Is America under God's judgment?

Podcast community of podcasters gathered to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

Theology Throwdown Introduction and Podcast Community Overview

This is a ministry of striving for eternity. Welcome to another theology throwdown. This is a.

Podcast of the christian podcast community. Any and all of our podcasters at the christian podcast community are invited to participate in these theology throwdowns and tonight we have a stellar sampling from our broad broader podcasting family and they are going to introduce themselves momentarily.

This show allows us to discuss different theological topics and their practical applications. Always with grace and love. So if you want to check out all of our previous throwdowns just visit christian parenting community .org click on the show page and look for a theology throwdown.

Of course while you're there you will probably see the over 50 different christian podcasts that are part of our community. I'm pretty sure that whatever your need or desire or question or passion you will be able to find a podcast that deals with it.

We have podcasts about marriage family and parenting which also includes homeschooling. We have podcasts for women and others for men. A bunch of them for everybody. We have podcasts about theology evangelism apologetics christians and pop culture sermons and so many more.

And you're going to meet some of our podcast hosts today but let me first introduce today's topic in kind of a fun way. The individual who thought of this topic is with us tonight and it also happens to be his first theology throwdown.

Now i i'm kind of wondering if perhaps maybe that's a little bit of arrogance on his side. You know like i'm not going to go unless they use my topic but i i no doubt that's not true. Uh garrett how you doing.

Man. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you. It's really good to.

Be here. It's exciting to be a part of this. And no i wasn't waiting till you picked my topic. It's just that this time every month seems to be our busiest time but i am really really happy to be on a theology throwdown like you said.

My name is garrett hampton. I am the producer of the schoolhouse rocked podcast which is a podcast for homeschoolers that's hosted by my wife and we're in our sixth season. I think we've been with the christian podcast community for like three years now maybe two or three years and we've got a few over 500 episodes posted and it's been a really great show.

To the glory of god we've we've loved building up families. And tonight's really cool topic that i think is going to be a little bit divisive even and bring about some great debate is is america under god's judgment and is it too late to repent.

And i think all of us can sense after the last three years of upheaval in culture and in the church that we're going through something consequential and huge. But the question is is this the end for our nation is at the end for the church and what is god doing right now.

So i wanted to see what the community had to say about that.

And i look forward to discussing. So that is our topic today is america under god's judgment. And if so is it too late to repent. And of course depending on your beliefs about this question we may even have a chance to talk a little bit about and time stuff.

Who knows. Now some of you are wondering who this guy is and why i'm introducing the show instead of andrew rabaport. Well andrew has the sobering opportunity of attending a funeral tonight. Right now as we are recording this uh it's for someone that he used to pastor a fellow elder at his church.

His former church lost his wife. And that's the funeral andrew is at tonight. So and while you're here this uh the the funeral will be over. But still please pray for andrew and pray for the family of this woman who has obviously been called by god to glorify him in her absence.

Which is never an easy thing to do for any of us all right now. Excuse me. So with garrett's wonderful introduction let's go ahead and introduce you to the rest of our panel tonight. Our theological lineup.

I'm going to ask each of the podcasters to introduce himself or herself and tell us a little bit about his or her podcast so you can connect their voices to their names. By the way you can also enjoy this show on youtube where you get to see all of our delightful faces.

So let's go ahead and start off the evening tonight. Uh in with uh with pastor dom. Why don't you go ahead introduce yourself and your podcast. And then we'll talk about the uh the special friend you brought with you tonight.

Wait you're still muted. There dom. He figured out how to turn it off which was great. Now we just had to get it back on. And survey says we're almost connected. He'll get it. And when when he gets it.

Yeah. Oh there's that voice. That's the voice we've been waiting to hear. Go ahead. That's me.

That's me dominic. Okay anyway. Pastor dominic rimaldi. We i host a street talk theology uh here on the christian podcast community. I got my fellow elder with me here from desert sky baptist church harland nielsen and um we're just here to enjoy the topic.

We've seen the topic and we just we try to get on. Well i try to get on everyone. Um so um i'm happy to be here and um and honored to engage. Right. Harland you ready. Right. My age you're never too old to learn.

Amen. Now if i and i i hope that you know andrew doesn't get the idea that just because i'm here kind of leading this up that everyone's gonna start breaking the rules. Uh do we ever invite guests like friends onto the show with us.

Is that how this works. Well. Like yeah i told andrew i was.

Sick uh having my fellow elder come and he said no problem but he's been harland's been on before.

I'm gonna start inviting my friends we're just gonna hang out. It's gonna be amazing. I love it harland. Thank you so much for joining us tonight and next. Let's go to eve.

Good evening everybody. I'm eve franklin and i am the co-host of the podcast. Are you just watching where we talk about the christian worldview as it relates to secular entertainment we mostly talk about movies but occasionally commercials or news or documentaries just whatever interests us.

