Romans 15:13, 1 Tim 4, Heb 7:24 and ἀπαράβατον, Church History without Racial Quotas

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a beautiful Tuesday. In fact, it was a degree or two cooler outside than inside the house this morning.

Now, for some of you, that's your constant experience even during the summer.

But for those of us in Phoenix, when the dew point drops out of the 50s, and it's a degree or two cooler outside than inside right at sunrise, that means good stuff coming.

Good stuff coming. You've survived another one. Oh, there's still going to be, it's going to come roaring back over the next couple of weeks, and it's going to blast us a few times more.

But there is hope. In fact, that's what we will start off with on the program today.

There's an old Maranatha series of CDs that I have.

In fact, I didn't get all of them when they came out on CD, and so I found them on, you know, just available for purchase, iTunes, whatever.

Amazon Music, I forget how I got them. But anyways, scripture memory

CDs. And they really do work. And I was listening to some of those while doing a workout recently, and one of them that I really enjoyed turned my attention to Romans chapter 15.

And, you know, when you have, a lot of ministers will have a particular benediction that they like to use.

This is an excellent text to memorize for benedictory use.

Romans 15, 13, Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace.

The New American Standard says, in believing. I'll talk about that in a moment. So that you will abound, overflow in hope by the power of the

Holy Spirit. And so much to be said,

I'm going to avoid preaching a mini -sermon right now, but I would highly recommend the text to your memorization, to your contemplation, to your meditation.

Yes, believe it or not, I realize there are some people that as soon as you say meditate, they start accusing you of being a

New Ager. I'm not sure how they read through the Psalter very often, but especially the 119th

Psalm, meditating on your law and stuff. But I would highly recommend it.

You know, just almost every phrase is filled with deep meaning, and I don't know about you, but it does seem like the world is just on the fast track of insanity these days.

Part of that is because we get hit with so much news. I don't think

God ever really designed us to have this tsunami of information instantly overflowing us every single day.

It's just too much. But partly because God's hand of restraint has been removed from many, many societies.

And so, the God of hope. The God of hope.

I mean, I recognize that term, hope, strikes different generations of believers and believers in different contexts in different ways.

Obviously, if you're in a position of despair, where you are constantly under persecution or hiding out or in a prison camp in North Korea or China, or in situations like that, the

God of hope is going to have a different understanding in your experience than a well -off, healthy, free

American evangelical. Of course, there is an objective meaning to the phrase.

I mean, Paul's teaching is that because of God's faithfulness, because of God's unchanging character, because of his power, his sovereignty, his fulfilling of his promises to the people of Israel, that he is the source of all hope.

No matter what the situation might be, he is the source of all hope.

So, the God of hope. And that would be the

God who is the source of our hope. And of course, our hope is focused upon him.

But it's just an amazing description when you think about it. And there's contemplation of that phrase at different times in your life may bring you different understandings of exactly what is beautiful about that phrase.

But it is a beautiful phrase. Now, may, this is an expression of, again, sort of like a benediction type thing.

May the God of hope fill you, fill you up completely, and it's a plural you, so it is addressed to the body of believers, with all joy and peace.

So, the two things that the God of hope is asked to fill the Roman believers with is joy and peace.

This morning, Dr. Moeller talked about happiness on the briefing, and he was talking about how the allegedly happiest countries on earth are filled with gloom.

And he described happiness as an ephemeral, thin thing.

I thought that was an interesting description. The pursuit of happiness is an

American phrase, really, probably instilled in our vocabulary just because it happened to sound good as it was being written long, ago by the

Founding Fathers, and many people today don't give much thought.

I kind of think of it, I don't know I've ever talked to any non -Christian that had seriously given any consideration at all to what the difference between happiness and joy is.

But there is a difference. Joy is happiness multiplied, made deep, and abiding, and disconnected from the experience of our external circumstances.

So, while happiness can come and go, it flits about, it's very fleeting.

Joy is a settled recognition of the goodness of God and my having been the recipient of that goodness.

And that remains true when the car breaks down, that remains true when the body breaks down, that remains true when loved ones are lost.

