Q&A with Pastor Jim at Kootenai Community Church

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It's only connected to that one, right? Mm -hmm. OK. And we did the speed check on it, so you have the right speed, at least. Should be good.

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What was the dapper up? Do you remember? 80? No, 7. 7. 7 .9. Beautiful.

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All right, we're back up and running. OK, we've got video.

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About the dark things in scripture. Video, everybody says we've got video. We've got audio. OK, good now? You're good, sir.

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Video and sound, here we go. Now they can hear you and see you, my live studio audience. All right.

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OK, so I'm going to be glancing down here at my chat window so I can pick up questions for the chat.

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So I'll be watching that a little bit. If you want to get a question in, we're going to do a

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Q &A on just taking questions from the live chat here. So if you have a question for the

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Q &A for the live chat, then you need to type it into the chat window down below. If you're not watching with the chat window, it's because you don't have an account, a

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Twitch account set up, most likely, or you're using an app or a platform that doesn't allow you to chat.

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So if you have a question, type it into the chat window. Yeah. You got to, if you have questions about my wardrobe, you need to preface it with the all caps question,

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Thomas. So if you type it into the chat window, and we'll get going.

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If you have a question, if you're waiting to type in a question just to make sure that I see it, please wait until I kind of get to the end, toward the end of answering a question, and then type it in.

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That's kind of when I might be looking down here at my chat window. And I'm not sure how many people we have in stream.

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It doesn't say on my end that I can see just yet. Adopted by Grace is back.

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But while we're waiting for people to kind of drop in here and drop in a question, I'm going to show you guys what

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I've been working on during my quarantine time. It's not that I'm necessarily hunkered down and not doing anything, because I'm over here almost every day of the week.

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But preparation for an online streaming service is a little bit less rigorous than for a normal Sunday morning, simply because, as I'm looking at you here in the camera, just to the left is the notes that I have for my sermon.

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So I can just glance away like that, and I can take in a whole page of my notes. And so it requires a lot less effort for preparation just for presentation, but also because I'm not in Hebrew, so I'm not demanding to do a ton of work of study and preparation for preaching through the book of Hebrews.

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So I had a little bit of extra time during the week, because nothing else is going on in terms of church ministry right now, at least till probably the end of April.

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So I've been working on this, my book. God Doesn't Whisper, and I wanted to show you guys a little bit.

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And again, this is just to distract us while we're waiting for people to drop into the stream here. So that is what

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I have finished on it so far. It is 230 pages.

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And what I wanted to show you was, right now, I'm in the process of writing 15 chapters, three of which have been posted in the church newsletter, the

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Kootenai Communicator. And then I have written, what is it,

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I don't know, 10, 12 chapters, 12 chapters beyond what you guys have seen. That's the table of contents there.

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And so far, with what I have written in this binder, is 82 ,000 words.

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And to give you some idea of perspective, that's truth or territory is 75 ,000 words. And 75 ,000 words includes all of the front material, so the foreword, the preface, the table of contents, all the front matter at the beginning, which deals with copyright infringement, stuff like that, title page about the author.

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All of that stuff is included in the 75 ,000 words. This is 82 ,000 so far.

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I've got four or five more chapters that I've got to write to add on to that, plus all the front material, the preface, the foreword, the title page.

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The table of contents about the author also has to be added to that 82 ,000. And that 82 ,000,

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I need to obviously shrink that down, because I'm going to probably add another 20 ,000 with what has to be written yet.

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But this is what I'm doing now. I'm going through and see all the red marks on that. I hope you can see that in some kind of a.

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This is my fourth revision of this chapter. I'm about five pages or six pages into it.

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So no, it doesn't have pictures. I can see people asking that. It's not a comic book. It doesn't have pictures.

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And never use a sentence when a paragraph will do. Actually, I'm trying to use sentences instead of paragraphs. That's why

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I'm trying to bone that down to as thin as I can possibly make it. So I'm making progress on that and working through that.

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Do we have any questions? Do we have any questions come into the chat here? I just wanted to show you what

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I've been working on book -wise. That fourth revision, by the way, yeah, it's the red pen of death.

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And after I get done revising it this time, Deidre will go through it at least twice to correct things.

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She usually goes through it to correct punctuation and stuff like that.

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And so that's going to be still yet after I get done with my revision.

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So this is the fourth time I've gone through it. And each time that I go through it, I try and cut it back and cut it down and make it so that the content of it is clear, concise, and really without a lot of extra words that we tend to add into our explanations and things.

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So making it as crystallized and concise as I possibly can. All right, do we have any questions?

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I like paragraphs. Oh, did she?

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All right. My live studio audience said Jenna Hardman wrote a question. Is it real true?

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Oh, here we go. Why is he capable of performing selfless good acts?

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Okay, so if man is totally depraved, why is he capable of performing selfless good acts? By depravity, what we mean by depravity is not that man is incapable of doing anything good by human standards or by human observation.

