Questions and Answers with Pastor Andrew Rappaport

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's summer school sessions where we're going to do this week a

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Q &A. That's a question and answers. For those of you that didn't know what Q &A was, yeah.

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Anyway, we're going to do questions and answers. We have some questions that came in through Facebook and through our email.

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Some who are in the chat room now can start putting their questions in now. The way to put a question in in the chat room if you're watching live is the letter

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Q and a colon that makes it stand out and we can see the questions and we can answer even the silly ones like, did

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Andrew get a haircut? Yes, he cut his own hair.

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All right, doesn't everyone cut their own hair? Yeah, well, all right. So we are going to have,

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I'm sure looking at the rowdy crew that we usually have in the chat room, I'm sure we're going to get a lot of interesting questions.

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But this is going to be a question and answer class where we're going to get to answering hopefully as many questions as we can and so we'll see if we can get them answered as best we can in the time that we have.

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So one of the first questions that came in that we got through Facebook, I'll ask this one first.

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The question came in from Alex and the question was whether or not the term local church is biblical.

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Whether the term local church is biblical, that was a question he had asked. We ended up, for clarification,

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I needed to get some background to understand what he meant in the question. After having got that, we have that and so one of the things that he was asking was there's a difference that people often refer to as the local church and the universal church.

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Another way you sometimes hear it referred to is the visible church and the invisible church.

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So let me define all those terms and if you actually go to the Greek, the word we have in our

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English for church is ekklesia. Sorry about that.

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So the word ekklesia is a word that means to call out for a public assembly and so this was a group of people that would be called out for a specific purpose in a general assembly.

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So the word specifically meant a local gathering of believers.

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It was those believers, we even have the names of some of the churches, Ephesus, we have the church names of Corinth, Philadelphia, things like that.

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So we have the actual names of some of those churches. So what we have is a case where we have specific names of churches that were the local or visible churches.

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I say those two for specific reasons. In theological terms, the local churches, those people that gather together on hopefully a weekly basis and they gather together for the purpose of worshiping

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God. Now, that's also called the visible church because it is the church gathering that we can see.

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But within every local body of believers, you have those that are members of a church.

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You have those that are true, genuine believers and some of those who are not genuine believers.

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So you have true and false converts that are in the local body, that local church or that visible church.

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And so what is commonly referred to as the universal church or the invisible church is the extension of that term for ekklesia that means all of those that are part of the body of Christ.

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These are specifically those that are regenerate people that make up the universal body of Christ.

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In other words, those people that around the world are all believers. So when you speak of the local body of Christ or local church or the visible church, that could be made up of believers and unbelievers.

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But those that are part of the universal church or what's called the invisible church are made up only of regenerate people.

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So the term that is meant for this local gathering is extended to a universal worldwide gathering in the sense of people all over the world that are part of the true church.

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You see, the local church has people that are true regenerate people and some that aren't. So there's the true church there and then there's false converts.

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But the universal church is made up only of true believers. So in the question of is the local church biblical?

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Yes, it is. It's actually the primary meaning of the word that we have for church, ekklesia, because they're called out into public gathering.

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But we use it often in extension when we speak of the church.

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And so when we speak of the church, there are some things that are true only for regenerate people.

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So when it speaks of the body of Christ, when the scriptures speak of the body of Christ or the church, and it's speaking only to those things that are true only for believers, it's referring to the church universal, those that are truly part of the church.

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You could look in a passage, Romans 9, for example, where Paul says, not all of Israel was

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Israel. What he's saying is not all of those that made up the children of Abraham, those that were considered

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Israel, were specifically Israel, spiritual Israel. So in other words, there was

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Israel the nation and Israel the believers. So you see those distinctions?

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So what you have there is two groups of Israel. You have the same thing with the church.

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You have two groups of church. You have the regenerate and then that visible body that gathers.

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So this is something that we do see, and we shouldn't be surprised by it. So I hope that answers the first question that we had.

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If you do have questions, by the way, even after the show, if you're watching on YouTube and watching it later, you can always email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org, academy at striving for eternity dot org, or join the

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Facebook group, the Striving for Eternity Facebook group, and you can always ask those questions there.

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We always seek to get somebody, if not me, to be able to answer those questions. So that was one of the first questions that we had.

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Another question that may be a little bit easier to answer.

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I say that only because we have a question that's going to be not so much that it's going to be hard to answer. We have some questions.

