Have You Not Read - S1:E2

Dispensationalism, Literal Reading, and the New Temple

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints.

I'm Dylan Hamilton. I'm Michael Deere and this is Andrew Hudson. Before we dig.

Into our topic, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast. And today we're gonna start right in with a question about dispensationalism. Uh-oh. All right, so the question's from David, and if you've read or if you heard our first episode, you know David Kassin is a member at our church who likes to ask a lot of questions, and very good questions.

So, question from David says, I was taught that if you take the Bible literally, you will naturally arrive at a dispensational view. Liberal teachers spiritualize many Bible passages in the Old Testament about the New Temple, so they do not think it will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.

You're also not dispensationalist, and do not think that the Temple must be rebuilt in Jerusalem in order for Jesus to come back, which I believe is a statement directed at Pastor Michael. The question is, does that mean you spiritualize the Old Testament?

How can you say you take the Bible literally, but then say that you are not being a liberal when you.

Spiritualize the Old Testament? Yeah, so we have a lot of key terms here that need some definition, and when a dispensationalist—and my grandfather was a dispensationalist deacon at a Baptist Church, and taught Sunday school, and labored very diligently in the text, and I still have some of his hand-drawn maps of the Holy Land, and a hand-drawn map of Jerusalem, and some charts that he made.

Were they accurate? Well, I don't know, but they were very well drawn. He was very meticulous in all that he did, a man of good reputation. So when we think about this term, taking the Bible literally, the desire is to believe the Bible for what it says, and that's something that all Christians agree on.

And when a dispensationalist says you need to take the Bible literally, I think ultimately what they're saying is, well, we need to believe what the Bible says as it says it, and we don't need to be bringing in non-believing assumptions that color our reading of the text.

Something that is called eisegesis, where we bring something from the outside and we bring it in and read, for instance, you know, Genesis chapters 1 through 11, through the lens of the Neo-Darwinian hypothesis, and so on.

So we are all in agreement that the Bible needs to be read according to its own terms, and in fact, this would be the best way to define the term literal, as it has been defined according to the literature, that we read the Bible according to its own literature.

So if we are reading in Psalms, for example, and it says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, we do not then—and I don't know a dispensationalist who would—read that as, but on the thousand and first hill, those cattle are not owned by God, right?

I would not accuse a dispensationalist of believing that, because they would read that as poetry, according to its literature, and be blessed by this pronouncement of God owning everything, and that He's our Heavenly Father, and we can depend on His resources, and so on, and so why fear?

You know, these are—this is a wonderful poetic comfort in the Scripture. I think when they say we need to take the Bible literally, and they're referring specifically to the promises that God made to Israel, because it's of the utmost importance for a dispensational hermeneutic, that the promises that God made to Israel be fulfilled only in particular to an ethnic national Israel sometime in the future, because obviously these things have not come to pass in the way that is expected when you first read the text.

So that is, I think, what they mean by that, and I would say that given their presuppositions, I would agree with their arrival, that if you take the Bible literally according to what they mean, that the land is eternally Israel's, and Israel's going to live in that land forever, never, never, and that there's going to be a new priesthood that will be sacrificing animals on an altar in a rebuilt temple, and so on, according to various passages that you would read in Ezekiel and other passages, even in the Torah, where there's very clear this is going to be forever and ever, that if you read those according to what you would say would be the most immediate sense of those verses, then you would end up expecting all these things to take place at some point, because obviously they haven't.

Now, I think that the goal, of course, and I think dispensationalists would agree, is to read the Bible on its own terms, that the Bible interpret the Bible, and I think there would be a total agreement about that.

We'd all be at the same table at that point, and I think there would be disagreement when we would begin to then say, okay, well, how do we read the Bible in its own terms, according to its own values, according to its own interpretive scheme?

And at that point, you would have dispensationalists interpreting Scripture in light of Israel, and I would differ in that, because I'd be interpreting Scripture according to Christ. I'm not trying to say that in some sort of, you know, I'm more holy than you, and I think many, many dispensationalists would say, yes, of course, Christ is the most important, Christ is the center, and He's the hope of Israel, He's the Messiah.