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So we can run across totally depraved people who work in soup kitchens and will help the homeless, and yet they're unsaved.

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And those might be good acts in terms of our human assessment of what is good because we see people who do apparently selfless things, but they're still not good things in terms of how

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God would evaluate it being good. And God's assessment of it, because if it's not done by the

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Holy Spirit through us as a result of the grace that God gives to us, and if it's not done in faith, because whatever is not a faith is sin, and if it's not done in obedience to God as an expression of gratitude and affection to Him, then it is self -sinful.

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It might be good in terms of our human assessment of it, but from God's perspective, it's not a good act because it is not done by a person or individual who is filled by His Spirit and walking in His grace, who is saved and honoring and exalting and doing it as an act of worship to Him, as a true act of worship to the one true

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God. So in that way, it's not good in terms of how God would evaluate it, but it might be good in terms of how we as human beings would evaluate it.

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The other thing to keep in mind with that is that by totally depraved, we don't mean that man never does anything that is noble or honorable or good in a human assessment.

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The act of total depravity simply means that man's entire being is depraved.

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Total depravity means that everything about us is affected by sin.

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So it's not that we don't do anything good by a human assessment, by human assessment, by how humans would assess that, but it does mean that every faculty of man is affected by the fall.

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We are depraved or affected by Adam's sin and Adam's fall totally, so that it means that our bodies, our minds, our will, our logic, our ability to reason, our ability to do anything, to choose righteousness, our ability to do good things, our ability to walk with God, our spirit, our soul, our body, all are corrupted by sin, all fallen.

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So that is what total depravity means. It means that every faculty of man is affected by the fall, not that everything that man does is totally wicked.

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By total depravity, we don't mean that man is as wicked as he could possibly be. Even Hitler was not as wicked as he could possibly be, but he was more wicked than we are, judged from a human perspective.

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So total depravity doesn't mean that man is as wicked as he could possibly be because there are people who could be a lot more sinful if the grace of God did not restrain them, the common grace of God did not restrain them from sin.

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So that's what we mean by total depravity. Hold on, let's flip back here through more questions here.

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How can Thomas still perform acts of good? That's good. Can you explain 1

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Timothy 2, 14 to 15 by Adam not being deceived? What does it mean that Adam was not deceived?

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Yeah, 1 Timothy 2... Let me pull it up here. I can read it in its whole context here.

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I know what you're talking about. The woman being deceived, was the woman who was deceived and not the man.

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1 Timothy 2... Yeah, so this comes in the context of Paul prohibiting women from teaching or exercising authority over a man.

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1 Timothy 2, 9... ...but to remain quiet.

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For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve, and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression.

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But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love, and sanctity with self -restraint. And, of course, ignore the chapter division.

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Chapter 3, verse 1, it's a trustworthy statement. If any man aspires to the office of an overseer, it's a fine work he desires to do.

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And so the qualification for elders then is given, but Paul prefaces his qualification for elders by talking about the role of women within the church, and he doesn't permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.

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And I think that in the context, since he's talking about elders, he's not talking about women can never teach, you know, their children or children or other women or anything like that.

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That's not what Paul's describing. He is talking about the teaching role of an elder -type teaching role exercised within the church, within the church body, in a position of authority over men.

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That's what Paul prohibits. It's basically women teaching men in the context of a church as an exercise of an authority over them inside the church.

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So as a preface to why Paul prohibits women from teaching or exercising authority in that context,

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Paul gives two reasons. Number one, the order of creation, that man was created first and then the woman.

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So there's something in the order of creation that determines or signifies headship. I was once asked by somebody, why doesn't your church allow women to teach?

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And I clarified, and I said, it's not that we don't allow women to teach, it's that we don't allow women to teach men in the context of the worship service in a way that would exercise authority over them.

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And this person then said, well, why does your church not allow women to do that? And I said, because Paul says,

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I don't permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. And then I went on to explain, it has to do with, number one, the order of creation.

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There's something established in headship. There's something established of headship in the order of creation itself.

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Paul says, it was the man who was first created and then the woman in indicating headship.

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And by the way, it's the same argument that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 when he's talking about the gender roles there, about women wearing head coverings as an expression of their submission.

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He takes it all the way back to creation, the creation ordinance, that there is something in creation itself that establishes that headship structure.

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And the second reason that Paul gives there, and after verse 13, it was Adam who was first created and then

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Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Remember, in Genesis chapter three, it was the serpent who came to Eve first because it was

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Adam who had received the command to not eat of the fruit of the tree. And then he had obviously passed that on to Eve or Eve was not present when

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Adam received that command. But the serpent came to her first and deceived her, not

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Adam. And so it seems as if, from what Paul is saying, that Adam, when he ate, did not eat because he was deceived by the serpent.

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Adam's motivation for eating the fruit seemed to have been something else other than being deceived. He was not deceived.

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He knew what he was doing was an act of rebellion. The woman was deceived as to the nature of the tree, the nature of eating the tree, and the nature of God's commandment.

