Jeff v. Clementine, Ancient Leviticus Scroll, Colossians 2, A Little Abu Zakariya

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Got started a little late (I think what I heard Rich yell was “I killed the whole thing!”) but still managed to sneak a program in covering a wide variety of topics including Clementine’s debate with Jeff Durbin and…other stuff! I leave for England and South Africa this weekend, so we will be back, Lord willing, with more programs at the end of the month!

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Yeah, you sure we're here? Not really sure, but I've been listening to very interesting things from the other room, like DOH!
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And a few other words. Not bad words, just like IDIOT! Things like that.
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What happened was we started a minute early, and someone realized we were a minute early. So they hit the button under the glass.
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We put it under glass for a reason. That's the same thing. Remember Galaxy Quest? You know, how they had to get through the chompers to get to...
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Yeah, that's what happened. And so, Warp Core shut down everything.
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We're going to have a Warp Core in here, by the way. Did you know that? Yes. Someone's actually using... I do not understand how these 3D printer things work.
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That's sort of like a replicator to me. You know, Star Trek? Star Wars? Oh, good grief. I'll never hear about that either.
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It's a Star Trek thing, but yeah, we're going to have a Warp Core. We'll probably put it up there someplace, and maybe we can put a remote control on it so when
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I start getting excited, you know how the Warp Core and the Enterprise, at least the Enterprise -D, would start going faster and faster the faster they were going.
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Maybe we can make it work that way. Anyway, got a lot to get to today.
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Most important thing right off the bat, everybody has to see this debate because I've never seen a
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Reformed Apologist just so completely shut down as in this.
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It's just, as a Reformed Apologist myself, it's pretty amazing to have to look at something like this.
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It's very, very hard. But, you know, we need to be honest.
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When one of our own gets owned, we need to learn from what happened.
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And so, for those of you who did not see Jeff Durbin next week, which is very confusing because how could you see
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Jeff Durbin next week when it was only on Tuesday night, but it's the name of the program, it's very confusing.
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It's almost like a time thing in Star Trek, where you, how can the
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Tribbles, you know, it gets very confusing. But anyway, there was a debate on there
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Tuesday night. I'm really surprised that Jeff allowed it to go out because it was just, wow, it was really amazing.
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So I thought we'd take a quick look at it, see what we can learn from it. So here's, watch for a particular question where Jeff is just silenced.
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You know, if atheists pick up on this, listen to the question that was asked.
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Have you seen this? You haven't had a chance to see this. Okay. All right. So here we go. Here's, oh,
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I need to move that over here. Here we go. Here's what happened. I can do a karate kick.
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Can you seriously do karate kick? Yes. Let me see. You sounded not very convincing in that one.
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So the two princes in Frozen are Olaf and Kristoff, right?
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Those are my favorite. Olaf and Kristoff. He's not a prince.
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Olaf is a prince. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.
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No. Do you have a chin? You know what's going to happen? Your teeth are going to fall out.
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I know. But the song from Frozen, I think is actually a bad song. It's kind of annoying.
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Let it snow. Let it snow. No. Let it go.
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What? It's called Let It Go? Yeah. Why do you think that? It is called
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Let It Go. I hear her sing it in the song. It's let it snow. Let it snow.
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No. It's let it go. Well, truth is all relative. So... In my book, it says let it go.
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Well, is your book the most important? Yes. This is why interfaith dialogues are so important.
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So there you go. If the atheists pick up on that, and I can just see this happening someday in the future,
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I can see an atheist right in the middle of debate with Jeff going,
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Do you have a chin? There were a couple other... Summer told me there were a couple airlines that didn't make it into the final cut, which included your cheeks are short and your hair is dry.
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So it sounds like she pretty much went ad hominem. And sometimes that's effective.
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How do you respond to something that cute when they go ad hom? So she was obviously sort of sizing up her opposition and realized that that was the direction to go.
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So there's Jeff Durbin getting owned by Clementine, who, of course, is my granddaughter.
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And that just had to be shown, had to see that.
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I did not know about that. So that was a bit of a surprise as I was on the program talking about atheism and culture and stuff like that.
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And so there you go. There's where you go. So anyway, something before I forget about it and go on to other things that I forgot to mention earlier.
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I forgot to mention an earlier program. And that was a story that came out not too...
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It's been less than two weeks. So I figure it's still probably, you know, worthwhile. You may wonder what
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I'm doing. I have the ability to adjust the air conditioning on my phone.
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And sometimes I forget to get it going a little bit better because once you close that door, it starts getting rather warm in here.
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So I just cooled it off a degree. Anyway, story came out.
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Let me see. This is August 3rd. It's only a week ago today. Scientists have finally read the oldest biblical text ever found.
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And we mentioned this once before. This was in the
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Qumran scrolls and in other locations. There have been manuscripts found that are in such a condition because they're scrolls that any attempt to unwind them is utterly destructive of them.
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It just can't be done. Because they've been in that position, they've basically fossilized in that position.
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And the writing's on the inside. And so they've just been preserved in the hopes that someone might be able to figure out how to do something with it in the future.
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Well, someone came up with this brilliant idea that ink, the ancient ink, would have a different basically x -ray signature than the papyrus or manual.
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It didn't have to be papyrus. It could be animal skin, whatever. Whatever writing material it was written on.
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And so if you scan a scroll, even though it may be wrapped around itself, what, 10, 20 times, if you scan that scroll and then are able to, and of course you do it from different directions and stuff like that, and then are able to map the differences where the ink is versus paper.
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It's not paper, but parchment, whatever it is. Then using computers, of course, you can basically unroll the scroll.
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And it is astounding the accuracy with which they've been able to do this.
