Man’s Sin Nature, What We Believe, Part 20

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details. Any time that you're going to make one doctrine supersede all others, you're trying to prove that doctrine everywhere in scripture.

01:10

I've seen Calvinists do this. You see the hyper -Calvinists. They will say, if you don't believe in Calvinism, you're not even saved.

01:18

Well, they're wrong. They're adding to the gospel. When they start to argue like that, every group does this, the charismatics.

01:25

You'll have some that will say, if you don't speak in tongues, you're not saved. You're going to see it with fundamentalists.

01:30

If you don't believe in King James only, you're not saved. Every group has their extremes. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

01:39

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

01:45

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:53

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the president and executive director of both the

01:59

Christian Podcast Committee and Striving for Eternity. I am joined by my trusty co -host,

02:05

Bud the Wiser. How are you, Bud? I am excellent, Mr. President. Are we in the Bud zone? Oh, wait, that's your podcast, sorry.

02:13

You have been in the Bud zone. I was recently a guest. I got to be interviewed by you.

02:19

That's right. I heard that got some feedback. I heard people just were burning it up and they're not listening to you anymore over that.

02:27

I surprisingly got some really favorable comments as a result of it. So there are deluded people out there.

02:34

Thank you. That was a lot of fun, so thank you. Those people who wrote the nice comments,

02:40

I owe you dinner, just. Yeah, okay. Both of you.

02:46

I'll make sure they hear that commitment. All right, well, we are continuing today in our study of what we believe at Striving for Eternity in the doctrine of man.

03:00

Today, we're gonna get into discussing a very important topic, something that most people kind of skip over.

03:07

They don't think through as detailed, and because of that, there's a lot that is implied in this, and a lot of people miss it because they don't look into every way that we see what we refer to as federal headship.

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We're gonna get into that in detail, explaining it, the ramifications of that, specifically with how it affects our nature as human beings.

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And so that's gonna be what we're gonna end up discussing in quite a bit of detail. That is something

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I hope you're going to enjoy. But let me, before we get into the episode, I want to give a quick shout out because we do want to let you know, if you are interested in joining us for Israel, it is filling up quickly.

03:54

In fact, I think it may even be filled up by the time you hear this, but we will see. But if you want to join us in Israel, go to 2023israeltour .com.

04:04

13 days in Israel. Myself, Matt Slick, will be doing the primary devotions, and we will be going with guides and everything in the price is included.

04:15

You can go on the website, check that all out. Encourage you to go there. We're looking forward to it. Now, we're glad with the rap report that you're listening.

04:23

This is something that we encourage. If you find this helpful, please go share it with friends.

04:28

That is the best way for people to know about it is when you share it with others.

04:34

So if you find this helpful, please share it. What we're doing is going through our doctrinal statement and if you want to read along with us, which we greatly encourage you to do, go to strivingforeturning .org,

04:51

about section under there. You'll see what we believe. Click open to open up the section on the doctrine of man.

04:58

And we're in the third paragraph, but if you wouldn't mind reading that third paragraph there, and then we will start discussing this very important topic.

05:08

Okay, you want me to read it out loud, right? Because I read it earlier, but it was private, but yes.

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I guess if you think that the listeners will be able to hear inside your mind, then you don't need to read it out loud.

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But here's the thing. If the listeners could hear inside your mind, would you want that?

05:31

No. My wife is skilled at it already, and that's always a problem. Okay, so you've been married for a long time.

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Do you have the ability that my wife and I can do where we could look at each other and say a whole lot with no words?

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Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. My kids growing up, they talked about the fact that we could just look at each other.

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They realize we speak a whole lot of language without words. My kids were like, we wanted to know what you were saying.

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We knew there was a lot being communicated there. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, I'll proceed since I took you off on that little junket there.

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This is paragraph three, having to do with the doctrine of man, and here is what it says.

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The sin nature is that reality that has been imputed directly from Adam to every individual since Adam except Jesus Christ.

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You reference Romans 5, verses 12 through 19. The whole human race exists seminally through Adam as the head.

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Thus, there is a seminal universality of humanity. The nature that each person, with the exception of Christ, possesses is the sinful nature passed on from Adam to each generation.

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By this nature, all men are guilty with race guilt through Adam. The sin nature is inherited, and each person is guilty at the point of conception.

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Okay, so this is really rooted all the way back in Genesis chapter three, right?

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We end up, actually, technically, Genesis chapter two. We'll start to see federal headship, but when we talk about the sin nature, this is rooted back in what happened at the fall of humans in Genesis three.

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Now, we're saying here that the sin nature is that reality which is imputed directly from Adam.

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This is important. We're saying that through Adam, the sin nature is passed on to children, and then from father to child, all the way down to you and I.

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Now, there are those who argue that we do not have a sin nature. In fact, one of the things that was very interesting when

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I was writing my book, What Do They Believe?, and I was looking at all these different religious systems when

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I looked at Rabbinic Judaism, and Catholicism, and Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, and Islam, and when

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I look at each of these, one of the interesting things was they want to, and I would argue even have to, deny a sin nature being passed on, and the reason they have to deny that is because each of them have a works -based salvation where human beings can do good works to outweigh bad works, and the only way you can do good works is if you aren't affected by sin.