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And so the woman was deceived and it wasn't the man. So that prohibition against a woman teaching or exercising authority has to do with the order of creation as well as the order of the fall, or I should say what happened in the fall.

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It was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman was deceived. And this is not intended to be sexist in any way, but it is difficult to not observe through church history that many of the cults and religious movements that have been started have been started by women.

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Many of them have. Not all of them, obviously, but many of them have. And then when you get into areas of apostate churches in the

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United States, you can look at apostate churches, and without exception, they are churches who have let women teach in that capacity and not had any restrictions on a woman teaching or exercising authority over a man.

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Just yesterday, I think it was, somebody posted to Twitter, a lady, I forget what her name was, but she posted about how she's been appointed as the teaching elder in her church.

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And I don't know what type of a church this is, but immediately Beth Moore tweeted out her approval of this and her encouragement to that person for taking that position.

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You have right now going on in the Southern Baptist Convention in the SBC a massive fight over the complementary and egalitarian issue, whether women are allowed to teach and exercise authority over a man.

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It was floated, I think it was last summer, the whole idea of having Beth Moore as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And people were talking about that, and even men within the

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Southern Baptist Church were somewhat sympathetic to that and willing to abide by that. So, yeah, that's what it means that Adam was not deceived.

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He wasn't. He ate as an act of rebellion, not as an act of deception. The woman did not eat as an overact of rebellion.

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Her act of eating the fruit was an act. She was deceived by the serpent. So, all right.

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Is that clear? My studio audience says yes. All right, I'll just scroll down through here looking for another question.

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What is the purpose of the Book of Revelation? I'm not sure how to respond to those who read it and then look for all the ways it connects to current events, sort of like a biblical dot to dot.

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Yeah, that's a good one. What is the purpose of the

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Book of Revelation? The purpose of the Book of Revelation is to reveal things and to make them clear. That is why

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I say that any attempt at interpreting the Book of Revelation that makes it unclear or that makes it some sort of an enigma or mystery that we can't figure out

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I think is a faulty method of interpretation. And I would throw in there, of course, any non -premillennial approach to Scripture I think makes a hash out of the

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Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation, the intention of it, I mean, the book begins with a promised blessing for those who read the book and heed its warnings.

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So, the book contains an intention to bless those who read that book and to understand the meaning of that book.

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The purpose of the Book of Revelation is to show us the unfolding of the future. And it is an apocalyptic book.

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It is a highly symbolic book, probably the most, no, I'd say it is the most symbolic book in the

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New Testament. But the symbolism is not intended to confuse us. The symbolism is intended to reveal something that is true.

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Why do people treat it like a dot -to -dot? This is where I think you get into the, whether it's

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Hal Lindsey or, oh, who's the Texas, the big, loud, bombastic

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Texas preacher, oh, his name escapes me, Justin would know because he courts the

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Word of Faith movement a lot. Oh, I was almost there, sorry. Anyway, I think that the error that people commit with the

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Book of Revelation is to take the Book of Revelation as if it's supposed to be discussing modern -day events and they're always trying to find some connection in the

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Book of Revelation to modern -day events. I think that the Book of Revelation needs to be interpreted in terms of its broad, sweeping themes and it's pointing forward to something that is mostly future.

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If you start looking at the Book of Revelation, you're seeing in chapter 13 and 14 things happening today and you're saying, well, this is this, there's a one -to -one correspondence between that prediction of that event and this thing that's in the news headline today,

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I think that that's an abuse of the Book of Revelation. I think most of what we see unfold in Revelation we're going to see fulfilled in hindsight.

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But I do think that the Book of Revelation describes a future seven -year tribulation period where the

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Antichrist will deceive the nations and he will set up a one -world kingdom and he will control commerce and that will end with a massive battle in the

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Valley of Armageddon, followed by the return of Christ and a literal 1 ,000 -year kingdom followed by another rebellion and putting that down in a judgment of the living and the dead and then the eternal state.

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So those are the broad strokes of the Book of Revelation that I think we are intended to see.

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We need to stay, no, it's not Hagen or Jim Baker, it's the, Hagen, no, not Hagen. Hagen, John Hagen, that's it.

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It was John Hagen. You said Hagen and that was like close. I thought that sounded close. But yes, John Hagen, that's right,

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Johnny Rocket, thank you. He's the one who's constantly connecting the dots in the Book of Revelation. So I hope that answers that question, what is the purpose of it?

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Who had a question? Spud. Spud. We conclude that women are not to speak in church and their instruction comes from their husband.

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What if a woman, what if a husband is not a believer? If 1

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Corinthians 14 is interpreted the same as 1 Timothy, we conclude that women are not to speak in church. No, I would say that that, that there's two things going on in 1

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Corinthians. We can interpret it consistently with 1 Timothy chapter two in that the women who are, that the speaking there would have to do with probably in Paul's context, the use of certain gifts, certain revelatory gifts or teaching gifts within the congregation since that's in 1

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Corinthians 14, which has to do with the gifts. So the speaking there, I would say is probably a reference to certain speaking gifts, prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, which would have been active in the first century church.

