WWUTT 2115 Q&A Marriage With No Children, When Marriage is Not Marriage, Alan Ritchson Talks Christianity

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Is it a sin if a married couple doesn't want children? If a woman becomes a

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Christian and the man she's living with doesn't want to get married, what should she do? And did Christianity borrow from religions older than Christianity?

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The answer is when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, that we may hear the word of the Lord and be conformed to His will.

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Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. Psalm 14 is where we are this week, and I'm reading from the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord, as you said. The wicked fool says in his heart, there is no

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God. They act corruptly. They commit abominable deeds. There is no one who does good.

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Yahweh looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is anyone who has insight.

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Anyone who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. Together they have become worthless.

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There is no one who does good. Not even one. Do all the workers of iniquity not know?

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Who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon Yahweh? There they are in great dread.

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For God is with the righteous generation. You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, but Yahweh is

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His refuge. Oh that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion when

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Yahweh restores His captive people. May Jacob rejoice. May Israel be glad.

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And by the way, just to make this point at the end of that particular psalm, the promises that are given to Israel are not exclusive to Israel.

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All of God's people receive those promises. I was going to say, isn't that for the church? Yeah. So that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion.

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That's for us. Amen. The salvation of Israel has come out of Zion. Yes. And we sing about it every

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Christmas. We do. Yeah. O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.

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Yeah. Almost said and rapture captive Israel. We can do that too. Yeah. Take us home. Amen. Take us home,

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Lord. But yeah, this psalm you might recognize as being quoted in Romans 3.

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They have all turned aside, together they have become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one.

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And that is all of us, that's our condition without Christ before we come to know the

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Lord. Yeah. We're worthless. We have become worthless. We were made in the image of God and as said in Genesis 1 and 2, whatever

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He made was very good. Yep. But then Adam and Eve sin and all of us who are descended of Adam are active participants in that sin, in that rebellion against God.

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Yeah. And we have made ourselves worthless and there is no one who does good.

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The depravity of our hearts is always to go after what is contrary to God and His law.

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It is not in our nature to seek God and no one by their nature seeks God. Since no one does good and seeking

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God would be a good thing. There is no one who seeks God, not even one, which is also in Romans 3.

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Yep. So this is our natural state. This is describing who we are.

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It is of course talking about all the rebellious of men. God is with the righteous generation, but God is against the wicked.

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His face is against the wicked. And so how do we become that righteous generation?

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By faith in Jesus. I was going to say by the salvation of Christ. Who clothes us in His righteousness and in this

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Christ makes us worthy. We are worthy to be in His presence. We are worthy to be called

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His children. We are worthy of the eternal life, the eternal kingdom that He has promised to the

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Son. We are fellow heirs of in Christ. We are made worthy by His righteousness.

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So it is the fool who says in his heart, there is no God. And you know, oftentimes this is like the atheist verse.

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Okay. We'll use Psalm 14, one to say this, these are atheists. They have said in their heart, there is no

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God. But this may also describe the person who acknowledges God with their lips. That's what

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I thought of. Yeah. But their heart is far from God. As Isaiah said of the hypocrites, and then

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Jesus repeats that, of course, to the Pharisees, you well, did Isaiah speak of you hypocrites?

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They acknowledge me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. So they may say that they follow

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God, but in their hearts, they believe he's not really there. He's not really watching me.

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Yeah. He's not really going to hold me accountable for the evil that I have done. And so they continue to do evil in secret or even oppress those who are the righteous.

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Yeah. And yet there is no one who does good. No one who by their own merit chooses to do the right thing and therefore does it.

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But Yahweh looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is anyone who has insight, anyone who seeks after God.

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He's the one who draws us to himself. John 6, 44, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

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So this is God who draws us to himself. We would have nothing in our hearts to go after God if it wasn't for him coming after us.

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As it said in Luke 19, 10, the son of man has come to seek and to save the lost.

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Yes. God is the one who has drawn us to himself and saved us by faith in our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Wonderful psalm. It goes without saying, but still it's a wonderful psalm.

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All right. What do we got today, Bex? I have no idea. Becky Deer, what are we looking at today?

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Becky Deer? Yes. That's a new one. Somebody, have I have never said that before? I don't think so.

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At least not often enough. 14 years of marriage and I still surprise you.

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This is very true. With endearing nicknames. Somebody came up to me recently and told me how much they loved your voice.

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I'm not going to say who it was because she may want to tell you in person, so I'll wait.

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And if she doesn't, then I'll spill the beans, but just came up to me recently and I love listening to the podcast.

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Your wife's voice is so amazing. I agree. So sweet. I told her the story about how

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Sonia and I had to really convince you to be on this program, but you had the right voice for it, but you were dragging your feet.

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So we have some questions here about the Hear the Word of the Lord podcast.

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By the way, on the Friday edition, we respond to questions from listeners and you can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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I've had a few about the new podcast, so I started another one which began on March 1st.

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And unfortunately, you can't actually enter your information into podcast websites to search for it or podcast host sites like Apple and Google.

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You can't do it unless you have a published podcast. So I can't set up the podcast and then say like, we're launching on March 1st and I've already got it set up on all of these search sites.

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You have to actually publish the podcast before it will let you enter it into Spotify or anything like that.

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Oh. Well, that's interesting. It's been out for two weeks. You've got to have it first in order to put it somewhere?

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Right. Okay. So it's been out for two weeks, but people are still not yet finding it on Apple.

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I don't know how long that takes before it finally shows up on Apple. Who knows it's Apple? Yeah. I like Apple, but it's still frustrating at times.

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Is it still iTunes? I think so. I use the podcast app on my iPhone.

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That's what I use. And I'm not an Apple user. I mean, I don't use an Apple, a Mac. I'm using a PC, but I do have an iPhone and that's the app

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I use to listen to podcasts. But yeah, I've done the same. I've tried to search for Hear the Word of the Lord. I'm not subscribed to it yet either.

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You can find it on Podbean, of course, because that's the host site. It's hearthewordofthelord .podbean

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.com. I don't know if it's coming up yet on Google and Spotify. Somebody told me that they were listening to it on Spotify.

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Oh, cool. So maybe it is there. But anyway, it's Caroline's email that I'm going to single out here.

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She says, hi from Canada. Before I get to the podcast question, the proper pronunciation of Salt Steamery.

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Oh, yeah. Uh -huh. That one. Is Sue St. Marie. Sue.

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Sue. S -O -O. All right. Like soup or soothe, but good try.

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It had on the Google, of course. Yeah, you looked it up. It had S -O. And I was like, that's so.

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So, right. That's not Sue. Right. But at the same time, Google's not always right.

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So, thank you. Touche. That's awesome. I really enjoy your friendly, fun banter and laughter.

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Such a welcoming sound. Aw. Again, so thankful for all your work. I cannot seem to find the podcast, even on Apple Podcasts or my other one that I use.

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There is a podcast called Hear the Word of the Lord, but I don't recognize any of the people's names who are reading the

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Bible. Is that really what it's called? I did a search for Hear the Word of the Lord, and one of the episodes was called that.

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But it didn't seem like the whole podcast was called that. From what I could tell from my own searching,

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I didn't see anything that was called Hear the Word of the Lord. Anyway, I could be wrong.

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She goes on to say, plus they have other random episodes on it. Perhaps I am spelling it wrong.