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You have to have the ability to do good works. So what I ended up seeing is that as I go through each of these religions, they wanted to deny the sin nature.

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Denying a sin nature allows for the good works to earn righteousness. So I think it actually is required almost to be able to argue for works -based salvation.

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You have to deny a sin nature because if we have a sin nature, we can't do good works.

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Not that would be pleasing in God's sight that would earn salvation or be able to make up for the wrong things we do.

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It started me to realize that this whole issue of the sin nature becomes more important than we might think.

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Now, there's many that would say they're within Christianity that deny a sin nature.

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And let me explain how I often see this progression. And it is a progression in thought.

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I had someone a few months ago that had come to my house. He wanted to debate the topic of Calvinism.

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And I don't know if I shared this, Bud, on the show here, but it was really a funny thing that happened.

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It turns out that this is someone in our church. She asked if she was dialoguing back and forth. She used to go to church with this person.

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She said he's very argumentative. He loves to debate. He loves to challenge. He's very much against Calvinism.

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You know, she was asking me just some things he's saying. And I said, well, you know, do you wanna just set up a meeting and three of us get together and talk about it?

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She's like, would you? I said, sure. Turns out we invited his whole family, a couple others.

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And soon as he walked in the door, I opened the door, he just stares at me and goes,

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Andrew Rappaport, I can't believe it. And I'm like, okay, you obviously know who

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I am. Like, you know, it turns out that he used to attend a conference where I was the keynote speaker each year.

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And so it was interesting because it totally changed the dynamic. She told me that person in our church, she was like, he's usually so argumentative and he was like listening to you.

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Oh, wow. So it wasn't the Calvinistic cage match that you were anticipating? Yeah, it was not like that at all.

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But I had said to her, as we're discussing, I ended up realizing his, and this is the progression.

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The argument starts with, I experienced, when I got saved, I experienced my choosing

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Christ. And in an experiential level, that's how we view it, right?

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Right, sure. We all chose Christ experientially. Theologically, we look at scripture and it says,

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God chose us. Now, when we get into the doctrine of salvation, we are going to solve that supposed dilemma.

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I actually don't think it's a dilemma. I think both are true, okay? And if you wanna look ahead, go look,

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I've spoken on often on the doctrine of superintending. That's the doctrine that's in play there.

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And so that resolves the issue. But because people have this view that Calvinism is determinism, that God chooses against someone's will that they're gonna be saved, forces them to be saved, they look at it to say, no,

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I experienced, I know from my experience, and we should never let our experience dictate theology.

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Yeah, not smart. Yeah, can we say word of faith? You know, charismatic movement?

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Those are where my experience dictates the theology. But we shouldn't do that. Here's the thing though. As we look at it, what we end up seeing is people say, well, this is my experience.

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I know this to be true that I chose God. Therefore, Calvinism is wrong. Calvinism is bad.

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But in arguing against Calvinism, what starts to happen is, well,

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I need to argue for a free will. In that argumentation, people start to go down different paths.

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And let me give a caution with this, whether you're Calvinist or against Calvinism, not the issue here, okay?

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Point being, any time that you're gonna make one doctrine supersede all others, where you're trying to prove that doctrine everywhere in scripture.

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I've seen Calvinists do this. You see the hyper -Calvinists. They will say, if you don't believe in Calvinism, you're not even saved.

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Well, they're wrong. They're adding to the gospel when they start to argue like that.

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But what are they doing? They see Calvinism is so important, they see it everywhere. I mean, every group does this, the Charismatics, you'll have some that will say, if you don't speak in tongues, you're not saved.

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You're gonna see it with Fundamentalists. If you don't believe in King James only, you're not saved. Every group has their extremes, where they take some doctrine and that doctrine becomes so important, they start looking for it everywhere.

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And the reason I think this becomes, for many people, something that happens is because for many people, you have that light bulb moment, eye -opening moment, where all of a sudden, wow,

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I understand this. And you start to see it everywhere. Then people are looking for it everywhere, but it leads people down a bad path sometimes.

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All of this to say, what happens when people argue for free will, there's some directions they go. One way that they go is they'll start to say, well,

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God doesn't know everything. They start to deny the nature of God. This is called open theism. And they will actually say that God's just a really good guesser.

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That becomes heresy because you've just changed the nature of God. The other way that people go is, and Bud, you and I have seen this a lot, is down this notion where there is no sin nature.

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Now, this is known as sinless perfectionism, where they will say that they start with this idea that there is no sin nature.

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And there's some that aren't sinless perfectionists that hold to that. Where it ends up leading for many is sinless perfectionism.

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They start with the idea that we are all in our volition, in our will, neutral, not good or bad.

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So what they would say is that in Genesis 3, when the fall occurred, the curse affected our thinking, even our emotions, but not our will.

