From Everlasting to Everlasting

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The fact that the members of the Trinity agreed with each other what they would do in saving us.
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Then the foreknowledge, this idea that God knew us, not just knew about us and our future choices, but knew us and loved us.
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And then the fact that God chose us, election. So those are some of the things going on kind of behind the scenes from our point of view before we even get born and start living.
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Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,
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Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the
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Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
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Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the
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Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. If you want to check out all of the 50 plus vetted podcasts, go to christianpodcastcommunity .org.
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Check them all out. We have something for everyone there. If you want to check out Striving for Eternity, go to strivingforeternity .org
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there. We have a lot of materials. Let me just give a quick shout out for the latest article that is up there.
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I was at the cessationist conference up in Idaho. Why in the world does anybody go to Idaho in the winter?
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I don't know. Wrong time to have a conference in Idaho. But it was cold, but it was a great conference.
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And all of my notes on the miracles in the Bible are up at Striving for Eternity.
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If you want to go to strivingforeternity .org slash miracles, you'll see my sermon notes.
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You'll also see, if you watched that video from the conference, you will see all of the charts that I presented with the miracles in the
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Bible, along with how they faded, how there's the trends as far as the timeline when we have miracles, the books that record miracles.
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All of that is there, along with, if you scroll all the way down, all of the data that I used to produce the charts, so you can see all those numbers, because, well, numbers are hard to preach.
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So you can go to strivingforeternity .org slash miracles to check that out. Today, what we have is something special.
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We don't always do this. We've done this a few times, and I'm excited for this one, is a book review.
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We have with us the author, Will Dobby, of the book, From Everlasting to Everlasting, and the subtitle is
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Every Believer's Biography, which we're going to get into why that subtitle.
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This is a very interesting book. Before I bring Will in, let me tell you up front, and you can get this book at amazon .com,
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but this is a book that I'm going to say up front, if you need a good
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Christmas gift for, well, everybody in your church, this would be it.
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So you're going to want to pay attention as we go through this, to listen to why
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I'm going to say you want to have this as a Christmas present, because you need to order now if you're going to get it in time for Christmas.
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A good thing, if you have Prime, it comes in in, well, they used to say two days, but you know, ever since COVID, they just say, hey, pay the
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Prime, and then get it whenever they send it anyway. But Will Dobby, welcome to The Wrap Report.
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Hey, thanks, Andrew. Great to be here. Now, folks, you may hear right off the bat, we may need to do translation. What languages that they speak over there where you're from?
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True English, real English. I had a friend of mine, his son, he's from the
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UK, and his son was actually asked, and this was a serious question. He was in the
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States and he was teaching in a school and they asked, what language do they speak where you're from? And he's like,
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English, it's where you got it from. The problem with the American school system.
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So let's talk about this book. Now, I love the subtitle of this, so I wanted to start there.
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Why do you call this every believer's biography? I guess the first answer is because just that's what it is.
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Like God is a God of story. I think the Bible is a meta -narrative. The universe is following the story he's written for it, you know, including our salvation story as believers.
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He's written the most beautiful, perfect, fascinating adventure story for each of us.
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And it's just a book tracing that. So it's kind of a systematic theology following the stage by stage path that God leads every believer down from eternity past through this life, death, and into eternity future.
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And that's the thing. So this is a book specifically on a doctrine called soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation.
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How did we get in a right state with God? But this is not your typical systematic theology, folks.
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This is more set up as a devotional book. So it is set for you to go through it each day.
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You have a different chapter for 30 days. So if you're one that likes devotional books, you're going to like this.
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However, if you're someone like me who typically doesn't like devotional books, basically because devotional books typically are very, very shallow, that's not this book.
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So do not be deceived in thinking that because it's a devotional book, it's shallow. This is actually a devotional book that's deep and a devotional book that is very theologically minded.
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So what we're going to talk about in this episode is the doctrine of salvation because that's what this book is about.
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Let's start with where you got the title from then. When you say from everlasting to everlasting, why that title?
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What do you mean by it? You know, we rejoice in the fact that we have a very, very, very big
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God. And you know, scripture says as much in those very words that from everlasting to everlasting, you are
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God. And as we'd expect from that kind of a God who's outside time, who made time, who knows the end from the beginning, salvation that comes from him reflects his nature.
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It's rich and deep and infinitely broad. We're going to be living forever with him, glorifying him forever.
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And he planned for us to do that from forever in the past from our perspective. It's kind of a funny way of putting it because obviously there is no past for him.
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Every moment is now. But yeah, I mean, it is what it says, right? From everlasting to everlasting.
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That's what we believe. And the whole thing of this being our biography, this is our story.