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Thanks again. So, yeah, to find it directly, the site that I host the podcast on, it's hearthewordofthelord .podbean

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.com. I don't know what's taking it so long to get on Apple and Spotify.

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Is that it? Yeah, that's it. That's Spotify. Oh, so it does come up on Spotify. It does.

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Okay. Now, anyway. Well, somebody's listening to it. I mean, it gets several dozen downloads a day.

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Oh, that's cool. So people are finding it. People are finding it. Yeah. Eventually. Give it a little time.

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It'll be good. There's only like one or two episodes that have a hundred downloads.

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Oh, yeah. It's not many. I don't even think there's a hundred subscribers yet. I may be wrong. Okay. But yeah, so again, in case you haven't heard, this is a

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Bible reading podcast, and it's only Bible reading. There's no intro or outro. You just bring it up, and boom,

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I'm reading scripture. I'll give you chapter markers. You know where we are. But it'll go from March 1st to February 28th, reading through the

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Legacy Standard Bible, which is what I'm doing right now. And since there's a backlog of those episodes, I mean, you can go back and listen to them whenever you want.

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Did you just say March 1st to February 28th? Yeah, March 1st to February 28th. That's a year. Oh, that direction.

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I was going backwards. You're going back in time? I've been a little slow. How do you do that?

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Or a lot to go backwards. And then the ambition is,

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I don't know if I'm going to get this far, but the ambition is that next year I'd do a new translation, which would be the New American Standard, since I've got most of that one recorded already.

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Oh, yeah. But right now doing the Legacy Standard Bible. Well, we just finished up Genesis, so starting in Exodus, but you can find the podcast directly from Podbean, and I guess we just have to wait till it shows up everywhere else.

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Yeah, and Spotify. Yeah. It was on Spotify. Yeah, and on Spotify. That's right. You do find it there.

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But thank you, Caroline. There's a few. Hopefully it'll be a little easier to find. Very quickly, hopefully.

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Hey, why are we so late on this episode today? Because we've had a sick household.

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Okay, I didn't even remit. I don't know what our excuse is. Yeah. It's run through the family.

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It's, yeah. Yeah, the kids have been sick. Yep. You've not been feeling well. Nope. I was feeling ill earlier in the week.

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Yeah. So I don't have an excuse. Well, you told me Thursday night you couldn't record.

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Right. Well, I told you don't worry about it. I was dizzy. Yeah. I couldn't even stand up. That was weird.

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You clearly didn't feel well, so I just said, just go to bed. And then I was going to record, and I'm just sitting here going,

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I don't want to do this. So I worked on something else, and then I thought, Friday, sometime

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Friday, Becky and I will be able to do this, and then that didn't even work out. No, that didn't. So we're recording this Saturday, though it's still dated for Friday.

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Sorry we're behind. A little bit. But one of the things I was going to do if I had recorded this by myself, if I had to do it by myself, was respond to a video of Bill Maher responding to, well, no, it's

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Bill Maher having a conversation with Alan Richson, who is an actor. He's the subject of a recent

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What video I did. We'll play that video here in a moment. Okay. And then somebody, a couple of people, in fact, sent me this interview with Bill Maher and Alan Richson and said, basically, what do you think of the answers that Alan is giving?

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It sounds like he's a theological liberal. And so we're going to play that. Okay. Since doing that video, folks have asked me, well, is he a

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Christian or not? I mean, can we trust anything that he says? I said in the video, you can't trust anything he says.

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Don't follow any of his stuff with regards to the InstaChurch channel that he's got on YouTube.

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He's trying to present what he believes to be

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Christian teaching, but it really is through a liberal lens. It definitely is that.

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So anyway, we'll get to that toward the end here. Let's look at a few of these other questions. First from Simon, who says, praise the

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Lord, brother. Is it a sin for a married couple not to have children if they have health issues like diabetes and otherwise and financial constraints, no sufficient savings?

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I am 39 and my wife is 32. So will age also be a challenge to become first time parents?

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Well, it's sad that you don't think that you'll be able to have children.

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My encouragement to a couple has generally been, if you can have children, you should.

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But if you've got some health concerns, like it might even be risky for your wife to get pregnant, then perhaps it's not a good idea.

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Those are things you have to consider. You might want to get a doctor's opinion on that. Definitely. So if you can get pregnant, you should.

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If you can have children, it's a good idea. But if you can't, or if you think that it would be risky, is it therefore sin for a married couple to not have children?

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There are some ministries out there, and very unfortunately, this has become wider spread.

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I think it's more on social media than anything else. But there is kind of this faction, I would call it legalistic, that is saying that if you're married and you don't have kids, then you are in sin.

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What? You should not even get married if you don't want children. And I don't see that as being a mandate in Scripture.

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No. There's nothing in the Bible that says that if you don't want children, then you can't get married.

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In fact, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul doesn't say anything there, with regards to all the instructions there in 1

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Corinthians 7 about marriage. He encourages you to stay single if you can stay single, but so that you don't burn with sexual desire, it's better for a person to get married than to burn with desire.

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But he doesn't ever say anything in there about, if you're going to get married, you should have kids.

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And if there's any chapter where you would think that instruction would happen, it would be there in 1 Corinthians 7.

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Yeah. So there is a one -flesh aspect to marriage between a man and a woman that is

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God -honoring without having to have children. Right. God says to Adam and Eve, after he creates

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Adam, names all the animals in the garden, it says, it is not good for the man to be alone.

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I will make a helper suitable for him. And so he creates Eve for him, and Adam says, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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So they have a union with one another. And, of course, God says to them, be fruitful and multiply, because they're the first man and woman on earth.

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Right. And there is a general, I think, command that is good for mankind to follow with regards to being fruitful and multiplying.

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But that doesn't mean that… Everybody has that. Right. Every marriage has to be that.

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Right. That doesn't mean that. We're in a fallen world. Yeah. That's just not going to be possible for every married couple to be able to have children.

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Well, to be able to have children, but even the desire to have children. That's true. If you don't desire to have children, then you probably shouldn't try.

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Yeah. But at the same time, if that's what you've resolved in your marriage, you need to be careful with how you prevent that.

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Like, how are you preventing having kids? Because there are methods out there that are abortifacients, meaning that you could be using something preventative that could be inadvertently causing abortion, and you are not even aware that that is happening.

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Right. It's true. And so I've strongly discouraged any kind of birth control that would cause that.

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So you need to be wise with how you're preventing that if you think that you can't do it. But it is not somehow inherently sinful if you, as a married couple, decide that you don't want to have children.

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This is definitely a question that you need to take up with a pastor, with someone who knows you better.

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You need to be shepherded in this question. Yes. Not just listening to a podcast host and then taking my word for it.

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But certainly consult your pastor and talk about these things. Somebody who knows your condition better, having a longer conversation about this.

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Yes, definitely. And, of course, seeking the word of God and understanding what God's word has said concerning these things, not based on opinion or anything else.

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But you can still have godly offspring even without having children. Yes. The whole church is called to that.

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Yes. Like even people who can't get married, can't have kids, you can still have godly offspring.

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And you do that through sharing the gospel. As the Apostle Paul will talk with the various churches about being a father to them like he does with the

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Corinthians or with the Thessalonians even. And with Timothy.

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We're finishing up 1 Timothy and he calls Timothy a child in the faith. He calls Titus a child in the faith.