And again, there would be tons of agreement there before we would part ways on particular readings. It is wrong to take up Bible passages in the Old Testament, and to begin to read them in ways that seem to be more compatible with modern sensibilities and so on, that would be wrong, and I know that many dispensationalists are concerned about that.

But the main question here is talking about, okay, what do you do with the passages in the Old Testament that talk about a new temple? In particular, that's what's in David's question, and if you spiritualize that, meaning you're interpreting that in a spiritual scheme, it's not going to be a physical temple, it's going to be a spiritual temple.

If you read it that way in the Old Testament, that's a wrong reading according to dispensationalism, and then doesn't that make you a liberal? Doesn't that put you in a liberal camp? Well, I would say no for the following reason, that when we read the New Testament, when we read how Jesus instructs His disciples, how He manifests His person and work to the crowds in the parables that He tells, and then as we read how the apostles write their letters and deal with different concerns and challenges in the Church, they interpret Old Testament passages in light of Christ.

And there are passages in the Old Testament, when you read them, they are about Israel. They are about Israel and God's covenant with Israel, and they are about Israel's land, and they are about Israel's temple, and so on.

And as you read through them, you say, okay, this is what this passage is about. And then later on, those very same passages are taken up by Christ and taken up by the apostles and read as being fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Mount Zion is a physical location in the Old Testament, where there is a mountain called Zion, and on this mountain, there is the worship of God, and King David reigned there, and all of this truly did happen, and God made promises about Mount Zion in the Old Testament.

And then when you get to the New Testament, you find out the fullness of what this means, such as in Hebrews chapter 12, and in Galatians, and in other places. Mount Zion is read as the Church, is read as the body of Christ, is read as our, as Paul says, our heavenly mother, the new Jerusalem, the true Jerusalem, and so on.

And so I would say that I'm trying to read the Bible literally as well. I think it's a good endeavor according to the literature, and so I want to read the plain meaning of the text. And so when I'm reading in the New Testament that these Old Testament facets turn out to be the shadows of Christ and the substances now come, when I read that these are promises that are fulfilled in Christ, I want to roll with that.

And even though I might be surprised, we're also told in the Scriptures that the prophets themselves would be surprised at how this turned out. And, well, God is God and we're not, and I think that's when we read the New Testament, we see what the Old Testament means.

And I think that there is a beautiful symmetry to it, and I think we're supposed to read the Old Testament in light of the New. I think we're supposed to read the Old Testament as Christians, as followers of Christ, and see it through that lens.

And I think if we don't, I think if we read the Old Testament in light of Israel, then it's like, well, Israel is the most important, Israel is essential, and so on. I think we're missing that Christ is the light.

So, Andrew, what do you think about spiritualizing the temple and not looking for a physical temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem?

Well, I think along the same lines of what you're talking about, the inspired interpretation, as recorded in the New Testament, of Old Testament passages, should they not take supremacy over my own literalistic reading and trying to insist that it, no, no, it means something different.

I'm going to take what was said by Christ and His apostles to be the truth that it is. Additionally, I'm going to use a Bible reference here, in Joshua chapter 21, verse 43 through 45. Now, if you were to read literalistically or literally, just listen to what it says.

So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. The Lord gave them rest all around, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers, and not a man of all their enemies stood against them.

The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.

Right.

I think the emphasis of dispensational view is that God is not a liar.

Oh, yes, and we agree with that.

Oh, yeah, amen.

And that's where I can have a large portion of unity.

Oh, yes.

But I see in passages like this that, no, no, God has fulfilled the promises that He promised to the patriarchs, to Israel. He has done it, and now He has given us His Son.

Praise the Lord.

Amen.

Yeah, and I think you both are pointing out an important point as far as taking the Bible literally, and sometimes with the dispensationalist view, too, we can go to inconsistencies with that statement, where we take the Bible literally except for when Christ says, this is going to happen to this generation.

And when we take their presuppositions and show where they've been inconsistent with them, back in on the argument or back in on the world view, that's going to be helpful, too, because that's where I've had that pointed out multiple times from different men when they start looking or they start reviewing premillennialism, that's where they go to a lot of times is, okay, you're going to be literal, you know, air quotes over here, but when Christ says, upon this generation, okay, we're not going to take the biblical view of 40 years being a generation.