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I mean, any one of us that knows Christ, we lived this whole process of regeneration and sanctification.
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We haven't gotten to glorification yet. That's coming for us. But the whole idea that the way you lay this out, and I want to deal, you kind of laid it out like a play, right?
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You have five acts in this storyline, and I want to walk through each of the acts that you have here.
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And folks, as I said, this is the story of salvation is really what it is, but in a devotional book.
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And I want to say this, Will, if I could, before we get into the book itself, just for the audience to understand that this is a book that I found very creative.
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And maybe we could dialogue about this in a moment, but there's many books that are out there dealing with the issue of how we get saved and the doctrine of salvation.
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Plenty of books. You could find a litany of them. However, there's not as many that are written really at a basic level, a lay level that everybody can understand.
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That all of a sudden you get, you want to go deep. There's plenty of them. You want to try to explain the doctrines of salvation at an easy to understand level for everybody.
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It suddenly gets fewer. But there's very few that I know that you can just give to anybody, whether they agree with your view of salvation or not, because there are debates in these areas.
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This book is one of the ones that's for everybody. And it leads people to a biblical view of salvation.
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And the thing, folks, that I really liked about this is this book drives you to scripture.
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That's the thing that I discovered. That's the thing as I went through it. Granted, there's a lot of theology in it, but the theology is based from scripture.
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And so I like a book that drives me back into the word of God, because no offense,
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Will, but I write books as well. Your book, my book, they don't even come close to the word of God.
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So any book that drives people to the word of God, that's better. And so that's what this book does in a devotional way.
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In 30 days, you learn the doctrine of salvation. Very deep theology at a level that everybody can understand.
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And so that's the value that I see. And that's why I'm saying this is a great Christmas present to get for everybody in your church.
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If you have a family like mine, maybe it's not a great Christmas present because, well, they first have to get saved before their biography.
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So let's talk about Act 1 in your book, because I'd like folks to get an idea of what they're going to get as they go through this book.
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Sorry, Andrew, just to jump in briefly, I've given this book to seekers who are not believers, because as you say,
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I've tried to make it accessible. There are illustrations, practical, down -to -earth applications, anecdotes, while still being substantive and heavyweight theologically.
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And also, though it is basically the doctrine of salvation, as you say, I wouldn't want people to think it's too niche, 30 entries, but it's almost like 30 mini, mini books in one, in that every day is a different doctrine within the doctrine of salvation.
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So I'm just looking at the contents page now, and day four is the doctrine of election, day three, the four knowledge, day five, providence, day nine, regeneration.
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So it's, I've tried to make it, you know, not too niche, so you guys would say niche.
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I like niche better, so I don't know, I pick up different ways people say things.
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I guess I have a really strange thing, because I'm from the North, but I say y 'all, so go figure that.
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I'm working on my y 'all. You're now down in the South, so down there, they probably say all y 'all, right?
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I'm just, yeah, later chapters are about propitiation, justification, redemption, adoption, resurrection, scripture, sanctification.
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So it's kind of a, I hope it's a really broad thing in which people can dive in and swim around and look in many different directions, multifaceted.
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One of the things I did find fascinating, because this is something with my books that I have been told countless times, and I didn't write it this way, but I guess my writing style is this way, is that people have said my books can easily be used as quick reference, because each chapter is,
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I write it where everything is succinct in that chapter, so you don't have to build upon the previous one, and so people like that.
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This is that way. I mean, there's 30, I want to say like 30 blog articles, because they're somewhat short.
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It almost seems like 30 separate articles that were put together, but they do have a thread that brings them all together, but you can read any one of these.
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So if you want to dig in to one, for example, you mentioned election. If you want to dig into what election is, you can read just that chapter and get a full understanding of what is in this doctrine without reading anything else.
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But it is designed where if you start at day one and go to day 30, it is kind of building upon without necessarily like saying, well, if you haven't read day three, you can't go to day four.
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You don't need really day three to read day four, but when you do it in order, the way you've laid this out really is building upon each other and having that thread throughout.
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So I really appreciated that aspect of it. So before we get into the content, actually, let me ask this question is, what got you to think about doing this as a devotional book?
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Because I don't know many theological devotionals. And so this is different than most books, or most devotionals,
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I should say. Well, I know you believe this too, but I'm passionate that all theology should be devotional, should be pastoral.
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God hasn't given us truths just to play around with for the sake of our intellectual fun.
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He's given us truths because we need them, because we need to live them and love them and feed off them, be strengthened by them, comforted by them.
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They're very functional. They aren't superfluous. They aren't for ivory tower theologians, they're for the people.
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And I have found that these truths, and some of them, sadly, might have gained a reputation over the years for being a little esoteric, but I have seen them all change lives.