Joy is a baseline emotion and commitment.

It doesn't do this number to where it disappears, or almost completely disappears. And that's happiness.

That's the flitting about thing. Joy is a conviction, and it is available to any person who recognizes they've truly been redeemed, truly been forgiven.

But it comes from God. I mean, may the God of hope fill you with all joy. It's not, you've got to work it up inside yourself.

It comes from what God has done, and the work of the Spirit. All of this is by the power of the

Holy Spirit. Joy and peace, ayreine, shalom in Hebrew.

We have peace with God, and then we experience that peace. The peace with God is objectively established by the perfection of the work of Christ.

The bright light of the empty tomb is what gives us peace. But there is one thing to know that we have peace, and there's another to experience that.

There are some who struggle in this life to accept the reality of the peace that is theirs because of Christ.

And it should be a constantly growing and increasing conviction in our hearts, the peace that we have, not because of who we are, but because of what

He has done. And that, again, is not something that waxes and wanes, comes and goes.

It's not the up and down valleys, and there are people like that. But I think there's a biblical basis for saying that there is an appropriateness in the

Christian life to encourage us not to be the kind of people who pop up and down and up and down, valley and mountain, valley and mountain, valley and mountain all the time.

We should not experience that. And I know God makes some people who are more subject to that than others.

And us Scotsmen, yeah, you know, we tend to just, just a little bit, not much, you know, we tend to be, you know, so maybe that's, but there is, you know, fill you with all joy and peace.

A person who is joyful and at peace, and five minutes later loses it, and then five minutes later has it back, and five minutes later is back.

Is that really joy and peace? Did that really come from a real understanding and conviction of what my standing in Christ is?

Those are some of the questions. But what's interesting is the NASB has in -believing, and it is, for those of you who've taken

Greek, maybe some of my Greek students right now are listening, we haven't gotten to mounts and infinitives yet.

So, but you can certainly see entopistuine, and of course, pistuo, pistis, the belief root and group, and this is an infinitive with an article, articular infinitive, in the to -believe, but the infinitive is not a direct corollary to exactly how we use things in the

English language. And so, you know, in -believing, we're sort of using a

Parsifal -Jaron -type English translation there. But, you know, in the to -believe, in the act of believing, there is no joy and peace outside of faith in God.

He who will be accepted by God must believe he exists. You know, that was what was so strange about that discussion that Pope Francis had just a few months ago with the little boy whose father is an atheist had passed away, and the

Bible is just so plain. You need to believe God exists.

Baptizing your children but not believing God exists is not going to give you peace with God. It's not a matter of racking up some kudo points by doing something along those lines.

There is no joy and no peace outside of faith, outside of believing in God.

Ais -ta with an infinitive, that's what makes this also unusual, again, for my

Greek student folks or others in the audience that have taken the language. You have ento -pistuine, and then you have ais -ta -parisuine.

Almost makes you wonder if there's not some sort of poetry thing going on here, a sort of alliteration -type thing.

But ais -ta with the infinitive, very, very common construction in Pauline usage.

So that it can be a purpose or result clause, sometimes you can fill three pages of argumentation from the commentaries as to whether it's a purpose or result clause.

For the purpose that this happened or the result that this did happen, something like that. So that you will abound, you will overflow, again, you plural, in hope.

I mean, it makes sense that the God of hope would fill you with joy and peace, that you would abound in that which is descriptive of him, the

God of hope, you would abound in hope. And then it's literally in the power of the

Holy Spirit, but again, Greek prepositions, I think it's perfectly fine to have by the power of the

Holy Spirit. This abounding in hope is something that is part of the work of the

Spirit of God within us. And so the God of hope provides the objective basis of our hope in the gospel, and then through the ministry of the

Holy Spirit, provides the mechanism whereby by his power, we might abound in hope.

One of the beauties of recognizing the supernatural nature of the

Word of God is the fact that these words can be applied by the

Spirit of God in the experience of so many of God's children, that I could certainly never understand because the

Lord has not caused me to walk that path. I often mention in the pastoral prayers at church, the fact that what we're asking is that God would, by his

Spirit, apply the same word preached and meet all sorts of different needs, the vast majority of which we standing behind the pulpit have no knowledge of.