And so in judgment coming as well, you have literal views of the promises being fulfilled. Now do you have literal views of judgment that's promised for covenant breakers being fulfilled as well?

Right, and I think that's where hermeneutics matters, and I think humble believers all agree, look, we believe that the Bible is consistent, there's no error, God always keeps His promises, He is true, and scripture should interpret scripture, and there's just this broad agreement, joyful agreement about all of that, and then when we engage in the scriptures, if we don't have a proper hermeneutic, if we don't have a proper way of interpreting the scripture, our own way of reading the text will collapse in on itself.

So if we read the scriptures and we make Israel the most important aspect, then we're going to end up in dead ends and cul-de-sacs and self-contradictory things and going the wrong way on a one-way street and so on, because we've picked the wrong hermeneutic.

The same goes for if somebody from an Adventist background picks Sabbath as the most important idea. If somebody takes even so lofty a term as covenant and makes covenant their interpretive reading, their hermeneutic and how they see everything in the text, we're just going to end up folding in on ourselves, and we are humbled and unable to master but given everything we need when the scriptures tells us time and again, and Jesus was so clear on this, that it is the scriptures that testify of Him, that He is the light of the world, that He is the way, the truth, and the life.

He is the one mediator between God and man, and so how else are we going to understand the Word of God except through the person and work of Jesus Christ? Now, covenant is pretty thick as far as a hermeneutic, and Israel can get real complicated, and so on and so forth, but if we read the scriptures through these hermeneutics, we could almost master it.

We could master the theme of covenant, we could master the theme of Israel. We can't master Christ. He masters us, and it humbles us then when we read the text, and we're reading it in light of who He is, and we see His shadows and His types and the promises in the Old Testament, we see the fulfillments of these things in the New Testament, and we will come to points where we just stand in awe, and I can't go any further, and I'm just worshiping, but I'm not going to master that hermeneutic.

It's absolutely true, but it doesn't leave us with dead ends and cul-de-sacs and going the wrong way on a one-way street. It leaves us with vistas of glory that I can't go and penetrate, but I can worship, and I think that, to me, that's a different approach.

Early Church Eschatology and the Limits of Church History

All right. Well, we talked about other questions, but I'm seeing one that's going to connect to this first question a little better, and we'll go ahead and hit the other ones as we go along, but this is kind of from a church history point of view of the same subject just below.

My dad taught me that the early church was premillennial, and that our Baptist church is just trying to be like the early church. You are not premillennial. You are postmillennial. Does that mean you are breaking with the early church?

I thought that historical premillennialism meant that the early church was futurist, while you are a partial preterist. Is that another break with the early church?

Yeah, so in discussions about church history, the development of eschatology or just understanding last things and what's to come, and how are these prophecies fulfilled? How are the promises of God coming to pass?

The early church is not monolithic. It's wide, and it's varied, and there are a lot of ideas that float around in early church fathers that we don't believe today because they were working it out, and then it was messy.

When a toddler first learns how to eat, not everything makes it in the mouth, and sometimes the stuff that does has been cleaned off the face. And there are some things that the church is trying to work out in the early days that is just not very clean.

There are some beautiful treatises like Athanasius on the Incarnation of Christ that just immediately resonate in the heart of all Christians. And Athanasius, of course, himself was very much towards a post-millennial view.

And there are others who were pre-millennial who also wrote things that are just beautiful about the person and work of Christ. But we have to remember that in the early church, they were still struggling with a pagan empire who, from time to time, would lash out at them.

They were still trying to figure out how to organize. They began to have lots of controversies in the church, which again, when heresies afflict the church, Jesus shepherds His flock and brings them to a point where they can answer those heresies, and they grow in the faith, and they get stronger, and they move forward.

And Jesus is a good shepherd, and He does that for us. And the early controversies in the church had to do with what is Scripture, what is not. The person of Jesus, fully God, fully man. These were critical controversies in the early church, and that was what they were spending most of their time on.

It is not the fact that you can say, well, all early church fathers agreed on eschatology. Well, that is not the case. There is a lot of different ideas out there in the early church, and they were disparate in their views like we are today.

Now, it seems like a really weighty thing to say, well, all the church fathers were pre-mill, so we should be as well. Well, when we go back and actually read what they said, and some of their works are still being translated, they were not all futurists.

