Has the Church Age Ended?

Good afternoon, Long Island, New York, Connecticut, and those listening internationally over the internet. This is Chris Arnsen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, and I'm very, very excited about today's broadcast.

The Debate Begins: Harold Camping and James White on the End of the Church Age

In fact, today begins day number one of the long-awaited radio debate between Harold Camping and Dr. James R. White on the topic, Has the Church Age Ended? Harold Camping, for those of you who don't know, if you don't know, I'd be very sorry if you're surprised, he is the founder and president of Family Radio and host of the Open Forum broadcast.

Dr. James R. White is co-founder and director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. This is day number one of a two-day debate, and we hope that you tune in. And first of all, it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Mr. Harold Camping.

Welcome to the program, Mr. Camping. Thank you. I'm glad to have this opportunity to have this discussion with Dr. White.

Yes, I am as well, and I really appreciate your graciousness and willingness to be involved in this two-day debate on Iron Sharpens Iron. And before I introduce Dr. White, briefly tell us something about Family Radio and how many stations you have across the world.

Oh, I really have no idea.

I don't keep track of that. We do try to blanket the world, however, either by our own stations or by buying time on shortwave stations or we have a couple of huge AM stations in China and so on. But we try to cover every country with the gospel.

And of course, nowadays, our big subject is that we feel we have been called to warn people that we're right near the very end of time and people have to prepare for judgment. And it's so wonderful that it's still a time of salvation and our people can still cry out and plead with God for salvation.

Well, thank you so much for being a part of this two-day broadcast. And I'd like to introduce now my dear friend, Dr. James R. White, the co-founder and director of Alpha Omega Ministries. And I'm so glad that you also took time out of your very, very busy schedule to be a part of this two-day debate.

Well, it's good to be with you, Chris. And I hope that everyone is aided by the discussion we're going to have, especially on how you handle the Bible, how you interpret the Bible, what the Bible teaches about important subjects, about who God is, what the church is, things like that.

We are not hearing Dr. White, incidentally, here at all.

Okay. We're going to make sure that our engineers work on that and rectify that situation. By the way, Dr. White, tell us briefly about Alpha Omega Ministries while you, if you can, and while we're having adjustments made so Mr. Campion can hear your part of the discussion today.

Well, Alpha Omega Ministries is a Christian apologetics and ministry based here in Phoenix, Arizona. And we've been active for a long time now. And, in fact, I'll be going to Australia in just a matter of a couple of weeks.

We're trying to do something here to try to help out. But I'll be going to Australia to do some debate. I'm dealing a lot with Muslims these days. And so we're keeping very busy.

Dr. White's fading in and out. But it might interest our listeners to know that there was a time when Family Radio was airing a program called Conference Echoes that featured the sermons of pastors all over the world.

And on at least several occasions, I submitted tapes of Dr. White, which were gladly accepted and aired on Family Radio. But we are looking forward to this two-day debate that these men have both agreed to participate in.

And we hope that the sound levels and everything are corrected very soon. Just to give our participants here today some ground rules, we're going to start with five-minute intervals where each, starting with Mr. Campion, will have five minutes to give an opening presentation.

And then from that afterward, from then on, each will have three minutes to either respond to the last statement or to introduce a new statement, or if they so choose, to ask a question of the other participant.

So the first two intervals will be each five minutes long. And from then on, it will be three minutes each. I'd like to get a check, a sound check here. Can both of my participants, Mr. Campion and James White, hear one another now?

We hear you perfectly now. Yeah, everything just cleared up, Mr. Campion. I hear you perfectly. You sound like you're sitting next to me. Am I hearing Dr. White?

Yes, that was Dr. White. Yeah, this is James. I hear you great, yeah. Okay. Well, it seems like God has answered prayer here. All right. Well, Mr. Campion, we apologize for flustering everyone here, but if you could, for five minutes, give an opening presentation as to your view on the church age.

We're not going to have any more commercials until the very end of the program. All right.

Harold Camping’s Case for the End of the Church Age

Shall I begin then? Yes. Yeah, well, you know, it was exactly eight years and a few days ago, I had a group of people having dinner with me. I was celebrating my 80th birthday, and at that time, I made a very solemn and sad statement.