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When we argue for total depravity, it doesn't mean that people are as wicked as they could be.

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It's just the idea that our will was affected by the curse of sin. So even our choices will be sinful.

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Right. Yeah, and there's not anywhere in Scripture, any text or proof text or even larger section of Scripture that would imply that discreet slicing off of the will from your emotions.

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I mean, it's a composite. You see the word heart used frequently in the Old Testament. You see it in the New Testament. It's not referring merely to your emotions.

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It's in the Hebrew way of thinking, it was your mind, your will, your emotions. It was the center of your very being.

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So you can't slice out your will and say, well, that was not affected. And Scripture is clear that every area of our being is affected by sin, is affected by the fall from Adam forward.

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Yeah, and I think the reason that they do this slicing is because they know this curse of sin is on man, but they wanna say that somehow we have a will that's free.

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And that's what it means free will. It means it's free from the influence of sin. And that's why I say we have a will, but our will is enslaved to sin prior to salvation.

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After salvation, I would say it's free because the Holy Spirit indwells us.

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But prior to salvation, we have a will that's enslaved to sin. That becomes very important because it's gonna affect the whole doctrine of salvation.

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The way that some people go is once they deny the sin nature, many of them will then say, well, once we're saved, we're gonna be perfect.

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And this is sinless perfectionism. It's the belief that once saved, I can never sin.

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Now they will often say, if you do sin, you can lose your salvation. Now it's interesting because they often will quote

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Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 for this argument that people can lose their salvation.

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Yet, if you look at both those passages, they basically say that if that's talking about losing your salvation, then it's impossible to get it back again.

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And it talks about a willful sin. Well, every sin is willful. Therefore, anytime you do any sin, you've lost your salvation and you're never getting it back.

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I always used to like how Matt Slick would joke and say, if you think you're sinlessly perfect, spend five minutes with me.

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I'll prove you're not. I'll get you angry. And he actually debated someone on this issue of sinless perfectionism.

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And it was hysterical because he's sitting there and he said, he's a horrible sinner.

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And everyone was aghast because they were basically, to them, he was saying he wasn't saved.

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And he was like, what, you don't think you sin? And they all, like all these people were like, yeah.

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And he was like, you're kidding. Like, you really all believe that? Meanwhile, the irony of that, this was an online debate as well.

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And there were many of us asking questions. I was asking the same question over and over. And I was sitting there and saying the fact that they were only asking questions from one side is interesting.

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So they ended up asking, they said the question was from me. And it was a question they were trying to get

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Matt to answer several times. They wanted Matt to answer if he thought the person he was debating was saved. And so they put that as if it was coming from me.

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And I said to Ruben Israel, the guy that was monitoring, I said, you know, that was not my question.

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You lied by your system. You're no longer saved and you can't get it back.

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He's never spoken to me again since. I would just,

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I don't know, go back to scripture. Maybe there's an apostle that wrote an epistle where he says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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No, it's interesting that you refer to 1 John because 1 John is the passage that they will say or quote the most to refer to sinless perfectionism.

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So let me explain why. Now, the way they'll interpret the passage you just gave is they will say, yes, when you first got saved, you have to admit that you sin.

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You have to confess that sin to get saved. So often they'll say you're saved by faith, but you maintain it by works.

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And you'll see this in any system that says you can lose your salvation. You're saved by faith, but you maintain it by works.

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We're going to get into this when we talk soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, but you cannot lose your salvation. God is the source of that salvation.

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So only God could take it away. Romans chapter eight's clear. He's not letting it go. Isn't that the

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P part of TULIP? It is for those who look at it. And many people will hold to the preservation of the saints, which is the

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P in TULIP. They will hold to, some will refer to eternal security because they don't want to say, even remotely seem like they would be

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Calvinists. I get it, it's fine. But it's the same idea that once you are saved, when you understand the nature of salvation, you understand you can't lose this because you couldn't gain this.

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And so the real issue, let me just answer this really quickly, is even though it's a rabbit trail, the reason is, is this.

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When people think that, well, Colossians two is really clear, 14 to 16, that all of our sin was paid at the cross.

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All transgression was paid at the cross. So when you realize that, you have to realize

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God's eternal and omniscient. Being omniscient means that God knows all things.

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If he paid for your sin at the cross, what sin have you committed that's not post -cross?

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All of them. All of them are. All of them. So God knew exactly what sins he was paying for.

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You would have to argue, if you say that you can lose your salvation, that would say that at the cross, either

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God didn't know all the sins you were gonna commit. This is why people end up in open theism because they end up, they want to hold to the free will so badly that they end up saying, well,

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God didn't know these things. But at the cross, when he paid for them, he either only paid for part of them, making him a liar because he said he paid all of them, or he said he paid all of them, but he just didn't know any better.

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And that's where you get to open theism. And so the other thing is he's eternal. He's outside of time. So everything's eternal now.

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Do you think he doesn't know? He's not there when you committed every sin you ever commit? Yeah, he knows all that.