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Basically, the computer can unroll the scroll and reproduce exactly what's on the scroll without ever physically unrolling anything.
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It'll stay in that rolled position forever, but we can read what's in it and read it very accurately.
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And there is a wonderful example of the use of modern technology to provide us with something awesome.
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And so this is a scroll that is from the
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Book of Leviticus. Remember, we spent I don't know how many months, maybe over a year of study in the
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Holiness Code, Leviticus 18 through 20, 21. And then we did a bunch of other sections,
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Leviticus, Deuteronomy, tackling all the tough law code sections.
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And it was tough work, but we did. And it is fascinating to recognize how central the
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Book of Leviticus is to New Testament theology. I mean, you go to the
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Book of Hebrews, Hebrews assumes that you have a knowledge of what is found in the
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Levitical text. You have to have it. There's no other way to even be able to begin to understand the discussions of the
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Day of Atonement and the high priest and everything else if you don't know Leviticus. So what did they find?
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Well, you'll notice the mainstream media didn't say almost anything about it.
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I mean, there's some, you know, the independents in the UK had a little story on it.
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But if they had found massive changes, if they had found a whole new version of the
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Book of Leviticus with completely different kinds of laws and stuff like that, that would have been all over the place.
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It would have been front page news. They would have had Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan and everybody would have been on your
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TV and computer screens and your iPhones and iPads and everything else. But the fact that you didn't see any of that probably is explainable by the fact that what you have in this pre -Christian scroll is an excellent example of the
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Masoretic text stream with almost no variation whatsoever.
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It's similar to the Isaiah scroll in being right there in the middle of the
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Masoretic, what becomes the Masoretic. It's anachronistic, obviously, to think of a first century
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BC manuscript as Masoretic because that's 900 years AD. But the point is the, oh, someone in channel.
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Did you see it? You see it? Okay, someone needs to explain to Disc Golf.
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Does James White think Revelations was written before 70
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AD? Disc Golf, it's... I think that's cross -purgatory worthy.
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I'm sorry? I think that's cross -purgatory worthy. It might be. It might be. Yeah. It's the book of...
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It's not Revelations any more than it's Psalms 106.
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It's Psalm 106. It's the book of Revelations. What are we talking about?
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Moses was in the bulrushes and he wrote the book of Leviticus and 1 ,400 years later, 1 ,300 years later, somebody wrote a copy, rolled it up, and 2 ,000 years after that, we're reading it with computers.
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And it demonstrates that there is no inherent necessary process of corruption in the transmission of the ancient biblical text.
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And that the book of Leviticus read the same way in the days of Jesus that it reads today.
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Now, Christians have assumed this, but remember,
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Christians were assuming this before we had any evidence of it. For a long time, the oldest manuscripts we had of the
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Old Testament went only back to about 900 years after Christ. The Dead Sea Scrolls launched us 1 ,000 years earlier.
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And here is just further examination of that.
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And validation of the reality that we have the same text that was possessed in the days of Christ.
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Now, this, of course, is relevant very much to the accusations of fraudulent change, editing, alteration that are constantly presented against the text of the
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Bible. Both Old and New Testament, even though those who launched those attacks are rarely overly detailed in telling us what they think has been changed or how it's been changed.
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But it was very fascinating to read about how they've done this and how the computer can just basically functionally unroll these scrolls.
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Physically, we aren't able to do it, but through the use of x -rays, we're able to actually accomplish this.
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I think that's absolutely fantastic. I'm sure there's gonna be more of that coming because I know there are other manuscripts.
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And we look forward to that. We invite that. We have confidence.
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We're not gonna find something where you have some completely different kind of text. Because if those texts actually existed, they would have left some kind of trace in the manuscript tradition.
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If they don't, then there's absolutely no reason to believe they ever existed. So, I think it's pretty cool. I think it's really neat.
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And I think we'll see more of that kind of stuff in the future. So, pretty exciting stuff.
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Next, I would like to talk with you a little bit about... Well, we haven't nailed down the exact order of speaking and time and exactly how everything's gonna work.
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But I'm getting pretty excited about the topics for the two
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Islamic discussions that we're gonna be having. One in England and one in South Africa.
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And, ah! Skyman came back. Book will now have to crawl on hands and knees and offer some type of gift to Skyman for having sent him off to Pras Purgatory this morning.
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He says it was accidental. He said he hit tab to fill in. And it was really a likely story.
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I didn't believe it for a second. But, you know, Skyman might be very kind, generous, merciful.
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Oh, yeah, you got nothing to talk about. You killed the entire program for ten minutes. But, then again, he might just be
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Skyman. And a little bit like the
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Southern rebels. I mentioned because Book lives in Pennsylvania.
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And I said, you know, the Georgians invaded Pennsylvania once before. They're looking for round two.
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Well, we'll take those hills the first day this time. And the rest of the battle will be different.
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If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. It's channel stuff. And that was in Skyman's honor.
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War of Northern Aggression history there. So, anyway, back to the trip coming up.
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I leave Sunday. Next Tuesday night, I posted a graphic. Did we get that? Has that been posted on our website anywhere?
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Not yet? Okay. Zaka Hussein's folks there in Birmingham did a really nice job.
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When Micah says that the graphic is really good, that is impressive.
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Because Micah is a little bit on the picky side. So, when Micah says, hey, that was well done, then y 'all did good.
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And so, we posted the information about the debate next
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Tuesday evening. Zaka Hussein and I are going to be debating the crucifixion. Of course, Zaka is a follower of Islam.
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He is a Muslim. And so, I can tell you right now, we're going to be talking about the historical evidence regarding the crucifixion.
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We'll be talking about who's using a consistent historiographical methodology.