I said to them, you know, this is the saddest birthday I've ever had. It was my 80th birthday, but it was sad. I said it's sad beyond measure because I've really been studying the Bible very, very carefully, and I've become totally convinced that the Bible is teaching that we have come to the end of the church era, just like it was back in 33 A .D., the era of national Israel representing the kingdom of God, which had gone on for 14...

They had been a representative ever since they left Egypt, 1 ,480 years approximately before, and now after 1 ,955 years, beginning in A .D. 33, when God shifted from national Israel representing the kingdom of God to the church age, now he has ended with this.

It was a dreadfully, dreadfully terrible thing to think about because I felt like I had been... I was betraying all of the churches. I had been a church member all of my life. For the 40 years previous, I had constantly told people to try to find a church that is reasonably true to the word of God because this was God's plan.

But the fact is that I, recognizing the truth of the Bible, I had to teach the way I was teaching. Well, in fact, during these last few years, God has been opening my eyes and eyes of others to a great many truths that we had never seen before.

And I wondered about that, but just a couple of years ago, I was reading Daniel chapter 12. Daniel 12. And there, God made a very, very profound statement. And incidentally, the Bible, every word in the Bible comes from the mouth of God.

It is a very holy ground. We tremble before the word of God. We don't ever look at it casually or we should never look at it as something to bandy about or whatever. It is something that is very serious business.

And Daniel had been receiving a great amount of information concerning the very end of time. And it made him very ill because of the sorrowful nature of it. And then we read in Daniel chapter 12, verse 4.

Remember, this is God speaking anything in a Bible. In the original languages, it is God speaking. But now, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book. Then even to the time of the end, many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.

And then it says further in verse 9. And he said, Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Well, you know, what is happening here? And then when we go to Revelation chapter 5, we find that where God talks about the book being open.

And as we see the book being open, we begin to understand why it's now that we're at the time of the end. And the Bible shows us when that book, when the seven seals had been taken off. We can know that date very exactly.

And when now that the book has been open, and that, of course, is the Bible. Now, the Bible has never had anything added to it in the last 1900 years. But God has a lot of ways in which he has has hidden truth until he wants it to be known.

And this is what God is doing now. He is giving us a lot of information that he has never given before. And it's all coming out of the Bible.

Okay, yeah, that's the five minutes, Mr. Camping. And by the way, before James starts, I want to let you both know, if you're free to stay till 430, we can carry this on for the full hour now that everything's working.

I certainly am. That's up to Mr. Camping. Great. Well, if you can stay on till 430, that'd be great, Mr. Camping, because we could have this full hour of broadcast for day number one. Sure, we can do that.

Yeah. Great. All right. Well, Mr. White, Dr. White, you have five minutes to give your opening presentation. Thank you.

White’s Opening: The Church as Christ’s Ongoing Work

The Scripture teaches that the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did in eternity past covenant together to bring about the glory of the triune majesty by means of the creation of the universe and the redemption of a particular people.

And that counsel in eternity past was determined that the Father would decree the glory of the Trinity. The Son would accomplish the means of redemption through the incarnation. His crosswork outside of Jerusalem and his resurrection from the dead.

The Spirit would bring the eternally decreed salvation purchased by the Son to fruition in the hearts of undeserving rebels, raising them to spiritual life and making them sons of God by adoption through faith in Jesus Christ.

These redeemed sinners are united to Christ, placed in his body, the church. The plain teaching of Scripture believed and accepted by God's people down through the ages is that the church is central to God's purpose in this world.

Though many imposters have arisen calling themselves the church, Christ has in fact been busy in every generation building his church so that the gates of Hades would not be able to withstand the onslaught of God's spirit-led people.

The universal fellowship of true believers has been, by God's wise design, revealed to the world through the local fellowships led by elders and ministered to by deacons. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he spoke of the local fellowships and referred to them as the church, the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

While individual local fellowships can cease to exist as God's blessings move to and fro across the earth, nations rise and fall in God's providence, Christ's church goes on. His redeemed people joining together for the preaching of the word, the observance of the ordinances of baptism and Lord's Supper, and fellowship in the spirit of God.

Today I have the privilege of responding to the claims of Harold Camping of Family Radio, who has abandoned his former beliefs and is now promoting a whole host of novel doctrines. The central assertion that brings us together is his insistence that the churches of Jesus Christ are now under the wrath of God.