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I've been a pastor for quite a few years, and I've just found them to be very pastorally powerful in ministering to people with all the different myriad of problems and trials and different seasons of lives.
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Some people in some situations need to understand deeper the doctrine of justification.
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That will change everything for their practical life situation, or it might be the doctrine of propitiation, or the doctrine of providence, or whatever it might be.
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So it flowed pretty quickly when I wrote it, because I'd been basically counseling it to my people over the years.
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So you started this book, From Everlasting. The title, folks, again, is From Everlasting to Everlasting, and you'll see that if you go through the book, because you really start in the
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From Everlasting in Act One, right? So Act One is really a, well,
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I'll let you, what is Act One about? Why do you start there? I figured starting at the beginning is probably sensible, and Act One is,
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I've entitled it Life Plans, the idea of before everything happens, from our point of view, what is the context, and how did
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God set everything up? What did he intend in advance? Every one of the five acts is a different aspect of life.
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So Life Plans is Act One. Life Begins is Act Two, and that's our entrance onto the scene when we get born onto the planet.
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Act Three is Life from the Cross, and that's a deep dive into the atonement. Act Four is the Christian life.
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So after the effects of the cross have been applied to me, how do I then live the rest of my days on earth?
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And Act Five is the life to come, heaven and then the new creation. And God is a
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God of life. He loves to give life. He does give it to us physically, but he loves to give it to us spiritually, his people, for the sake of his glory.
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And Life Plans is just following the data that Scripture gives us in a chronological way from our point of view from the beginning.
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So the first thing under Life Plans is the eternal covenant, the fact that the members of the Trinity agreed with each other what they would do in saving us.
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Then foreknowledge, this idea that God knew us, not just knew about us and our future choices, but knew us and loved us.
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And then the fact that God chose us, election. So those are some of the things going on kind of behind the scenes from our point of view before we even get born and start living.
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Now, election is for some people a, well, say touchy doctrine.
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A lot of people get very upset just from the get go with the doctrine of election because so many people have differing understandings of it, what they think it means.
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Your book does a good job of laying out what the Bible says it means. But just for folks to get a feel, how do you see what the doctrine of election, how does that play out?
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Why do you put that in the kind of the from everlasting category? I think it's just so comforting when you understand it.
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There is tension for us with our very finite, limited perspective where time bounds and God is outside time.
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And there are antinomies at the heart of some of the greatest truths in Christianity, election being one of them.
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So there's a place for humility. Lord, I don't understand exactly how this works, exactly how this is fair, but I trust you.
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I'm not going to be arrogant and distrust you and think I know better than you. I do trust you. And as well as that attitude, like it really does make sense to a very, very deep degree at the same time.
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I think if we approach Scripture honestly. And then in terms of its application, the reason
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I say it's important to strengthen and comfort believers is that it has multiple applications, which
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I list briefly in that chapter. I think one of the main ones is the fact that God has us.
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I think election is this beautiful, crucial doctrine for the sake of our comfort and assurance and our ability to keep going healthily, spiritually.
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It's not meant to confuse us or trouble us or be a sort of theological equivalent of Sudoku, give us just a brain teaser for the fun of it.
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Yes, there are some things hard to understand at the heart of it. We do need humility when we come to it.
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There are antinomies at the hearts of some of the richest Christian doctrines, and I would include election in that.
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But nonetheless, it does stack up if we go by the data which God has given us in Scripture. And crucially, once we humble ourselves and accept it as opposed to saying,
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God, I know better than you, even if it doesn't fully make sense to me at the deepest level, I'm going to trust you as opposed to being arrogant and trusting myself over you.
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Once we've done that, then we find that we just have this joy and this confidence and security that God has us.
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I think that's one of the primary applications of election, that we're secure, that he locked us in to salvation before even the beginning of time.
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That's how he can say that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We're locked in.
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That's election. The devil can't pull us away. Even our own sin or the world can't drag us away.
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God has us. And again, folks, the book is From Everlasting to Everlasting by Will Dobby.
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The question I want to ask you after this break is, the second act that you have is
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Life Begins. This seems to be where the controversy usually starts.
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Doctrines like regeneration, who chose who, stay away from some of the labels, but really the whole thing of repentance and faith.
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Actually, if I'm not mistaken, that's a chapter. After this break, I want to talk about how
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Life Begins and that next act that you have in the book. Again, the book is
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From Everlasting to Everlasting. The author that we have with us, Will Dobby. And this episode is sponsored by MyPillow.