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So bringing others to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, sharing the gospel, you therefore produce godly offspring, a spiritual offspring.

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So we're all called to that, whether or not you may have actual physical offspring.

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Yeah. There's still an offspring that we are to be producing and that is through the sharing of the gospel.

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Amen. So let's still be faithful to that. Yes. Even though you may not feel like you are called to have a family in these present days.

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Did you read it as they didn't really want to have children or just didn't want to biologically have children?

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Because of health concerns. Yeah, they don't want to have children at all. I'm reading this as not just my wife getting pregnant and having kids, but even because of our health concerns, we don't even feel like we're physically capable of caring for children.

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Got it. Check, check. Now, I've known adults who have married one another because they really couldn't live alone.

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And so having a partner to care for each other in sickness and in health, that's a perfectly valid reason to get married.

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It doesn't have to be because we're getting married to have offspring.

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If we can't have children, then we shouldn't get married. That is a legalistic implication. Yeah. It is not stated in Scripture that you can't get married unless you're also deciding to have children.

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Right. Yeah. I don't know. That bugs me.

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It bothers me, too. That people put that on others. Yeah. That kind of pressure. Parachurch ministries, like the

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Gospel Coalition, have gone too far pushing singleness the way that they have. We should be encouraging marriage.

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Yes. And should be encouraging families, godly families. Yes. That is a good thing. It is.

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But by no means should we therefore say, well, God has not called you to be single. Maybe He has.

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Yeah. There is a segment of evangelicalism that pushes back on that hyper singleness approach.

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Okay. And becomes hyper marriage. Oh. It's like the pendulum swings too far the other direction.

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It's like somebody needs to stop it in the middle. Yeah. I mean, there are single adults that I have counseled before and I have said, do not get married.

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Yes. Please don't get married. You're not ready for it. You're not mature enough for it.

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It would be a disaster if you were to do it. Or terribly hard. Yeah. Really hard or whatever.

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Or a person who has been through like three or four marriages. And I have to tell them, this is not a good track record.

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Yeah. Maybe it is not your fault that all four of your marriages have fallen apart.

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But it just seems to me that this is not a wise thing to do right now. All I have to go off of is wisdom.

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Don't get married. Right. So there are certainly occasions in which

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I've had to counsel somebody to not get married. And that is the right counsel. There have been other occasions

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I've seen where I could name some, but I'm not going to. A pastor encouraging somebody to get married.

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And it turned out to be an utter disaster. Yeah. There was even a pastor in Junction City where I was pastor for 10 years in Kansas.

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Somebody went from my church to another church because they knew I was not going to bless that union. And the pastor married them.

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And before he did, I emailed them. I tried to call him but never could make a connection through a phone call.

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So I emailed him and I said, don't marry this couple. Don't do it. And he did it anyway.

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I tried to explain the whole situation. This is why they should not be getting married. Never even responded to the email.

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I did find out that he told them, your former pastor, Gabe, emailed me and actually tried to tell me not to marry you guys.

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Because then they came back to me upset that I would try to interfere with their getting married.

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Yeah. He married them anyway and it was a disaster. I would not be –

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I'm not at liberty to tell you in what ways. It was just really bad. But I certainly felt vindicated, not joyfully, but the warning was right.

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They should not be getting married. And then it just turned out to be a terrible, awful thing. So there are occasions in which a person should be discouraged from getting married.

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And then there are other occasions in which getting married, maybe the couple cannot have children and they're not doing anything sinful.

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But once again, Simon, I would say that is a question that you should definitely ask a pastor, somebody who knows you,

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Sunday school teacher, someone, some spiritual mentor that you know, that knows you more personally and can guide you through those things and give you more sound advice for both you and your spouse.

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Yes. This next question comes from Ciervo. This is a little bit long. Okay. Dear Pastor Gabe and Becky, I first wanted to thank you for your many years of service.

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Your Bible studies and Q &A with Becky have been a blessing to my life that I can't measure or explain with my faulty

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English. Aww. I'm from Chile and have been a full -time ministry in Costa Rica for over a decade.

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Oh, fun. About five years ago, I planted a church in a very socially difficult area of San Jose.

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This area is populated mainly by Nicaraguans looking for better job opportunities.

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Even so, it is an area full of violence, drugs, and other things that I cannot mention. But the

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Lord has been faithful, saving many within this community. Oh, amen.

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Something that is very normal in places like these is that most families are not married, but rather get together and live at a very early age and begin to have children and live as if they were married, many times even living still in their parents' houses.

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Most of the families that have come to our church come from this background, and God has given us the opportunity to celebrate weddings for many couples who receive the gospel and want to put their families in order.

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My question has to do with those who have come to the Lord, but their partners remain unbelievers. Many of them have shown fruits of salvation and want to get married, but their partners refuse to do so.

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Most are women who have children with their partners and are financially dependent on them. My questions are, do you think that these women are living in fornication since, although they are not legally married, they live in committed relationships as if they were?

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How would you encourage them to strengthen their walk with Christ when there is an obvious desire to follow

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Him, but their partners do not help them? Would you withhold baptism, communion, and membership from someone who is stuck in this family situation but shows evidence of salvation?

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I apologize for the long email. I ask you for a little wisdom and advice here.

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I hope I have been clear explaining our situation and need. If one day you want to come to Costa Rica, you are more than invited.

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We'd love to get God's word preached from you and share all the pizza you can eat. God bless you, your family, and ministry.

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Thank you, Siervo. That was a wonderful email. Obviously, he's read elsewhere.

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I will go anywhere for pizza. You don't have to pay me to come. Yes. Maybe pay my travel expenses or whatever.

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It'd certainly help with that. It would be great. But as long as you give me pizza, I'll come. Yep. I'll be there. Yep. These are some heavy questions.

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They are. I'm not going to give a lot of detail, at least on this program, in responding to them. But I will, in the email response,

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I'm going to send to Siervo. The first question is, do you think that these women are living in fornication since although they are not legally married, they live in committed relationships as if they were?

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I'm going to speak to this as if I am completely ignorant of how marriage laws work in Costa Rica or in Nicaragua.

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Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. A person who has formed a one -flesh union with another, and you're talking a man and a woman, contrary to what our

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American culture might say about what marriage is, this one -flesh union can only be made between a man and a woman.

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So they've become one flesh with one another, though they've never officially gotten married.

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There's not been a marriage certificate or whatever else. There weren't marriage certificates, like getting married and getting divorced with some sort of legal process involved until the law of Moses came along.

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Right. But there was still marriage and being given in marriage. You think of Abraham and Sarah, who were nomads.

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They didn't have a particular fixed place in which they lived. They lived in tents. Right. They traveled around in tents.

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Yet, Abraham is married to Sarah. Sarah is his wife. Sarah gives her maidservant,

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Hagar, to Abraham, and it is said that Hagar becomes his wife. And then after Sarah dies, he has other concubines and other women that he ends up marrying.

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So these marriages may not have had certain legal aspects to it that join this man to this woman, and yet they are one -flesh unions.

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They are married to one another. We might refer to that in American culture as a common law union.

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Right. So a man and a woman have moved in with one another. They've been together for 20 years.

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There has never been any union with anybody else outside of that union. So they are, for what it's worth, they're married.

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Now, I have had situations where a couple has come into my church in the past, and they have said, we've been together for 20 years, but we're not officially married.