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When you say that you can lose your salvation, you're actually messing with the attributes of God. I want you to notice how often

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I go back to that. When you go back to the perfections and nature of God, all of our theology is based in that.

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And when you have good theology, it's going to be in line with all of his perfections.

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But if you have bad theology, you'll see that you're messing with the perfection of God, one of his attributes or more.

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One of the other ways that in a desire to protect free will, they don't want to deny sin nature, want to protect free will, is this idea that came up from a

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Catholic priest called Molinism. It's the idea that God looks at all the possible choices we can make, and they would call this these worlds.

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So God looks at all the worlds, every choice. When you make a right turn versus a left turn, he knows the outcome of that, how it affects every other human being.

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And I would agree he does know that, but the idea that they have is that he knows that, and then he selects one world out of all the possibilities, the one world that will give him the most glory.

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Here's the dilemma. Their idea is to protect God, protect our free will. But once God chooses that world, we don't have free will anymore because we can't do anything other than what we would have chosen in that world.

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Their attempt to try to get around what they call determinism in Calvinism, they end up going into a far worse determinism than Calvinism does.

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That's extreme determinism. I've debated Molinists this way, and I just asked the one question. Can we do anything other than what our free will choices were in this world?

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And they go, no. Okay, well then God determined, and I can't do anything else.

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But it was your free will choice. But not anymore, it's not. So all these things you end up seeing is ways that people will argue.

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And now notice, I could be talking about the ways that Mormonism or Islam or any of these others deny the sin nature.

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I'm focusing though within the Christian realm, within those that would want to be called brothers in Christ.

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You know, look, folks, I mentioned Molinism. William Lane Craig, someone many look to, he's a

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Molinist, he's a big promotant of it. So as we look at this, this idea of the sin nature and denying the sin nature is more prevalent than we think.

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And it gets into a thing of headship. So let's get into this. So the sin nature, this was a lot of intro to this because we need to say what we are not teaching.

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By saying that the sin nature is that reality that has been imputed directly from Adam to every individual since Adam, we put the exception, except Jesus Christ.

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This is really important because it says that it is passed on. So ladies, mothers, when your children disobey, you can honestly blame the father, okay?

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Because it is their fault. This is why Adam did not have a human father. You end up seeing this is, the virgin birth is really important because the sin nature was not passed on to Jesus Christ.

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Had he had a human father, that sin nature would be passed on that it is somehow in the way that God has created procreation that the sin nature is passed on.

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And so, yes, it is the father's fault when children disobey.

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I always say when people would look at my kids, but they look at my kids, oh, they're so good. Look, I said, yeah, they get the good looks from mom and their sin nature from dad.

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So what we end up seeing with this is we have to look and Romans 5 is really the key passage for this.

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But if you wouldn't mind, could you read Romans 5, 12, actually 12 all the way down to 21.

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12 to 21, yeah. Yeah. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

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Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

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But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man,

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Jesus Christ abounded for many and the free gift is not the result of that one man's sin for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

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For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

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For as by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

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Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. Pretty powerful. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the key passage.

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I will get back to 1 John. I just realized I didn't finish the 1 John, so I'll get back to it. That's okay.

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You should've warned me. All right, so here we go. So let's look at this. This is really clear because this is tying what

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Adam did as our federal head to what Christ did as our federal head.

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And if you deny the sin nature, if you say that sin was not passed on, even though it says quite clearly, through one man, right?

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One man, all of us sinned, right? Then how do you avoid that?

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Even in verse 18. So then as through one transgression resulted in condemnation to all men.

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You see that? All men have sinned because of what Adam did. So that is imputed.

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It's part of us. If you deny that, then you end up breaking this whole thing about through one righteous act of Jesus, there's justification for all men.

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We could be justified because of what Christ did. So this is tying the two together.

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So that federal headship of Adam is passed on to all people. That's what allows

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Christ to be our federal head so that he could be that righteous one to be able to offer salvation to all men.

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Now, I did say, let me get back to the 1 John thing because I didn't wrap up completely with that.

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Why is it that so many of the sinless perfectionists use 1 John? 1 John was written to Gnostics.

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This is important when we interpret scriptures to know who wrote it and who he wrote it to. John was dealing with the

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Gnostic issue and he's writing it to a bunch of people struggling with that. Gnosticism was this belief that anything physical was evil and anything spiritual was good.

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This is why they denied the human nature of Jesus Christ because they thought that would make him evil.

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And so they didn't question his deity, they questioned his humanity, but the idea that you ended up having in Gnosticism, an example would be is that they felt they could go sleep with a prostitute and that would not affect them.

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And the reason it wouldn't affect them is because they only gave their body over to it, not their spirit.

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And so they'd make this distinction. So John is writing to say these things are, he writes in very clear cut language because he's dealing with people who are trying to do fine divides here to say, well,

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I can continue to sin in my flesh, but not in my spirit, and therefore it's okay. And so they were giving license to sin, they were making excuses to sin.

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And that's why he's so black and white with things. So when he's saying these things that you cannot sin, everything's black and white.