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Folks, I love MyPillow. You guys know that, who are regular listeners. If you want to get a great night's sleep, if you want to get some great products, because they have things other than good sleep,
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I can't say who I did this for because they may be listening. But I will say that somebody close to me,
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And the promo code to use is SFE. What does that do? That lets them know you heard about them from us so that they will keep sponsoring this show.
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So we're grateful for them. Thank them for their support. And you can show your support for this show as well by going to MyPillow .com
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using promo code SFE. That way you get yourself some great products and help to keep this show going.
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So we appreciate it. So Will, the author of From Everlasting to Everlasting, available at Amazon .com.
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Will Dobby's the author. Act two, life begins. There's no controversy here within Christianity anywhere, right?
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The doctrine of repentance, how we come to believe. This is,
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I think, a very natural progression as in this book. You have several days in the devotion devoted to this act.
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Let's walk through the doctrine of repentance. So what is, just to start with, you start actually not with the doctrine of repentance, but you actually started with a different doctrine, the doctrine of providence right after election.
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First off, what is providence? And then why is that the natural progression? I think providence is
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God's sovereignty over everything for the good of his people. And the logic for me in putting it as day five after day four, which is the
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God who chooses election, was that having chosen us before the foundation of the world, which
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I believe in line with Ephesians 1, God, part of his sovereignty and providence is that he chooses to the moment and to the millimeter when and where we are going to enter this world as well as every part of our lives, which doesn't mean that we're helpless automatons robots whose choices are meaningless and whose love is meaningless.
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It just means that apart from him, in him, we live and move and have our being.
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It's like to want to be free from his sovereignty in that sense would be like a fish wanting to be free from water.
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Like the nature of it is that he, as our creator and sustainer, keeps every single neutron and proton spinning around, you know, electron.
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And I'm not a nuclear physicist, but, you know, every heartbeat and breath, like, let alone every decision, he is fully sovereign.
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He's not partially sovereign. And his sovereignty as seen in his election includes when and where he decided to assign us our little time on the earth.
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You know, one of the things that's interesting because there's so we've talked about this earlier, so many books dealing with this doctrine of salvation.
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And one of the things that I see that I find so interesting is the fact that you didn't jump right into the issues that so many fight over of regeneration.
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You first started, and let me go look because I forget which day it is. Day seven, you started with the external call and then the internal call.
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And I think that there's many Christians who don't think about that. They jump right into debating, did
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God choose me? Did I choose God? And get right into that debate. Why did you do like, well, what is the external internal call?
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Why did you do that before? Because it leads well, but I want for folks who haven't read the book to understand why you did it that way.
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I mean, it is every believer's biography. So it is meant to be following the story step by step on a timeline from our point of view.
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And I think God, having chosen us and arranged when and where we would be born, the next stage after that is us being born, conception, physical life.
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And then the next thing is the external call and the internal call. I think Scripture distinguishes between the two of them.
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I think the external call is when anyone hears the gospel. That's the gospel proclamation going out, usually from the mouths of other believers who are witnessing to them.
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And it does have several important purposes, but it doesn't have the power in and of itself to convert someone because only
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God himself can do that. That takes a miracle of the Holy Spirit. And that's what the internal call is.
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The internal call is often, not exclusively, but often after someone has heard the external call, maybe many times, maybe for years and years and years, and it's just bounced off and bounced off.
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There will come a moment where that person then receives the internal call. God, the
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Holy Spirit, works in their heart, and they just crumple like a house of cards.
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They're defenseless against his beautiful, strong sovereignty, his grace and love and kindness and mercy.
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And it's at that point that we have the next day, which is regeneration.
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That's when God makes people alive because we're spiritually dead. And so he makes us alive so that we can then repent and believe, which is the day after that.
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So even though some of these things happen simultaneously in terms of chronology, there is still an order in which they happen in terms of theology.
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And I give the illustration of backing my car into a neighbor's car in our street where we lived in London.
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Me hitting their car and the dent appearing in their car happens simultaneously, and yet there is a, even if not a chronological order, nonetheless a logical order in that I had to hit their car first for the dent then to appear.
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So I think quite a few of these things happen simultaneously in terms of chronology, the internal call, regeneration, repentance and faith, and yet I have to receive the internal call for me then to be regenerated, for me then to repent and believe, if that makes any sense.
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It does. And one of the things that I did appreciate with the book, and I'm glad now as we're doing the interview because I think it's coming out in your voice for folks to hear, is how pastoral this book is.
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It really is, it's not a theological work the way we'd often think of it, where it's just here's the doctrines.
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Here, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. What comes across is that these doctrines are for me, or for the reader.
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And that is what comes across in the book, it's coming across in your voice here, at least
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I'm seeing it, but maybe I'm biased because I already read the book, but I hope people are hearing that. Because one of the things that when you go through the call, as I got, maybe it's because you and I already agree theologically, but it lays out that progression where when you get to this area of repentance and faith, it just seemed like, well, yeah, that's natural.