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We have a question here that's going to take a little bit more detail to answer, and so that will take some time.

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So let's look up the question. If there's any questions in the chat room, feel free to put a colon, a Q, then a colon, then your question, because I actually have the chat room right there this week so I can see.

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So this question is going to take a little bit of reading from this passage.

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So let's take a quick read of this, and it says, the question is, it's a little bit lengthy, but let me try to read it.

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Jude 1 .6 states this, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

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The second passage is in Revelation 12, verses 3 and the first part of 4, and then verses 7 to 9, and they read,

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Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and the seven crowns on his head.

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His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them down to the earth.

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And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against these dragons, and the dragon of the lost angels fought back.

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But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.

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The great dragon who was hurled down, the ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray, he was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

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Now, this one is a little bit more difficult to understand.

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The question actually here, I should read the question. The question was, can you reconcile these two for me?

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And the answer is no, I can't. So let's move on to the next question.

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The reason actually I can't reconcile them is because I don't think they have anything to do with one another.

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Alright? I believe these are two things that are speaking of two different groups of angels in two different time periods.

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So what we have is a case where I think in the passage of Jude, there's two interpretations that you have with the angels in Jude.

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Okay? If we open to the book of Jude, that's toward the back of your

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Bible, and I know that you all brought a Bible to class. So if you look in Jude, you have, it's going to speak of in this passage, it's going to speak of in more detail of them.

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So if you back up a little bit and you start at verse 5, you see that he says, now

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I want to remind you, although you already knew it, that Jesus, who saves, who left out of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe, and the angels did not stay to their own position.

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So he speaks of Egypt, then he speaks of these angels. Okay? Verse 7, though, just as Sodom and Gomorrah surrounded the cities and likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued the desire, so you serve as an example, undergoing punishment of eternal fire.

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So what you end up having is several examples here of some bad teaching, bad angels that do some things, some bad people that do some things.

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Now, when we look at Jude 6, which is very similar to 1 Peter and some things,

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I believe, and there's different people have differing views on this, and I think that both are some good views, but these angels seem to be angels that were involved in the day of Noah.

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Okay? So this is going to be a little different. Some think that the angels referred to in Revelation 12 refer to those being sent down when

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Satan first fell and was cast down to earth, but yet in the context, it's talking about the seals later, so it's kind of hard to see that being there seems to be a future event, future to us at least.

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And so what I think that we have here actually is a case of,

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I think these are two different groups of angels that are in two different time periods, one being in the time of Noah, one being, some would say, some argue for the time that Satan first fell, but I think just because of the casting down to earth, but it's probably more a future event.

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So I think you're dealing with two different groups of angels in two different time periods. I hope that kind of helps answer the question.

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But there is some interesting surrounding of the angels referred to in Jude 6 that also deal with that in 1

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Peter. So the question that just came in the chat room, how do you get the time of Noah? Well, we get that actually out of the 1

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Peter passages 1. And let me look that up real quick.

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Where this becomes of interest is that these angels,

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I believe it's 1 Peter, but I'm trying to find it. It might be 2

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Peter. Let me look real quick. Sorry about that. Yeah, 2

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Peter 2, verse 4. For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them into chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

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If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.

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If the turning of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned the extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

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So what you see here is very similar language to Jude. And so there's some connection.

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And so someone in the chat room is already jumping the gun here and asking Genesis 6. And yes, you have an account in Genesis 6 of the sons of God that have sexual relations with the daughters of men.

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And so there's question of that. Now, we do know the sons of God is a reference that we saw in our theology class to angels.

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So that should bring an interesting question. Not the son of God. Son of God is a specific individual.

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But sons of God often refer to angels. So were those angels that had sexual relations with the daughters of men that so corrupted the human race that it required a worldwide flood?

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And some will say, no, no, no, that's mythology. How do you get there? How do you get into angels that can have sexual relations with men?

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That's Greek mythology. But whatever did happen in Genesis 6, it was something so severe that God had to wipe out all of the human race for it.

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And it seems that these angels, in whatever way that they corrupted the human race, were cast into a temporal location of punishment that they are held.

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Now, when Jesus saw different demons as he walked the earth, the demoniac, the man we know as the demoniac with legion, and they say, you're going to cast us into that place of darkness.

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In other words, there is a place where there are some demons that are cast into now, which is still not their eternal resting place because we see in the end of Revelation that hell and death and the demons and the devil are cast into the eternal lake of fire.

