Apologetics & Debate: Hermeneutics, Part 3

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All right, we're live. I don't have any of the fancy music because well Randy's not here to run it.

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So I don't have his cool music and his five -minute countdown timer for Passing the torch.

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No, do I have his cool graphics? So we're had to do this on my channel

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Or my string yard so that we have it striving fraternity. So welcome to class.

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This is the fifth class in our Apologetics and debate we got three classes left after tonight

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Where we will focus more on well things like logic. So Tonight we will wrap up part three of our course, which will be focusing part three of harmoniutics and This is an important thing when

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People ask me how I prepare to debate especially I do a show every

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Thursday night It's called apologetics live. It's a live stream so anyone can come in which means people come in prepared to debate me on topics that I'm Not prepared for because I didn't know there was a debate that night that's what happens when you have a show that is open to anyone and So what often gets asked of me is how do

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I prepare for? debates when I Wasn't prepared for like you.

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You can't really be you have to always be prepared type of thing And so what do I do?

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When things like this happen, and I've told people for a long time. There's two areas of study to within Christianity at least to study to be able to be prepared for prepared for debates at any time anywhere and What that is is to study harmoniutics and the second area is logic

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And that's why we focused our time here. We we started off this course We talked about things like what is apologetics why we should do it.

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What's the purpose of it? what's the character we should have when it comes to doing apologetics and Then we have spent the last two weeks and this week.

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We'll spend the third on harmoniutics how to interpret the Bible. So part one of harmoniutics was focused solely on the issue of Context and we did that because Context is the number one rule when it comes to interpretation.

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You need to know the context you need to be able to read this in its

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Basically, what are the verses before it? What are the verses after it? there are so many times that I get asked a question on apologetics live where all

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I have to do is back up a few Verses and the context answers the question or challenge being asked of me from a passage of Scripture So just reading it not the verse but reading the verses around it, maybe even the whole chapter

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Often helps to understand things. Sometimes we have to go to the historical context the cultural context. There's different areas.

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We have to go to to get an understanding now After that last week, we spent the time looking at two very important principles that is the

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Ability and remembering to differentiate between descriptive and prescriptive passages now just to give you a

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High level of it go back to last week's class to get to dig in deep. But when we look at that the high level of it is this is

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We're going to look at a descriptive passage describes what actually happened

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And when we do that, we're not necessarily looking to say this is what should be done or what shouldn't be done

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It's what did happen. That's what descriptive is trying to do prescriptive is instructions

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Commands, those are things we are to obey So we're gonna put a greater emphasis on a prescriptive text one that prescribes something tells us what to do

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Over a descriptive text something that tells us what happened Okay, the other thing we looked at last week is that we will we need to remember to Interpret the harder to understand passages by the easier to understand passages

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Because what we have is a case where there are passages that are just hard to understand

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But there's others that are not they're very easy And so when we come upon those and people try to make it seem like oh look here's a contradiction

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But it's not a contradiction because there are no contradictions in Bible. What it is is our lack of understanding

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Something of a text and so when we come to something that seems like a contradiction is a hard to understand passage

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What we want to be able to do is look at an easier passage and Use that to know how to interpret the the more difficult

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So that's where we left off last week this week. I want to start off with the idea of being able to challenge or question our presuppositions now when

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I took hermeneutics in seminary this was actually the first principle that they had and It is an important one to have as your first principle because if you are not willing to question your presuppositions or even worse

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Recognize that you have presuppositions then you can come to the text and Make some mistakes and those mistakes being is that you might not recognize that you are is a cheating not exegete

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Okay, so I used a bunch of big words. Let's define them so we understand them Presupposition what is a presupposition?

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A presupposition is something that we have that we bring to the text of Scripture a thought

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Someone may come to the text of Scripture Understanding the

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Trinity you come reading it the understanding Trinity and you're going to read a passage like Genesis 126 let us make man on our image and say well that is obviously speaking of the

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Trinity Because this is God creating and therefore it has to be a Trinity But if you deny the

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Trinity if your starting point is the Trinity does not exist You come to that same passage and you have a lot of variety in the responses

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Some Jewish commentaries I've read will say that this is like a royal we This is not really

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God speaking in a plurality But God speaking in a in a royal sense of we but it's really just God the the one

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God the Father one person one being You'll get some who will even within Judy Judaism, I've seen some commentaries that will refer to this is

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God speaking with the angels though. The angels have no part in creation But it's

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God just speaking with them There's others Jehovah Witnesses that will say that this is

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God speaking with Michael the Archangel and Michael the Archangel it does all the creation.