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Who's handling history because 40 Arabic words, Ptolemy has to do it that way. I'm sure it's going to come up.
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It has to come up. But I will most definitely be raising the issue of the nature of atonement.
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The prophetic witness of the scriptures to the atoning work of Christ.
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It will be a wonderful opportunity for interaction for a number of hours between myself and Zaka Hussein in public with a mixed audience.
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I would assume a majority Muslim audience. At least, I hope that's actually how it turns out.
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We'll see. This was put together fairly quickly. Zaka has probably had to be doing a lot of extra work to do that.
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There's a lot of details and things like that to be able to do this. I'm very appreciative of his doing so.
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But then I got in touch with Yusuf Ismail concerning our get together in Durban, South Africa.
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Later on, I think the week after that. And when
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I asked him, so what's been discussed? We need to talk about topics and things like that.
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What he wrote back, I hadn't remembered suggesting. But if I didn't, now that I think about it,
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I think I did. But I think it's great. I think it's awesome. And it's going to be something totally new.
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I've not had this discussion ever before. And so the reason
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I'm mentioning all of this is it's going to lead us into a little bit of a study of a scriptural passage here in a moment.
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But I really would encourage those of you, because I realize there are certain people watching this program that do not support what we're doing.
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And do not support debates, let alone dialogues of any kind.
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And so I recognize that I can't simply assume that Christians will be supportive of outreach to Muslims in this way.
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But those who do, I would truly request your prayers for these encounters.
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Yusuf Ismail and I are going to be comparing and contrasting his understanding of the
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Islamic concept of Qatar over against a Christian understanding, my understanding, of the concept of predestination and election.
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And we've never done that before. And it's obviously a challenging subject, but with so many really important ramifications.
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When I think of Norman Geisler's book, The Cross and the
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Crescent, what's the first thing I think of is the comparison of the Islamic view of God and the concept of Qatar with Calvinism.
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Because, of course, Norm's strongly anti -reformed. And how many times
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I've addressed the differences that exist. Well, this will give us an opportunity to really do that to a new level of depth.
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Not that I'm going to have a whole lot of reading time between now and then. But it's going to be a really,
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I think, really important subject. I've mentioned before what we're trying to do is to create a whole body of work that will be useful to Christians all around the world long after I'm gone.
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And as a result, we want to address all sorts of different topics. And both of these debates,
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I think, will fill in areas. Yes, we've done crucifixion before, but from different perspectives and not with Zuckers.
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So pray for these encounters. Pray for the people that I am debating.
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Pray for clarity of expression on both sides. If either side is not clear in expressing their perspectives, it lowers the value of the debate.
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You want both sides to be very clear, to be very focused so that those listening have a really strong idea of what is being said, what is being argued.
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And so please pray for these encounters, as well as everything else
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I'm doing. I mean, those aren't the only two things that I'm doing. I've obviously got a lot of teaching to be doing down in South Africa.
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I'm going to be at Antioch Bible Church again. Those poor folks just can't seem to get rid of me. But I appreciate their allowing me to come.
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And also teaching at a new church I've not taught at before in the Durban area.
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So it's good to be making new connections there as well. And as always, prayer for health.
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Because, man, there is nothing worse than coming down with some horrible infection when you're far, far, far away from home.
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When the only place you want to be is in your own bed. Because if I'm sick, the only place I want to be is my own bed.
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So that's coming up. So I leave on Sunday. I think it's a 15 -day trip.
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And then next month is a trip to Germany. So as I was thinking about next
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Tuesday evening's debate with Zakir Hussain, my mind turned to a subject that I address a lot.
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I address a lot. Right as I turn the other direction, then we change which camera we're looking into.
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At least you didn't hit the button under the glass. That would be bad. We'll probably put the warp core right up with the tribbles.
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Well, that's scary. Because if you put tribbles near a warp core, do they become giant tribbles?
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That's the question. We'll have to check that. The warp core next to the
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Borg cube. There's only so much room up there, though. We're going to have to start swapping stuff out.
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So I got a hint that I might have an Enterprise D headed my direction in the not -too -distant future, too.
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So we might just have to put a table over in the corner and just sort of swap stuff out on a regular basis.
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So Rich just left, which makes me wonder what's going on out there. Anyway, I was on focus.
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I was on focus until he threw me off with the camera change.
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And then it's just like, squirrel, and off you go. What were we talking about?
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Moses was in the bulrushes. That was something that old D .C. Martin used to always say. Whenever he'd get distracted, then he'd default back to Moses in the bulrushes.
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I've often utilized the illustration. Well, I've told the story.
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I remember years and years ago staying in the parking lot at PRBC. And, oh, package arrived today?
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I can't see it from here. Oh, yes, yes, good, good, good.
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That's for the trip, actually. When you put covers on your computers, all the original ones they came out with don't work anymore.
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They don't fit. So that one just has a straight plug -in. Anyway, explaining why a package came and why
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I've got yet another USB -C port. Dongle life.
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Those of you who have the new MacBook or the MacBook Pro or the MacBook know what I'm talking about. You have to have all these different dongles.
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I've often told the story of staying in the parking lot. And I was talking with a really sharp brother, nose
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Greek, really sharp mind. And I've been doing some work with Jehovah's Witnesses.
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And he said, you know, they say that in this particular text that what's really going on is this interpretation.
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He says, you know, I don't know how to respond to that because it could mean that.
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And I remember saying to him, yeah, it could mean that.
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And he was taken aback. I said, you know, just on the basis of the grammar, syntax, vocabulary.
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Yeah, that's a possible interpretation of that isolated text. Well, then how do we respond to that?
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And I said, well, Christian truth is not derived from single isolated texts.
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Christian truth is derived from not just Sola Scriptura, but Tota Scriptura.