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So the eternal place is the lake of fire. So what you have there is that it seems that there is a place where some demons are right now chained up for one reason or another, and they are not able to be free, and they will eventually join the rest of the demons that will be judged and cast into that eternal lake of fire.

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So what are the angels or the sons of God that are referred to in Genesis 6?

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Well, there's a couple different answers it could be. I actually do believe because of such a severe consequence that somehow these angels did corrupt the human race in some way.

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If they could have corrupted the human race, then they could have been able to basically prevent the

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Messiah, and they understood the prophecies that were seen all the way back from Genesis 3, and therefore that's always been their desire because they realize they've already lost, but they're doing everything they can in their power to still try to win because they've got nothing to lose.

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So is that mythology? I'll let you decide. It's an interesting study if you want to study that out more than we have time for in this class because we do want to get to a couple more questions.

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Again, if you have questions in the chat room, feel free to put them in there.

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Also, you can always email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org, and we'll hope to answer all those questions.

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We did get an email that came in that is a question that is often asked.

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It's asked out of the book, out of 1 John, and it is one that says, let me read it here.

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It says, can you lose your salvation? In other words, can somebody sin in such a way that if they continue to sin that they lose their salvation?

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Because they say in 1 John it says that the one who sins cannot be saved.

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And so let's look at 1 John. I want to take a look at 1 John and I want to read it actually starting in verse 5 just to get some context here.

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But it says this, this is the message we have from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

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If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

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But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin.

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Now it's interesting that the person wanted to stop there because if you continue it says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

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Now let me deal with the passage here and we're going to jump around on this one because this comes up often and this is one that some people have to understand.

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They always go to 1 John because 1 John is a black and white type of book. Now if you remember or if you haven't taken our school of hermeneutics, biblical hermeneutics, you should watch that.

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There's 20 lessons there and so if you go, you can see that one of the things we're going to teach you is that context is important.

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Not just the context that you see in literary context.

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In other words, as we just looked, we read beyond what was quoted in the question. See, the person that asked the question wanted to read 5 to verse 7 but stopped there and didn't read to the rest verses 8 to 10.

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So, the literary context is important, alright?

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But another thing that's important is going to be looking at the context of history, the historical context.

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The question really being, why did John write what he wrote? Who was he trying to address?

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What was he trying to address in his question?

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And so, what we have there is this. We have the question that John is speaking to a group of people called

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Gnostics. Now, what do we know about Gnostics? Well, the Gnostics were people that believed that anything material, physical, was evil.

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But spiritual was good. And one of the things that they would do is they would justify their sin.

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They would go sleep with a prostitute and say, well, my spirit didn't do it, only my flesh did it.

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My body did it. But I didn't sin because it wasn't my spirit that was doing that.

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And we would look at that and go, who are you trying to fool? They were trying to fool themselves.

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And God, if they could get away with it, but God will not be fooled. And we see this throughout time.

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Many people that do many things, make many arguments to try to justify sin.

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So, what John is specifically addressing in these black and white terms is if you're claiming you have no sin, that you do not sin, you make

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God a liar because God says you do sin. But He gives us a remedy for that sin and the remedy is going to Him in forgiveness as the cross.

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But notice the language here. He says if you walk in the light, if you walk in darkness, do you see that in the passage?

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Walking has the idea of a pattern of life. It's used in a figurative sense to mean the way you conduct yourself.

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It's a pattern of life. In other words, if your pattern of life is evil, is sinful, now granted we're all going to sin.

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That's not His point. It doesn't mean if you have to be absolutely perfect as some try to argue and only if you're absolutely perfect are you walking in the light and therefore you have

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Christ. That's not what He's saying. What He's saying is that if you walk, in other words, the pattern of your life is continually being more and more spiritual and that's your conduct and your pattern.

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That's what you're known for. In other words, when you die and people speak of you with the obituaries, is that going to be, they're going to talk about what a party animal you were and what a sinner you were or are they going to talk about your spirituality and how you continued to do that which was right in God's eyes.

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Though there was sin there, we all have that, but there's going to be an aspect that we are always walking in the light.

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He's speaking to those that walk in darkness but claim to have light. That's who He's speaking to.

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That's the group of people, people that claim they don't sin because they're not doing it in their spirit.

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So that becomes a distinction.