The spirit has withdrawn from all churches and no one can find salvation therein any longer. Mr. Camping has taken the amazing position of insisting that his interpretations of the Bible, based upon allegory and numerology, are sufficient to allow him to claim that God is revealing new things today, never known to anyone in the history of the church.

This claim is the foundation stone of all of Mr. Camping's idiosyncratic teachings, such as his assertion that Jesus died twice, that the death of Christ on the cross outside of Jerusalem was not relevant to the forgiveness of sins, his annihilationism, and his teachings the world will end May 21, 2011.

Indeed, as I listened to Mr. Camping throughout the Doctrine of the Trinity just last week on his open forum radio program, identifying Christ as the Father, resurrecting one of the earliest heresies of the church, I was reminded yet again what happens when the sound exegesis of the text of inspired scripture gives way to personal revelation and spiritualization.

This encounter is about rescuing the Bible's trustworthiness. It is about demonstrating that the Bible is not the playground of any person who decides he has new spiritual insights no one else has ever had.

It is about defending Christ's church, his bride, and the local fellowships to which the Spirit of God joins all who are truly united with Christ. As we will see, no matter what element of this teaching comes up, the fundamental issue will be this.

Harold Camping refuses to use any kind of meaningful exegetical or hermeneutical set of principles in his handling of the Bible. There are no rules when Mr. Camping opens the Bible. He is the final authority when it comes to his system of interpretation, if that word can even be used, of the complex system of allegory and numerology that he utilizes to make the Bible speak.

I believe firmly that the only way to profess that the Bible truly is God's Word, God speaking, is to expend every possible effort to avoid inserting my desires and my thoughts into the reading of the Bible.

That is why sound exegetes unanimously avoid all of the errors that Harold Camping's entire set of teachings illustrates in glowing colors. Sound exegetes seek to understand the meaning of the original writers in their original language, in their original context, first and foremost.

And that is the exact methodology rejected by Harold Camping. In fact, given that he says that no one has seen what he now sees, and given that he makes connections across all sorts of contradictory and differing contexts without the first thought of concern as to what the original authors actually intended, there is no way that Harold Camping can claim that what he is teaching is in any logical or rational way the teaching of the Bible.

It is the teaching of Harold Camping expressed in the words of Scripture wrongfully ripped from their proper and original context. And so the issue that we need to address today is not just the individual teachings, saying that Christ died twice and things like this, and the allegation against the Church, but the foundational issue.

How do we rightly handle the Word of God so that it remains the Word of God and not merely something that we are inserting our thoughts into? How do you handle the Bible? That's what this discussion has to be about.

Thank you very much, Dr. White. And for those of you who just tuned us in, this is a two-day debate. This is day number one of a two-day debate between Harold Camping, the founder and president of Family Radio, and Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries on the theme, Has the Church Age Ended?

And now, Mr. Camping, you have three minutes to continue your thought or to respond to Dr. White in any way you choose to. You have three minutes.

Parables, Spiritual Interpretation, and Comparing Scripture with Scripture

Well, you know, when we start talking about hermeneutics, the Bible gives us the biblical hermeneutic, and I've never been able to find in the Bible the historical grammatical method of hermeneutic. Where does that come from?

That's one question I'd like to have an answer. Where do you find that in the Bible? I'll tell you what the Bible has to say. We read in Mark chapter 4, where God says that, without a parable, verse 34, spake he not unto them, Christ is speaking.

In other words, Christ is saying he spoke in parables, and he did it for two reasons. He said, in verse 12, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted and their sins be forgiven them.

And on the other hand, for the true believers, the parable method is giving them a lot of new information. In other words, God designed the Bible so that, on the one hand, it would remain impossible to understand by those who are not elect of God, that is spiritually understood.

But on the other hand, for the believers, it would be. Now, the fact is that God gave further rules that have to be followed. The first rule is, in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 13, we are to compare spiritual things with spiritual.

In other words, any time we look at a verse and we are wondering, what does it mean, even though it sounds like we know the meaning right now, until we compare that with everything else in the Bible that might relate and find harmony, we have not found the truth.

We have to really compare everything, every idea, with every possibility in the Bible in order to find truth. And that's a terrific protection when Christ spoke in parables. You just can't go out and say, well, the spiritual meaning is this or the spiritual meaning is that.