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They're not active today. And even if that involves teaching or in some way standing up and giving a message to the congregation, it is in that context that women should remain silent in that because then a woman cannot get up and exercise that gift in that context of worship service with men present without her violating those commands.

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And so, yeah, she would have to remain silent in those terms, but it doesn't mean that a woman walks in the door and that she can't say hi to the greeter or she can't ask her children to go to Sunday school or anything like that.

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That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about in the congregation of men and women assembled together where everybody comes together, everybody has a gift, right?

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The use of those gifts, one of the things that restricts the use of tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy and things, again, we're talking first century context, not modern day because I don't believe that those gifts are even being given today.

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But in that first century context, the use of those gifts in a congregation, a woman cannot do that without violating that principle of teaching or exercising authority over a man.

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So they would have to remain silent in that context. And if they had something to say or had a question or something that wouldn't be addressed, they would have to address that to their husband.

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But that doesn't mean that a woman can't walk up and ask me a question because that's not what's being described there in 1 Corinthians 14.

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It would be the use of, it would be women standing up and being bombastic in the worship service in some way like that.

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For instance, you look at the other instructions that Paul gives in 1 Corinthians, he describes in 1

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Corinthians 11 the headship order within the worship service and within the family.

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And that headship, it goes back to creation again with men in leadership, men providing that protection and that provision of leadership to women and to those in the congregation, that it's men who are to lead in that way.

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That there were issues in the church at Corinth with women who were usurping that authority.

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And we had the same thing in Ephesus when Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy. So that's the issue with women usurping authority and that's the correction that is given by Paul there at the end of 1

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Corinthians 14. Alright. If their husband is not saved. Yeah, if their husband is not saved then they need to, that 1

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Peter chapter 2 where they need to live in submission with a gracious spirit so that he might be one without a word.

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And of course, a woman with an unsaved husband is not going to be able to go to him with theological questions or questions about scripture.

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She would have to seek out and find biblically qualified leadership within her congregation or even a biblically qualified woman who could answer her questions in some way.

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Those would be the options for a woman with an unsaved husband. Alright.

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I'm looking for it here. Didn't Nathel have one?

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I've heard people say that God causes calamity. True. Does God cause it or allow it or is there a difference?

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Does cause it or allow it and is there a difference? A lot of times Christians will try and get

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God off of the hook by saying, well God didn't cause this and the implication seems to be that God is sitting back and doing the best that he can to stop all these horrible things that come into our lives.

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Or does God cause it? I think it's possible for God. No, I would say that God does cause a lot of calamity.

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I read the passage several weeks ago from one of the prophets. I think it's Isaiah where God takes credit for the calamity that he causes.

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But we're not talking about doing something sinful or morally wrong. God can send an earthquake that destroys and takes the lives of 10 ,000 people and he has done nothing wrong in causing that calamity.

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It could be an act of judgment. It could be an act to get the attention of unbelievers. It could be an act to discipline Christians in some way.

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And it could be, God could be doing all of those things through that act of calamity without having any moral culpability in it.

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So yes, God does ordain all things that come to pass and God does cause calamity and God does use the evil things that he ordains to happen for our good and for his glory.

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So there is, I think there's a difference in the way that people use those two things, that God causes something and God allows something.

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There's a difference in how we speak of those things. But I don't necessarily think that the difference in the end of the day gets

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God off of the hook, which it seems that many people who use that terminology, they're trying to get God off of the hook for having something, for allowing something to happen.

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They just want to portray God as if he's sitting back with his hands tied watching it all unfold, sort of biting his nails and wishing it were different.

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And I don't think that that is a, I don't think that that's a good picture of God. I would say God does use and cause calamity and he uses those things sinlessly.

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He uses them sinlessly. All right, next question. Should Christians concern themselves with conspiracy theories and satanic going -ons in the world or look on YouTube?

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One, look on YouTube and there are a ton of ministries dedicated to exposing these theories. Bill Gates seems to be a hot topic right now.

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I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories as a general rule. I think that I'm just not a conspiracy theorist.

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I know that there are evil forces at work. I know that there are evil people at work. There are evil people with a lot of power and a lot of money who are doing everything they can to promote evil in the name of good.

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Is there some cabal somewhere, some one -world cabal where the orders are coming down from, you know, some person somewhere centrally located?

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I don't think so. I don't know that you could prove that if there was. But we do know that there is somebody behind the scenes, some evil personage behind the scenes who is trying to accomplish all of that.

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So if there is a conspiracy, it's in the spiritual realm, in which case, we can't be concerned about it.

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I know that Bill Gates is a hot topic right now because of the vaccinations and everything that he wants to see happen. And I understand the concern there.