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So God creates Michael the Archangel Michael then creates everything that is created and Then becomes

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Jesus. Yes, Michael the Archangel becomes Jesus and so This is how creation would be done in Jehovah Witnesses Do you see there's a lot of creativity with this one passage of Scripture because they cannot accept

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The Trinity that their starting point is that the Trinity doesn't is not true

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And so if you come to the passage with that then you are going to read your your view of the

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Trinity into that passage and Come away with a lot of variety so We have to be able to question our presuppositions

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I'm going to talk about that more in a bit because I said it leads to two other big words isogesis and exegesis so isogesis is when we read a meaning into a text and The ice that's the exegesis is when we are going to read the meaning out of the text and so what we we find with that is

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When we the proper way to do it is to take the meaning out of the text Okay but we all

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Have to realize that because of presuppositions we have that can affect our hermeneutics our interpretation of Scripture This is why when

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I was in seminary this is the first thing they started with is because if you are unwilling to Question or even recognize that you have presuppositions

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You can make mistakes in your interpretation. It doesn't mean you always do

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But it means you're more susceptible to that. So with that We recognize we come to the text with preconceived ideas

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We have to know what those preconceived ideas are Not only do we have to know what those preconceived ideas are

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But we have to be willing to question whether our preconceived ideas are correct if we don't know what they are it and even worse if we're not willing to Look at the the scripture and and say okay could could

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I be wrong? then we're gonna have a problem because if we if we

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If we're going to approach the scriptures and assume

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That everything we think about the scripture is right. We're not going to Approach it properly

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So what that means is when we approach the scriptures we are going to look at this and Well, this is what it means

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So an example of this that I would like to give Is a passage that I struggled with for many years

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This is Ephesians 2 8 9 not really struggled with but debated had friendly good discussion

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Because it says in Ephesians 2 8 9 for by grace. You have been saved through faith and That not of yourselves.

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It is a gift of God Not as a result of works that no one may boast

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The question is what is the gift? The gift that you're given is it grace?

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Or is it faith now, this is a passage that in the

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Greek The gift could be argued either way And so but when

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I was for many years, I would argue that the gift here being spoken of is the grace

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This is grace that has been given and it's a gift and I'd have more my more

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Calvinistic friends that would argue that no it is the faith and We would go back and forth well,

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I was preaching through the book of Philippians and as I was preaching through Philippians, I came to a passage that Really gave me some difficulty it is

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Philippians 129 Now this is another example of we we take the more difficult.

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We interpret it by the clear Now I approach this with a presupposition That We had a a

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Will that was tainted by sin and yet God could

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Would give us an ability to to call out to him and He would then when we called out to him in repentance, he would then reconcile us and so I believe that We would have our belief that would come before our regeneration and I would argue that Ephesians 289 it could it could be used to argue that with the gift

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But as I preached through Philippians, I came to Philippians 129 which says for to you

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It has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake and Here I had a problem

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Why because a this is a clear passage to understand This is something that is well both passages are prescriptive

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So as we looked at what we said last week Both are prescriptive But one is a little bit harder to understand because when we look at the

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Greek the gift can be applied to either the grace or it could be applied to The faith so which is it?

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hard to tell But Philippians 129 it's not hard to tell even that belief that we have is granted to us

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He's making the argument that suffering is from God Suffering has been granted to us and he says he's saying just like your belief in God was granted to you so is this suffering and And so this all of a sudden caused me to have to change a theological position and yes

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Call some friends who gave me a hard time for a long time and say I was wrong

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You were right Forgive me Now if I wasn't willing to question my own pre sub positions my preconceived ideas

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Then I would have come to that text Stood before my congregation and preached something that wasn't true.

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I Would have preached something that would fit with my theology Rather than looking at what the text of Scripture says and letting that speak now that makes a major difference doesn't it because now all of a sudden what happens if I get up there and Reach from my perceived preconceived ideas.

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Do I have God's Word anymore? No, I Have my word or maybe the words that I got from someone else, but I don't have the

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Bible and so this is Super important to be willing to question our own preconceived or presuppositions or preconceived ideas or pre pre submit presuppositions because we have them and Let me let you know some ways that people do this very common ways one

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I'm gonna kind of pick on the our charismatic friends out there Those who you know are our brothers in Christ, but they believe that the charismatic gifts occurred and a lot of times in fact,

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I would say that every time I've Debated it or had discussions on it. It will almost always

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Come down to someone will talk about a personal experience. I Had this happen.