It has to be found in the Bible. The Bible has to always be the core of truth, and never do we go out. That's why, on my kind of programming, I only quote the Bible. But the fact is that God has given us all kinds of ideas, like a lamb can refer to Christ, the field can refer to the world.

The Christ is the way. So when we see the word way, we can think about Christ. He is the truth. He is the light. There are just all kinds of emphases in the Bible where God is given, like, for example, Jerusalem.

It talks about Jerusalem. All right, Mr. Camping, your three minutes are up, and you can continue your thought after Dr. White, who has now three minutes. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me give an example of what happens when we do not go first to what the original authors meant in their original context, what they intended to communicate to their audiences.

Obviously, we know that not all the Scripture is written in parables. Only certain portions are. Jesus taught directly in a non-parabolic form. But Paul's letters are not written as parables. We have to recognize the different kinds of literature we find in Scripture.

But let me give you an example. I was listening to the open forum just this morning, and a caller called in and asked about Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 through 25, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Now, if we read the book of Hebrews in its original context, original language, this is talking about gathering together in the Church. And it is talking about stirring one another up. The King James says, provoking one another to do what?

To do love and good works. So it's a positive thing. And so when we read this, it's talking about gathering together in the fellowship of the body of the Church and provoking one another to doing godly things.

As soon as Mr. Camping started reading this, he got to the word provoke, and he said, well, this proves that this is actually talking about that period of time when the Church age has ended, because to provoke means to create dissension.

And so whenever you preach that the Church has come to an end, you bring about dissension. And so this proves that this is about meeting outside of the Church and no longer meeting in the Church. Now, the writer of the Hebrews never would have had that idea.

His audience never would have had that idea. That ignores the context where the term itself is being used in a positive sense of stirring one another up, stimulating one another to love and good works.

And so the original words, inspired under the direction of the Holy Spirit of God, their meaning is completely lost, and instead a completely foreign concept. Now, there have been all sorts of folks down through the history of the Church who have attacked the Church who could have used this very same text in the same way that Harold Camping used it.

The Montanists could have done that, and Joseph Smith could have done—all sorts of people could have done that. But does anyone seriously suggest that that was the actual intention of the Spirit of God in penning these words?

No. These words had a meaning to the person who wrote them, they had a meaning to the persons who received them, and we are first and foremost to discover that and then live in the light of the principles that are laid down by the Word of God.

If we don't do that, then we cannot claim that our teaching of the Scriptures is reflective of the Word of God itself. We simply cannot do it, because we are not accurately representing what the original intention of those inspired writings actually was.

Thank you, Dr. White. And now, Mr. Camping, you have three minutes as well.

Yeah, well, you know, the biblical rule is that the Bible interprets itself. The Bible is not subject to private interpretation. It is its own dictionary. We find words in the Bible that we are looking at, and then we want to—if we want to understand it, that's the wonder of the commentaries, that we can find all the other words, other places in the Bible where that word is used.

And if you go on, in Hebrews 10, for example—the word provoke, incidentally, is only used in one place. It was used in the book of Acts, when there was heavy contention between Paul and Barnabas concerning taking Mark with him on the next missionary journey, and so there was a provoking between them.

There was dissension. That is the only place it is used, and it is indicating there was contention. Now, when we go on in Hebrews 10, we find for—it says that, in verse 26, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.

Well, my, that's—how do you understand that? The whole Bible is telling us that Christ is a very merciful God, and Israel came to Him again and again and again for forgiveness, and here it says, however, there will be no sacrifice for sins.

You're out. You're out. And the only time that could be is in our day, because in the churches, there no longer is any sacrifice. The Holy Spirit is not working there, and that gives us the meaning now of Hebrews 10.

But outside, wonderfully, there is salvation going. Now, when we look again, when we talk about what does it mean to the local person, when Abraham, for example, back in Genesis chapter 13, he was told of God.

He was told in verse 14, lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land which thou see is to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever, forever.

Now, how did Abraham understand this? And this had been emphasized in chapter 15 and in chapter 17, all the land from the river of Egypt to the river of, to the Euphrates River. Well, we'll talk about that next.

Thank you very much, Mr. Campion. Your three minutes are up. And now, Dr. White, you have three minutes.