Even if we have a faint inkling, we can't know truly the way the Spirit of God can.

And one of the wonderful things about scripture is that God can take a scripture like this, and I'm not saying this scripture is some amorphous talisman, magical thing, that's not what

I'm talking about. What I am saying is that because it is the living and abiding Word of God, when it is applied to the hearts and minds of believers who are believing by the power of the

Holy Spirit, that God can meet needs in ways that nothing else ever could.

And that really is one of the signs, I think, of the true followers of Christ. They hear Christ's voice, and that's one way in which this takes place.

So, Romans 15, 13, highly recommend it to your memorization, application, lots of deep stuff there that could be expanded much farther than we have the time to look at today.

Now, staying in the scriptures for a few more minutes, well, we're going to be in the scriptures a lot today, actually, come to think of it.

So, if you've got your Bible, if you've got your Greek text, we'll be looking at a number of things. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he spoke of the future times, and he said, but the

Spirit explicitly says that in later times, which from the standpoint of Paul would be the period we're in now, even in the days of Paul, we tend to think of it in a different way, but the

Spirit explicitly or openly or plainly, without figure, says that in later times, some will apostasuntai.

Apostasuntai, Tinnitus, actually, because Tinnitus is connected there.

In the latter times, certain ones will fall away. They will step away, teis pistaos, from the faith.

Why? Because they are paying attention, they are going after deceitful spirits of deception and doctrines of demons.

And so, the fact that you can find people who once made a profession professing deceitful and demonic teachings should not surprise us.

I'm not going to take the time to go over to 1 John 2 and talk about They Went Out From Us. I've spoken about that a number of times, and I think it's quite relevant and important to review those things every once in a while, because one of the main things that troubles believers in our day is seeing apostasies, seeing people who once made profession.

It automatically makes any one of us go, what about me? Could I do something like that?

And that's a natural question to ask, and it's a proper and natural thing to be concerned about.

But mere profession does not mean possession.

And certainly, the older I have gotten, the more I have become convinced that the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding takes a long time to cool out of the oven.

Got to give things time. And God has all the time in the world to make us hurry.

So be patient, observe, resist the constant pressure of the world to speak quickly.

That's just the very nature of social media, I'm afraid. Anyway, and by means of the hypocrisy of liars, those who speak lies, having in their own consciences been seared with a hot iron.

Now, that's a pretty strong phrase, but certainly

Paul had encountered many false teachers who had gone out, just as John did. And it is a strange thing to talk to someone who you may have known during their period of professed orthodoxy, possibly would be one way of putting it.

In fact, maybe there was someone in your own fellowship, in your own church, and you knew them at that time, you shared the

Lord's Supper with them, did ministry with them, whatever it might be. And now you talk to them, and they've become insensitive.

The strongest words of warning that you can bring to them from Scripture, just leave them unmoved, untouched, like the spiritual sensitivity is gone.

Well, that's what happens when you're seared with a hot iron, that scarred area, it becomes insensitive.

You can touch it, you don't feel it. And that can happen to someone's conscience.

Why does God allow that to happen? Well, he has his purposes. It's certainly been one of the greatest sources of warning to God's people.

I don't want to be like someone like that, when you consider the great light that was once theirs, and now the darkness that is theirs, and their seeming indifference, their love of evil.

You can see what has happened to them. They very often cannot. But that's what

I think of when I think of this rather lengthy phrase, seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.

Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

Now, this is probably in reference to the same people that you have warned about in Colossians, a proto -gnostic mixed with Jewish mythology type thing.

But it's awful hard to avoid making the connection, forbidding marriage, and advocating abstaining from foods.

That's certainly happened a lot down through history. We can find particular groups in the history of the church that forbade marriage, interestingly enough, over history.

They never lasted long. Every time I've taught church history,

I've sort of mentioned there is sort of a logical connection between the forbidding of marriage and the eventual downfall of a particular group.