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There is a wholeness to it. There is a fullness to it that simply is not to be found in a, well, an outline systematic theology form.
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If you know what I mean, there are some systematic theologies that are pretty much just a long outline.
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And you can just sort of look things up. You go, well, I want to know about Doctrine of God, Deity of Christ, Types of Acuna.
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It's sort of like a flowchart type thing. You may have noticed that's not how
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God chose to make his revelation. He didn't give us a flowchart. He didn't give us that kind of Western mindset, engineering manual style revelation.
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And that bothers a lot of people. A lot of people, that's exactly what they want. They don't want any gray areas.
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They don't want any progressive revelation. They want, you know, Muslims, for example, as a whole, really struggle with this idea of progressive revelation.
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They have the idea, anachronistically again, that, well, if you believe in the
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Trinity today, that means that Abraham had to have the exact same content of faith that you have today.
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There can't be any progression. There cannot be any further revelation. You just have to have it all at once type of a situation.
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And so a lot of people are bothered when they look at the Bible and it's like, well, you know, there are certain things that are clearer in other parts of Scripture than in previous parts of Scripture.
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And certainly there's all the discussion about the relationship of the Old and the New Testaments and what's called intertextuality and promise and fulfillment and just all sorts of stuff like that.
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And so what do you do about that? How do you handle that kind of a situation?
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And I have emphasized repeatedly the reality that Christian truth is found in its fullest, most beautiful form in the unity and harmony of each separate scriptural book, the letters of the
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New Testament, the Gospels, Acts. When you can allow them all to be what they are.
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You don't have to. I am concerned about a lot of American evangelicals that try to turn the
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Bible into something that's not. They try to turn Paul or Peter or John into people they were not.
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They try to turn, wow, everybody tries to turn poetic literature into systematic theology literature.
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And instead of allowing all these forms of literature to be exactly what God intended them to be and to have the part and the place in the revelation of God's truth that God has chosen them to have.
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You look at Jesus' statement about the
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Holy Spirit spoke by the mouth of David. And he's quoting from poetic literature.
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And you then take that and compare quotations from the book of Leviticus we were just talking about in regards to the computer scanning and stuff like that.
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Leviticus and many of the Psalms very, very different in form, in original context.
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And yet they're all a part of this. I love the term tapestry. Orchestra.
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You could say that the poetic is the woodwinds and the prose is the string section.
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And you could however you want to try to visualize it. The point is that an orchestra would be really boring if it was all made up of trombones.
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I mean, you may love the trombone, but there's just only so much you can do.
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With 70 trombones. But if you allow for all the richness of the different kinds of instruments, then you can produce the beautiful, beautiful music.
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That is a part of a symphony, a Beethoven symphony or Bach or Mozart or whoever it might be.
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Rimsky -Korsakov, Scheherazade. There you go. And when you keep that in mind, then when we talk about something like the atonement of Christ.
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The crucifixion of Christ and its theological accomplishment, atonement.
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Unfortunately, very often in our day. Well, let's just put this way.
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Twitter theology stinks. Christian theology was never intended for Twitter.
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That doesn't mean that you cannot say true things in Twitter. You can. The point is, sort of like when
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Doug Wilson said to that woman in the debate or the screaming match at the university.
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I often have thoughts that take more than two or three sentences to express. In the same way,
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Christian truth very frequently suffers when it is artificially truncated.
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Especially when it's artificially truncated to fit modern man's sensibilities of brevity and shortness of attention span.
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And so what you really find, I think, the deepest, most satisfying evidences that I have of the inspiration of Scripture.
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Of the truthfulness and beauty of Christian doctrine. Come from seeing the harmony of the many parts as they come together to present the whole of Christian truth.
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And it's very difficult at times to bring that kind of stuff together, even in a multi -hour debate.
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Let alone in a Twitter conversation or something along those lines.
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But the beauty of it is once you understand this concept and you start realizing 40 different authors, 1500 years.
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Think of all that had happened. The empires that had risen and fallen during that time period.
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Two and a quarter different languages. All these different people involved and yet each one contributes its own extremely vital part to the entirety of the symphony.
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And the deepest, most satisfying rendition of Christian truth is to be found in allowing the whole of the parts to speak.
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We want our proof text lists and very often that's not all that satisfying.
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I think the Christian soul is primarily satisfied by a pan -canonical, all the way across the canon, testimony to truthfulness.
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Now, what am I referring to? Well, in thinking on the atonement, there was some discussion this morning in channel about Colossians chapter 2.
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And as I was looking at that, I thought, you know, let's spend a few minutes on the dividing line.
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Looking at Colossians chapter 2. I've got one other topic after this to look at. We got started 10 minutes late, so I figured
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I'd get a little more time. Because here in Colossians chapter 2, anytime that you look at a text of scripture, you always want to have in the back of your mind some of these.
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It was the classes that I took in seminary that most everybody else found really boring and I found to be really important.
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Old Testament backgrounds, New Testament backgrounds, intertestamental period. Man, most of my fellow seminary students were just like, who cares?
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You know, I'm going to be pastoring a church. I don't need to know this stuff. But I was already involved in apologetics, so I was like, oh, this is good stuff.
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This is important. And when you look at any book, one of the first thoughts across your mind needs to be, how does this book relate?
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Where does it sit in the canon and what's its relationship to other books? So in other words, if you're looking at Colossians, then you want to be thinking about Paul.
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You want to be thinking about where this was in his ministry. And as you look at the epistle itself, what's really important to remember is there are parallels to each of the sections of the epistle to the
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Colossians. Where? Ephesians. Ephesians and Colossians, from what we can tell, are written at the same time.