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Yes, because he's dealing with people that are playing word games. And so he's trying to say, no, if you give yourself over to sin, you are giving yourself to darkness.

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And that is dealing with a specific type of teaching where it's making excuse for sin.

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And he's arguing you can't separate your flesh from your spirit. It is your whole being.

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And so when your pattern of life is to sin, your love for sin, you're making excuse to sin, then you're, he's saying, then no, you wouldn't be of the light, because that's not the pattern.

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He's not saying that you can't do any sin. And so they'll interpret that that way because they want to say they're sinlessly perfect.

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Of course, you know what the irony is with sinless perfectionism, bud? I have never met a sinless perfectionist that's not prideful.

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They're very proud of their sinlessness. It's amazing. Pride never seems to be one of the sins.

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Goodness. That is all just to tag onto what you said. All of this, because John is dealing with the issue of Gnosticism.

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This is the Greek dualism that matter is evil, spirit is good.

31:11

And so there's where you sort of see the divide in the argument that he's combating there.

31:16

You got to keep an eye out for dualism. It's a problem in a lot of arenas. But see, if you start to apply the scripture in a way that the author meant to apply it, and you try to apply it differently, you're going to come to wrong conclusions.

31:30

It causes disaster. In fact, let me give an example of that. If you're going to use, for example, like the

31:36

Mars lander, that they used the, in all the calculations, they used

31:41

American metrics here in America when doing calculations, but they were working with other countries that used

31:48

European metrics. One is the metric system and one is not. And so when they were doing things, their calculations were off because they were applying the wrong metric.

32:01

So when the Mars lander landed, it crashed.

32:07

I mean, it just slammed into Mars so hard that it was a completely wasted mission. Why? They went back and went, what went wrong?

32:16

Oh, we were measuring in feet. Oh, we were measuring in meters. Important safety tip, folks.

32:25

This is what ends up happening. Even with scripture, when you apply the scripture differently than it was meant, you're going to come to disastrous results.

32:34

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Go to the support SFE, and you can support us on a monthly basis would be great because, well, our bills are monthly.

34:41

So with that, let's get into this next sentence here, because this is gonna get us back to this whole thing of the federal headship, so we can explain this.

34:49

It says, the whole human race exists seminally through Adam as head.

34:55

Now, but in America, I think many of the listeners may not understand federal headship as well as some other countries.

35:04

We have a president with a Congress. We have a court system.

35:09

So we have three branches that are divided for the purpose of checks and balances. So we don't have the idea of a king.

35:17

We don't have the idea of a federal head. So our federal head would really be the three branches together.

35:24

But in most countries where they used to have as a king, and the king represented the entire country.

35:29

So if the king declares an act of war, the country's at war. So in our case, our federal head would be

35:36

Congress, president, Supreme Court. When we declare war, right, it's not the president who can declare it,

35:42

Congress would, but once they declare war as our federal head, our representative, we're at war.

35:48

Now, you and I may not have voted for that. We didn't choose that, but that's what our federal head has done. So I'm trying to illustrate that.

35:56

That's the idea here. So what Adam did, and this is the issue, people have problems with this, and the reason people deny this in nature is they say, well, it's not fair.

36:04

Now, just stop there. Just stop. I had a debate online this week, bud, someone that was like talking about fairness with God.

36:12

Where do we define what is and isn't fair? The nature of God. So when you're gonna tell

36:18

God what's fair or not, I'm sorry, but you have no grounds to do that because you can't say what

36:27

God does isn't fair if he doesn't do it your way, because you're saying the standard of fairness, we're throwing out and making me the standard of fairness.

36:36

What you're doing is setting yourself up to be God. That's what caused Adam and Eve to fall. They wanted to be like God.

36:43

We have to realize that we all, Adam's our federal head, and though what he did did affect all of us, and when you wanna say, well, that's not fair because I didn't choose that, there's many things in life that affect you you didn't choose.

37:01

No one said you get to choose your own life. No one said you get to be the masters of your own race, right, or your own universe.

37:09

The whole idea here is that people think they should be God, not God be God. Somehow we should be able to decide whether we suffer or not, and if we suffer, that means

37:18

God doesn't exist because we didn't get to choose. Wait, what? How does that correlate?

37:25

It just means God is not the one you created in your own head. So we are all in Adam, the whole human race, and the next thing we say here is thus, there is a seminal universality of humanity.

37:43

This, by the way, folks, means there's one race. There's not different races.

37:49

There's a human race, and we're all in Adam. Okay, so let's get into some fun topics real quick, but are there aliens out there in space?

37:59

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, actually, technically, there are because right now at the space station, there's different people that would be

38:10

Russian, and so we'd call them aliens. I don't know where the border is there. Yeah, where's the border of space?

38:16

But the idea, maybe you'll think there is aliens in space. There are other beings.

38:22

Well, if they are, I could say one thing for sure. According to Scripture, Christ didn't die for them because he didn't become them.