But today, we have a major world religion that forbids marriage to a class that it claims is, interestingly enough, if you've seen, you know, we mentioned a couple weeks ago on the program, the theology of Rome regarding the priesthood, the idea of a sacramental mark placed upon the soul of a person who is ordained as a priest, they always be a priest, always have the ability to work the miracle of transubstantiation no matter what they do or become.

And it has been pointed out by a number of people recently that some of the worst offenders in this current homosexual crisis within Roman Catholicism, this is not primarily pedophile priests, this is primarily homosexual priests.

What you need to understand is there are many homosexuals in the Vatican, in the

Curia, in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. They're called the Lavender Mafia. They've been known by that name for a long time.

This is almost certainly now why Benedict resigned. He knew that there was nothing he could do.

There was nothing he could do. He undoubtedly knew the extent of this and figured he'd be dead before this all came out.

Well, he's not. But the Lavender Mafia, they control stuff.

They have a lot of power. And this unbiblical, unchristian office of priest, which, believe me, if this was even semi -apostolic in teaching, would it not have to have been thoroughly explicated as to its nature in the

Book of Hebrews' argument about the uniqueness of the priesthood of Christ, which we're about to look at in another context, but keep that in mind.

This is what happens when you try to show yourself to be wiser than the

Spirit of God. And that fundamentally is what a denial of the soul of is.

We are wiser. We know more. God didn't give us enough in Scripture.

That's what you have going on there. Forbidding marriage, advocating abstaining from foods.

Why did we used to have Friday fish fries in the United States?

A lot of people don't remember, but it was at least a venial sin.

I think there's some priests that may have identified as a mortal sin to eat meat. Now, technically, it was a discipline, but again, consistency, a hard thing to come by in Roman Catholicism.

You weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays, but you could eat fish. Now, I don't know about you. I sort of think fish is actually meat, but you know what

I mean. Here you have all these alleged disciplines.

I mean, priestly celibacy is a quote -unquote discipline. Well, look what it has allowed.

I mean, wow, let's put a whole bunch of young men in close quarters with one another and deny to them by discipline the natural relationship that you would long to have with a woman named your wife.

Might be someplace that homosexuals might want to be in. I mean, it's just so obvious, so painfully obvious.

It's just like, really? What? This is shocking, everyone. All of a sudden, this has been known.

There have been entire books written about this literally for many decades and really centuries.

I've talked about the pornography on the program before, but just go back to the 8th and 9th centuries in Rome, and it was just outrageous, though there wasn't nearly as much homosexuality then.

So you could, on one side, say that it's worse, but at least most of the popes in the past multiplied illegitimate wives, not illegitimate boys or men, be that as it may.

These kinds of external practices and fastings and giving up of this and giving up of that, etc.,

etc., the scriptures tell us that, for example, the foods that we're supposed to abstain from,

God is created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. There's that truth thing again.

I've been saying to a lot of Roman Catholics online recently, you want to talk about apostolic succession?

There is only one meaningful apostolic succession. It is a succession in truth. Teach what the apostles taught.

Don't pretend that you stand in some other line when you deny what they themselves taught. This is the very essence of so much of the problem that's out there.

Did you see the quote from Cardinal Cupich in Chicago?

The pope has a bigger agenda. He's got to get on with other things of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church.

We are not going to go down a rabbit hole on this. Wow. Wow.

Was that off teleprompter or something? I mean, ouch.

Bigger agenda. The environment. Bigger agenda.

Yeah, that's what the shepherd of the sheep is supposed to be. Yeah, right. And protecting migrants.

Yeah. Someone in the channel just said, protecting migrants from their local parish priests?

Well, maybe that is what he meant. I don't know. Protecting the environment from these guys?

I don't know either. But talk about stepping in at big time.

Cardinal Cupich from Chicago. Yeah, okay. That's pretty sad.

That's really bad. Well, anyways, so staying on the same, not the same topic.

Staying on In the Bible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are the worst floor director ever.

And he only got two cameras too. That's the sad thing, is, goodness.

I was not able to find, I had seen it a number of times.