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They're sent out at the same time. There's all sorts of parallels between them. And in all probability, when in Colossians chapter 4,
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Paul says to the church there, read the epistle. It's coming from Laodicea. That's probably Ephesians.
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Ephesians was probably a circular letter meant to be circulated around the churches of the Lycus River Valley. And that book would reinforce what
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Paul has been saying in Colossians. So there are parallels. One of the important parallels between,
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I think it's what, Ephesians 1 .7 and Colossians 1 .14,
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I think, redemption through his blood. And there's a parallel corruption that comes in.
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And so the King James only people are like, see, the NIV is the bloodless Bible. And we've talked about that type of thing.
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So there are parallels to be found between these texts. So when you keep that in mind, you start looking at the subject of the book of Colossians, and you see really important echoes of what is found in Ephesians.
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What do we find in the first chapter of Ephesians? But one of the most in -depth discussions of God's overarching purposes to the praise of His glorious grace.
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Remember in the last program, I was explaining some of this from Ephesians chapter 1. And the relationship of the
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Jews and the Gentiles and the one Christian church, so on and so forth. So there you have the strong emphasis upon God's sovereignty and upon the fact that God's doing these things and God's accomplishing these things.
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And we look at the verbs in Ephesians 1, in Romans chapter 8, again, paralleling relevant passages from the same author.
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You see that God is doing these things. God's almost always the subject and man's the object.
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It's not God has made potentialities and man is working these potentialities out. None of that kind of stuff.
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So with that in mind, if you look at Colossians chapter 2, and you want this.
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When you look at Colossians chapter 2, and I have to change over to it here.
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There it is. Should have it now. Just these two verses for now.
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And you, and this is plural. We can make the application to each individual, but it's plural.
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You being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh.
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Here's the first real key term to look at. So this is one of those wonderful words.
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We just pack a bunch of stuff on to make a nice long word. Poieo, to do or to make.
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Zoe, life, soon, together. And so, to make, alive, together with.
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He made you alive together, soon, alto, with him. Now, when you look at that, you go, you see this epsilon right there.
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With the lengthening of the thematic vowel, this is an aorist. So it's a simple past action element.
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And so he made you alive together with him. Well, the only real consistent way to understand that is we often talk about the reality of the fact that the elect are united with Christ.
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So that his death becomes their death, and his resurrection becomes their resurrection.
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And so there is this odd word to make alive together.
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But who's doing it? We didn't make ourselves alive. This is an action of God.
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This is God's activity. This is God's working. He did this.
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Not you did this. You didn't make yourself alive. You didn't actuate some kind of a process or utilize sacraments, grace that have been made available to you, whatever.
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He made you alive together with him.
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Now, this is one of those situations where a lot of people will, a lot of preachers and teachers will look at a text like this.
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And rather than having the thought, well, this book is written at the same time, contains many parallels to what we have in Ephesians.
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Instead of going over there and getting some light from Ephesians, and you have the whole discussion of God's sovereignty, and you were predestined in him, and this constant emphasis upon in him, in him, in him, and here now together with him.
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Instead, most will just sort of look at it and just try to fit it into an already existing overarching theological scheme.
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Well, it can't really be meaning this or it can't really be meaning that. And when you do that, you end up missing the real heartbeat of the text.
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Just as when you look at the golden chain of redemption, it's what God does. Here, likewise, it is what
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God does. He made you alive together with him. And how could he do that?
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Well, he's working out the purpose to the praise of his glorious grace, Ephesians chapter one.
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That's the parallel book, right? And so this would, in Ephesians, what else does it say?
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We have been seated together with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, union with Christ, his death, our death, his resurrection, our resurrection, that vital union continues to exist.
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It's all right there. So it's perfectly appropriate to let that light shine on this text as well.
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That is not an invalid bringing in of some external authority.
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This is appropriate exegesis. Now, I realize,
47:30
I suppose I should mention this because somebody is going to run off and buy a commentary someplace and go, hey, this guy said
47:37
X, Y, and Z in this commentary. Almost any modern commentary that you're going to pick up on Ephesians or Colossians is going to address the issue of authorship.
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And the fact that there are many people who reject
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Pauline authorship of Ephesians and Colossians. And when you ask why, it's because it addresses questions that they, in their theory, don't believe would have been relevant to the early church.
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And of course, then by arbitrarily creating word lists based upon presuppositional theories, you can try to say, and the vocabulary is different.
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Just always remember something. Almost any vocabulary argument is dependent upon the honesty of the person compiling the vocabulary list.
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Because as I've pointed out many times before, if you take Bart Ehrman's scholarly works and compare his popular level works on the basis of vocabulary, the same man didn't write all those books.
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He will tell you, because he gets the royalty checks for them, that he did. But again, it's a rigged game as to what you get to choose as being the data set in regards to any of these types of things.
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So, he made you alive together with him, and how could he do this?
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Here we have that beautiful word charis, grace. It's charis saminos, and hence, to forgive.
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Having forgiven us all the transgressions, or all our transgressions, translating the article in that particular fashion.
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So, what's necessary for being made alive? How is it that God can justly make us alive together with him?
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Well, the impediment to so doing is penalty of sin. It's penalty of sin.
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So, if there is forgiveness of sin, then you can give and grant spiritual life, which is what
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God has done. So, what do you see here? You see the necessary interrelatedness of all the different topics that we tend to spread out, and we put the verses about one topic over there, and over here, and over here, and because they're all over the place, we don't really see the big picture.
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We don't see how they're related to one another. The justice of God's making us alive together with Christ is intimately related to Christ's perfection as Savior that brings about forgiveness of sins.
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He couldn't make us alive if he did not have a basis for the exercising of that grace.