The Meaning of Scripture in Its Original Context

Just a couple things to recognize what was just said. First of all, the text from Peter, I think, was being misapplied when it says it is not of any private interpretation. If you look carefully at that text, what Peter is saying is that no prophecy of Scripture ever came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

It instead comes from God. Men spoke from God as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit. So that is a misapplication of that text. But secondly, I hope everyone heard what was just said, and that is we were just told that the actual meaning of Hebrews 10, 24 -25 could not have been understood by anyone until a few years ago.

Every age of Christians, whatever they thought that text meant, they were in darkness. They had no concept of what that was actually about. They must have been misled to do all sorts of things by this cryptic text.

That no one could understand until just a few years ago when Mr. Camping determined that the book in Revelation is actually the Bible. There's no reason to believe that, but that's what he asserts. And so here you have the author doesn't know what he's writing.

His recipients don't know what he's writing. The words in their own context, he mentioned that word is only used twice. It's actually used four times in the Bible. It's used twice in the Greek Septuagint.

And yes, it can mean dissension, as it's used in Acts 15 -39, but that's not what it means in Hebrews 10, 24. In Hebrews 10, 24, it is a positive thing. It is to stir one another up to love and good deeds within the community of the faith, which is the church.

And so to just simply say, well, it had this meaning over here. That means it can have this meaning here. What if we interpreted Harold Camping's books in that way? What if we took the words that he uses in the English language and we could find any use anyplace else of the same word and import it into his?

His context doesn't matter anymore, because what he's telling us is the context of the Bible writers doesn't matter. We could make, we could turn him into someone who teaches anything that we want. We could read anything into his voluminous writings based upon ignoring the original context of the authors, the original context of those who initially received these epistles.

The epistle to the Hebrews was written to keep Christians who were being pressured to go back to the old ways. And so when he says, how can you understand there's no forgiveness? Hebrews chapter 10, he's talking about those people who would go back and offer sacrifice and therefore do disrespect the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

He's talking about the same people first John talks about. And John says, I do not even say that you should pray for such a one. He's talking about those people who deny Jesus Christ. And that was the issue in the early church.

And we need to understand that first and then make application to our day. There is no reason to say that these words never had any meaning until our modern period, none whatsoever.

Thank you, Dr. White. And let me just make a quick announcement. I also want to thank the technicians and engineers for both WNYG and Family Radio for helping us to resolve the issue. But Mr. Camping, you now have three minutes.

The End of the Church Age and the Sealed Book

Well, you know, you still haven't answered my question. Where did the historical grammatical hermeneutic come from insofar as the Bible is concerned? I can tell you what the Bible says. It says that Christ spoke in parables and the Bible says that we are to compare scripture with scripture.

And the Bible says that the Holy Spirit will lead you in the truth because the Holy Spirit, because the Bible is a very spiritual book. And we have to follow that very, very carefully. That's why I raised the issue of, just as an illustration, and they're sprinkled all through the Bible, about Abraham.

He was told that he would inherit all the land that he saw. And he named it a little later as all the way from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates River, that that would be given to his seed forever, forever.

Are we to understand that the land over there around the Mediterranean or adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea is going to be there forever? That's what the Bible says. The Bible says that. And what did it really mean to Abraham?

Did he understand what he was being told? Incidentally, we were arguing or discussing this matter of Hebrews 10. And I have tried to answer that question of how to handle that there remains no more sacrifice.

And every theologian has tried to answer that. But it's in our day that now we find a very clear and concise answer. And there are many verses like that, that God kept under wraps, so to speak. He would not give us a clear and concise answer until today, like Nicodemus, for example, was told nobody has ascended into heaven except the Lord Jesus.

Well, now we understand and we always have had some kind of an answer. But now we can understand it perfectly. Now, when it comes to the church, the gates of hell shall not prevail. What happened to the church in the wilderness?

What happened to it? That was Israel on Mount Sinai. Did it prevail? And it was the corporate or the external church. When the reformers, you know, talked about the invisible church. Now, it's true. The invisible church is every true believer.

But when it says that the gates of hell should not prevail, does that include the charismatic churches? Does that include the Roman Catholic Church? Does that include the Methodist Church? Does that?

Just what does it include? In fact, three minutes are up. All right, Dr. James R. White, and you have three minutes. Yes, indeed.