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Now, can we lose our salvation? That's a separate question. Let's address that because the way people will argue and they'll argue from Revelation, well those who overcome, well

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I would argue that those who overcome will go to heaven because those that God has already saved already overcame.

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Not because of what they have done but because of what God has done. Remember when we look at this, and we're going to get into this in our systematic theology class when we look at salvation and we look in detail and we see that in that we will notice that we have a case as we look through the doctrine of salvation that it is

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God who saves. Now, if it's God who saves, a simple question, who are we to think we're stronger than God that we can break the bond that God says no one can break?

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Let's look at Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8, I want to read a little bit of a lengthy part because I want to make sure we get the context.

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After reading Romans 7 where he speaks about I believe someone coming to salvation as in Paul's case and he says, oh wretched man that I am.

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He comes to a real saving knowledge and then it says verse 8, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

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For the law of the Spirit is life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death.

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For God has done that what the law weakened by flesh could not do.

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Do you notice who's doing the saving there? God did what the flesh could not do, alright?

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Which makes it interesting when people argue that if we can somehow lose this salvation that God has given us, okay?

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Continuing in verse 3 there, middle of verse 3, by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the

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Spirit. So how do we walk? We walk according to the Spirit. Why? Because of what

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God has already done. For those who live according to the flesh have set their minds on the things of the flesh but those according to the

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Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind of Spirit is life and peace.

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For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law.

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Indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please

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God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. In fact, the

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Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit, the

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Spirit of Christ does not belong to him but if Christ is in you, altogether the body is dead because of sin, the

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Spirit is life because of righteousness. Do you see here? I hope that this becomes very clear who it is that does the saving and who it is that did the work.

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Notice, if it is God that saved us and he's saying he's strong, he can do this, then who can be against him to undo what he does?

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Now, some will say that, yeah, but there's things that, you know, we see people that live in sin.

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Well, actually, 1 John has an answer for that. It's very simple. Those that live a lifestyle of sin but they argue that, they're going to argue that, well, look, this person claimed to be a believer but now look at their life.

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It means they never were Christians. John says they went out from among us because they were never of us.

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That's an important thing. They were never believers. So, we have to understand that but continue reading later in chapter 8 of Romans, it says in verse 31, what shall we say then to these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us? He did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.

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How will we not also with him graciously give all things?

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Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is

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God who justifies. Who is it to condemn us? Jesus Christ is the one who died more than that who was raised.

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Who is at the right hand of the Father who indeed intercedes for us?

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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Now, he's going to give a list of things here.

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What he's saying here is God saved us. God gave us salvation. God is strong.

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In fact, he's all powerful. Nothing is stronger than him and therefore who can be against him who saved us?

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He promises to keep us and look what he says. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

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Shall tribulations, so in other words you see people that have given up supposedly on God because tribulations came in their life, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.

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If any of those things cause a person to walk away from the faith, it means they never had the faith.

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There's not two classes of Christian. There's not those who are true believers and cardinal believers.

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There's those who are saved and those that were false believers. There's true and false converts is what there is.

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So, no one can save us. Look in verse 37. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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Notice the focus. God loves us for I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor those things present, nor those things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of Jesus Christ.

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In other words, some people say, oh yeah, none of those things, but I can lose my own salvation by my works. He says here as a catch -all, nor anything else in all of creation.

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In other words, there is nothing, nothing that is stronger than God that can make you lose your salvation, to separate you from the love of God.

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Alright? Now we could go on on that. We'll hit that in our theology, but we have some more questions that are coming in.

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If you need more on that, essentially what we're saying is you cannot lose your salvation because God is the source of the salvation.

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Okay? Another question that we have, Christine asks, how do you answer someone who insists that Catholics are

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Christians with extras? Well, very simple. The extras they often refer to is either their extra books that they add to the

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Bible or their extra works that they add to faith. Both of which

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God says He's going to condemn. It's those extras that are dangerous.

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You see, when you say the Bible plus, which the Roman Catholic Church never accepted those extra books until the 1500s.

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So, to them even, they were extras. And they only added them in response to the

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Reformation. But that would be, what does it say? Oh, in the book of Revelation, oh yeah, those that add to these books are going to have the plagues added to them.

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You're not to add to God's word. When we see them add their traditions to God's word, those extras are the very things that are going to condemn them.

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When they add their works to the faith of God, then guess what?

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They've added to what God says is salvation and that condemns them.