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And I've said, if you want to become a member in this church, you have to be. You need to go make it official.

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It has to be legal. In the eyes of God, a covenant has been made. Vows have been exchanged in front of witnesses.

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And you've done this officially so that you are legally married to one another.

29:37

However little weight a marriage certificate counts in the United States of America anymore, since even a man and a man can get married to one another.

29:45

But still, legally, you need to be bound to one another so that there's not some easy escape clause in there.

29:54

Yeah. You are married to each other. In the United States of America, that's an easy thing to do. I'm not sure how that works in Nicaragua or Costa Rica.

30:02

Yeah. How the cultural aspect of that goes. So I'm speaking, of course, as somebody who is an American, speaking in ignorance to your situation in Latin America.

30:12

So the question again, do you think these women are living in fornication since although they are not legally married, they live in committed relationships if they were?

30:19

My response is going to be in ignorance. Maybe she is in sin and maybe she's not.

30:25

Maybe she should leave the guy who won't get married to her. And maybe she does regard him as a husband, though he won't regard her as a wife.

30:35

If they can get married and they won't and they refuse to, that's a different matter. But you have a woman in this case who has become a

30:43

Christian and wants to marry their partner and can't. Like their partner doesn't want to.

30:49

Right. The partner is willing to remain with them in a relationship, but not in the committed sense of being legally married.

31:00

Peter says this to wives of unbelieving husbands. And I think this is relevant to the situation you're talking about.

31:06

1 Peter 3, beginning in verse 1. In the same way, you wives be subject to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, as they observe your pure conduct with fear.

31:25

So consider it this way. Maybe the wives in your congregation think of the men that they are with, who they have children with and are living with, they think of those men as husbands.

31:38

They would regard them as husbands. They want these men to be their husbands. But the husband is resistant to that, because he's unbelieving and he doesn't want to make the commitment.

31:49

These are women who have come into the faith since they have been in these, you know, domestic relationships with one another.

31:56

Now they've come to the faith, they're convicted of heart, they want to get married. Well, be subject to this man as if he were your husband, so that if any of them are disobedient to the word, because obviously this husband is, this man is disobedient to the word, maybe they are won without a word by the conduct of their wives, as they observe your pure conduct with fear.

32:17

Going on to verse 3. Your adornment must not be merely external braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry or putting on garments, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible quality of a lowly and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

32:35

For in this way, in former times, the holy women also who hoped in God used to adorn themselves being subject to their own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed

32:45

Abraham, calling him Lord. You have become her children if you do good, not fearing any intimidation.

32:54

Your husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman, and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

33:07

Now, of course, that last verse there, verse 7, that's speaking to a believing husband. In this case, you're talking about women who are in union with husbands that are not believers.

33:22

So let me come back to 1 Corinthians 7, a chapter we mentioned a moment ago, and let me read this section here. It goes right along with 1

33:27

Peter 3. If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.

33:36

And if a woman has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not divorce her husband.

33:44

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband.

33:50

For otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave.

33:59

The brother or sister is not enslaved in such cases, but God has called us to peace.

34:06

So however you are shepherding these people in your church regarding these things,

34:11

I mean, it's a very tough situation. I don't envy you. And I'm sure every situation, every couple is different.

34:19

Right. And should be approached differently. Exactly, right. It's not like a one -shoe -fits -all kind of thing.

34:26

But then, again, coming back to 1 Peter 3, so that they are subject to the word of God, and they desire holy conduct so that their unbelieving husband may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives as they observe your pure conduct with fear.

34:46

And we've seen that happen. Oh, yeah. Lots of times. Right. Where the wife is believing, and she comes to church, and she's very faithful, and then suddenly her husband appears.

34:56

Right. And then gets saved and baptized. Yeah, we shared the story before of a couple very dear to us where the husband was rebellious, and the wife was not giving up, and took a lot of years.

35:10

Yeah, a lot of prayers. But eventually brought him around, and I got to baptize him. Yeah. And so that was very exciting.

35:16

But, yeah, when we were in the church that we were a part of in Kansas, a lot of military in that church, and it was pretty common that we would have a deployed husband, a wife would become a

35:29

Christian, and she would start attending our church. Her husband's still an unbeliever and deployed. Then he comes home, and he'll come to church with her, because this is my wife, but he's not really interested.

35:40

Yeah. And it takes some work. But we have, of course, seen those scenarios where the husband comes around and is won over by the conduct of his wife.

35:49

Yes. We were pleased. We were blessed to see that fruit come about very many times.

35:56

Unfortunately, it also came about that he never does become a believer. That's true, too. There's also been that outcome.

36:03

So, Siervo, I don't envy the position that you're in, but God bless you for shepherding these people and having to consider these things and weigh this.

36:14

We'll be praying for you. Yeah, absolutely. We'll take a moment here at the end to pray for Siervo.

36:20

This next question comes from Chris in North Carolina. Good morning, Pastor Gabe and Becky. I am greatly looking forward to catching the

36:25

Shepherds Conference sessions when they become available. The Shepherds Conference was last week, by the way. In the meantime,

36:32

Protestia zeroed in on something John Piper said during his session.

36:37

He said that obedience to Christ should be out of love. No issue there, but that this kind of love is not agape love, but it is, quote unquote, erotic to the core.

36:50

He admitted that it was an overstatement and the uncomfortable laughter in the audience was palpable.

36:56

I must admit that I don't follow John Piper on a regular basis. He has been quoted in sermons by my former pastor.

37:02

I recognize his contributions to the church at large, but his association with charismatics and willingness to partner with certain events like the

37:09

Passion Conferences give me cause to be careful with his teaching. Yeah, I used to be a more fervent follower of John Piper, especially even before I became a pastor.

37:20

I read a lot of his books. I never really cared much for his preaching. The style that he does in his preaching just is not—I don't enjoy it.

37:30

Yeah. And so I would tend to listen to other pastors, R .C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, still like what

37:39

Piper wrote, but I just didn't care for his sermon style all that much.

37:44

And yeah, he does tend to do this. This is a common thing that he has done in his preaching is go too far with emotionalism in his,

37:55

I guess, application. Okay. Because that's what he's doing here, giving application to obedience, and that it's an erotic obedience, which is—yeah, that's gross.

38:05

I wouldn't have just sat there and laughed uncomfortably. I would have probably made a pretty funny face at him making that statement.

38:13

So Chris goes on to say, Is there any reason to justify the statement Piper made in his sermon at ShepCon? It seems ill -advised and wrong to make that connection, especially considering how hyper -sexualized our culture is in general and the sensual worship so prevalent in the modern church.

38:29

Perhaps we're making mountains out of molehills. Thanks again for your ministry. Yeah, so you're right that the phrasing was careless, if not ignorant.

38:38

So eros, which is the Greek word for love, from which we get the word erotica, is synonymous in Scripture with sexual intimacy.

38:46

So there is no sense in which it is synonymous with obedience to Christ, unless you're taking some hyper -symbolic approach to the interpretation of Song of Songs.

38:58

Yeah, well, there's that. I don't think Piper meant anything by it other than he was looking for the most intense word possible, and then he just went too far, which it sounds like he even said when he gave that answer.

39:12

And like I said, I've also heard him do that on other topics as well. Could it have been a slip?

39:18

Like he said the wrong word? No. Okay. No. I mean, I did not hear the session.