Obviously, there are, a lot of people have learned that if you want to try to force somebody to think about something or do something, you can sort of get around some of the firewalls that they have in social media.

And so, starting right after I got back from Salt Lake City in Colorado, I started seeing some graphics sort of being passed around about how wrong

James White is about the Greek term aporabaton at Hebrews 7 .24.

Now, this is a term that we've been discussing with Mormons for a very, very, very long time, because Mormonism has a horrifically unbiblical doctrine of the priesthood.

It is not derived from Scripture. It is contradictory to everything in Scripture. It was plainly designed by someone who had next to no knowledge of Scripture.

And so, it is a very valuable area in which to have discussion with Mormons.

And so, I had seen someone saying, oh, he's just using this old, he's using old

Thayers. Thayers is out of date. It doesn't really mean that. And I don't remember if Alma said something similar to that during our discussion or not.

It's possible. Maybe that's where it was coming from. I'm not sure. The text is

Hebrews 7, beginning of verse 23. The former priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing.

But Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood aporabaton permanently.

Therefore, he is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

And then it goes on to talk about, it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, then for the sins of the people, because he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

And of course, I could point out that in Mormonism, you have the idea of the atonement beginning in the garden, which messes all of this up.

For the law appoints men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath which came after the law appoints a son made perfect forever.

And so, this is part of, it's just a portion of, an extended apologetic.

Chapters 6 really gets going in 7, but there's some intimations of it before then.

7, 8, 9, and 10. And in this, you have the apologetic that demonstrates that the

Aaronic priesthood, the priesthood of Aaron, was not able to perfect, and a number of reasons are reduced as to why it was not able to perfect anyone.

But the argument is, this is part of the old, the old's passed away, the new has come.

And what you have in Jesus is a fulfillment, it is something new, it is something better.

The old has passed away, the new has come. We had many high priests under the old, we have one high priest under the new, that was the

Aaronic order, this is the Melchizedek order, and the

Melchizedek priest has the power of an indestructible life. And so, one of the emphases in Hebrews is the finishedness of the work of Christ, and hence, the lack of need of any further priest to continue on this work.

He has an indestructible life. So, notice the contrast.

The former priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing, but Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood apparabaton.

Now, what I have stated, and what they were criticizing, was that the term apparabaton can mean permanently, forever, inviolably, but that in this context, because the specific contrast is between the old and now the new, the old passed away, hence required replacement, indestructible life, will not die again, therefore, to have the priesthood permanent means there is no succession in this priesthood, because he will hold it permanently.

The high priests had to pass that priesthood on because of death.

He's not going to die, therefore, he has no successors. So, what this illustrates is what is called, in modern linguistic studies, is called semantic domains.

Words have a range of meaning. Some words have almost a dot meaning, very, very, very focused meaning.

Others, like the term logos, has a whole balloon of meaning. It's big, and it can mean all sorts of things.

And identifying where in the semantic domain the author wishes to place a specific use of a word always requires context, following the flow of argument, etc.,

etc. And so, when it comes to operabaton, the permanency of his priesthood, in light of the fact of what the high priest was and what he did, would mean he could have no successors.

So, what these Mormons have tried to do, not generally being involved in this level of exegesis or translation of the text, has been to try to say, no, that without successors thing is just based on Thayer's.

And Thayer had this meaning from the phrase parabainainamon, to transgress, that is to violate, signifying either unviolated or not to be violated, inviolable, priesthood, unchangeable, and therefore not liable to pass to a successor,

Hebrews 7 .24. And then reference is made to Bleak, Delitch, and to others.

Now, let me give you some other sources, including more modern ones. Lo and Nida, operabatos, pertain to that which does not change from one state to another, not changing, unchanging, never to change.

And then they give Hebrews 7 .24, and because he lives forever, his priesthood never changes. Now, keep something in mind.

In light of the fact this is the high priesthood, there's only supposed to be one high priest at a time. If it never changes, what does that mean?

Of necessity. Again, this is interpretation language in the context which was being used, in the argument that was being used in.

Then we have BDAG, so Bauer, Donker, Arndt, and Gingrich, third edition, current edition there.