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So when they come to the passages with about the gifts The gifts must be true because of my personal experience

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So what is the ultimate authority then my personal experience now, let me be clear

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I know every single charismatic brother that her sister that's listening to me is saying no,

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I don't do that. I Understand that you're you would not Say because it would be wrong to say that we put our personal experiences above scripture and I get that However, that is what we're doing

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Just like if I was to come to Philippians 129 And argue against what it clearly teaches

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I'm putting my preconceived ideas above scripture or my theological system, which is the next one.

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I was gonna use Because many people do that they come to the scriptures you get a passage scripture it seems to teach something that goes against whatever theological system you believe in and What happens is we say?

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Well, this can't mean that for this reason. So What do we do in those cases well what some do is they change the meaning of the scriptures

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By looking at this and saying well can't possibly mean that why well because Whoever theologian has said

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That it can't well, that's not the right way to approach it Okay, we cannot approach the scripture

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And look at it from our theological system, so let me give a passage that I see this happen often

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John 1st John 2 2 it says and he himself is the propitiation for our sins and Not ours only but also for those of the whole world

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Now for Calvinist this can become an issue Because what is this saying that that Jesus died as a propitiation propitiation means a payment of wrath for the whole world

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Now this is one that would be be used by our minions to say look here

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Jesus satisfied was the satisfaction of our sins for the whole world and They make the emphasis on whole world saying this means every single person

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Now if you come to this passage with a view Of Calvinism that John Owens had of a limited atonement that says that Christ died only for the elect

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You have a dilemma here, don't you? Because if this is saying that Christ died for every person

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Then he didn't die for only the elect So what do people do with this well?

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Some will say well world doesn't always mean world. Is that true? Absolutely. It's true

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But does this mean in this passage that world means every individual or just all people as far as the general reference to all people the world the cosmos well

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Not really. Sure. Maybe the context can help us. Well, he prefaces it with whole world.

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Does that help us any? Not really and so many will argue see that that's just meaning all the nations that all nations will be safe So there's elect people from all the nations

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Now what they've done there is they're reading that into because there's nothing here about the elect nations

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But where my issue is is in this not for ours only but Because now what we have to figure out to get the answer to the question is who is the us and who is the not us

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Well, he tells us who the us are Context the verse before it verse 1 my little children so the us are believers

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Making the not us unbelievers That is a sticking point if you believe in an unlimited

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Atonement meaning that Christ died only for the elect now. I agree that logically that is true

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But this passage doesn't teach that So what do people do? Many will argue that what this passage is talking about is this is speaking about the

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Jew Gentile discussion However Now let's put in our again

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Context now our historical context first John is one of the last books written the

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New Testament Okay, all of John's writings were late So this is a much later book

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Many think it could have been after many of the Apostles died so This would have been something long after the

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Jewish Gentile debate is over so there's nothing in the book of first John that makes a connection here anywhere of a

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Jewish Gentile distinction so this is where a theological system that we have can be read into a

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Passage of Scripture and we start to come up with ways to explain it. So I'm saying that Everybody is susceptible to this

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And I know people just go wait a minute So you don't believe in limited Atonement because you don't believe because you're saying that applies to unbelievers

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Well, let's get to that in a moment just so we can clarify my position and I have done whole podcasts on this explaining it but the issue here is that that text is

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Speaking about believers and unbelievers We know it because he tells us who he's speaking to my little children he does that as a term of endearment to those believers he is writing to and so Right off the bat we realize that if we're going to look at this and Question be willing to question our priests conceived ideas of presuppositions that we bring to the text our theological system

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Then we got to go home Maybe I could be wrong here about this That's a very helpful thing to do.

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We have to remember that our theological system as good as it may be Is still done written by human beings that it's all the interpretation that we have of Scripture And so every theological system mine included is wrong

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Somewhere. I don't know where if I knew where my theology was wrong. Guess what? I would change it as I already explained

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I did when I came to Philippians 129 I had to change my the a lot my theology and some are going wait a minute you changed it

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It sounds like you made the change to be more Calvinistic. But now you're saying first John sounds less Calvinistic.

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So I Believe that we have to look at this from either from God's view and man's view

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Okay From from God's view. He knew exactly Who was gonna?