39:25

Again, I'm speaking out of ignorance, in the sense that I didn't actually hear it. But this is not surprising, because I've heard

39:32

Piper do stuff like this. Fair enough. Yeah. Hey, I was trying. Right. I was trying.

39:38

So for Chris to recall that, and then he even says that Piper admitted it was an overstatement.

39:46

So, yeah. Yeah. If it's an overstatement, don't say it. All right. Last question.

39:51

We'll see how far we get with this, because we're pretty close to the end now. Jason says, good afternoon. Appreciated your video about Alan Richson.

39:59

Well, yeah, let me go ahead and play the video here. But then he sent me an interview between Alan and Bill Maher denying the sufficiency of scripture.

40:09

Neither of them are Christians, Jason says. And I have to agree with him on that. So here is the what video that I did, warning about Alan Richson and his

40:18

YouTube channel, Instachurch. And then we'll come to this interview that he did with Bill Maher. Okay. Alan Richson is the star of the hit show

40:28

Reacher and has also been in movie franchises such as The Hunger Games and Fast and Furious. He also claims to be a

40:33

Christian with a channel on YouTube called Instachurch, in which he attempts to take a look at scripture and how it relates to our lives today.

40:40

Sometimes he can be solid. In one video, he talked about sin and why we need the substitutionary death of Christ.

40:45

In another, he addressed a skeptic and defended the power of prayer. However, he says he does not have a church, but that Instachurch is his church.

40:53

He also defends abortion and homosexuality. And several videos I watched were full of leftist political talking points.

40:59

I watched two interviews with Richson in which he repeatedly used R -rated swearing. Through content guides,

41:04

I read that Reacher contains graphic sex scenes in which Richson appears. He's a married man who gets paid to take off his clothes and be intimate with other women.

41:13

In his defense, Richson said, I think it's laughable when people criticize me for playing characters that are not like saintly.

41:20

You know, that's not my job. And I don't think God cares about only telling those kinds of stories.

41:25

I think we can start conversations and we can reach people through these mediums in a way that I think

41:30

God enjoys. He thinks God enjoys adulterous sex scenes? The Bible warns of teachers who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

41:40

Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin.

41:48

They entice unsteady souls and love gain from wrongdoing. Pray this man would be convicted of his sin and repent or the day of judgment will not go well for him.

41:57

In the meantime, avoid Alan Richson's acting and teaching when we understand the text. Bill Maher, in case you're not familiar with him, he is the host of the show named after himself on HBO.

42:11

And I think he's done that show for, it had to have been over 20 years. But then he's got another show on YouTube called

42:19

Club Random. I don't encourage you to listen to anything from Bill Maher. He's very foul mouthed. Oh, yeah.

42:25

And very blasphemous, too, on top of that. And some of the things that he and Alan Richson say here are, in fact, blasphemy.

42:31

There are some swear words as well. I'm not playing those. So this is safe content.

42:37

All of that's going to be bleeped out. Thank you. But anyway, here is the conversation that Bill Maher had with Alan Richson.

42:43

Now, where I'm picking up, this interview is over an hour. I'm, of course, not playing that much of it. But where I'm picking up,

42:48

Alan Richson is talking about his latest movie. I don't know what it is. Angels in the Outfield. It can't be

42:54

Angels in the Outfield. I was going to say, isn't that already taken? Yeah, that was a

43:00

Disney movie from, like, the 90s or something like that. Yeah. I even saw that in the theaters when I was a kid. Ordinary Angels.

43:07

That's the name of this movie. It's a movie that's put out by Lionsgate. Which, by the way, Lionsgate is the studio that assumed the rights to the distribution of The Chosen.

43:17

I was going to say, isn't that a chosen thing? Yeah. So this is a movie studio that has figured out we can milk

43:24

Christians for some money. And they put out this movie with Alan Richson called Ordinary Angels. He's talking about it here.

43:30

And, of course, I'm going to interrupt the conversation as they have it. And we'll talk about it at some point.

43:36

Here we go. All right. It's a very inspiring movie. You know, at the premiere, Lionsgate handed out

43:42

Kleenex to everybody in the audience. And not one was dry at the end of the film. Really? It's a beautiful movie.

43:48

And, you know, wholesome and fun for everybody. So that's in the theaters? That's out today.

43:55

So I guess when people are seeing this, let me know. I guess we're going back to opening in the theaters, huh?

44:00

Yeah. Thank God. Thank God for Lionsgate. Now notice Bill Maher just thanked

44:06

God there. Bill Maher's an atheist. Well, okay. You know,

44:12

I'm looking at the video here. And he was, like, moving around with his fingers and stuff like he grabbed something.

44:18

And then I heard this clip. I thought he was, like, cutting his fingernails. I was like, what is he doing?

44:26

No, he's smoking. He's cutting his cigar. There you go. Yeah, that's what he's doing. Anyway. Not only are they taking a swing at the theaters, but they're taking a swing at original, you know, at either, you know, true stories or, you know, smaller impactful films or things like Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is also

44:46

Lionsgate. That's a high concept original, you know, a piece of IP. So they're filling that very difficult space with that, like, between $20 and $70 million.

44:55

You don't have to sell me on Lionsgate. I made them one movie, my movie, called Religious.

45:01

I don't know if you ever heard of it. I've seen it. Oh, okay. It was great. It is great. I mean, Larry. No, it was trash.

45:07

Yeah. It's a terrible movie. And he's going to say some things here about that film in which, like, he was fair and balanced in the way that he approached the subject of religion.

45:16

No, he wasn't. He did this documentary to mock religion. It was not at all, not at all to give a fair and balanced critique of Christianity or anything like that.

45:28

Charles, the brilliant director who did Borat and Bruno, he and I, we went and did this movie 15 years ago.

45:36

Wow. Was that Lionsgate who distributed it? I mean, first of all, nobody would do it today.

45:43

But only Lionsgate would do it back then. I will always be so indebted to them. I feel the same way.

45:49

I mean, my manager, my ex -manager at the time, Brad Gray, was head of Paramount. And of course, we were close.

45:56

And he was like, we could do it. And I said, you know what? You know what will happen, Brad, is that people will start to complain and say, have you released this movie?

46:07

Or blah, blah, blah. Show it here. Do that. Then we're not going to support

46:12

X, Y, and Z. And they had Mission Impossible franchise and stuff.

46:18

They had pressure to put on them. Lionsgate alone was like, we're going to put this movie on. Now, they wouldn't show it in many states.

46:25

Probably the ones where you can't get an abortion. Right, yeah. Probably the ones where it wouldn't have performed well. And they're laughing about that.

46:34

So this is Alan Richson, who claims to be a Christian. And the two of them are laughing at like, hey, this movie wouldn't be shown in states where you can't get an abortion.

46:44

Why? Wait, no, don't answer that. Never mind. Moving on. So they're talking about the movie, which makes fun of Christianity.

46:51

Religious makes fun of Christianity. Right. It's not going to be distributed to certain markets, very heavily

46:56

Christian or conservative, because the movie wouldn't perform well there. That outlaw abortion.

47:03

Thank you, yes. Which at the time that that movie came out, there weren't any states outlawing abortion. That's what I was thinking.

47:10

I'm so confused. Anyway, but it's ridiculous that they joke about it. Murdering babies is funny. I mean, why even put that in there?