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And I'm opposed to all of that. Should we be concerned about it and be doing everything we can to promote the theory and get everybody aware of it?

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I'm not posting that stuff on Facebook. I'm just... There are evil people at work.

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And is there a conspiracy? I'm not... Maybe. I don't know.

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It's not something that I care about in terms of that's going to be my hobby horse. So I don't think that we...

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There are a lot of ministries that are dedicated to it because sensationalism sells. And Jimmy Baker can sell food using

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Bill Gates as clickbait. And it's very effective. And it is something sensational that draws a lot of people in.

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And I'm just not... I'm just not a fan. What do we got here?

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Isaiah 45 is the reference.

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Yes, thank you. All right. Do we have another one come in? Kenneth Copeland demanded a vaccine for COVID -19.

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Right. All right. Do we have any other...

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I'm not seeing... Yep. I don't have any other questions coming in.

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Unless I missed one. If I missed one and I haven't addressed it yet, please put it into the chat.

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Are lions going to eat grass during the millennium? Or is this a... Wait for the rest of the question.

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Or is it a what? Are lions going to eat grass during the millennium? The answer will be yes.

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An allegorical nature of man. No. Oh, good question. No, it's not allegorical of the nature of man.

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If we believe what's... Look, in the Old Testament, it predicts a kingdom in which the effects of sin are going to be lifted.

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In which people who die at 100 years old, lifespans will be extended.

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Not because sin will be no more. And not because death will be no more.

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But because the effects of the fall will be mitigated by the rule of Christ. And so,

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Scripture does teach that the wolf and the lamb will lay down together. And that they will do no harm and the child will play with the cobra, etc.

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I don't think that there's any reason in any of those contexts to take those as allegorical statements. Because the minute we get into saying that these are allegorical statements, then the interpreter is...

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Then the interpretation of the passage is subject to the interpreter. And so, you might say, and I'm not saying that you would say this,

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Casey, but you might say that the lion laying down with the lamb or the lion eating grass in the millennium is just an allegorical statement of the nature of man.

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Well, what nature of man? Man before the fall, man after the fall, man after he's redeemed, man in the eternal state.

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What is that? Then we're just debating over which nature of man it is. And how do you know it's allegorical of the nature of man and not allegorical of the nature of my human pet?

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Or how do we know it's not an allegorical statement about the nature of Israel or human government or even

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Satan himself or fallen angels or good angels? Then we're just debating over what's an allegory of.

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And that's the problem with allegorical interpretations of scripture is that the true meaning of the text then is determined by the interpreter and not by the author.

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So you'd have to go back and say, what did Isaiah mean when he said that the wolf and the lamb will lay down together?

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Was Isaiah describing the nature of man? Well, if he was, then if he wanted to say something about the nature of man, he could have said something about the nature of man using non -allegorical language, just like he does in Isaiah chapter 6 where he talks about being a man of unclean lips and living a man among a people of unclean lips.

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Those were straightforward ways of describing the nature of man. There were other ways of speaking about the nature of man that didn't require the use of a lion eating grass or eating vegetables.

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So in the millennium, there will be, animals will no longer be carnivorous.

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They will be herbivorous. They will eat grass.

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And this is not something that we see unprecedented even in nature right now. There was an article in Answers in Genesis of a lion that these people had, and it was, these people were either performers or they raised private lions, and this lion ate hay, it ate grass, it ate vegetables, and it would turn its nose up at meat, and it wouldn't eat meat.

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I used to have a dog that he would eat meat, but he would also eat the hearts out of, he would eat tomatoes, he would eat watermelon and cantaloupe and carrots and beets and lettuce, and he would eat the hearts of cabbage.

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He loved vegetables. So that's not something that we see even in animals that have carnivorous teeth or teeth for eating flesh.

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Them eating vegetables and subsisting off of vegetables is not something that would be impossible.

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So there's no reason why we would take the lion eating grass in the Millennium as anything other than a straightforward reading of what the animal kingdom will look like under the reign of Jesus the

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King in an earthly kingdom where the effects of the fall have been mitigated and life spans have been increased and animals do no more harm.

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All right, so it looks like there's a bunch of questions that came in while I was going for that. Can a person that has truly had a

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Christian rebirth experience have their heart hardened later in life? Jim's dog is no longer with us, clever.

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Oh, what's the one about denying science here? How do you respond to those who say

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Christians deny science? Okay, let me deal with that one real quick. My question would be to answer that question with a question, how do

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Christians deny science? Because we believe that God supernaturally created things. That's not a denial of science.

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What in the realm of observational science do Christians deny? We don't deny the scientific method.

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In fact, the scientific method only makes sense in a Christian worldview where there's some order in creation where we can expect that a

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God who is orderly and systematic in how he does things that our experiments are always going to turn out the same every time we run them.

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So I don't think, it's not fair to say Christians deny science. That's a logical fallacy. We don't deny science because they're using the term science to mean evolution and science is not evolution.