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It's those very works that's going to condemn them. They add things like purgatory, which is proof of their works -based salvation.

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Because in purgatory, you work off any of the things you haven't done in life. Yeah, that's proof that it's works.

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Alright? So, what I would say is it's those works that they rest upon that actually condemn them. Someone's asking, do we see a connection of the

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Nephilim in Genesis 6 and Daniel 2? Let me just look at Daniel 2, 40 and 43.

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It's always good to check with the scriptures and check them in context. So, let us read.

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This is Daniel 2. I'm going to back up to verse 36 and read this. Nephilim in Genesis 6 are those giants that some would say the sons of God that we read about earlier in Genesis 6.

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This was the dream, now we tell you, we'll tell the king its interpretation.

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You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given his kingdom and power and might and the glory, and into whose hand he has given wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the heaven making rule over them, and that you are the head of gold.

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Another kingdom in fury to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze shall rule over all the earth.

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And then verse 40 says, and there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as a lion, because of iron it breaks to pieces and shatters into all things, and like iron that crushes, it breaks and crushes all things, into verse 33.

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So, verse 41 now, and as you saw the feet and the toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it will be divided into the kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, but as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, and as to the toes and the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.

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So, as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will be mixed with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together as iron does not mix with clay.

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I would answer no, this is not the Nephilim of Genesis 6, and the reason

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I'd say that is because what this is, is speaking of the Roman Empire. We see that King Nebuchadnezzar, as this passage speaks in its context, you have

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Babylon, you have then another which isn't mentioned, which we now know is the

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Medo -Persian Empire, but later in the book of Daniel, he'll refer to the other two, the third and the fourth kingdoms by name, which is

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Greece and Rome. So, that's how I would answer that. I hope that helps.

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Those were some quick questions. We have another question from someone in the chat room says, some people cite

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Hebrews 6 as proof that a person can fall away from the faith.

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I don't think it means this, but what's your take on that? Okay, so let's go back to that, because this is again to the salvation.

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Can you lose your salvation? And on our website, down here, you can go to the website and you'll see, or you should see, let's see,

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I'm going to actually jump out there real quick, I hope, and see if I can find it to see.

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We have on the website, we should have a paper on this specific passage, and it should be under, if you go on the website under Biblical Commentaries and then

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Hebrews, there is a paper right there that says, does Hebrews 6, 4 -6 teach that you can lose your salvation?

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Let us read that. I'm going to just read 4 -6, and I think it'll be kind of clear.

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It says, for it is impossible, note that word, for it is impossible in the case for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the

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Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away to be restored again to repentance, since they have crucified once again the

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Son of God in their own harm and holding Him up in contempt. So, a couple things to note.

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One, is that it is impossible for these people to ever be saved again.

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If this passage is referring to people losing their salvation, then it is impossible for them to ever gain it again, okay?

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Which is something that those who hold to that losing your salvation never hold to. They believe you can lose it, and then gain it, lose it, then gain it.

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Another thing that we see, and we noticed this already when we spoke about the churches, that there is a visible church, and I believe what this is speaking of is just that.

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The visible church, that there's people that are in the visible church who are not regenerate.

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They've tasted of the things of God, but they do not have a regenerate heart.

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So, they do not really know the things of God. They're not regenerate. And therefore, we have the case where I believe he's speaking to people in the visible local church that has some regenerate and some not regenerate.

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He's saying those who were sitting in the church and refused to bow their knee to Christ, it is impossible when they fall away, when they had the truth, they leave the truth knowing full well what the truth is, and reject it, they cannot be regenerate.

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Regardless, if you believe this means you can lose your salvation, then in its context, it means you can never ever be saved again.

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It contradicts those other passages that we looked at where we looked at some of the the context of like Romans 8, where it's saying that God saves you, where it's speaking specifically of salvation.

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And this is a good harmoniutical principle. A good harmoniutical principle is when you have an easier to understand passage, you interpret that to explain the harder to understand passage.

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So, you never want to take a difficult passage as Hebrews 6, in its language, the book of Hebrews, the whole book is a difficult book to interpret.

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But you need to see in this that there is a case where when we have this that seems more difficult to understand, it's not as clear, we're going to let those easier to understand passages, those clearer passages to interpret this.

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So, the clearer passage would be that there's many, many, many, many passages in Scripture, most of the parables, most of the things

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Christ spoke about that speak of hypocrisy. People that would be in the church but not really of the church.