47:18

Well, of course Bill Maher's going to say that. Wow. But Alan Richson, yeah, just goes right along with it.

47:23

But it did great. It was at the time it came out, it was the seventh most successful documentary ever made.

47:30

Oh, wow. Yeah, it did really, really. But, you know, of course, the material was going to be offensive to any religious people, which is still most of the country.

47:42

And even though it was not mean spirited, you know, it was it was not looking down on Christians or, you know, we were one of the first places we went with.

47:52

I mean, does anybody really believe that? Would anyone believe Bill Maher was actually creating a documentary covering religion and was not looking down on religious people?

48:04

Bill Maher. Maybe if you don't know him or know of him. The movie is called

48:11

Religious, combining religion with ridiculous. OK, fair enough.

48:18

So the title itself is a mockery. True. Anyway, yeah, it's absurd that he's sitting there going,

48:27

I gave a fair and balanced. Oh, give me a break. He interviewed Ken Ham in that movie.

48:32

I watched it. I saw it years ago. But he interviewed Ken Ham in that movie. And and Ham was was pretty fed up with the guy like you.

48:42

You can see the bill like Ham was like, I'm not dealing with this nonsense. I covered the film in my book, 25

48:48

Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says. Oh, really? Because there's a claim that he makes in that movie that is a complete myth.

48:55

I'll I'll mention it here in just a moment as we keep going here, because Maher is going to say something about this to Richson. And and I can

49:02

I can kind of respond with the same thing that I have in the book. There's a truck stop church in outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, you know, truckers.

49:11

And it's a little shed out in the parking lot. Right. And they have a mass there. And, you know, and I spoke to them there.

49:17

And one guy like walked out right away. Right. It was like, if you're making fun of my

49:22

God, man, I don't want any part, you know. But the other one stayed and we had a really good dialogue. Interesting.

49:28

You know, they weren't. We wound up hugging it out. And, you know.

49:34

Do you feel like you learn anything from that audience when you talk to people from that space?

49:41

I'm always up for learning something. I mean, my favorite three words are I don't know, because if I say that,

49:47

I always learn something. So, you know, if you can tell me. Usually it's the other way around, quite frankly, because people, they're religious.

49:56

They don't know anything about their own religion. Most Christians, maybe you're one of them. You're Christian, right?

50:02

I am. OK. Would would tell you that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were disciples of Jesus.

50:09

The people who wrote the Gospels. And they were absolutely not. Did you think they were?

50:14

No. I mean, we, you know, we know that those documents were based off an older document. They came later.

50:20

Yeah. We know that. We know that. That's what Alan Richson said. We know that those documents came later.

50:26

We know that from where? I have no idea. We don't know that because it's a lie.

50:33

That is not true. Matthew and John were among the 12 disciples of Jesus.

50:38

At the end of John's Gospel, Jesus and Peter were talking about John and John wrote of himself.

50:44

This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things and wrote these things. John wrote the

50:50

Gospel of John. Yeah. Luke and Mark were not among the 12, but Mark was a disciple and an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry.

50:59

He was also an understudy of the Apostle Peter. So in 1 Peter 5, 13, for example, it mentions that Mark is with him.

51:07

Mark was an understudy of Peter, and he would have written the Gospel the way that he heard

51:12

Peter preach it. Luke was among the Apostle Paul's missionary brethren, and he wrote Luke from eyewitness accounts, and he wrote

51:19

Acts from what he personally witnessed. So no, the four Gospels are not written later.

51:26

They were written by eyewitnesses to these things, people who actually saw this stuff happen.

51:32

And like I said, Matthew and John were of the 12. So what he's saying is utterly absurd.

51:38

Maybe he meant later as in, you know, like, not at that time. We know they were written later.

51:45

Well, okay, so he mentions a date here. They do mention a date. What? So yeah, let me go on here. Jesus died in 33, and the first Gospel, Mark, the

51:56

Gospel of Mark, is 70. Right. They were not contemporaries of it. No, that's totally wrong.

52:02

So it is a myth that Mark wrote his Gospel first. Okay, so Mar mentions that, that Mark came first.

52:10

That's a myth. There's no evidence that's true. Matthew wrote his account first, and he didn't write it in 70.

52:18

Eusebius, who is known as the father of church history, said Matthew wrote his Gospel within 12 years of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

52:28

That would put it between 40 and 45. Yeah. Which is 30 years off of what

52:34

Bill Maher is saying here. At least 30. He's saying it was after 70, which is not true.

52:39

So we have a pretty good idea, even from the biblical account, that the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were not only written but copied and distributed to the churches within 30 years of Christ's ascension.

52:52

And we talked about this in church recently, too, because I was reading from 1

52:57

Timothy 5, and it's there in verse 18 that the Apostle Paul references Jesus' words in Luke 10, 7, and calls them

53:06

Scripture. So we know that the Gospels were written, copied, and distributed to the churches at least by the time that Paul wrote his letter to Timothy.

53:18

Alan? Alan Richson. Yeah, does he know that Bill Maher is an atheist? Oh, yeah.

53:24

Well, like I said, he watched the Religious documentary. Then why is he letting him lead? Because he's a liberal.

53:30

Oh, well, fair enough. I don't think that Alan Richson actually believes anybody goes to hell. Okay. He's probably a universalist.

53:38

Well, then that makes more sense. So converting Bill Maher doesn't matter to him. Okay. Similar names.

53:45

Right. So it is a little confusing. Right. But I've talked to people who are real serious

53:51

Christians and scholars and all this stuff, and they, oh, no, I don't think that's… It's like, trust me, every scholar understands this.

54:01

It's not an insult either. That's just a fact. No, that's not a fact.

54:07

It's a complete lie. Not every scholar claims that the late -dating theories… They don't all agree on those late -dating theories of the

54:16

Gospels. Liberal scholars believe in the late -dating theories of the

54:22

Gospels. Yeah. It is almost exclusively a theologically liberal concept to believe in the late -dating, that the

54:29

Gospels are written after A .D. 70. But like I said, we already have Gospel references, like references to what was written in the

54:37

Gospels in the epistles that we have in the New Testament. Yeah. And it's pretty well understood that there was a decent canon of the

54:46

New Testament that had already been copied and distributed among the churches even before the destruction of the temple. Paul, we read about, says to the

54:54

Colossians, take this letter over to the Laodiceans, let them read it, and you read the letter that I wrote to the

55:00

Laodiceans. And Peter makes a reference in 2 Peter 3 to the Apostle Paul's letters, which had been copied and distributed to the churches.

55:08

So the churches had the Gospels, they had the epistles, the instructions, the further teaching that came from the apostles.

55:14

Now that you have heard the Gospel, here's what that looks like in action. We know that Revelation was copied and distributed to the churches.

55:23

John mentions seven of them right at the beginning of the letter. So it wasn't just John wrote this manuscript and it was just kind of floating around out there.

55:33

When it was written, it was copied, multiple copies, and then distributed to the churches.

55:39

And this was for the instruction of the church. It was for the instruction of the saints, that they may know how not only to have sound doctrine, but then how to live out that doctrine.

55:49

It was orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And there was none of this stuff. Not one book in the

55:56

New Testament was written after the apostles. It was all written in the lifetime of the apostles.

56:02

All of the New Testament was. They don't know their own religion. They haven't read the

56:07

Bible. They talk about... Well, neither is Bill Maher. What? Bill Maher hasn't either.