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Who he he will have in with him in heaven who he regenerates He knows that with an absolute knowledge.

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He doesn't let need to look at what we do to understand that But does that mean that the propitiation was only for them

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Well, I think first John 2 2 says that the propitiation was for everyone every person

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So, how do I reconcile that? Well from a human perspective? An offer of salvation could be made and I you always use this as an example

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Maybe a bad one, but it's the best I have I go into a restaurant and offer to pay everyone's bill

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Some people will say hey, thanks for dinner. Love the free dinner and they leave

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But I I know because I've done this where we've evangelized in a restaurant

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Friends of mine and I and we share the gospel and people go so You know,

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I don't like what you're saying They get upset and my myself or a friend will buy their dinner

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Well, I remember one time we were in a restaurant that knew the owners there were believers Because I knew the owners

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I knew we could get away with this But me and a friend of mine mark went to every single table and we evangelized every single table before we sat down Every table we did it separately every table got the gospel gospel tract one guy was really you know he's polite about it, but totally disagreed with us and Mark paid for his meal and the guy was absolutely upset that his meal was paid

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He walked up to the cashier asked the price of his bill and paid it again and he came over to the table to tell us that he paid the bill and We should we might as well just ask for our money back and mark said no if you did it

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Then they just got a really big tip but your meal was paid for already and What this this guy was like, well,

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I'm not gonna have anyone pay for me I'm gonna do it my way Which I got some well, that's the very reason you're gonna spend eternity in a lake of fire

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Because you will not let anybody Show you grace Not even the

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God of the universe You got to do it your way You got to pay it just like this dinner bill.

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You can't accept the grace from another person You got to pay it your way and I think that you the reality is that did

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God was God's death sufficient This is the Puritan language, but you know time of John Owens John Owens really was the one that solidified this idea that a limited atonement

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Means that Christ died only for the elect and I think that is a good logical conclusion

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I just don't think it's a good biblical conclusion Because That passage in first John 2 2 doesn't teach that so the

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Puritans used to say that Christ's death was sufficient for all but efficient for few so It's it's enough to pay for the sin of every human being that ever lived

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But it wasn't applied to everyone who ever lived and so when people are When people repent when people are regenerated then it is applied

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Now so people will say well that makes no sense because logically If you're saying

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Christ died and was it was satisfied the sins of another person. Well that passage says yes

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Well, then how could that be? I don't know. I'm not God in the mind of God. It makes sense

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You see so a lot of times these preconceived ideas that we have when we come to scripture are

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To wrap things up so that we can understand things that our minds cannot understand We have to allow for mystery in the scriptures and some of our

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Presuppositions we have are trying to answer the mystery that we can't know and so I think that Christ died for all people and yet It's clearly limited

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The atonement is clearly limited because there's people in hell today. So That is the way of that Explain that but this is what a good example of good examples of how people bring their

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Personal experience why I speak in tongues. I had a prophecy. I had some experience therefore gifts continue today or Here's the theological system.

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This must be true whether denying the Trinity or You know, whatever it might be We have to be willing to Question the preconceived ideas or presuppositions that we come to scripture with and if we do not do that It becomes a major problem because we will not be able to recognize

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When we're in error with scripture will not be able to recognize when our theological systems have a problem with it

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We can't because it becomes that theological system becomes the ultimate authority

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It is what interprets scripture, this is one of the arguments I make against Colts all the time

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The Colts will sit there and argue That you need the the watchtower

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Society to be I'll tell you what God's Word is or the Mormons will say you need their their living prophet and then twelve apostles or whatever their group is that they say you must have

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To interpret scripture if you need something to interpret scripture

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The Catholic Church says the church the magisterium you need them and tradition to interpret scripture

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Well, then they automatically become superior to scripture

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The reason being is if I need something a church an organization to interpret the scripture

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Then I by myself alone with the scripture can't understand it. I need this group That groups becomes the ultimate authority

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Because that group is the authority to tell you what scripture means And I'm saying that to say that I want you to understand how strongly we have to take this to question our preconceived ideas because if we come to scripture and we are saying our

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Experience or theological system is how we're going to interpret scripture. We may not recognize we're doing that That's why we have to know what our preconceived ideas are but if we come to it then we're subjecting scripture to our theological system to our personal experience to whatever it is

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We say that we come to it with those preconceived ideas become superior to scripture

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That's why this is Something we have to really challenge ourselves with why it's the very first thing

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They taught me in seminary before they started talking about context I thought start with context because it is the most important Rule that we're going to use when interpreting.