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Those who profess Christ but do not possess Christ. They proclaim salvation but they don't have it.

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That's consistent. So, this passage very easily could be speaking of hypocrites in that way because that's a consistent theme in the

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New Testament and in the Old actually. But we also see passages like Romans 8 that are very clear who saves and that nothing can separate us from that love of God.

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And that if we have that love of God, we're Christians. So, if nothing can separate us, that seems pretty clear that once God who does the saves us, we are not stronger than Him to lose it.

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So, in that clear understanding, I think it's better to understand Hebrews 6 as referring to false converts that refuse to accept the faith, walk away from the visible or local church and therefore can never be saved because they knew the truth.

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And they now call themselves to be atheists. That's really who it is, those hardened atheists that have so rejected

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God. Now, can God still save them? Sure. God can do whatever He wants. He knows when

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He's hardened someone's heart like Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh hardens his heart, hardens his heart, hardens his heart.

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And at some point, God hardens Pharaoh's heart. You can read that in Romans 9. So, God can do that, alright?

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But when we look at this, we see that, and if you want to look, go to the website down here and look up that paper.

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You'll get more information. Now, there's some questions we will not have time to answer because there's just too much detail.

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Job 38 verse 7, Revelation 2 28 and Revelation 22 16 are these verses referring to angels.

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I don't know if we're going to have time. Email us that question and let me try to answer that offline.

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We'll see if we have time for that. I'm just concerned we are running short on time, but we're going to see.

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See if I can answer this next one quickly. The idea that there's contradictions.

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I think this is the question, so I'm going to ask if that's what it is. The idea, it just says the,

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I quote, idea, unquote, contradicts, not the Scripture. So, I'm not sure what that question is referring to.

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So, Christine, if you can ask that maybe a better way. If the question is, if the question is, are there contradictions in the

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Bible, that's very easy to answer. No, there are no contradictions in the Bible. Are there things that could be difficult to understand, things that are difficult for us to comprehend, such as Hebrews 6?

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It's not going to contradict. It may be that we need to study a little bit more to understand because it may seem to contradict.

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And there are times where some Scripture verses seem to contradict, but they don't. Alright? So, I hope that clarified that.

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Oh, you were just clarifying some other things. Okay. Let me look, and this is going to take a little time.

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We have about five minutes. So, let's see. Job, let's quickly turn to Job. Flip in your

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Bibles. I know you guys have your Bibles open, ready, and you are just waiting to get to the passage.

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So, if you will turn to Job 38. Job 38.

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Come on, Andrew. Flip to it. Flip to it. Verse 7. Job 38 .7. And when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for glory.

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This, actually, we looked at in our class of Systematic Theology on Angels. Don't have time to look at the context.

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Let me just give you the context. Actually, context is in verse 4. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

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Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurements? Surely you know.

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He's speaking here when he laid the foundation, when he created the angels. This is God saying to Job, you think you've got answers?

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Okay. Answer me these things, Job, you think that I've got to answer you.

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I'm God, and you think I owe you an answer. It's kind of interesting because God never actually gave him an answer.

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But those were just angels that were created. I think that would be all of the angels, okay?

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Revelation 2 .28, speaking to one of the churches, he says, I will give him the morning star.

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That would be a reference, as we see throughout here, references to angels that are the seven stars.

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The morning star is a reference to either a group of angels or specifically.

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So, I think the Job passage refers to all of the class of angels. In Revelation, what's the next one?

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22 .16, it says, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things.

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For the churches, I have set the root, the descendants of David, the bright morning star.

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So, I think that the, again, what you have here, this bright morning star is, again,

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I think you have the morning star as a reference to angels, okay?

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So, you saw that in Job in general referring to all the angels. You saw that, you see that again in the

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Revelation passages. So, I believe that it may be different groups of Job. If that helps, the

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Job passage being all the angels. We have someone in the, one last question.

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There is no way we are going to cover this question in the two minutes we have left.

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Actually, yes, we can. The question is, what's your take on woman pastors? In other words, should women be pastors?

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No. Next question. Was that easy enough? Actually, we do have a

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YouTube video. When we were going through the school of biblical hermeneutics, we went through that and explained why that's not the case, okay?

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Why women should not be pastors, okay? It's very simple. First Timothy would be the passage to turn to.