38:31

So that would be one thing. People will ask sometimes, is there life in space?

38:37

Don't know, but what I would say is they're not human. The human race was through Adam, and this would speak against Mormonism, which believes that God reproduces, and then you could become

38:49

God and get your own planet and reproduce, and so just by the way, mathematically, with the number of Mormons that have lived and reproduced, we should be seeing these other planets having life.

39:05

There's so many of them, and they're all reproducing on their planets, and each of those planets are producing good Mormons that are reproducing on those planets, and so it becomes exponential.

39:14

We should be seeing life. If Mormonism is true, we should find life on other planets. This is the way my brain works, right?

39:20

People don't argue that way, but I actually wrote a program many years ago in the 80s, or sorry, 90s to prove that the

39:28

Book of Mormon can't possibly be true by just the calculations of birth rate and death rates because if you have the death rate in the

39:35

Book of Mormon, the birth rate that you have to have is like 15 times the birth rate that we actually have.

39:44

So somehow in the Americas, they had to be producing way more children than is physically possible. Every year, they gotta be reproducing from the moment they can until the moment they can't.

39:55

Every egg of the mother has to be used. What we're saying here is that the nature of each person, now

40:03

I'm saying again, with the exception of Christ, I keep saying with the exception of Christ because this as a doctrinal statement, we want to try to answer everything.

40:10

We wanna be very precise, and so in that precision, this does not apply to Christ.

40:16

Why does it not apply to Christ? When we say this, people that even that hold to the sin nature don't think about this connection.

40:22

The reason for this exception is because Jesus didn't have a human father. Therefore, he didn't have a sin nature because the nature that each person with the exception of Christ possesses is the sinful nature passed on from Adam to each generation.

40:39

You can't avoid this. And so this becomes the thing is that we see is that every generation was influenced by sin.

40:47

Every generation has the curse of sin from their father. The only way to avoid it is to not have a human father.

40:57

Now, I will admit, this brings up a very interesting thing in seminary, but I had to write for my ethics class,

41:04

I had to write on cloning, the ethics of cloning. I gave the arguments against it, and then

41:10

I made an argument for cloning this way. We know that sin is passed on from father to child, but if you clone a human being, which they're working on, they're trying to do, why is this so important?

41:24

Here's why they're trying to do things like cloning. They're trying to find a way to have children of your own that you could reproduce without being able to have male, female, because the homosexuals want to be able to have their own children.

41:41

They're trying to create artificial wombs, and this is one reason why cloning is so important for some people.

41:49

Now, I can't say all, because China, which is doing the most research into cloning is also the most against homosexuality, which

41:56

I do find, side note, very interesting thing, Hollywood, for example,

42:02

Disney, who has made it really clear that they are gonna fight for transgenders and homosexuals here in America.

42:09

Well, in China, where they said, hey, there's a film, I guess, with Harry Potter, where the character

42:14

Dumbledore is not even, I don't even think they said he was gay, they just, they implied it, and China said, we won't allow a single

42:22

Harry Potter movie to be made until you cut that scene out, and so they cut the scene out. They say, we have to stand for LGBT rights here in America, but in China, it's like, nope, nope, nope, there, we're gonna follow the money.

42:35

You know, the other thing, and I know we didn't sort of outline this, but just to kind of leap off of what you said, the other big movement that we're seeing right now that is in the same direction is this whole transhumanism movement, where the real concern that they have is mortality.

42:53

They're trying to conquer death. They're trying to get technology and biology merged together so that you become some sort of transhuman.

43:05

You know, for years, you've had the cryonics where you can save your brain, and when science has progressed to the point where you can be cured of whatever it was that killed you, you can come back, and now there's this notion of being able to put your consciousness into a computer, and into that sort of arena, so this whole transhumanism thing, which is attempting to conquer mortality, but it fails because that's not really the problem.

43:32

The problem of mortality is the problem of sin, and it's a fruitless endeavor, but it's certainly godless, though they're acting as if they are gods.

43:44

You're right. One person who I think, the rumor at least, is that he did this was Walt Disney. He's in a chronic state, and they have the technology to recover him with whatever disease he had, but that'd make it really interesting if Walt Disney was to come back and see what

43:59

Disney does today. He would just maybe roll over in his grave. But the idea, folks, what

44:14

I hope you're seeing is that we're saying that all of this is in the idea of federal headship. Now, let me give an application to this.

44:20

When we look at the family structure, the husband is the federal head. Does that mean that he is better than the wife?

44:29

No, that's not what federal headship is. Is Adam better than, is he better than any other human being? No, he is human like everyone else, so this whole idea when they say federal headship means that there's a hierarchy.

44:42

That's not what it's saying. Adam is not, like, we all don't submit to Adam. It means he represents, and the husband represents the family before God, and therefore he's gonna be more accountable for decisions made for the family.

44:58

Part of the sin nature is the rebellion against the family structure that God has ordained where Adam, who was created first, is the federal head, not only because he was created first, but because Eve sinned first.