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Okay, but as far as importance of All the rules

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I would say this is the most important This is the one that really we need to do first in when we come to a passage of scripture.

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We need to look at what? Preconceived ideas we're bringing to that text okay, and so Fatima is saying in chat.

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Oh sad pride can be devastating and I'm glad she mentioned it because that shows you what it really comes down to it's pride and so this is

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This is what we have to recognize about this is that if we're going to Look at this with pride

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Then we have to reckon or look at the scripture pridefully we have to realize that pride is

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Woefully deceptive it always tells us we're right and So if we're not willing to question our preconceived ideas those presuppositions we come to the scripture with then we're going to Have a problem because that ends up leading or could end up leading to being prideful

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About our view of scripture and then it's not scripture that is informing us. It's ourselves that are informing us

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Okay, and so that's why I'm emphasizing it and really want to take the time for us

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To look at that now. I want to let the last one that we're going to talk about is the idea of scripture interpreting scripture

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I If I Only have eight weeks.

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I'm limited what we can talk about I wanted to come up with five of the most important that I think are most important.

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Why do I bring up this one? I bring this one up because this is one that is most often abused

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What people mean by interpreting scripture with scripture is not always what it should mean

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So, let me first explain what it should mean and then show you how it's abused

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When we interpret scripture with scripture what that should mean is that I come to a passage of scripture like I did with Philippians 129 or more importantly or more

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Detailed we looked at John 1st John 2 2 What did we do? Well, I'm comparing these with other passages of scripture, right?

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I'm comparing Ephesians 2 8 9 with Philippians 1 29

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Now that is doing a comparison, but what am I gonna do in each of those? I'm gonna exegete or pull the meaning out of the text of each passage independently to first see if there is a connection between those two and if there is a

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Connection then I'm applying scripture with scripture What a lot of people do is

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So that's the right way you exegete all the passages that you're connecting together Make sure that they're right in the same context and if they're in the same context, then you can tie them together

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But just because a word is used multiple times doesn't mean it's in the same context So we have words in the scripture and they can have different meanings based on context

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And so what a lot of people do is a mistake is they will take something they would look for a word and they do a search for everywhere that word is in the

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Bible and Then they say well this must mean something because it means it everywhere else and That is not the way to interpret right,

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I already said we interpret each one of those passages individually by themselves and and then see now if a if a something means

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That has the same word usage in every other passage

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Does it mean that it must be the same way in the passage? I'm looking at maybe not now there are times where there are things within language within certain words that are

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Restrictive and so word does have a specific meaning and you can't give it a wider meaning

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Some words can have multiple meanings and so we can look maybe there's nowhere else where that word is used that way in the

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Bible But it was used that way in Greek or Hebrew literature. So we know it does have broader meanings

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There's a word pistos it can mean faithful or it can mean believing and So when we come in Titus chapter 1, there's people who who take

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Titus 1 where it talks about the qualifications of a pastor and It says in verse 6 having children who believe not accused of dissipation or rebellion and What some will do is say that this means that children the pastor's children must be believers

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Because it's translated often as believe but that word could mean faithful Which actually ties in better with the context

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So, what do we do what people often do is say we'll see this word when it's used of human beings always means believer and When it's it when it's not of people it can mean faithful well,

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I did a search and realized that actually there's times where it's used of of non -human beings is used as in a parable and Therefore it's not actually talking about a real believer or not.

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So Yeah, there's times where it speaks of a humans and and the context could mean faithful or believer

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So what people do is that are they argue for the case that? Pastors children must be saved.

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They're bringing an idea in they're looking at the way this word is used They're saying this this has got to be restricted in this way to only refer to believers because we restrict it everywhere else and Yet that's a way that someone there that's a restriction that they're putting on to the word that the language doesn't put on and So they can come to a wrong conclusion when doing that And so what they do though is that what are they how they doing it?