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Science refers to a method and Christians don't deny the scientific method nor do we deny the outcome of the scientific method or the observations of a scientific method.

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All right. Can a

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Christian who's had a truly Christian rebirth experience have their heart hardened later in life? I would say yes, they can have their heart hardened later in life but not in an unsaving, a non -salvation way or not in a hardening in terms of like an unbeliever whose heart would be hardened and penetrated by the gospel.

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That would require them losing their salvation. I think it is possible for somebody who's been truly born again to grow distant in their walk with the

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Lord and to become cooled in their affections to the point where we're lukewarm or to the point where we don't respond to truth like we should or we don't respond to our conscience like we should.

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That has happened and that does happen. Our prayer and hope is that a believer would respond to the truth but when we live in disobedience to the truth or we deny our conscience or we sin against our conscience, our heart can become hardened in the sense that we become insensitive to the work of the

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Holy Spirit or even to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. That's why we should strive always to have a soft heart.

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But I wouldn't say that they can have their heart hardened in the sense of them becoming an unbeliever or becoming hostile to the gospel and then finally perishing.

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Chumquito, what is the proper interpretation and application of the passage dealing with women and head coverings? All right.

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Let me deal with Brad and Mary because we're talking about science here real quick. For science thinking, meditating neighbor who could be open to truth, what book might you recommend?

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For a science thinking, meditating neighbor. Let me think.

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I would say if you're looking, if you have somebody who's considering creationism as a whole,

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I would recommend something by Jason Lyle. If they're wondering about, see that's such a broad, that's such a broad subject.

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If they're wanting to, yeah I was going to say that Thomas about Jason Lyle's book but I've got like three of them.

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So I'm trying to be more specific here. So if they want something that deals with the interpretation of Genesis, I would suggest

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Paul Taylor's book which we're going to be giving away to people registered for the spring conference if we still have that. All right.

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I would recommend this book here, The Six Days of Genesis by Paul Taylor. That will deal with the introductory chapters in Genesis and what they teach.

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Biblical creationism versus like day age theory or any kind of an old earth perspective.

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Ken Ham's book The Lie kind of deals with evolution as a philosophy. That's a good one. Of Jason Lyle's stuff, if you're looking for somebody who says look

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I'm logical and I'm rational and I'm reasonable and I can't buy into Christianity because it's irrational and illogical and you people deny logic and you deny reason and all of that stuff, this book here,

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The Ultimate Proof of Creation, this is the one we gave away when Jason was here. This book shows you that you cannot even have a commitment to evidence or the scientific method without first believing that there is a creator that is described in scripture.

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This is an excellent one and it has a, it deals in here with logical fallacies and how logic works and why logic works the way that it does.

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And then if you have somebody who's really intellectual and they want to kind of get into a discussion or understanding of say

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Einstein's theory of relativity from a young earth creationist perspective, The Physics of Einstein by Jason Lyle is fantastic.

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So, that's where I would go with that. Okay, next question. Ochamquito.

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What's the improper interpretation and application of the passage dealing with women and head coverings? Okay, just checking the time here.

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In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the, I think that the interpretive principle that we apply in 1

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Corinthians 11 is we see a historical reference to a, two things, a reference to two things.

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First, a biblical principle and then a culturally relevant and a culturally respected application of that principle.

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So, the principle of 1 Corinthians 11 is the principle of headship and leadership. Men in headship, men in leadership by the order of creation, by the ordinance of God, etc.

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I think that that needs to be expressed in some culturally appropriate or relevant way. And in first century

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Corinth, that would have been a head covering. A woman who had her head uncovered was a harlot or a prostitute or demonstrated the fact that she didn't consider herself as being in any way under authority.

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And so, Paul wanted the church at Corinth to demonstrate the creation order and the authority structure within the church in a way that would be recognized and understood by everybody.

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And in that context, it would have been wearing a head covering. In our context, wearing a head covering does not express submission to authority.

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You can go out in the, like a woman wearing a hat. You can go out and find a woman who is unmarried, rebellious, unsaved, who wears a baseball cap or a hat out in public.

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A head covering a hat in our context does not express that authority. It does not express that submission to a husband.

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So, I think that the challenge for us in applying that principle is finding a culturally relevant and a culturally recognized way of expressing that creation ordinance and that authority structure within the church.

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A woman wearing a hat doesn't do that. So, how would a woman express that toward her husband?

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It might just be in the way that she comports herself or conducts herself. So, the short answer to that is that the head covering itself was a cultural expression of that biblical principle.

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Just like greet one another with a holy kiss, we're not going to do that when we get back our first Sunday at church. We're not going to greet one another with a holy kiss because that was a cultural expression of a biblical principle which was demonstrate brotherly love and compassion and an appropriate, like it would be the first century equivalent of our handshake.

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When we greet one another, we do so in Christian love with a handshake. That's an appropriate, culturally relevant way of expressing our love for one another and our greetings with one another.

