language

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This is a rich blessing and we don't want to take it for granted We want to be thankful for the treasure that you have placed in our laps and we pray that you would help us by your grace to honor it as it is worth honoring and To view it correctly to to view it as it is in truth and to think of your word rightly

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We thank you and we love you for your graces and your goodness and we ask your blessing upon our time and our fellowship and A worship that is to follow in Christ's name.