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They're looking at every other passage of Scripture because they're looking for the same word and saying well it has to be the same everywhere

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That's not the right way to do it Let me give another example and and so we talked about on the first week that we dealt with hermeneutics when we talked about a context the first thing

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I said is how people the wrong way to interpret and we talked about idea of isolation and proof texting isolation is we take a verse out of its context and We talked about proof texting where you you string passages along That are together that May or may not have the right context so what people will often do is grab some verses that look like they're speaking of the same thing because they have the same maybe

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English word or maybe the same Greek word and They just string them all together and say we'll see this is what it means and so They then are saying that they are interpreting

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Scripture with Scripture But as I said if you're you can't isolate the text

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You can't do the proof texting in the wrong way. You have to exegete every one of those passages

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Individually, and so that's how you properly do Use Scripture with Scripture an example that I use had a friend of mine who you always used to say

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This is dealing with Revelation chapter 20 Revelation 20 verse 2 to 7 those six verses uses the word thousand years six times and so this is where we get the idea of a 1 ,000 year millennial kingdom and So what many will say or some will say is that that's figurative?

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I had a friend who used to say that everywhere in the Bible where the word thousand is used it is used figuratively

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Therefore this is used figuratively And I challenged my friend and I showed him many passages where thousand was literal

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He recognized that and so he changed it and he said everywhere where a thousand years is used it's figurative and therefore

39:33

This must be figurative Okay, well how many times is the word thousand years used

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I'm glad you asked It is only used four times Outside of the passage that we're looking at of Revelation 20

39:49

Okay using Psalm 90 verse 4 where it says for a thousand years in your sight it are like yesterday when it passed by For as a watch is in the night and so, okay, is that figurative it could be

40:08

I'll say could be get back to this Ecclesiastes 6 6 even if the other man lives a thousand years twice and Does not enjoy good things

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Do not all go to one place Was he gonna live a literal thousand years

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No, so is this figurative Could be I'll get back to that The other passage is in the

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New Testament and it uses thousand year twice So it's for there's four uses of thousand years outside of Revelation chapter 20 and it is 2nd

40:49

Peter 3 8 which says Do not let this one fact escape your notice beloved that With the

40:58

Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day Is that a literal thousand years?

41:08

It could be now I see now It's not a literal thousand years that a day is like that.

41:16

The Lord is a Day in the Lord is like a literal thousand years right because God is outside of time and so it's what is what's the what is the context of first Peter that he's saying that God's long -suffering and so he's using it by comparing a literal day to a literal thousand years so The same could be said for Psalm 19 as some 90 verse 4 and Ecclesiastes 6 6

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In each of those is the contrast of an illustration So is it being used as an illustration?

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Yes But it's being used as an illustration with the expectation of an actual thousand years being compared

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To an actual day or a short period of time So That's the idea that it's it is a thought a literal thousand years being compared.

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So when we go scripture with scripture this way People will say we'll see these are figurative.

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Therefore Revelation has to be figurative I would disagree with that and even if the others are you only have three passages

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That's not a lot to go on to say that thousand years can never be literal Clearly in Greek literature

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It can be literal. So this is a mistake that people will make when they say they're interpreting scripture with scripture

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They're just saying well a thousand years is figurative here So it's got to be figurative there and yet when we look at Revelation 20

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Not only is the is thousand years emphasized by repeating it in six verses in a row

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But the other thing that you see in it is chronological language. This happens then that happens this then this then this and So that is something we see with connected to language.

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That would be literal So I would believe in a literal thousand year period because that's what that text says so I Emphasized the wrong way to do it.

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And the reason I wanted to emphasize is because so many people do it incorrectly The right way to do it is to look at every passage that you're going to join together

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That you're gonna look at one passage scripture with another you're going to interpret do all the work of interpretation of them

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Separately and then after you do that separate interpretation You're going to look to see whether they are still within the same context and if they are then compare them together

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That is how we should compare scripture with scripture. Is that a lot of hard work?

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Yes, it is But interpreting God's Word is hard work and it is the most important work that we could do with our lives

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It's far more important than memorizing the stats of your favorite sports team just saying don't tell me you can't spend time

44:13

Understanding God's Word if you have all those stats memorized That that are useless in the grand scheme of things won't last for eternity.

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In fact Most people won't even remember who who lost the last

44:27

Super Bowl. Maybe you know, I mean, it's people it's a short -term thing Now there's some people really like that trivia and like those stats and so they spent a lot of time really knowing it

44:37

Then you could spend the time getting something that is of eternal value and that is studying the scriptures

44:43

Okay. So as a recap as we look at hermeneutics, we talked about the importance of context historical context cultural context

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Also the biblical context and the literary context what's before what's after we talked about differentiating the differences of descriptive and prescriptive passages of scripture we talked about the importance of taking the difficult passages and interpreting by the easier passages

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Today we looked at the fact that we have to be willing to question our own presuppositions

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To let the scriptures tell us what the meaning is rather than us.