45:12

For those two reasons, we would see that God has structured this federal headship, and that's why he doesn't allow women to preach in churches because of this federal headship.

45:22

All these things are connected. You can't take one without the other. This is the way that God ordained it.

45:28

Sorry, I didn't get to make the rules. I don't have to like it. I just have to submit to it. Someone told me this week, they were on this topic saying that they believe women should be able to be preachers, pastors, and I said, well,

45:41

I disagree, and the guy says, well, you're entitled to your opinion. I said, I agree.

45:47

I'm entitled to my opinion. You're entitled to your opinion. The difference is God will judge you for being wrong on your opinion because God has spoken on this 1

45:56

Timothy 2, 12 to 14. So you're right. We're entitled to our own opinion, and God will judge us for our opinion.

46:03

Exactly. So this last sentence here, by this nature, all men are guilty with race guilt.

46:11

Now, when I say race guilt, I'm not saying black versus white. This is human race.

46:17

I'm emphasizing that because we have a race guilt through Adam. We are all one race, okay?

46:24

Christianity has the answer to racism. The world does not. The world's answer to racism is more racism.

46:31

Reverse racism, which is still just racism, does not solve racism. If you want to solve racism, you solve all racism.

46:39

You do not be racist anyway. Christianity has the answer to that because we're all one race, okay?

46:47

But what this is saying is we're emphasizing here that by our human nature, we are all guilty.

46:54

We're all guilty through Adam, all right? The last part, the sin nature is inherited, and each person is guilty at the point of conception.

47:06

Now, this becomes something that there's some who want to argue, disagree. Some will say that the sin nature doesn't affect us until some age of accountability.

47:16

What's that age? Well, when people are more reasonable. Where do you find that in scripture? You're not.

47:21

You're not gonna find an age of accountability in scripture. I'm arguing that the only way

47:27

I can see that this can be explained is that if this is passed on from father to child, as we read in Romans 5, that it's through Adam to the next generation, and this is why

47:38

Jesus didn't have a human father, then the only point that you can have is at conception because that is when the procreation begins.

47:48

That is when you end up having that union between the father and the mother, and you start to have, that is where I would argue that a soul is created is in that process, and that soul, because of the father, would have a sin nature.

48:04

Now, let me deal with a touchy topic, because, Bud, you know I always try to avoid the difficult things, right?

48:11

The difficult, yeah, I wouldn't want, make it easy. What happens when you have a child that dies in the womb?

48:18

Andrew, are you saying they immediately go to hell because they have a sin nature at conception, and they're not even two weeks old, and they die?

48:27

Are you saying they go to hell? I'm saying, listen very clearly, I don't know.

48:34

You know what that means? That means I don't know. Scripture does not say what happens to a child in the womb, but let us deal with that for a bit.

48:43

Are they guilty of sin in the womb? Yes. Have they sinned in the womb? Well, yeah,

48:49

I would say that because of their sin nature, they would have that guilt, but did they actually sin?

48:55

Well, I argue, I even put this in my book, What Do We Believe? What's the very first thing that a child does when it comes out of the womb?

49:01

It cries out of selfishness, because it wants to be fed. It is a selfish being. So could

49:07

God rightfully take every child in the womb that dies and say, guilty, and send them to hell?

49:16

He could. Does he? I don't know. But people will say, but wait,

49:22

Andrew, Andrew, scripture talks about this. David said when his son's life was taken in 2

49:27

Samuel 12, he says that he cannot come to me, but I can go to him. So therefore David knew his child was in heaven.

49:35

Well, let's read the context there and see if that's actually what he's saying. First off, it's an idiom, a Jewish idiom to say that you can't bring someone back from the dead, but I can go to death.

49:45

He wasn't saying he was gonna see his son again. And by the way, did David know through supernatural means that his son was going to die?

49:54

Yes, yeah. God told Nathanael the prophet to tell David this was what was gonna happen.

50:01

David knew the outcome before his son died. He knew it was from God. Could Nathan have told him afterwards that, or even at the time that God would take that child to heaven?

50:14

Maybe he did. Maybe David had that revelation, but the real argument I'd make is it's an idiom and I would interpret that as the idiom that it is and not take it as a literal that David would see his son in heaven.

50:27

So there's no passage that you could use to say that children will be in heaven. But I will say this, we do know from John the

50:33

Baptist that he could recognize Christ while still in the womb. So could a person be brought to repentance even within a womb?

50:41

I would say yes, and therefore a child in the womb could be saved the same way everybody else can be.

50:46

And so does God or could God save every child in the womb that he is going to take their life?

50:54

Yes. Now people say, and I've had someone say this to me, how could I ever counsel someone who lost a child and believe such things?

51:04

The answer is I lost a child. My wife lost a child in the womb. Will that child be in heaven?

51:10

I don't know. I would like to think so. But again, like I said earlier in the program, we don't let our emotions or our experiences interpret scripture.

51:20

When I look at scripture, I have to say that the sin nature is passed on at conception. What happens in the womb with children that die?