Usually interpreted without a successor, but this meaning is found nowhere else, rather has the sense permanent, unchangeable.

Now, you're going to read that at least twice, and so the question is going to be, well, that proves you're wrong.

It means it can be passed No. Every term has to be understood in the context in which it is being used.

In the context of Hebrews 7, where the contrast is between the old high priest and the one new high priest, who has a different kind of priesthood, has a power of indestructible life, if it is permanent, then only he's going to hold it, because there's only one high priest.

So, the not liable to be passed to a successor is a translation understanding in the semantic domain of the word based upon the argument of Hebrews 7.

You're not going to expect to find that anyplace else. You're not going to expect to find that in secular literature, because secular literature is not going to be writing in the context of the old covenant high priesthood.

The question is, what about in Hebrews, which is a unique context?

What about in Hebrews? Then we have

TDNT, which is Kittles, also known as Kittles. Hebrews 7, 24, it says of Christ, because he remains to eternity, he has an unchangeable and imperishable priesthood.

Instead of the passive unchangeable, many expositors suggest the active sense, which cannot be transferred to another.

Christ is a priesthood, which cannot be transferred to anyone else. This is a natural interpretation and yields a good sense, but it does not really fit the context.

We should keep the rendering unchangeable, the more so as the active sense is not attested elsewhere. Same thing

BDAG said, but when it says it does not really fit the context, we're not told why.

Why this particular German scholar says it doesn't fit the context? It actually flows directly from the context.

That's what the context is all about. Then you have

Lange, Schaff, Moll, Kendrick, etc., Commentary on Holy Scriptures, Hebrews, hath his priesthood not to be passed by, hence superseded, or perhaps better with reference the active parabino, go aside from, transgress, violate, transgression, violation, not to be transgressed or transcended, inviolate.

And then Hughes sort of lays it out for us.

The adjective operabitas rendered adverbially in our version as permanently is susceptible of a variety of interpretations.

Unchangeable, King James Version, perpetual, NEB, indefectible, bruce, inviolable, westcott, interminable, delege, represent one line of exegesis, while that cannot pass to another, erasmus, that does not pass from one to another, owen, intransmissible, herring, teodorico, inalienable, speak, montefiore, non -transferable, moffet, that needs no successor, philips, represent another.

Such evidence as the papyri afford seems to favor the former, but this is more than counterbalanced by the preference of the

Greek fathers for the latter understanding. In our view, the appropriateness of the term is enhanced by its ambivalence.

The priesthood of Christ does not pass to another precisely because it is a perpetual priesthood. Hughes is exactly right.

The two go together. In this context, since it is permanent, by necessity it is without successor.

You can't avoid that. If it is permanently his, it cannot be someone else's. That's the nature of the high priesthood.

The whole argument of his ability to save the uttermost is based upon the uniqueness of his priesthood.

So, the well -known linguistic key and exegetical key of the

Greek New Testament, aprobitas, not ably passed on to another, intransmittable, non -transferable, the priesthood of Christ does not pass to another precisely because it is a perpetual priesthood.

Hughes, Bruce, Moffat, we're seeing a number of people saying the same thing. The last one I'll read for you here, just to make sure that we know that this isn't just something

I made up on my own. Speak has one of the longest discussions of this, and I think, well, how should we translate the biblical hoppocks?

It means it only appears one time. In Hebrews 7, 24, Jesus, inasmuch as he remains for eternity. This rather rare verb is only found in Late Greek.

It is used only once in Philo and twice in Josephus. Etymologically speaking, parabino, pass along, pass beyond, violate.

Aprobitas is a transgressor, a violator, or a denigrator, so aprobitas should be that which ought not to be transgressed, inviolable, and that is the meaning usually in a legal context that is well -attested in the papyri and even in literary writings, notably with the verb meno.

But this does not fit Hebrews 7, 24. He is correct there. This is not a legal document talking about contracts.

This is talking about the priesthood, and the Old Testament teaching about the nature of the high priest has to be determinative as to what is being said here.