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Tell the scripture what the meaning is so that affects our pride it affects our Systematic theology our personal experiences all those things and then lastly we are going to interpret scripture scripture

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There's no contradictions in the Bible. And therefore when we see something that's in a seems like a contradiction we have to look at these passages and we got to compare them one with another to see if there's actually a

45:53

Contradiction or if maybe we're just reading one of those two or three or four passages incorrectly that happens

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Okay So this it is hard work to do hermeneutics, but it is profitable work.

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It is so that you know what the Lord says What how he wants you to what you he wants you to know of himself and how to live

46:18

Important things and these will last for all eternity Okay, so next class we're going to spend three weeks looking at logic

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Gonna try to identify Looking at what identifies valid and invalid arguments

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We may take a look at some formal versus informal logic and then we're gonna look at some logical fallacies

46:45

Most people when they think of logic think of the logical fallacies We're gonna spend much of the time in understanding how logic works

46:51

What it is what makes things valid or not so that you can identify it without knowing having memorized all the different fallacies

47:01

That will be important to you. Why is this important again to do debate? Okay, we're going to do debate

47:09

Debate is going to at least Christian debate if we're gonna do apologetics, which part of that uses the skills of debate

47:17

Then we need to know how to rightly interpret God's Word and we need to be able to recognize when someone is in logical error

47:25

Because that's we're gonna know God is logical and so he's not gonna be he's never gonna make an argument.

47:33

That's illogical All right, so I will announce now that this week

47:39

I will be putting out the the midterm Midterm will be focused on the three previous classes that we looked at maybe it might have some on character and and purpose of Apologetics, but it's going to look specifically at or emphasize the the hermeneutics and so that will be an exam

48:02

Not a quiz So for those of you who missed taking the quiz, as I said, the quiz will be 15 % of your grade the two

48:11

Exams the midterm in the final which okay. The midterm is a little bit past the midterm since this is week five out of eight, but the midterm and final will be 25 % of your grade and Then the debate will be 35 %

48:26

All right, and so we will be setting up those debates and so That would be something that I hope that you'll engage in even if it's like some people may want to do a debate live

48:39

Hey great, and and then we can get audience to take a look at that You know help with with looking at things we can learn from all of us can learn and so what we'll do is

48:54

We will have some of those debates some people may just want to have me and the two people debating fine

49:01

The goal is not to win the debate. The goal is to learn to improve and So you don't have to worry.

49:09

It's more about how we debate Rather than whether you convince someone that you're right

49:16

Okay, that's what we're looking for in that. So don't let that scare you It will be good for you

49:24

So this is this wrap up this class in Passing the torch if you're not familiar with passing the torch if you're new you just came in passing the torch

49:33

It's on you could find it just search for passing a torch on in Facebook, but it is a ministry where we are getting

49:40

Older, unfortunately, that makes it that's me the older apologists to train up some younger apologists

49:46

So that you younger guys do not make the mistakes that us older guys have made and that's why we're doing these classes and Doing the training in such a way to give this training and give instruction and discipleship and Yes, even get credit for it.

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So Next week. I will see you again To start our subject in logic.

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I hope you've enjoyed this and if you have enjoyed it, maybe you should share it around This is

50:16

I know I've created this on YouTube in striving for eternity It is a playlist so you can just look for the playlist on apologetics and debate

50:24

Start at the very first lesson and work your way through it and you could share that playlist advantage of sharing the playlist is

50:33

Well next week's class will end up on that playlist next week. So you'll have the all eight classes when we're done

50:40

I hope this is helpful. See you next time And I realized I left up there my the logo for apologetics live which

50:49

I probably should have taken down since this was passing the torch, but If you do want to join apologetics live

50:56

Thursday nights 8 to 10 Eastern Time You can join us ask any question and that is a place where I know there's been

51:03

Some of the questions that are popping up in here that don't necessarily have to do with the class

51:11

And those are should be are better being asked on apologetics live Because that's what we use that for So if you have some of the questions that you've been asked in here and you're like, hey, you didn't get to it

51:24

The reason is I'm looking for questions that were directly to what we are teaching Not something that's how would

51:31

I interpret passages that don't have anything to do with what we're discussing?

51:37

All right, so With that I will see you next week. I hope that this class was helpful for you.