56:13

So he just said there, they don't know their own religion. They haven't read the Bible. Well, I mean, that's true for a lot of Christians.

56:19

It is true. Right. It is true. Now, you can't deny that. But he's indicting himself.

56:26

He's a hypocrite. He is. He's making fun of Christians and saying they don't know their own religion. Admittedly, that is true.

56:32

There are a lot of professing Christians out there that haven't read the Bible and really don't know their own religion.

56:38

That is true. In fact, the Bible even calls them out. Yeah. You know,

56:44

James says in James chapter 1, if a person says he has religion, but he cannot bridle his tongue, his religion is worthless.

56:50

And we've mentioned, you know, already from Isaiah, where Jesus says to the

56:55

Pharisees, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? You acknowledge God with your lips, but your heart is far from him.

57:02

Many Christians like that. Many professing Christians like that. Yeah. So that's certainly true. Yeah. But Maher is no expert whatsoever.

57:10

Yeah. And it even gets worse from here. Oh, boy. The Bible a lot. It's a long book.

57:17

It's boring. But the problem that I have with most Christians today, and I talk about this openly a lot, is that it misses the point.

57:26

I mean, you can get hung up in the weeds about document Q or whatever you want to talk about with where this stuff comes from. But the point is very simple.

57:34

You've got somebody who claims to be the Messiah pointing the way towards a whole radically different new way to love.

57:41

And that's through self -sacrificial care of your neighbor. Very true. And when you talk about just that, it's a really beautiful thing that a lot of other religions don't talk about.

57:51

Because you're talking about religions that talk about the way to salvation is through doing it over and over and over again and living a million lives.

57:58

Or finding your own self -elevation through meditation or contemplation.

58:05

But this is talking about admitting that we are flawed and admitting that there's a path towards joy that comes through self -service and self -sacrifice.

58:14

And I like that. Now, that might sound nice. But that's theological liberalism.

58:19

What Richson is espousing here is exactly what Jay Gresham Machen confronted in his book, Christianity and Liberalism.

58:26

And the thrust of that book is that liberalism is not Christianity. The liberals of Machen's day, this is a hundred years ago now, did exactly what

58:36

Richson is doing here. The Bible is full of mytho -history is the way that they're talking.

58:42

Yeah. And we don't have to take it literally. All we have to do is follow Jesus' unique example of peace and love.

58:51

Yeah. That's theological liberalism. And notice that Richson didn't mention anything about us being sinners deserving of the judgment of God.

58:59

And that Christ died for us in our place. How did he word that? We're just not perfect?

59:04

Yeah, we're just, you know, we're flawed. Flawed. Flawed was the word that he used. Yeah. He's not saying anything about Jesus actually rose from the dead, which was testified to by eyewitnesses and foretold by the prophets.

59:16

And, of course, he doesn't believe that because they think all of the Bible was written after those eyewitnesses were around.

59:23

But whoever believes in Jesus receives the Holy Spirit and is saved from the wrath of God. That's the gospel.

59:30

That is the heart of the Christian message. And it's literally in the first sermon ever preached after Jesus' death and resurrection.

59:36

The first sermon that Peter preached at Pentecost was all of these things. Jesus really lived.

59:42

He really died. You all put him to death. He came back to life. We're eyewitnesses of it.

59:47

And if you don't repent and follow him, you're under the judgment of God. Yeah. But you don't hear anything like that in what

59:55

Richson believes about his own faith, what he calls Christianity.

01:00:00

So, yes, Jesus told us to love one another. But if you don't follow

01:00:05

Jesus, though you may claim to love others, you're still under the wrath of God.

01:00:12

Yeah. John 3 .36 says, The biography of Jesus is anything but unique.

01:00:26

In fact, it's stolen. The number of pre -gods who came before him who were born on December 25th really had disciples were crucified or something on a tree and then came back to life.

01:00:41

Even Genesis, like even the very first story in Genesis, the second line talking about the spirit hovered over the water, those chaos waters, that myth.

01:00:49

That myth was absconded from, you know, early Eastern. The flood. But the thing that makes it different is there's a twist on every one of them that orients us towards,

01:00:59

I think, a seed of truth that is worth inspecting and holding on to. You know, for example, the real twist in the first myth and the creation myth in Genesis is.

01:01:10

Yeah. So anyway, this is the last thing I'm going to respond to. What? Yeah. So all of this that they're talking about is utter nonsense.

01:01:19

What they're saying is actually the myth. Yeah. They're claiming the Bible is espousing this myth.

01:01:25

No, what they're saying is myth. And I've actually talked to people in real life that have said that to me, too.

01:01:31

Yeah. I'm like. Right. No. Yeah. Right. It's the stuff that gets floated around on the

01:01:36

Internet. All the atheists that are out there going, you guys follow the Bible. You're actually reading something that was lifted from a bunch of other religious myths.

01:01:44

No. Yeah. That's the myth. Yeah. What you're believing in is the myth. And again, so this is what

01:01:50

I. Well, if they found it on the Internet, doesn't mean it's true. I read it on the Internet. It must be true.

01:01:55

So this is the portion that I had covered in my book, 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says. I think it was on the chapter over Mithraism is actually a, or I'm sorry,

01:02:06

Christianity is a ripoff of Mithraism. That's the myth. When it's actually the other way around. Mithraism is a ripoff of Christianity.

01:02:13

So in Maher's faux documentary, this religious, religious documentary he was talking about, he claimed that the

01:02:21

Egyptian Book of the Dead, which predates the Bible by over a thousand years, says that the god

01:02:28

Horus was the son of Osiris, born to a virgin mother, baptized by Anup the

01:02:35

Baptizer, who was later beheaded, was tempted in the desert, healed the sick and cast out demons.

01:02:42

He walked on water. He raised a man named Lazarus from the dead, and he had 12 disciples. He was crucified, rose from the dead on the third day, and his resurrection was announced by two women as the savior of humanity.

01:02:55

That's what Bill Maher claims in his documentary. This is in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which predates

01:03:00

Christianity by over a thousand years. That's his claim. Sounds like Christianity, doesn't it? Definitely.

01:03:06

All of that is completely false. It's all a lie. It does not appear in the

01:03:11

Egyptian Book of the Dead. And he never, in the documentary, he never cites that. I was going to say.

01:03:17

Like, look, here is the manuscript from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and here's what it says. He doesn't do that at all.

01:03:23

He never talks to an Egyptologist. He doesn't talk to one historian that affirms any of that stuff that he just said.

01:03:29

In fact, we even know where that myth came from. Where's that? It came from a crackpot.

01:03:36

Like, seriously? Yeah. Who has since been discredited as a complete fraud. And his name was

01:03:43

Gerald Massey. According to actual Egyptian mythology, Horus was born of the goddess

01:03:50

Isis, not a virgin. There's no mention of Anup the Baptizer or anyone named Lazarus.

01:03:55

Horus was not tempted in the desert. He did not travel the countryside doing miracles. And there's nothing about Horus being crucified and resurrected three days later to be announced by two women as the savior of the world.

01:04:05

Did not happen. It's a complete lie. And yet, Bill Maher wants to make fun of Christians for not knowing their own religion, and yet he's the one who's believing completely unverified myths and passing this off as knowledge, right?

01:04:21

As truth. And that he knows better than you because he has this information. Right. And here in this conversation, it's not just Maher.