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Let's look at this very, very briefly. We won't have time to do this, but like I said, we have an entire class on this, okay?

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So, essentially, when we went through the school of biblical hermeneutics, after teaching through all the classes of how to interpret, we did address this, alright?

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And so, we did it in greater detail than I'm going to have time in two minutes or less. But real quick,

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First Timothy 2 .12, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.

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Rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor.

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What you have here is that he does not allow a woman to instruct a man or have authority over a man based on the creation order and the sin order.

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Both of those things are back in the beginning. They transcend culture, they transcend history, okay?

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So, whatever it is Paul is saying, he's saying this is not a cultural issue. We cannot say

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Paul was speaking just for his time and now we're enlightened, okay? The other reason

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I would say that is because when Paul speaks of pastors, which is an authoritative role and has some leadership, he speaks of overseers in chapter 3 only as men where when he speaks of deacons, a servant role, he speaks of both male deacons and female deacons.

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In other words, male servants and female servants or specifically waiters of tables. So, it would be waiters and waitresses.

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So, in those roles that have the service, you can have male and female.

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But those that are pastors and have the authority over the church, they are only going to be men.

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And based on 1 Timothy, in its context it is because Timothy is saying that in the church a woman should not have authority, which is a forceful authority, and should not be teaching.

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So, one last question. We are over time, but one last question. Can you explain how

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God knows all and yet we are still to pray? God ordains both the means and the ways.

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So, in other words, the ways and the means. He wants us to pray, but He already knows what He's going to do because He didn't need us to pray to learn, okay?

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Remember in the school of systematic theology, the attributes of one of those attributes we talked about is that God knows everything.

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He didn't learn anything. He knows it. Therefore, God knows in a way that we can't comprehend everything there is to know.

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And so, He knows what you're going to do and there's nothing that surprises Him, but He wants us to depend on Him.

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So, He wants us to pray. That's one of the purposes of prayer. So, we get our will aligned with God's will.

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God doesn't need us to pray for His benefit. He wants us to pray for our benefit so that we depend on Him more, not ourselves, so that we're

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God sufficient, not self -sufficient, and that we would look to Him for answers and get our will aligned with His will, making

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His the standard, all right? So, those are a lot of questions we got to. If you guys enjoyed this class and want us to do this more often, let us know either from their email or the

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Facebook group. You can go to academyatstrivingforeternity .org or go to the

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Facebook group, Striving for Eternity. Let us know that you enjoyed this or not and we could try to do this some more.

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We do want to try to answer all the questions. I think we got all of the questions that came up in the chat room, the emails, and those that came in on Facebook.

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If we missed any, email us and we'll try to get to it, okay? So, as a last thing, we want to just encourage you,

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NorCal Fire is coming up. It is not far away. Please register quickly.

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If you register and attend, you get a gift bag. You must register and attend, both, all right?

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And it's be, I think, for the first 75 people. That's how many bags I think we're going to send out to make, but you can't have registered under someone else.

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In other words, if someone else registered, now, it's only one per family. So, husbands and wives, sorry, you only get one.

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Of the free resources that we have, we have some books from Stand to Reason, I think from Institute of Creation Research, some different other things that have been given out, some

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DVDs, CDs, things like that. So, register now, NorCalFire .org,

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and you will be able to partake in that. It is going to be an exciting time. Matt Slick from CARM, Christian Apologetics Research Ministries, a great ministry, has tons of information.

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He's going to be coming out. We have Tony Miano is going to come out from Cross Encounters Radio. I'll be there speaking.

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We will be speaking on getting Christianity right. We're going to deal with major theological topics, why it's important to get these things right, where the false religions have gotten it wrong, and what the truth is.

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So, do hope that you'll come out for that and attend that. And we do hope that you remember no class next week.

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There will be no class next week. I will be traveling. I do not say that I will not surprise you with a class, but we have no planned class.

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In other words, we may, if we can, if I can get to the computers,

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I'm going to bring the computer. I will try to do a live class. It will not be recorded.

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Look on Facebook. We'll let you know if we have that class. Go live, tune in.

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If there is no show, you'll know by about 8 .01 or 2. But we will try to do a live show as we did last time.

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We may give you Si Tim Brunenkate's sermon from Jersey Fire.

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I think we may have that queued up and ready to go. If we do, I'm just saying it will be a long class because someone went over his 50 minutes just like I did today.

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But I hope that we answered all your questions and remember to go out and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.