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This is where, in talking with Muslims, we have a fundamental difference. From the Muslim perspective, he can do whatever he wants.
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Justice doesn't matter. His law does not have to be fulfilled. It does not have to be atonement. But it's clear that in the inspired scriptures that were written long before Muhammad came along, there is an intimate relationship between making us alive together with him and having forgiven us all of our transgressions.
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So, regeneration, being made alive, is directly related to the forgiveness of all of our transgressions.
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And, having canceled out, it could be to, in a construction sense, plaster over, to wash over, to wipe out, and hence, by extension, to cancel the against us handwriting twice dogmason.
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The handwriting of dogmas or decrees which was over against us.
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And so, there is a beautiful description given here of the work of God whereby he,
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Paul pictures for us something that you would understand from a law court. Where you have all the charges that have been written up against us, and they are just charges.
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God doesn't record false accusations. They are just charges.
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They are the certificate of death, the certificate of debt.
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And it is made up of these decrees, these dogmas, these statements against us.
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They are the recordings of our sin, the recording of our guiltiness, and the recording of how many times we didn't do what we were supposed to do.
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We knew we were supposed to do, but we didn't do it, and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And it's standing over against us, and it condemns us, and it does so justly and rightly.
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It says he canceled it out. He wiped it out. But it is a just recording.
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This is the very essence of God's justice being vindicated here. Are you saying that God can lie and say something that isn't truly just is just?
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Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it away.
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He has taken it up, literally, from the midst.
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He has taken it out of the way. He's lifted it up out of the way that we would have to go to be able to have peace with God.
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It's sort of like the old Jack Chick track.
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If you remember the old Jack Chick track, this was your life. Remember that? I don't know how many millions of those
55:14
Chick must have still be printing. But this was your life where you have this horrific threat of the massive big screen
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TV in heaven that plays back every swear word you ever said, every evil thought you ever had in full technicolor and so on and so forth.
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There is a recognition on man's part that if God were to mark sin, who will stand?
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No one. No one will. And so who was to take up this certificate of debt consisting of decrees against it?
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How is this supposed to be dealt with? What's the mechanism? How can we have any hope?
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Well, he has taken it out of the way. But how can he do that?
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How can God be just in this situation? This is very important in regards to Islam because one of my primary arguments is the fact that when you look at the arbitrary nature of Allah's forgiveness of one person, non -forgiveness of another person, all dependent upon his choices, his not revealed will, but just a sense of arbitrariness as to you're in, you're out.
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It's not like it's demonstrating a purpose. That's a problem.
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God has to deal with his broken law. God has to deal with this issue of uncleanness before him.
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And so how does Jesus just take away the just righteous recording of our evil deeds?
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How does he get away with that? Well, it says right there, Having nailed it to the cross.
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Having nailed it. Now, think about that for just a moment.
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Having nailed it to the cross. Hmm. We know the only time that that could happen.
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But you could render the article his cross.
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You see, this is why atonement is absolutely necessary. This is why the cross is absolutely necessary. If you're thinking with me about this, then you're seeing that this is the great exchange.
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This is 2 Corinthians chapter 5. This is he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might have made the righteous of God in him.
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Here's the same idea in a different way. All of those righteously, properly recorded examples of our sin, which condemns us.
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It stands over against us. It accuses us. How can that ever be dealt with?
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The Muslim says, God just says, I forgive. I forgive.
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The law remains broken. Justice is not done. There is no theodicy. There is a theodicy of power.
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I can do what I want. Not a theodicy of actual justice. And so what you have being said here, he takes it away having nailed it to his cross.
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Now, who nailed it to the cross? Who nailed it to the cross?
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Well, the Father certainly did. But when you think about union with Christ and being made alive together with him, well,
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Paul also says, I've been crucified with Christ. So there is a union in his death as well.
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And this is intentional. This is why Jesus said, it is necessary that I go to Jerusalem. It's necessary.
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There's no other way. And so it's nailed to the cross in the one who bears that punishment to whom those sins are imputed.
01:00:08
He has taken it out of the way. It's no longer in the way. It can no longer condemn us. That's why there's only two possible ways,
01:00:18
I think, to look especially at Colossians and at the
01:00:24
New Testament as a whole. Synergism is not one of them. Synergism is not one of them.
01:00:32
There's only two possible ways. You can be a universalist. Yeah, you can be a universalist and say everyone's going to be saved.
01:00:44
God has the power to do it. And the
01:00:50
New Testament's teaching on salvation itself is so monergistic, so focused upon God's power.
01:00:58
But that's actually one of the tougher topics to engage is this idea of universalism.
01:01:07
A lot of people don't know how to even begin to start to approach that. Now, the reality is the
01:01:14
New Testament teaches punishment. It does not teach universalism. It talks about those who will die outside of God's grace and the punishment that's going to be theirs and so on and so forth.
01:01:25
But the only two consistent ways would be either to be a universalist or to be Reformed and to recognize
01:01:32
God has his elect people. The idea of a synergistic, hypothetical method of salvation doesn't fly.
01:01:44
Doesn't fly. Because if you try to promote the idea of universal atonement, that the certificate of death consisting of decrees against us, the us here is all of mankind, then that has been taken away and that was the one righteous, just ground of condemnation.
01:02:10
You take that away, there is no ground of condemnation any longer. So for whomever this is nailed to the cross, eternal life is theirs because the just judgment against them was this decree and it's been nailed to the cross.
01:02:26
So if that's been done for everybody, you need to be a universalist. Or you can accept the biblical teaching that it's done for the elect.
01:02:37
And when you do that, then you understand the consistency.
01:02:45
You can see the same thoughts woven through all of these texts.
01:02:51
He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. The imputation of our sin to him, the imputation of his righteousness to us.