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That's right. It lays it out. I think that's because, well, that's biblical.
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But you then ended up going into the next area that I think is probably the most difficult for people to understand and to address.
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And one of the things, well, I do want to point out, you said this earlier, and folks who are regular listeners will pick up on that,
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I hope, that you're talking about God's attributes, from everlasting to everlasting, the fact that God is, there is no time to him.
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These are difficult things for us to comprehend because we don't have the mind of God. We're finite beings trying to understand the infinite.
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We struggle with it. It's almost like you said earlier, you're not a physicist or dealing with cells, and yet you can understand some things, but we grapple with that which we don't know.
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Well, grappling with the deep things of God, we'll never know, but we try to deal with that which he's revealed to us.
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And the next act that you have, I have to just look up to make sure I don't misquote it, but is life from the cross.
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I just, I knew what the next subject was. Life from the cross, you start with the, really, the area that most people in Christianity that deal with this doctrine have difficulty with is the atonement.
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And one of the things, and let me just say this to the audience, every chapter is about five pages long,
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I think, like four to six pages. We'll go with that. Yeah, they're about five pages. And so you get through it quickly.
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So it's not a whole lot of reading that you have to do in a day, but it does go through and answer the question.
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And I was interested to see, atonement is a big topic, along with the next day, which is propitiation, two very big topics that there have been volumes written on, and yet you were able to take that and condense it down to five pages and really answer what these doctrines are.
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These are difficult doctrines for folks. Can you just give like a high level, obviously not five pages worth, but what is the doctrine of atonement?
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Because you're saying this is life from the cross, right? So this starts at the cross. What happened back there at the cross?
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I see the atonement as a general term. I've always found my high school religious studies teacher's definition of atonement to be not totally without use at one moment, right?
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It's how God brings us to be at one with himself, having been estranged from him because of our sin and his holiness.
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So day 11, the God who dies, according to his human nature, obviously, because God can't die, is the atonement.
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It's a kind of overview. And then the following four days, propitiation, justification, redemption, and adoption, more of a deep dive going in further.
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And if the atonement is the heart of the Christian faith, I believe those following four sub -doctrines, propitiation, justification, redemption, and adoption, are kind of like the four chambers of the human heart, the heart of the heart.
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Propitiation is the truth that God satisfies his own wrath against us by putting forward his son.
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And that wasn't, you know, cosmic child abuse, as some liberal theologians have said in the past, because Jesus was a willing, loving volunteer.
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Justification is God declaring us righteous. In Greek, the word righteous and the word justification are the same root, dikaiosone.
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And God sort of is able to clothe us with his son's righteousness. It's this swap that takes place.
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Then redemption is the fact that God sets us free. He redeems us. He buys us back out of slavery.
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And then having done propitiation, justification, redemption, he's then finally able to bring us into his home, to adopt us.
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So the previous three are like all of the legal necessities, so that as a result, fourth, he can, you know, be fully, totally, intimately, relationally reconciled with us.
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Is that the kind of overview you are looking for? Yeah, the thing is, and you kind of alluded to this earlier, these things are not chronological.
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And a lot of people place it in that way. And it's, I think, even as I'm hearing you, I hope the audience is hearing that this is where some of the struggle can be, is how do we work through these things to say something that's logically, your example that you used of the car, right?
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Obviously, the car didn't have a dent and it drew, your neighbor's car didn't have a dent and it drew your car into it.
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Yeah, yeah. But they both happened. And I think the struggle that people have is we think cause and effect, as if you banged into the car, so that's the cause.
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Then we see the effect. And yet with so many of these things, they're simultaneously happening. Yeah. So they're not sequential chronologically, but there is nonetheless a logic, even if not a chronologic, there is a logic to them, you know, because gloriously
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God is a God of order and I don't want to lose that. So that's why the order of these is deliberate.
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While I'm not saying God had to laboriously follow a kind of a step -by -step process, lots of these things happen simultaneously.
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Nonetheless, there is a very graceful, beautiful logic and order to how he saves us.
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Now, after this break, what I want to do is talk about the next act, which really gets into now that someone is saved, they've been regenerated.
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What's the Christian life all about? What is this doctrine that we would refer to as sanctification?
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How does it play out? Because that is, for those of us who are now believers, this is where we spend the most of our time.
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So you've devoted, if I'm not mistaken, I'm going to double check before I say something, you spent more chapters in this than in the others.
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And so my question that I have for you is, why did you devote as much time?