One might be tempted to give our adjective the otherwise well -attested meaning of permanent, perpetual, unchangeable, as the word was understood by the

Vulgate and the Peshitta, and as it is most often used in literature. But this would produce a tautology with the first part of the verse, even a banality.

And in any case, this notion of a priesthood unchangeable in character or quality is not in evidence elsewhere in the

Epistle. Alternatively, we can posit a derivative meaning, one for which no attestation has yet been found, not passing from one to another.

This was the interpretation of John Chrysostom, a theodoret, followed by Bengal. That cannot pass to successors, and it is the meaning that flows out of the context.

I agree with Speak at this point. As opposed to the Levitical priesthood, whose moral ministers had to transmit their power to their descendants, an eternal priest remains unique and will never have to pass his priesthood on to any other minister.

The term was apparently chosen because of its legal connotations and to justify the priestly institution of the

New Covenant, which was identified with a single person. So we translate, he possesses the priesthood, which is non -transferable.

So the point being, well, first of all, it gave us the opportunity to delve into some text there that I think is very important, and also to illustrate that rarely do you see anything on the web that has a strong exegetical background.

I was going back and forth with, I think, a homosexual on Twitter this morning, or maybe this afternoon, actually.

It wasn't that long ago, on the meaning of arsenikoitai at 1 Corinthians 6 .10.

And you could tell all he was doing was quoting from stuff that he saw on websites someplace.

And I kept challenging him, do you actually read this language? Because he was producing a lot of eisegetical errors.

And eventually I had to admit, no, I don't. So when you see stuff like this, don't be quickly moved.

Do your homework. When you do your homework, you'll actually end up appreciating the conclusions you come to all the more as a result.

And the fact is that the priesthood that is

Christ is not held by any 19 -year -old Mormon missionary peddling by on his bicycle.

Joseph Smith didn't understand it. The Mormon church doesn't understand it to this day. He holds his priesthood operabaton.

Now, one last thing. We only get to go for a few more minutes because I've got some other stuff

I've got to do this afternoon. I have sitting here next to me some of my textbooks from seminary in church history.

In early church, we read Henry Chadwick's The Early Church right there. And then these were our two primary texts.

It's interesting, you can sort of tell. Kenneth Scott Lauderet's two -volume History of Christianity. And you'll notice that the binding isn't broken on this part of the second volume.

You'll notice it's all the way across on this one. And then only up to about here. That's where the Reformation ends, because we didn't use this for anything past Reformation.

And so that part of the book—oh, good grief. Yeah, okay.

It is Phoenix, and it's been 35 years or so since then. Anyway, why do

I have some of my seminary history books here? Well, some of you may recall in the last program,

I addressed a blog article that had been written concerning the

Master's Seminary and the issue of church history. Since then, I've had cause to engage in discussion with a few folks on Facebook and on Twitter—in social media, in other words—on the subject of the teaching of church history.

Church history was the first subject that I was hired professionally to teach right out of seminary.

I taught church history at Grand Canyon College and remain proud to this day that, though that was sort of a required—well, it wasn't a required course, but it was one of the courses that a lot of people had to take to fill a needed spot in their course list.

Not only did I keep the vast majority of my students, but one of the regular comments at the end was,

I expected this to be a boring class, and it wasn't. It really opened my eyes.

And so I've been teaching church history. I'm teaching it right now at PRVC. We're wrapping things up.

We're doing the Anabaptists right now, and next week is Munster. Starting to look at Munster.

Maybe we'll get it all done in one day. I don't know. It's possible. Anyway, I have been deeply disturbed by Christians who have actually bought into the idea that in a master's level course—not for a person who is graduating with an emphasis in history, and not for a person who's going to be going on and doing church history studies.

We're talking about a seminary that is primarily focused upon ministry preparation, a place like the

Master's Seminary that still does church history. A lot of places have dumped it. A lot of places have dropped it or have so shortened it to where you could do your entire church history thing in a 13 -day

Jan term. You can do that with Greek and Hebrew in a lot of seminaries today. But I come at this as a person who has taught this, and what

I'm hearing are people literally saying that we need to have racial quotas in church history.