01:03:00
This is how Paul can say, I have been crucified together with Christ. Yet I live.
01:03:07
And here we've been made alive together with him, having been forgiven all of our trespasses, all of our sins.
01:03:17
And he canceled out the certificate of death. We didn't cancel it out. He did it.
01:03:24
This is an accomplished reality. And so it's not that, well, you just take, you know, there's just one text here and it establishes our thesis or another text over there.
01:03:38
It's found in the consistent testimony of Scripture throughout itself.
01:03:44
That's really where you find the firmest testimony to divine truth.
01:03:53
And in this instance, the consistency of Reformed theology, the recognition of the existence of the elect, the union of the elect with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, perfectly consistent all the way through this text, as well as Ephesians chapter one,
01:04:11
Ephesians chapter two, and so on and so forth. So this is where really the depth of the beauty of these things is to be found.
01:04:24
Okay. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead.
01:04:30
I'm going to try to press on for just a few more minutes. You're going to be able to avoid hitting any buttons.
01:04:38
It'll kill it. You're going to try. There would be.
01:04:47
There would be that. I haven't had the opportunity to get back to responding to Jesus man, messenger, and Messiah.
01:04:59
I started working on that and I, Abu Zakaria's work, and I sort of stumbled and fell and things came up.
01:05:09
And when you got traveling coming up. But I wanted to get to this while it wasn't too far removed from the.
01:05:20
Subject of the Council of Nicaea as I covered it in the PRBC ongoing church history thing, and I know that most of our regular listeners are already aware of the fact that I'm teaching church history on Sunday mornings when
01:05:34
I'm in town, which means I don't know out of 52 Sundays this year.
01:05:42
If I get. If I get 20 of those in. We're on less than 35 or 36,
01:05:50
I think. And I started last year. So anyway. Before we get too far afield from the
01:05:57
Council of Nicaea, I wanted to address some of the comments that Abu Zakaria made in his book. Wet the old whistle there a little bit.
01:06:08
Under the Council of Nicaea, beginning on page 15 of Jesus, Man, Messenger, Messiah. If you haven't, if you're not familiar with this, this is a book written by a
01:06:18
Muslim apologist. It deals with a lot of the issues that we talk about regularly around here. We started interacting with some of the things on the doctrine of the
01:06:25
Trinity a number of weeks ago. Council of Nicaea, Emperor Constantine seeking to unify the church convened the
01:06:34
Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. The question to be settled was, is Jesus absolutely equal to the
01:06:39
Father always existing and of the very same substance or not? Now, that's his interpretation of that.
01:06:47
Obviously, the reason for the calling of the Council was the teaching of Arius.
01:06:54
And Arius was teaching that there was a time when the Son was not. The Son was not eternal. He did not identify the
01:07:00
Son as a god, but a lesser derivative god than God the
01:07:05
Father. Bishops from all over the empire were summoned to the council where their differences would be debated with the aim of reaching agreement.
01:07:15
This is the first time in Christian history that such a council had convened. There had been councils before this, but not one that even
01:07:23
Rome would identify as ecumenical. It was very difficult to have councils before 313, obviously, because of the fact that Christianity was a religio illicita, an illegal religion.
01:07:44
This was the first time it had been convened. Constantine told the delegates that they would enjoy the climate and also, with a hint of menace, that he intended to be present as a spectator and participator in those things which will be done.
01:07:58
It must be noted that Constantine was not interested in doctrinal purity as a motivation for calling the councils, merely to assure the political stability of his empire.
01:08:07
I would pretty much agree with that, but let's keep that in mind, because people who try to attribute to him, for example, the terminology of Theodostos, if he's pretty much just a politician, he's not going to be coming up with terminology like that.
01:08:26
Constantine himself said, When I heard of your division, I was convinced that this matter should by no means be neglected.
01:08:34
I shall feel my desire fulfilled only when I see the minds of all united in that peaceful harmony, put away all causes of strife, and loosen all knots of discord by the laws of peace.
01:08:44
Council of Nicaea had three points of view represented at the meeting. The strict Arians, the semi -Arians, and the strict
01:08:51
Trinitarians. Now, when I have taught on this, I use, I think, significantly more useful terminology.
01:09:01
You have the Arians who present the idea that Jesus is heteroousios, of a different substance than the
01:09:13
Father. He's not truly divine. You can call him a god, as Arius did, but he's not truly divine.
01:09:24
So that's the Arian side. Then you have the
01:09:29
Orthodox side, not led by Athanasius, but led by Alexander, his bishop.
01:09:35
Athanasius is not even a bishop at the Council of Nicaea. He does not become a bishop for another three years. And they would be called the homoousion group.
01:09:47
One substance. And then in the middle, as is the case in so many situations, you end up with a group of people that initially, well, this is what's missing in the description.
01:10:10
There were those who wanted to use the term homoousios, of a similar substance to the
01:10:16
Father. As if there could be a similar substance. I mean, what's similar to God, as far as substance goes?
01:10:26
You're either god or you're not. The reason that the
01:10:32
Eastern bishops initially had a different view than the
01:10:38
Alexandrians was because it was the Eastern bishops who had been fighting against Sebelianism, which was a form of modalism, for many decades.
01:10:50
And their concern was that homoousios could be misunderstood as a denial of the distinction between the
01:11:01
Father and the Son, if they were of the same substance. These weren't Ebionites, these weren't people promoting an
01:11:08
Islamic understanding of Jesus. Arius would not have made a good
01:11:14
Muslim because he didn't believe that Jesus was a mere prophet. Keep that in mind. The strict
01:11:23
Arians were a small minority who were led by Arius. They believed that Jesus was inferior to God and rejected the notion that Jesus was the same substance as God.