51:28

I don't know. Scripture doesn't say. If scripture said all children in the womb go to heaven, boy, we would have a really hard argument against abortion, wouldn't we?

51:38

I mean, in fact, we should encourage it. Spare people the sinful life on earth and possibility that they don't go to heaven.

51:46

I mean, take your child's life. This actually happened with a Mormon because Mormonism believes that the age of accountability is eight years old.

51:52

And if you remember back, I think it was in the nineties, and I'm forgetting her name, but the woman who killed all her children as her oldest was turning eight and she saw how sinful he was, she wanted her child to be with her in heaven.

52:07

And she killed him and then realized she wanted all the children and she may not get a chance.

52:13

She knew she'd be put in jail. She killed all of her children. I think it was like six children, killed them all because she wanted them to go to heaven.

52:20

If that was true and God said all children go to heaven, what would be our argument against it?

52:26

I mean, it's the best thing you could do for the child then, right? And if the child, if God said all children go to hell, well, boy, that'd make it really hard for someone to live with.

52:35

When you lost a child in the womb and that child is going to go to hell, but God doesn't say.

52:42

But what I think we can infer very clearly is that that sin nature is passed on to each and every person at the point of conception.

52:51

What God does within the womb, we won't know until we get to heaven.

52:57

But I can guarantee one thing, whatever happens, God is just, and God is fair, and God is good, and he is right.

53:07

The only way we can know any of those things is through the nature of God. We know these things because we know who

53:13

God is. We have faith, which means we trust him to always do what is good and just and right and holy.

53:23

That is our greatest assurance is his sovereignty and his attributes. But you're right, and I was just going to point out

53:30

Psalm 51, David makes the classic statement about this whole issue of sin nature. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

53:41

There we are. There we are. So before we close out, folks, I got to let you know there was a post, public post this past week that we're recording that said,

53:52

I'm back. Some of you think it's President Donald Trump that he's back and posting on True Social.

54:00

No, it's actually me back on Twitter. Yes, I have returned to Twitter. It's under new management or looking forward to being under new management, so I will return.

54:10

And so I'm back on Twitter, but because of the shadow banning they had done, I kind of felt my account was completely useless.

54:17

So when they kicked all the conservatives off, I permanently deleted my account. So I had to create a new account.

54:23

So it is Andrew underscore SFE for striving for eternity. So look for Andrew underscore

54:30

SFE. And hopefully, because, but we were talking before the show, I created the account.

54:36

It only took two days for my haters to go and report me and say, he's back on Twitter.

54:42

He's trying to get followers again. Okay, the account is back. And I said to Twitter, yes, please turn my old account back on since they've removed all the shadow banning they've been doing to people.

54:53

I could prove that now, but if they removed all the shadow banning, then I wouldn't have to try to get followers again.

54:59

Two days after that, my account was locked. And so in the process, I've been working with Twitter to get that unlocked.

55:06

They say they will, we'll see. I should be back on Twitter. I said, there's proof of the shadow banning.

55:12

Here's an interesting thing, bud. Twitter was doing a thing, is why I say that Twitter was a useless platform for me before because I could not get over 2 ,500 followers.

55:24

I'd get 5 ,000 followers, get a whole bunch of people following, and then all of a sudden they'd all disappear. I at one point had over 20 ,000 followers on Twitter, and within 48 hours, they all vanished.

55:36

And people would say, hey, I thought I was following you. Well, here's the interesting thing. When I created a new account,

55:41

I used to use a tool for Twitter. It was still tied to my old account. When I got rid of my account, I had 2 ,300 followers.

55:49

When I went to log into this thing, it told me I had,

55:54

I think it was 3 ,500 followers. I am dyslexic, so I couldn't remember if it was 53 or 35.

56:00

But either way, that's way more than the 2 ,300 that I had. And so I think whatever rules they had, they shut those off and all the connections between the people that I used to be connected that they had prevented suddenly popped back up.

56:17

This has been in the news that this happened, that once they announced Musk, they started getting, like all of a sudden, all these conservatives started getting a ton more, and all the liberals were losing.

56:26

So they probably got rid of all their fake bots and stuff. Who knows? I think they were definitely doing something. That's happened with mine, like you're talking about when they had the big purge.

56:34

I think I had something like 15 ,000, and over the course of a couple of weeks, it goes down by 5 ,000.

56:41

And I'm looking right now because this week, maybe the last week and a half, I've been gaining followers.

56:48

I'm at like 9 ,700 at the moment, but that's like 500 more than I know I had a week ago.

56:54

So there's something going on. Something going on. Good to hear. Lastly, let me just say, if you guys want to get the book,

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Sharing the Good News with the Mormons, again, we're having a sale on it. Go to strivingforeturning .org. Just get that book.

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Use the coupon code LDS for Latter -day Saints and save yourself 35%. I'm not sure we're going to keep this in stock, so this will be your last chance to get this book.

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If you want it, it's a great book on looking to evangelize. All right. So with that, bud, you know what?

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What's that? That's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeturning .org.

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