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In the first century, it would have been a kiss which would have been a brotherly, it would have been something that everybody did, but a holy kiss is one sanctified where they would have greeted their brethren in that way with special Christian love and affection.

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So, in our cultural context, a head covering doesn't communicate submission or the creation ordinance or anything.

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So that's why we have to find ways of expressing that ourselves in our own congregation. One way

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I think we do it as a church is we don't have women do any kind of leadership in the public service in that way.

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We have them assist others who are leading, that's fine, like singing on a stage, but that order of authority and leadership even in our worship service is always recognized and always demonstrated.

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All right, in front of the fall, prior to the fall there was no death, this is no meteors yet.

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Okay, reading down here for science thinking.

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How do you respond to people who quote Hulk Hogan's statement, God said you want to worship? I just,

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I don't think Hulk Hogan is a theologian that I quote. As terms, in terms of the substance behind the statement that we have violated all of God's commands so God is giving us something to judge us,

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I think this gets to a bigger, broader principle and that is that in the midst of any event that is happening that is cataclysmic or earth shattering like this, whether it's an earthquake or a tsunami or a car accident or a plague like what we're facing or anything like that,

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I don't think that we have the ability to say exactly what we know that God is doing.

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I think generally we can say that in every calamity God to the unbeliever is either taking their life, getting their attention so that they will repent or punishing them for their sin.

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So God will do that in the calamity to the unbeliever, to the Christian. We know that God is either,

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God is always going to discipline us for our good so that we may embrace him and get rid of sin and walk closer with him.

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That's what God is doing to the believer through any calamity. So other than to broadly say to the unbeliever

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God is getting their attention to discipline them or to bring them to Christ or to the believer God is disciplining us or he is doing something for his glory and for our good conforming us to his image.

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We know that God is doing that in our hearts but other than those general statements we can't say that we know that COVID -19 is

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God's judgment upon this nation. It might be, we don't know that. In the Old Testament when the prophets predicted judgment upon a nation for its sin and they would say for instance the

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Babylonians are coming in like Habakkuk does and they're going to destroy Israel for its sin the only reason you would know that the invasion of Babylon was to destroy

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Israel for its sin was because a prophet revealed that that was the mind and the will of God through that judgment.

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And since we can't know the mind and the will of God apart from divine revelation for any particular act that happens or any event that happens all we can say is generally speaking we know that God is either punishing or drawing the unbeliever to himself or he is doing something in the heart of the believer in a general sense.

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But we can't say that because we worship sports God sent COVID to shut down sports. I don't know that that was

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God's mind in it and I can't claim to know that that's God's mind unless I have some kind of personal revelation. So that's what

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I would say about that. We miss you all too. What does a wife's submission look like in a

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Christian marriage? Just look at my wife. It means following headship.

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It means showing love and respect and being a helpmate and seeking to honor your husband in the decisions that he makes.

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It means that you follow his leadership and even though you might not agree with it you do what you can and you submit to that in a respectful and admiring way in a way that is cherishing to your husband and ultimately if he makes a bad decision that's on him and not on you.

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You're seeking to honor him and you have to submit to a man unless... submit to our husband unless I should say

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I'm not submitting to husband but a wife will submit to her husband unless he asks her to do something that is patently unbiblical or patently a violation of God's commandments in which case she has her responsibility to disobey that in a very submissive way in a way that honors him.

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So the idea behind submission is lining up behind someone else's authority or leadership and putting yourself under that position of authority and leadership and then doing so in a respectful and honoring way.

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Um... I have a moderator for these Q &A sessions who collects the questions and presents them to Jim for an answer. Yeah, that's kind of what

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Peter does but he does it from a distance and he's doing that out in the sound booth so he'll try and repost something if he sees that I have not answered a question so we could actually have somebody in here who would collect those questions but the problem is that the chat channel keeps churning so quickly that it ends up spilling down through the questions end up disappearing before I can get a chance to answer them and then you have to have somebody back here who's writing them down or at least scrolling through them for us so that might work.

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Um... Hopefully we won't have to do this much longer. Maybe one more

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Sunday. Um... Alright, do we have any other questions? Thomas, did you ask

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Jim for permission to ask that question? That's clever. Uh... Alright. I think

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I got them all. Yes, indeed so.

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Peter, your help in this is greatly appreciated. I realized that the other day that not all churches have the technology or the people in place to help with some of this and to make stuff like this possible.

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In fact, I read a story about a church who has made their facilities available to other churches to come in and do streaming services so that their technology is in place for them and other people to do it as well.

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So... It is, um... It is a blessing to have people who do this. Alright, if we have no other questions then, um...

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Any questions about the book? When will it be in print?

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Question from the live studio audience. Um... Let me see.

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My goal is to have everything written and revised by the end of May. Um...

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Then it will be to Deidre's desk and she will proof it. She usually takes a few weeks to do that.

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And once that is done, once it's all proofed and it goes through its final...