01:11:30
Should be of the Father, but anyway. The strict Trinitarians were also a small minority and they were led by Athanasius.
01:11:38
That's just a mistake. It's a common mistake. Most people make it because most of what you read on the net will say that.
01:11:49
But if you actually go to decent sources, then you know Alexander was the head of the
01:11:58
Orthodox Party. And Athanasius, while he was there, was a deacon at this point.
01:12:08
They opposed Arianism because it questioned the deity of Jesus. The vast majority of the tenants, however, took a middle position between Arianism and Trinitarianism.
01:12:18
That is not appropriate terminology. They would not have understood that statement.
01:12:28
The Eastern bishops were very concerned that if you used homoousios, it would be giving in to the
01:12:35
Sibelians. And that's the battle they had been fighting until Arius came along. So to try to make it look like it is a conflict between Arianism and Trinitarianism, misses the reality of what was going on.
01:12:51
Nobody would have understood that terminology then. They were led by Eusebius of Caesarea and are referred to as Semi -Arians.
01:12:58
Well, that's sort of anachronistic. Later on, that would have been appropriate terminology. They rejected the
01:13:05
Trinity Doctrine, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same substance. About this, Council of Church Historian Philip Schaff wrote, in reference to the theological question, the
01:13:13
Council was divided in the beginning into three parties. The Orthodox party was at first in the minority.
01:13:19
The Arians and Eusebians numbered perhaps 20 bishops.
01:13:26
The majority, whose organ was the renowned historian Eusebius of Caesarea, took middle ground between the right and the left.
01:13:33
That sounds like, oh, we really don't believe in the deity of Christ, but we want to exalt him more than these people are.
01:13:40
No. Remember, the vast majority is individuals. The vast majority. Tradition says 318 bishops.
01:13:47
That's tradition. But the vast majority of these are from the East, and they believe in the deity of Christ.
01:13:55
What they're concerned with is the utilization of terminology that their own opponents had used in the past, and they condemned the past.
01:14:04
Now, it might be in a different context, but since it was the same word being given a different context, there's where the problem was.
01:14:12
Then this is stated. This is further evidence the Trinity was not the Orthodox position of the early church since the majority of bishops attending had not held a pro -Trinitarian, anti -Arian view before the
01:14:25
Council. This is just totally unwarranted realignment of the historical data to try to fit a modern controversy.
01:14:36
I'm sorry, but it really, really is. What's interesting is,
01:14:45
Abba Zachariah knows about Ignatius. He'll quote him later on, on a completely different subject. Why, Mr.
01:14:54
Zachariah, did you not quote Ignatius on the deity of Christ? That's a subject
01:15:00
I'd like to ask him about. Because this kind, this is, it may be how
01:15:07
Mr. Zachariah understands this, but it either represents a tremendous amount of prejudice on his part, or more likely, a tremendous amount of prejudice on the part of those who have instructed him.
01:15:22
So that it is not an accurate representation of what was actually going on, who the parties were, what the historical context was, why it was the people of the
01:15:31
East held the positions that they did. So, with that, we'll probably pick that up at some other point, but it's another one of those really important examples.
01:15:50
There are a few things in our church you need to know more thoroughly than the Council of Nicaea, because it simply gets misrepresented all the time.
01:16:01
And if you haven't taken the time to look at it, it's going to be really, really challenging for you to handle the objections that will be thrown to you, because they sound very confident, even when they are, in fact, in error.
01:16:17
But we'll pick up with that at some point in the future, I would imagine.
01:16:23
So once again, my desire for everybody in the audience, I don't know what we're going to be doing while I'm gone.
01:16:35
I was just informed that someone has a lot of catching up to do, so no shows.
01:16:41
And it sounded like there was a little bit of prejudice. That is not how
01:16:48
I said it. That is not at all how I said it. That's what I heard. That window is not completely soundproof, but that's how it came through to me.
01:16:57
No shows. So, in fact, you know what it sounded a little bit like?
01:17:03
No soup for you. No shows for you. So, take that up with the show,
01:17:12
National Socialist. Man, you can't even use
01:17:19
Seinfeld jokes anymore. That's how much things have changed, even since whenever that was.
01:17:29
Yeah, sad. But anyway, so I get back on,
01:17:36
I think, the 28th? I think we're on the 28th or so.
01:17:43
So maybe 29th, 30th, somewhere around there. We'll get back.
01:17:50
And there have been times. Remember when Rick Warren did his My Pope thing?
01:17:55
I was in Ukraine, and I recorded something then.
01:18:02
So if something really important comes up, then I will have my computer with me, and I'll be able to record something and hopefully get something posted up.
01:18:12
But again, my request that you pray for, especially the debate next
01:18:18
Tuesday evening and then the debate down in Durban, very good topics. Pray that there will be great clarity.
01:18:26
They'll be recorded well. High quality recordings. You won't have any problems getting hold of them.
01:18:32
There's all sorts of things like that that need to be worked through when we're traveling. And for health.
01:18:37
Health and safety on the trip as well. And you can still help us with these trips. There's a travel link at aomin .org
01:18:47
where you can help with these things. That's very, very encouraging to us as well. And you might want to drop
01:18:53
Jeff Durbin a note and just try to encourage him. When you just fold up in a debate like that, as we saw at the beginning, he needs to develop an apologetic for his chin.
01:19:09
He really does. He needs to be able to explain what's actually under there. So, yeah.
01:19:16
Someone was asking on the channel, what's Clem going to be doing? That's a possibility. We could do a program with Clementine.
01:19:24
Let Summer and Clementine do a program. That might work things out quite nicely.
01:19:32
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, prayers appreciated. Thank you very much for watching today.