Now, as I look at these books and I think back, I'm sorry, I don't remember anything about racialism or racism in those books in the sense of—now, if you're of this particular racial background, then you read these chapters.

But if you're of this particular racial background, you read these chapters. And those of you of this particular racial background, you want to make sure to focus in upon this because you're going to see yourself there.

That's not how we did church history. My church history professor, God bless him, did a wonderful job, had a certain portion of history to cover in a fairly brief number of classes.

And his job—and we had to trust that he did his job well—his job was to decide what we needed to know to have a solid grasp of the key issues that defined the early church or the medieval period or the

Reformation or American church history. There's a lot of material there.

And we all understood that this was a basic introductory level.

Some of us wished it hadn't gone as deep as it did because we had other classes we were taking. We didn't need all the details because we had really tough tests.

But the point was, there was an agreement by everybody, no matter what their ethnic background in the class, that we all needed to know the same things.

We needed to understand why the church of our day struggled with the issues that it struggled with.

And to know that, you have to know basic foundational truths from the past, and there's a lot there.

Now, when I taught it, if someone had come up to me and had said, you know, for my paper,

I would like to delve into some of the church figures of my own ethnicity who did this, that, and everything.

Great. Fine. No problem. And you could be Black, or you could be

Chinese, or you could be South American, you could be Brazilian, or from Chile, or whatever. And it was just plainly understood.

If you want to go more in depth, then great. But there are certain foundational things you've got to get.

So someone on Facebook was going, how come we celebrate Martin Luther, but not this

Black church leader? Which I'll admit, I never heard of. And I look at that, and I'm like, because you can't understand the denominational and theological wilderness of American church

Christianity without understanding who Martin Luther was. But you can understand it without knowing what the other guy was.

Doesn't make Martin Luther more of a Christian than the other guy. Doesn't mean that one guy is more saved than the other guy.

But the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of Christians who ever lived are never going to be in a church history book because God didn't call them to be used in such a way.

They make some huge impact in church history. So why are you taking the class?

It's not to hold a mirror up to yourself. It's to know why things took place in the past the way they took place.

And that takes a certain amount of time. And to say, well, there needs to be racial quotas.

What you need to do is you need to look at the class. And if you've got two black people, and you've got three

Hispanic people, and you've got two Korean people, and you've got a Chinese person over here, and you've got four just plain old

Anglo folks. And what you need to do is you need to, if you're using Loterette, you got to go through there and you got to somehow make it represent the class.

So you've got that amount of time for each group. That is the end of Christian education.

It's the end of the fellowship of the church, by the way, when you have that kind of an attitude. I don't even know what words to use to express this.

Except, of course, that you look at the comments section and what's the term that's used.

If you dare say, well, you know, you probably ought to teach history in such a way that you get the real main important movements and the real main important people that had the biggest impact upon the most people.

Racist? No, it has nothing to do with being a racist. And every time you misuse that term, as a mere means of emotionally attacking someone you don't like, you're emptying it of its meaning.

And especially when it really does take place. I was really stunned by some of the people that were involved with this.

I was just like, really? I thought you had a firm foundation in being able to look at stuff and see what was important, put things in a proper perspective.

Is Martin Luther more Christian than somebody else? No. Everybody knows, especially over last year, that I pointed out a lot of Martin Luther's warts and foibles and everything else.

But you cannot understand the current situation in the church. You can't understand the dominations.

You can't understand the relationships between Presbyterians and Lutherans. And you can't understand the Council Trent if you don't understand

Martin Luther. There's all sorts of other people you can name. You can understand all that stuff without ever having heard of them.

So when you're a church history professor, what are you supposed to do to actually fulfill your job?

And the question is, do we still want scholarship to fulfill its duty? Or has it all become all about me, me, me, my feelings, my felt needs, etc.,

etc.? It is an amazing time we live in.

Anyways, Lord willing, be back on, I'm, Thursday, should be here

Thursday. Friday is the discussion with Mormon fellow from Three Mormons.

So be praying for that Friday morning is when that's going to be taking place, being recorded. Not sure when it'll be available, but Apologia does things pretty quickly.