Many of them were preterists. Frank W. Gemmerloch, for instance, is a scholar who is translating all kinds of writings from the church fathers and finding lots of preterists among them, partial preterists, who said, hey, look at all these things in Revelation.

These things were fulfilled anywhere from AD 64 to AD 70. Here is what they were fulfilled, and they disagreed with each other too about just how they were fulfilled, but not everybody in the early church were futurists.

Some of them were partial preterists as well. Some of them were idealists. They had different ways of reading the text. So there was a lot of variety there, and that is not really the case when you go back and you read.

Now, if you only read futurist pre-mill church fathers one after the other, you can get the idea that they're all in agreement, but you have to do a little bit wider reading, I think.

Right. But are they in agreement with John? That needs to be the question.

Well, yeah. Well, that's what we're all striving to be, is we want to be submitted to the text, and that's what we desire. But I'm not as avid a reader of church history as others. I think this is a question that Andrew's been pondering.

Well, I would say, if you think about the appeal to authority in this question, the authority is, yes, the church fathers had many blessings to be able to continue to pass on in their writings to us. Now, did they hold every doctrine infallibly?

Did they know everything in a way that they can speak authoritatively at the same level as the scriptures? Well, the answer is no. So therefore, our appeal is always going to be, what does God say? What does His Word say?

Yes.

I think you could also think of some things like Origen's allegorical interpretation of The Good Samaritan. Not many people still hold the allegorical interpretation of The Good Samaritan. Well, are we wrong because we don't, and it disagrees with Ambrose and Augustine and their allegorical interpretation that they also received from earlier generations, or do we just look at the text itself and go from there, allowing the Holy Spirit to do what He said He would do and to lead us into all truth?

Right. That's a good observation that this really is an authority question. By what authority are we, by what standard are we reading the text?

Right, and I appreciate that, but would we say that a historical objection or a historical discussion of these things, do we find them useless in the light of that fact, or are they still going to produce some sort of edification that we can come, and I think they produce wonderful conversation as we see right now, but when we get down to brass tacks, is that something that we really need to pursue, or methodologically, do we need to shift back to something more like what Andrew was saying?

Right, yeah, because many movements have thrown out all of church history, so to speak, even though they can't. They claim to throw out all of church history and say, well, now we have the truth, and claim that the church has been lost since the first century, but we have revived it, and so on and so forth, and historical claims run both ways on that, you know, a double-edged knife where, again, a claim made by non-dispensationalists might be, well, the idea of a pre-tribulational rapture wasn't even introduced until 1830, so on and so forth, but again, are we making our appeal to church fathers, to church history as the standard by which we interpret the text?

Well, obviously not, but what value is there, is the question, what value is there? And the value comes in where a lot of work has been done that is a blessing to us, just like somebody in the church, a teacher or a preacher, labors in the text and then blesses others with that labor.

Well, we have many ancestors in the faith, you know, who have come before us, and they've labored in the text, and they have done some work that is still edifying to us today, such as the Christological creeds, and a lot of work has been done that is truly a blessing to us, and all of us here, we've read books by dead men, and been blessed and fellowshiped even in the Holy Spirit with our brothers who have shared these things from the Word, but the Word of God is the norm that cannot be normed.

The Scripture itself is self-authenticating, it is the standard by which we evaluate everything else, and so no matter how big the name is, you know, Irenaeus, Polycarp, Clement, Augustine, Calvin, Edwards, any... doesn't matter how big the name is, all of these writings are subject to the Word of God, and we do our very best to hold that as the standard, and our own convictions and opinions and so on and so forth must be ready to be normed and changed, altered by the clear teaching of the Word of God.

Right. One might say semper reformanda, right?

Yes, always reforming, that's right, and the direction of that is toward the Scripture, right, not toward a better cultural modification, it's towards the Scripture.

Right. Well, if you're not going towards Scripture, in a lot of these cases, appealing to a church father or something like that could slip into something like ecclesiastical demagoguery, where you're just following this one person, and whatever they say goes, which we have cases of in certain sects of Christianity as well, but then you have the extreme of that, and they break completely, and like you said, they've had a renewal of the church, or the true church, and that leads into the next question here.