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We have five acts. This one has more chapters than the others. Why devote so much time to that? That's the question
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I want to ask you right after this break. Folks, we want to let you know that we are running some sales through the end of the year.
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If you do need Christmas gifts and want something other than the book From Everlasting to Everlasting, which you should get for Christmas.
34:46
But if you want to get some other gifts, you can go to strivingforeturning .org. We are running our
34:52
Christmas sale that we've done a couple of years ago, and that is to get What Do We Believe at 50 % off.
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Just use the coupon code after you purchase Christmas. And that actually is for as many copies as you want.
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So if you want to get multiple copies of What Do We Believe, which is a good Christian systematic theology, goes into the
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Doctrine of Salvation and others, so that was something you could pick up. Go to strivingforeturning .org,
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use coupon code CHRISTMAS to get 50 % off. The other thing that we're doing a sale on is the book
35:28
Sharing the Good News with Mormons. You can get 35 % off on that book using the promo code
35:34
LDS, which stands for Latter -day Saints. So go to strivingforeturning .org,
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go to the store, pick those two books up. Use the promo codes, get yourself some discounts.
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So we're back with the author Will Dobby of From Everlasting to Everlasting. If you want to get it, well, you could go to Amazon or you could go to christianfocus .com.
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Now, it's the publisher's site, another place you can go to pick it up. If you're against Amazon, I know some people in the audience don't want to support
36:08
Amazon, then go to christianfocus .com, pick it up there. So, Will, let me ask you, you devoted a large section of the time in your book to the issue of the
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Christian life. So my first question is, why did you devote so much time to that? I think that's because where we are now.
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Like, I do want this theology to be intensely pastoral and practical. And as you just said before the break, you know, this is for many believers, the majority of their experience, they are trying to live the
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Christian life, which can be hard. And I suppose that act, act four, the
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Christian life is kind of a big arrow pointing to the words, you are here. Like you see on a map sometimes.
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Yeah, because I mean, a third of your book is just in this act. And I like the map, you are here.
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Because this is really, this is where we are in our life. This is where the struggles we have.
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And this is where I think that we end up seeing, or at least it's throughout the book, but we end up seeing your pastoral heart.
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So let's walk through, because we often think of just sanctification, and it was intriguing to me because you added some other things in here that if, to be honest, if I was writing this,
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I wouldn't have thought to add in, okay? Because it just doesn't, the idea of the role the church plays and the
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Word of God play, I mean, how these different things play into our sanctification, we often think about sanctification just as this process being made more like Christ.
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But let me run through the different topics that you cover. And what I want you to do is explain how these different topics play into our sanctification.
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So you have Christ's intercession, the Bible, prayer, church, sanctification, spiritual disciplines, ministry, suffering, perseverance, and even death.
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Yeah, I think death is probably the most important part of the Christian life. We want to die well.
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I view that as one of my main roles as a pastor. I'm training my people to die well. I think all of these things play not just into sanctification, but into each other.
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They're all part of the multifaceted same thing, which is the Christian life.
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And just to go through them, like you said, the first thing to know is that Jesus is praying for us in the Christian life.
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He's the God who prays. He's interceding for us with the Father. And that is incredibly comforting and empowering to know not only that, but God has equipped us with His Word.
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I mean, another slightly cheesy trite cliche, but a little bit useful, maybe, is the high school thing about, you know what
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Bible stands for, B -I -B -L -E, basic instructions before leaving earth. It's a survival guide for life.
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It's not an abstract doctrine for a bundle of ancient irrelevant facts for people to get
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PhDs from. It's incredibly practical. It's crucial. Not only do we have a
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God who speaks to us through the Word, but a God who hears us. We can speak to Him through prayer. The God who gathers is the next day church.
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And, you know, we're preaching through Ephesians at the moment in my church. And I think
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Ephesians is God's blueprint for this thing we call church. And yes, it can be exasperating, frustrating.
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There are no perfect churches. If you ever find one, you would spoil it by joining.
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The perfect church is in heaven. We all are waiting to get there. The church triumphant.
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And yes, we need it as soon as we come together to glorify God in ways that we can't glorify
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Him when we're scattered. And when we're gathered, another function is that we keep each other going. The fellowship, encouragement, comfort, accountability, sparing each other wrong.
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The God who grows is what I've framed here is, you know, the individual spiritual progress we make as we increasingly manage to resist temptation and have victories over sin and grow in our love, grow in our knowledge, and many other ways.
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And that comes partly through the next day, which is the God who trains spiritual disciplines. God has given us these kind of repeatable activities which are concrete and specific that are there to help us, not there to be legalistic with, but nonetheless there to train us, whether it's reading our
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Bibles, saying our prayers, the discipline of fasting, the discipline of feasting, sometimes, you know, celebrating
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God's goodness, which we're also not that great at, and many others. Then the God who mobilizes is the next day ministry.
