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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is Tuesday, January 26th, 2021. And the topic of today's show is going to be the passing of the late Larry King.
This past weekend, many of our news feeds were filled with a story about the passing of Larry King. And most of us know who this person was. He, of course, was a broadcaster who for decades topped the ratings with celebrity interviews.
And many of us are familiar with him interviewing everyone from Billy Graham to Donald Trump and just about everyone in between. And what I want to talk about on the program today is not so much about his life as an interviewer or his life as a celebrity or a person who interviewed celebrities, because that's going to be talked about all around the news.
And many people are going to be talking about that for the days and weeks to come. But I want to talk about maybe something that people don't know about Larry King. And that is a quote. He was quoted in the book, Rumors of Another World.
What on earth are we missing? By Philip Yancey. And I want to read this quote to you. And it goes as followed. If you could select any one person across all of history to interview, who would it be? Larry King was asked that question.
If you could ask, if you could select any one, any one person across all of history to interview, who would it be? And Larry King's answer was Jesus Christ. He said if he could interview anyone, it would be Jesus Christ.
And knowing that Larry King was a skeptical Jewish person, the person asking him the question said, well, what would you, what would you ask him? What would you ask Jesus? If you being a skeptical Jew, what would you ask Jesus Christ?
And this was his answer. I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin born. The answer to that question would define history for me. I read it again. This is a quote directly from Philip Yancey's book, Rumors of Another World.
What on earth are we missing? And the answer to the question, what would you ask Jesus Christ by Larry King was I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin born. The answer to that question would define history for me.
Now just for a moment, I want to simply take a step back and say, think about what King is saying in this statement. Number one, if asked, who could you interview? Who would you like to interview? A person who's interviewed countless celebrities, countless people in the media and in religion and in politics.
If you could interview anyone, who would you interview? And he said, Jesus Christ. Now that is not necessarily a unique answer. Certainly a lot of people would answer that they would like to interview Jesus or have a conversation with Jesus.
If you could talk to anyone in history, who would it be? Jesus Christ. That certainly is a sensible answer. And for a professional interviewer, certainly that makes sense. But when inquired about what question he would ask Jesus, and I wonder if you, the listener today might think about that question for yourself.
If you could ask Jesus any question, what would it be? You know, I honestly have never thought about it. We have so many questions. I mean, the Bible tells us so much about Jesus's life, but there's so much about Jesus's life that we don't know.
We don't know what his life was like between the birth, between his birth and his ministry beginning. The only thing we know about in his life in that time period was the one instant that we have recorded for us, where he was taken to the temple as a young boy, and he had an opportunity to teach in the temple as he was left behind by his parents accidentally.
And so, a lot of people would ask the question of Jesus, well, what were your teenage years like? What did you do for fun? What were your hobbies? What kind of life did you live in those 30 years of unknown time?
A lot of people would ask that question of Jesus. Some people might ask Jesus a question regarding his divinity and his humanity. Somebody might ask a theological question about the hypostatic union or about his work in the atonement.
And if you had the opportunity to interview Jesus, to maybe ask him to clarify some of the statements that are very hard that he gives us in the Gospel. I know as a Bible student, as a Bible teacher, as a person who has taught through the Gospels and taught about the life of Jesus for years, I know that there are several things that he said that are somewhat difficult to understand.
And so, if somebody asked me, well, if you had an opportunity to ask Jesus a question, there are so many questions that I would want to know. But the one question that I wouldn't have is the question of whether or not Jesus was virgin born.
But I know that the reason why I don't ask that question is because as a Christian, I already know the answer. As a Christian, the one thing that we can affirm with very great certainty is that everything the Bible says about Jesus is true.
And the Bible clearly says about Jesus that he was born of a virgin. And it says that in the Old Testament Scriptures, and it says that in the New Testament Scriptures. The Old Testament says, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.
And the New Testament writers, picking up on the Old Testament statement from the book of Isaiah, repeat that when they say Mary the virgin gave birth to a son and they quote Isaiah as fulfilling the prophecy given to the prophet.
They quote, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy given to Isaiah. Jesus is virgin born. There is no reason to not believe that unless, of course, you do not believe what the Bible says. And this comes back to Mr. Larry King.
Certainly Larry King was an intelligent man. He was certainly a consummate interviewer. He was a man who was gifted in his field. He was a man who demonstrated the image of God by expressing the gifts that he had in an artistic way as an interviewer.
He was a man who knew how to use the spoken word in a way that was both moving and compelling. And certainly Larry King had a lot of blessings as simply being made in the image of God and expressing that image in the way that he did.
But at the same time, it seems as if he did not know Christ as Savior, that he was skeptical of the Lord Jesus Christ, even in the simplest statement that he was born of a virgin. And if you cannot believe that Jesus is born of a virgin, then you certainly will not believe that he is God incarnate.
And if you cannot believe that he is God incarnate, then you will probably not believe that he came into the earth to save his people from their sins. And if you do not believe he came into the earth to save his people from their sins, then you probably will not believe that he went to the cross and died and suffered the wrath of God on behalf of those who would believe.
And if you don't believe that Jesus came and suffered the wrath of God for those who would believe, then you don't believe the gospel. And it seems very unfortunate that Larry King did not believe the gospel.
And so when we consider the passing of Larry King, yes, he was a giant in media. Yes, he was a giant in many ways and in many things. But even though Larry King was a giant in media, it seems as if he did not know Christ.
And the Bible tells us this, what good is it if a man should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? So we mourn the death of Larry King. We pray that at some point he considered all of the times that he certainly heard the gospel and he interviewed many men who gave him the gospel.
And perhaps before he died, maybe there was some change. We will never know on this side of eternity. But we can only hope because without Jesus Christ, eternity is a time of forever being under the wrath of God.
And so it is a sad time and it's sad to consider, but it's important for us to consider the one question that Larry King had, was Jesus virgin born? The answer we can say without a doubt is absolutely.
Jesus Christ is the virgin born son of God who came into the world to save sinners. And so today, if you are a sinner and you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, may I say this to you, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, trust in him with all your heart.
You will not be put to shame. You will never be disappointed. And there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the truth.
Thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.
May God be with you.