The Church as the Pillar and Support of the Truth

Thank you very much, Chris. Where did the historical grammatical hermeneutic come from? Well, every time that Paul writes to, for example, the Church of Corinth, does he expect them to understand what he's saying?

Does he expect them to interpret his letter in such a way that his words mean what his words mean in the context that his audience would have understood? Does he not hold people accountable for their behavior in light of what he has written to them in a historical and grammatical way?

The answer is, of course, he does. And what if they had, what if the Judaizers in Galatia had decided to interpret the Book of Galatians in the way that Mr. Camping interprets the text that says the Church is going to continue?

And said, well, you know, you can understand Paul's writing spiritual things here, and what he really means when he says we're anathema is that we find this other use, this word over here in the Old Testament, and that actually means we should have the preeminence in the Church.

Now, how would that, how would that work? No, his words had a meaning when they were written in the form they were written. When the apostles and Jesus interpret the Old Testament, do they interpret it in the way that Mr. Camping is interpreting it?

Where they say, well, you need to look at this word here, and then we can connect it over here, and there are 153 fishes, and that's 3 times 3 times 17, and they took numerology apart, and they connected things together.

Is that how they use the Old Testament? The answer is, no, it is not. And so why should we follow that methodology? Because you can do anything with it. Mr. Camping has done much with the 153 fishes that are pulled out of the sea.

And I would just point out, you know, well, these are, you know, there are so many people being saved, we can't get them into the Church anymore, and things like that. Why can't I point out that those 153 fishes were dragged up on the shore and died, and that this is, therefore, the end of the fishes?

I can interpret anything, any way I want to, when the original intention of the authors and the original language and their original audiences is ignored. You can't claim to be accurately representing Harold Camping if you don't interpret Harold Camping in the context in which he intended to write his words.

The same thing is true with the Word of God. You cannot say you're accurately representing the Word of God when you do that. Now, again, what I said about Hebrews chapter 10, very clearly, you have to know what the to go back to the old ways.

And there's no question about that. This isn't, you know, when you come up against a difficulty of interpretation, do you just simply throw out exegesis? That's the easy way to do it, that to have this overarching system that you just force onto every text, but that's not a way that honors God's Word.

And what is the result of all this? Even though Paul taught that God would be glorified in the Church throughout all ages, we're being told by Mr. Camping, flee the churches. The Holy Spirit of God that forms the churches is no longer in the churches.

He's no longer saving people in those churches. That's what happens when you ignore the original context.

Thank you very much, Dr. White. And for those of you who just tuned in to WNYG, this is the day number one of the two day debate. And now we have three minutes for Mr. Harold Camping to continue his thought or to respond to Dr. White.

You know, I've heard that many, many times. What did that statement by the prophet mean to the people of that day? I ask you the question, what did God, what did the statement that God made to Abraham that he would be given all the land that he could see?

He was looking at physical land and it would be given to him forever. What did that mean to him? How could he understand that? And as we look at Israel in the wilderness, they were told again and again, this and that, and they were given all kinds of ceremonial laws to follow, which were all incidentally like a parable, because to offer a blood sacrifice was a picture.

It was the earthly story pointing to the heavenly meaning, which is what a parable is, of the fact that it required the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, how much of this did they understand?

Who is the Bible for? The Bible is for all of the nations, not for those people that just happen to be living there, and God has set up rules. He spoke in parables, and in fact, he spoke in parables, as I've read from Mark chapter four, so that for those who are not elect of God, they would not understand at all.

He wrote it in a way so they could not understand. All the information that he had sealed in the book of Daniel, or excuse me, the book that is spoken of in the book of Daniel that was sealed was in the Bible, because nothing has ever been added to the Bible once it was completed about 2 ,000 years ago.

It was all here, but God sealed it. How did he seal it? He sealed it. By the way he wrote it, and by putting in difficult verses, very difficult verses, the Bible is not easy to understand at all. For example, right today, we have always believed, and this is a terrible thing that has happened, but God has allowed it to happen, namely that if we only believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we will become saved, and yet now we understand.

Why did God wait till now to tell us that faith, which is the noun for the verb believe, faith is the noun, believe is the verb, it's the same word, and the Bible says faith is work, and we're not able to be saved by works.