Responding to Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses at the Door

When a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness comes to my door, what is the correct response? Do I give them the gospel, and then, if they do not listen and try to argue, shut the door? Do I try to engage with them in a friendly way, and even invite them to church?

Do I just give them some cold water in the name of Jesus and shut the door? And the reason it led in is because with Mormonism especially, we have a claim of revivalism of the true church, and how do we handle people who are proselytizing these sorts of things?

Yes, so, and this is not a cop-out answer, but the prayer request that Paul mentions is that in Colossians chapter 4, in verse 3, he says, praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the Word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak.

And then he exhorts the church in this way, he says, walking wisdom toward those who are outside, and that would be definitely Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, redeeming the time. Now, here they are at your front door.

Here's an opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. It's going to be different based on the people that you're talking to.

However, the truth of the Word of God obviously has to be maintained as the standard. I recently had, I think, well, it's within the last year, two Jehovah's Witnesses come by our home and try to speak with us.

And it's interesting because they are technologically advancing, and this is detrimental, I think, to the conversation, where before they brought their New World Translation, which is, I think was, I forget who said it was the most dangerous book ever to be published in the English language.

Because it is a perversion, particularly it has an agenda to mistranslate passages about Christ being fully God. And so it's striking at the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of Christendom, to deny the divinity of Christ.

Well, if they bring the hard copy with them, there are some opportunities to even use their corrupted translation and show where their own translation clarifies the deity of Christ, because they can't get rid of it, even though they've been working at it for quite some time.

Ron Carlson has an example of that, and he, you know, in his fast facts about false teachers, he's got some good examples in there about how to do that. Well, these Jehovah's Witnesses come, and I want to have a conversation with them using that methodology.

I want them to read out a revelation and see where Jesus is making claims where He's the Alpha, the Omega, the Beginning, and the End, and He was dead and alive forevermore. So what are you going to do with that?

Just to kind of destabilize them, I want to put pebbles in their shoe so that they think to themselves, I don't have an answer for these claims. There's something missing here. And I was enabled to do this because, as I was talking with this lady, I would ask her a question about the text, and rather than answer me, rather than think about the question and try to answer it, she was using this tablet, and she would click on the verse, and there was a commentary that answered all these known objections to Jehovah's Witness teaching, and so she did nothing but read off the tablet.

And I would try to ask her a question, and she would do nothing but read off the tablet. And then I would ask her a question about why she was reading off the tablet. And then she just said, well, you're not gonna listen anyway, and then she left.

And the other lady stayed just a little bit longer in making sounds about how she was concerned for my soul and so on, but the older woman was calling her away, and we're done here. So that didn't work out very well.

I wanted to have a conversation, but that didn't work out very well. And I suppose that Jehovah's Witnesses are going to be more and more that kind of encounter where they're using technology and reading off their approved script and not allowed to do so otherwise, and that's very disheartening.

But I think that it probably differs from person to person about what kind of encounter you're going to have. And I had an acquaintance in seminary who ordered some Mormons and had them delivered to the seminary.

You can do this. You can go on to the website and ask for a visit. And he gave the address as the seminary grounds, and he met them in the seminary library or the bookstore and began a series of conversations with them.

And this actually generated a visit from one of the head elders, I don't know what they're all called. Bishops. Bishops, yeah. A bishop came with these two young men who were called elders, and he came and had conversations with this seminarian.

And it actually generated a visit to one of our seminary classes where we were studying Mormonism in our World Religion and Cults class on the very day that we were talking about the life and times of Joseph Smith.

So providentially, God arranged this, and I don't know what the outcome was of this, of them sitting there listening to how Joseph Smith was all these different things, and none of them holy, and it's documented in his own words and so on.

So these opportunities, I think, are fairly unique and not standardized. But what do you do? Well, obviously, Paul says, you know, pray that I can speak as I ought to and try to let, you know, your speech should always be with grace, seasoned with salt.

You know, what's the most effective way that I can reach this person in this moment? To try to get the Word of God, because the Word of God is eternal seed. My words aren't. So how do I get the Word of God into their life?

What can I do to be a good witness? And that's gonna vary. I mean, I don't know if they... There probably are some standard questions, and I know that Apologia and some others have been thoroughly engaged in that.

Andrew, what would you say? Well, I actually had a question along these lines. So there was.