01:04:30

It's also Alan Richson. Yeah, it is. Who's calling the creation story myth. He's agreeing with everything. He's going along with all of it and even calling parts of the

01:04:38

Bible myth. So not only is Maher an unbeliever, of course we know he is because he's a professing atheist, but Alan Richson doesn't believe the word of God either.

01:04:48

Yeah. This man who is a professing Christian and doesn't believe the Bible. And you never hear anything from him that sounds like the gospel, you know?

01:04:57

And there's even a point coming up. I'm not going to get to, I'm not going to get to that. We're done here. We're not going to keep going because this is still another couple minutes away.

01:05:06

But we get to a point where Bill Maher starts laughing and he says, this is going to be really hilarious. The internet's going to explode if you end up converting me to Christianity.

01:05:13

It would not be the Christianity of the Bible. Yeah, definitely not. It would be this theological liberalism, which the point of Jay Gresham Machen's book was, theological liberalism is not

01:05:23

Christianity. Yeah. It would be this false God that Alan Richson believes in, who is the subject of this book that he claims is full of a bunch of myths.

01:05:33

And there's like a, there's a strain of, you know, moralism in there or like feel good ethics that we should be adhering to and following Jesus' example and all this other kind of stuff.

01:05:48

The same sort of thing that Martin Luther King Jr. taught. Yeah. He was not a Christian either. Right. It was theologically liberal.

01:05:54

This is the same heresies from over a century ago, just being repeated again as if these guys are not aware, all of this stuff has already been considered and debunked.

01:06:04

Yeah. It's like beware of the person who says, oh, you've never heard this before.

01:06:10

Yeah. Yeah. But even before Jason sent me this clip, I saw it on Facebook and there were even

01:06:19

Christians in the comments that were saying, oh, wow, this is profound. I had never really considered this before.

01:06:25

He's a liar, people. Yeah. These two men are lying to you. Nothing they're saying is profound.

01:06:32

None of this is profound. It's a lie. Don't listen to it. Don't have anything to do with it.

01:06:39

So it's heartbreaking how simple it is for people to fall into this, fall into this.

01:06:45

Oh, if you say it confidently. Yeah. I totally get it. Right. You know, you don't know. I mean, who has a book of the dead on their bookshelf?

01:06:54

Like, take a look. I mean, I get it. It's easy to fall into.

01:07:00

But that's why it's so important to know your Bible first and foremost. Right. They're going to schmooze over those people who truly don't know

01:07:08

Christianity well. Yeah. Who don't know their Bible well. Then the stuff that they're talking about is going to sound convincing to you.

01:07:14

Right. But if you have ears that are trained in what the scriptures say, following what

01:07:20

Paul instructs Timothy in with being sound in doctrine, have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths,

01:07:26

Paul says. Don't even let anyone teach that is going on about myths and speculation. We should be fixed on the truth and the hope of the gospel.

01:07:34

If you are trained in that, then you're going to hear stuff like this, and immediately red flags are going to go up. Alarms are going to start going off.

01:07:41

Yeah. Nothing they're saying has anything to do with the gospel. It's all just this feel good, moralism, ethics fear that they're creating, which is if you keep going along with it, you're going to find it sounds very socialistic or communistic.

01:07:54

That's what I was thinking. Yeah. And it makes you cringe. Oh, yes. Constantly. So their theological liberalism will turn into political liberalism really quick.

01:08:04

Yeah. That's the fruit, the rotten fruit that this produces. But anyway, yeah, having ears trained in this, you're not going to easily be persuaded by liars.

01:08:15

Mm -hmm. Because you have ears that are trained in the truth. Yes. Well, thank you for sending that, Jason. I appreciate everybody who sent emails today.

01:08:22

And if you have responses that you would like to make, send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

01:08:28

Let's pray for Siervo. Mm -hmm. And as we close out here, and again, thank you for listening and for sharing this broadcast with others.

01:08:36

Yes, thank you. Let's pray. Yes, let's. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be able to respond to these messages, to look into your word, to know your truth.

01:08:48

As Jesus prayed for his disciples, even praying for us today. In John 17, 17, he said,

01:08:54

Father, sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. What we read in scripture is true.

01:09:00

It's not mytho -history. It's not something that was written later on by those who had heard about these myths and then they kind of developed it into their own religious system and whatever else.

01:09:13

These things were established by people who were eyewitnesses to this and even heard the word of God in what it was that they wrote down.

01:09:20

The Spirit leading men to write what you intended them to write, according to 2 Peter 1, and some actually hearing the voice of God and writing what you specifically said to them to give to your people.

01:09:33

We get to know the mind and the heart of the creator of the universe when we open the pages of scripture.

01:09:40

May we remain fixed on this, not only knowing sound doctrine, but how to put it into practice, how to rightly apply it.

01:09:47

In that sense, I want to pray for Siervo. I want to pray that he, in the context in which he has to minister and pastor the people that he has been called to shepherd, that you would give him wisdom to know how he is to respond to each one of these scenarios, the unique situation that he's in there in Costa Rica.

01:10:06

And I pray that you would also give him good sound men along with him that they are able to make these decisions together.

01:10:15

He's not alone in having to shepherd these people, but there are other sound teachers of the word that are able to look after this flock as well.

01:10:23

We also pray for these two men that we just listened to, Bill Maher and Alan Richson.

01:10:29

These men are lost. Maher may be on the atheist side. Alan Richson may believe that there is a

01:10:35

God, but he does not follow the Christ of the Bible. May these two men be pierced to their heart and recognize their sin and need for a

01:10:42

Savior and understand that it is the Christ of the Bible who is that Savior. He's not a myth.

01:10:48

The Jesus that we read about in the gospels is not something that was developed over time.

01:10:54

It was written down by eyewitnesses who saw the things that he did, that he really died and he really rose from the dead for our justification, as said in Romans 4 .25.

01:11:04

And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if he didn't raise from the dead, then you're still dead in your sins and you are not saved.

01:11:14

It is only by faith in the truth of what has been proclaimed about Christ in his word that we can be forgiven our sins, have fellowship with God and the promise of eternal life saved from the judgment that is coming against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

01:11:34

Continue to work out in us this salvation that we may grow in godliness and in holiness before you, looking forward to that day when we will join with Christ forever in glory.

01:11:45

And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. So I don't think

01:11:57

Piper meant anything by it other than he was looking for the most intense word possible and then he just went too far, which it sounds like he even said when he gave that answer.

01:12:07

And I've heard, like I said, I've also heard him do that on other topics as well. Could it have been like a slip?

01:12:13

Like he said the wrong word? No. Okay. No. I mean, I did not hear the session.

01:12:20

Again, I'm speaking out of ignorance in the sense that I didn't actually hear it. But this is not surprising because I've heard

01:12:27

Piper do stuff like this. So for Chris... I was trying. Right. I was trying.

01:12:33

So for Chris to recall that and then he even says that Piper admitted it was an overstatement.

01:12:41

So yeah, that's... Yeah. If it's an overstatement, don't say it. Yeah. Especially something like that.

01:12:47

That just... Yeah. Don't think... I'm not even going to repeat it. I was going to say, don't think of obedience being...

01:12:53

Yeah. But yeah. No, that's awkward. That's awkward. I didn't mean to make you die.

01:13:07

I know. I think I need a drink of water after that one. Get you all choked up. All right.