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Then I have to put it into a format. I have to put it into a PDF format that will be printable that gets uploaded to the publisher, to the printer and put it into a

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Kindle book format. Um... That... Um... That will take a couple of days worth of work.

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So, I'm hoping by mid -summer if everything went really well, like 4th of July, but I hate to even say that, so I'm going to say by the church camp out.

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I would love to have it published by the church camp out. Which would be... Oh, this book right here?

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That's my book. That's not... That's not any other book. Oh, look at that.

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That's a lot of proofreading. Um... When will we be able to read it?

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Do you think it's possible in some cases when someone takes their own life,

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God will show them mercy if their mind is so far gone they're no longer accountable? Hmm...

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I think it is possible, though rare, for a true believer to be in...

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plagued by depression to the point that they would take their own life. I believe that that is possible.

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I believe it's possible for a Christian to sin in that way. Um... I also believe that it is possible for people to think they are saved and pretend to be saved and end up doing that as an expression of them not being saved.

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And ultimately, I don't think that you can judge the salvation of somebody who died in that way, even taken their own life.

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Um... As a historical example, the... William Cowper, who wrote the hymn or the poem, we sing it as a hymn or a song,

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God works in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Um...

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William Cowper was plagued for his entire life, even as a Christian, with chronic depression. He got even suicidal at times.

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And his pastor was John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace. And he was in Newton's church. And Newton personally discipled

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Cowper for years. And that sin of... of, um... wrestling with depression...

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Depression was his thorn in the flesh, Cowper's thorn in the flesh. It was something, though he had times when he would come out from underneath those clouds of despair,

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Cowper never really officially... never really totally conquered that... that plague of despair and despondency and sin.

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And he wrestled with that even as sometimes questioning his own salvation because he was so depressed at times. But it really was his thorn in the flesh.

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It really was something that he had to war against his whole life. And, um... And even though he knew Newton and Newton was his friend and his pastor and discipled him, um...

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Cowper never got out from underneath that cloud. And so... what would we say of a William Cowper who loved the

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Lord and by every indication in the rest of his life other than chronic depression gave evidence of salvation in his life and love for God and yet he constantly wrestled with that sin, with that...

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with that thorn in his flesh? Um... What would we say of him if in a moment of despair and weakness he took his own life?

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Would we say he wasn't saved and that's the evidence that he wasn't saved? Um... What would you say of me if the last thing that you knew of me was that I committed some sin and then died right at that moment?

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Would you say that me dying in the moment of committing that sin or struggling with that sin was an evidence that I was never saved?

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Or would you look at the whole lifespan of somebody's life and say that there is evidence there of salvation even though at a particularly weak moment they died and took their lives?

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And I would look at Cowper and say that the evidence of his salvation was there, um... uh... even in spite of the fact that he struggled with that sin.

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So an individual who commits suicide does God know their heart? He does and ultimately he knows if they are one of his or not.

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Um... We would not say because I don't believe that sin that the sin of suicide even though it is even though it is the committing of murder it's self -murder that that sin itself is necessarily one that eliminates somebody's salvation.

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Um... I don't believe that you can be saved your entire life and then die in that way and all of a sudden that disqualifies you for heaven because that right because it comes back to the finality of salvation as to whether or not salvation is final and full and complete and whether what

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Christ has done to atone for that person's sin even the sin of suicide if that's their last act on this earth um...

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is sufficient or not it comes back to that question and I do believe of course that the sacrifice of Christ and the righteousness he provides and the forgiveness forgives even that sin.

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That's no excuse obviously for committing suicide nor should any Christian ever do that and they should get help. Um...

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but the act of suicide itself though it should cause us to wonder and question is not itself a something that all of a sudden eliminates our salvation or takes us out of the righteousness or out of Christ that's not an unforgivable sin.

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I hope that adds some context to that maybe that's something that deserves a little bit more time and attention but I hope that's a brief enough answer because we are past time it's 1025 and I need to take a few minutes here and then we'll jump back on in about 10 minutes for the worship service.

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I'm going to we're going to be in Acts chapter 2 so I'm going to take a second here to give

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Peter a chance for this to catch up with the because this is a bit delayed so if I cut it out too quickly

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Peter doesn't have a chance to cut off anything at the end so I'm going to read through the questions here the statements here to see what people are talking about while I'm answering questions and then we'll stop the live stream here in a couple seconds and then we'll be back in about 10 minutes.

53:19

Josh Comstock does the audio reading for it. I don't know that might be good.

53:27

I actually had somebody we have an audio book of Truth or Territory that has already been submitted to the audio book distributor and it should be out according to their site it's already out and available in audio book and we had somebody locally here do the reading for it and I was pleased with it they did a good job in fact

53:43

I think I'd probably hire him to do Prosperity of the Wicked at some point and possibly even

53:49

God Doesn't Whisper but it's Truth or Territory should be available in audio book within the next week on most audio book platforms including iBooks or whatever iTunes audio book platform is