A question about, should I give them something to drink? Right, right. So I'm gonna read a passage from 2 John, starting in verse 7. For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ that's coming in the flesh.

Now, this is, I think, directed a little bit more towards a Gnostic understanding of who Jesus was, but maybe the principle still holds, so I'll continue. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves that we do not lose the thing we work for, but that we may receive a full reward.

Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him, for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.

How does this apply to wanting to convert in the sense that we want to give them the gospel, but at the same time being mindful of not sharing in their evil deeds?

Right. So the situation in the ancient world as far as traveling and people not having a place to stay, they did have inns, but these were few and far between and often not the best places to be. And it was understood that if you came into a place, a town, a village, whatever, that the ancient codes of hospitality, you would find a place to be put up for the night.

And if they didn't offer hospitality, it affected the reputation of the entire town and it was very, very bad. So Jesus himself gave instructions to his disciples to preach the gospel and to go from village to village and to look for a man of peace there, a person of peace, who would receive them and receive their message and take care of their physical needs.

But if there was a rejection of the gospel, then to wipe the dust off their feet and to leave that town and go to the next, because they would not make it through all the villages and towns of Judah before the Son of Man came in judgment against Israel for their covenant breaking.

And so in this case, when it says, do not receive him into your house nor greet him, this is going to be pertaining to that kind of support. We're going to let you spend the night and take care of your physical needs, make sure that you can continue in your mission.

So there should be no kind of support to false teachers. So today's equivalent would be, you should not be sending your money to false teachers, even if they are on TBN or even Christian radio. If they're false teachers, don't send them physical support.

And then it says, don't even greet him. And I think this has to do with the kind of greeting of, I approve. Maybe I can't do anything for you, but I approve. There's a pat on the back, here's a thumbs up, kind of like Timothy Keller giving approval to the atheist chaplain at Harvard.

So that's definitely a violation of this text. Thank you.

And one thing we're seeing now in our current context may be, it may change a lot of this stuff too. Like I know since COVID, I've heard that Mormons have been pretty shut off. They've canceled pageants and conferences and stuff like that.

And I don't know what the elder or their missions look, what they look like these days, but at some point they're starting to pull back some of this stuff because of the situations that are around us.

And they're very fearful right now of COVID. And to the same degree, or to a differing degree, I would say, the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're retreating to a certain extent, but to just technology and having lines and you don't answer the lines.

That's a different form of retreat in my mind, not being able to answer questions thoughtfully or to accept your answers in any sort of fashion and answer them thoughtfully. So yeah, the context around these groups are changing a little bit in 2020 and beyond because of what's happened.

Yeah. It seems to me that it's time, it's an.

Opportunity for apologetic minded Christians, evangelistic burdened Christians, which we all are at some degree, but especially those who have a heart for those who are trapped in the cults, like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, to go on the offensive.

They're on the retreat. So what does that mean? You can't sit around and wait for them to come to you. I mean, I see Mormons out and about today. And the other day I saw them in their SUV, so they upgraded from their bikes, but they had their bike rack on the back.

So I figured that that was just their main vehicle to get them from place to place. But I mean, I see them out and about and that would be an opportunity to engage since their uniform is so distinctive.

So it's an opportunity to maybe go on the offensive and go strike up a conversation with them. And again, some of these things you're not going to be able to win any kind of debate. There's going to be very well-guarded arguments that run in a circle that you can't penetrate because they've been told what to say and what to believe.

Nevertheless, God's Word is far more powerful than Satan's lies. And so simply by engaging with them and speaking the Word of God into their life, you know, we're acting in faith that God will use that and that God will take that seed and plant it and that God will bring about the new birth and so on.

Amen. All right, we'll move on to the next question. Why doesn't your church have more ethnicities in it? Your church is mostly white, but the Bible says that the gospel should go to every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Ethnic Diversity, Tribal Languages, and the Sin of Partiality

Yeah, this is a major concern of many today is that I think, I forget who it was who said it, that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in the United States of America in our culture. Jesus loves tribes, and He loves tribes, and He loves nations, and He loves peoples, and He loves tongues, in terms of, you know, different languages and languages themselves, because they diverge at the Tower of Babel as an act of God's judgment upon man's hubris.