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Partly we grow through serving. You know, I believe with Ephesians 4, 11, and 12 that pastors and those in Christian leadership and full -time ministry are there not to do ministry, but to equip the saints rank -and -file
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Christians for the work of ministry. And that's not an optional extra. That is part of our identity.
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As those have been saved, we've been saved to serve. And we grow through that. We bless others through that.
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We honor God through that. So as I try and drum into my church, you know, we don't want to set a culture of consumerism, a bunch of consumers.
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We want to be a people who are contributors. Then I had to include a chapter on suffering. That is part and parcel of every
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Christian's Christian life, and that chapter just explores the ways in which
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God is sovereign over our suffering and refines us through it and uses it for our good, even though it can be incredibly painful and will, of course, one day totally heal it.
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We'll see all of the ways in which he was using it, even if we can't see them here and now. And that chapter also provides comfort and motivation to persevere amid suffering, how to harness our suffering.
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And then the God who keeps, you know, perseverance. The important thing in the Christian life is to keep going, and that's a sign that someone is truly a
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Christian if they do persevere. We're not saved by it, but it is an indicator, a validator, an authenticator of whether or not our repentance and faith was ever genuine.
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If it was genuine, we will keep going. And then, you know, the final journey we all have to take, in a sense, the climax of the life is death, you know, which no longer for us, because of Christ, is this horrifying, terrifying trapdoor to eternal torment, but instead is the opposite, this beautiful, glorious gateway to everlasting joy.
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So, yeah, you know, these things feed into each other. The Christian life is very multifaceted and rich, and that act tries to just whet people's appetite for what it is they're living and to be able to live it more, more deliberately.
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So, again, folks, we're speaking with author Will Dobby from Everlasting to Everlasting. So we started from Everlasting.
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The last act in your book is to Everlasting. And so this is where are we headed?
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I mean, which is a natural progression, right? You just spoke of death. And it's interesting because one of the things, and again, folks, if you maybe tuned out in the beginning or tuned in in the middle of the episode, this is a different book than most because it is a devotional book, a 30 -day devotional, short chapters, easy to get through, easy to read.
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It is a book for everybody. I don't think there's anybody who can't pick this up and understand the doctrines that are being taught, and yet it takes us from history past to history future, hence the name, and it is a biography for every one of us that knows
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Christ. This is our story. And so where are we headed is where you end up wrapping up the month in your devotional book.
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So the issue here is something that is kind of interesting because when
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I think about the doctrine of salvation, the books that are written on this, most of them do not focus on glorification, right?
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Most of them will focus on maybe the doctrine of election, eternity past, they'll focus on our regeneration, and then they kind of end on our sanctification.
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You have chosen to move forward into our glorification. Why do that? And then what is this final doctrine?
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Well, I want to do that because God's doing that. That's the focal point, the terminus of all of our stories.
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We're all going to end up in glory, getting to honor him forever. And that's the grand climax.
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That's how the Bible ends. Days under Act V, the life to come, the
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God who receives heaven, it's the first thing we're going to know after we've died, we'll be with Christ, not with our bodies, but with our souls.
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Then the next day, the God who resurrects, the believer's resurrection. So everyone will be raised, and I'm focusing on when
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Christians are raised, and that's going to be just when our bodies are redeemed, our souls are reunited with them.
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Then penultimately, we've got Day 29, the God who holds accountable. There will be a believer's judgment. Our salvation is not at stake, but nonetheless, all of our actions were not meaningless.
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God does reckon with them, and there will be rewards, I believe, and we will be held accountable, even as those who have been justified.
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And then finally, we've got the God who renews, the new creation, and that's the new heavens and the new earth after Christ has returned, and we get to glorify
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God with physical bodies in a perfected heaven and earth. We'll be perfect like the garden at the very beginning, and yet even better.
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We move from a garden to a garden city. I never heard that before, and I like that.
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From a garden to a garden city. So folks, I encourage you guys, get the book
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From Everlasting to Everlasting by Will Dobby. Again, it's available on Amazon, but if you're anti -Amazon,
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I totally get it. I understand. Go to christianfocus .com to get it there.
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And this is, as I said throughout, this is a great book. Hey, we're coming up on a new year.
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Everyone likes to start their new devotionals, so maybe get it in time for January.
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January 1st, you could go through this. Maybe for some of you that have struggled with this doctrine, you've debated and you've argued and you've had the discussions on Calvinism versus Arminianism and who chose who.
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I recommend you get this book. It may clarify the issues for 2023, start the new year off right with a good theology.
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So I recommend you get From Everlasting to Everlasting by author Will Dobby. Before we close out,
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I just want to, let's talk not about the book, but about you. I know you've, you know, you served in the
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British military. We talked about that prior, but you also are planting a church here in America.
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You don't need translation when you preach, do you? No, just, I, you know,
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I always tell the joke. I don't know if you know who Paul Taylor is. He's used to be, he used to run Answers in Genesis UK.
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He and I were at a conference together and I was, we were joking back and forth.
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He and I liked to kid around a lot. And so I kept asking people if they need translation for him, because he's got a heavy
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British accent. And we were in Ohio, Midwest state. They pronounce certain things different than we would on the
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East coast. And brilliant move on his part was we were at the
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Q &A and I asked the moderator if he could bring some waters. And that's not how they pronounce that in the
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Midwest. And so the moderator jokingly, since I was busting on Paul so much, he turns and says, what is that?
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And Paul just grabs the microphone. He would like some water. Everybody was cracking up.
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He got me back, got me back in a brilliant way, but you're, you're planting a church here in the
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States. So I want to talk briefly about that. Where's the church? What's the church name? How, if people are in the area, how could they find you?
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It's called Emmanuel, Emmanuel Knoxville in East Tennessee. And we are about 10 weeks old.
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Knoxville is an amazing place. It's one of the top 10 fastest growing cities in the U S people are coming in flooding into Knoxville from all over the country for a few reasons, as well as all over the world.
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And in the downtown, in the heart of Knoxville is where we are, where there are just emerging massive needs.
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It's very strategic opportunity. And the website is ENOX .org, E -K -N -O -X .org.
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People are ever nearby, more than welcome to drop in. We'd love to see them. Our services are at four o 'clock on a
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Sunday afternoon because we're a church plant. We, you know, take what we can get in terms of venue and we're renting first Baptist church downtown and the afternoon service has been working well.
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So yeah, that's what I'm up to at the moment. I can tell you from personal experience, having pastored a church that did a similar thing, having church in the afternoon, we, we rented a
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Southern Baptist church. And so we'd have church from one to five. Now, granted some people that, that, you know, idolize that pigskin foot, they call it football here in America, where they play it on Sunday.
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We didn't have that issue because you were in church during the football games. But I will tell you, it's going to be an adjustment when you get your own building and have, and go back to, you know, like services at like nine in the morning.
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Cause it's nice to sleep in late for the pastor on a Sunday, isn't it? And the people as well.
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I think we're all loving it as a church and everyone is enjoying their Sunday mornings. Oh, yeah. I used to,
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I mean, I used to be able to actually, when I was pastoring back then, I was helping another guy who was planting a church and I would come in the mornings to his church just to help him out, not, not with the preaching, but just with other things.
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And then I'd go to my church. But even without that, it was a great time, just a family time.
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I, I, that's the one thing I do miss is I used to have the family time when the kids were young before we rushed off to church.
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We weren't in the rush in the morning. So I, I'll tell you, I miss it.
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So enjoy that while you can, because, but so if folks, if they're, if you're in that area,
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I will recommend if you're hearing, I think throughout this episode, the pastoral spirit, the shepherding voice that, you know, that I think you're going to get, you and I don't know each other personally, but having read the book, it gives me a feel for how you're going to preach and how you're going to shepherd a flock.
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And so just want to let folks know where they could find you there. So, Will, thanks for coming on.
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Thanks for your book. This is something that is different, and it's, I think it is needful for the body of Christ because of the way it's written, because of how it's written, the way that it's, as far as a devotional book, but also as far as its content is really something
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I think that's going to be a great value to the body of Christ. So thank you very much for writing it. Thank you, brother.
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I appreciate that. I hope it is of use and help to people. And we appreciate everything that God does in our lives, in your life.
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The ministry has for you. This book is our story because it's everything that God has done through us and is continuing to do in us and will do for us in the future.
51:54
From Everlasting to Everlasting by Will Dobby. I want to encourage you one last time to check that out.
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Get it. Get it for Christmas. Get a bunch of them to give out as Christmas gifts. They're small books.
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Each chapter 500 pages. I'm just looking to see because I want to see about 173 pages is the total book.
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So it's something you can get through very easily. So I just want to commend it to you to look at getting this this year.
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Start your new year off with something. One of those New Year's resolutions you can actually keep.
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That's a crazy idea. Start the year off with this devotional book. One month you'll get through it.
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But I'll be honest with you. I think you may want to do it. Read it again in February because it is something that you can read multiple times and gleam more from it.
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So I want to encourage you to get From Everlasting to Everlasting from Will Dobby. Will, thanks for coming on.