Every month we do one episode a month and we've been podcasting since 2009 and a proud member of the.

Christian podcast community and if i'm not mistaken one of the longest running theology throwdowners.

If i'm is that right. Yeah i've only missed one episode. That's right that's right. And it was.

Recently too so sad she broke her streak but man she didn't give up. She's back and she's fighting all right. We had a garrett internet uh introduce himself. So uh we'll skip right over to melissa.

Thank you andrew. Um or hey it's so it's so hard you don't look anything like him. But thank you. Um yeah. So i'll introduce my podcast. It's thoroughly equipped and it's for women. Basically what we do is we take uh the women's ministry uh books and conferences and we look at their uh popular women teachers and we basically compare what they say what they teach to scripture.

Uh my goal is to make sure that just women are um deep in the word and understanding that it is sufficient to equip them for all of good works all that they need to do to to know the lord and to be a godly woman.

So um right now we are in the process of critiquing the if gathering so that's kind of popular among women. I know men don't really know about the if gathering but it's just a really really big uh women's conference that is held online.

And so i take the last couple years looking at their teachings and looking at the teachers that are presented there and we go over there um what they teach. Yeah. So it's an interesting one. It's been my whole season this.

This this time so it's a really important topic. I mean aside from the fact that there are false teachers and whatnot out there everyone has a platform these days and it takes discernment to be able to tell if what people are saying it has any biblical value.

So praise god that you're doing that. Thank you all. Right rebecca your turn tell us all about you and your podcast. I love rebecca's.

Oh go ahead. Rebecca. Yeah i'm unmuted now. Yes. My name is rebecca burschmanger and i am the host of one little candle. And one little candle is a weekly podcast whose core mission is to equip and encourage believers to live their lives as a light that god's called us to be.

The podcast covers a wide variety of subjects including cultural issues. I'd have to say my favorite probably or my heart is for issues um the subject of lgbtq. As a matter of fact i just finished a three-part series this past week with a guest co-host on the normalization of sexual immorality.

So if anybody wants to check that out please do. Um the name one little candle is such because the point also is to is to help people to realize that they have their corner of the world where they're at.

And although they may be just one person one small light one little candle they can in fact make a difference.

Very awesome amen. And yes by power of god we all can all. Right. Keith you are next sir. Yeah this is.

Uh keith helpfully from the quest for truth podcast which i do with my co-host nathan caldwell. And unfortunately i don't always make a lot of these but sometimes i have a house full of kids or noise and background sounds that are hard to deal with.

Uh hey here i am our podcast just deals with as the name says quest for truth we seek for truth uh the bible of truth and in our world around us. And uh sometimes let's take a casual fun shots at world views and sometimes.

We dig in deep and study the bible. Awesome. And we do have the full house tonight. We just had our eighth guest. Uh join us. Stephen why don't you tell us about yourself. Hey guys my name is stephen dew.

And i'm the host of the doctrine matters podcast where we talk about doctrine and how it matters. We uh talk about several different things and and just kind of funnel that through a biblical lens. And i'm also a pastor in northeast arkansas so uh i think this may be my first or second one i've ever done but i'm glad to be here tonight and looking forward to the conversation.

And if.

If you go on youtube and check this out you'll see that stephen has the like the perfect beard for a guy who does a podcast by that name. I mean it's it's like it it's starting to rival uh spurgeon if i do say so myself it's awesome.

My name is aaron brucer. I am the podcast host for two different podcasts. One of them is called truth love parent which as you can guess is all about marriage and family specifically parenting. My expertise i suppose if you can put it that way has been working with at-risk children and broken families.

So i spent a lot of time really counseling as a biblical counselor working with people like that but really trying to help everyone else not get to that place be a little more preemptive and preventative and trying to rear our children so that lord willing we can avoid that that consequence.

Then my other podcast is called the celebration of god where we talk about discipleship and worship not just singing and things like that we oftentimes think of in a church service but really the broader definition of worship that life is worship obedience is worship.

In fact disobedience is worship too. It's just a question of what it is you're worshiping. So it's all about discipleship and how to worship god better this year than you did last year. And those are my two podcasts.

And then andrew rapoport the gentleman who normally runs this and and runs striving for eternity has a number of podcasts as well and you should definitely check him out and his podcast because he's a super cool guy.

I had to say that just because then he won't be mad at me and he paid right. No well you know i wish i wish in fact never mind i won't say uh andrew i love you all. Right. So uh the as as garrett so wonderfully um said earlier the topic of today's show is is america under god's judgment.

And if so is it too late to repent. And garrett thinks that this might be uh slightly controversial. So we'll see uh and we're going to start with a question that's going to lead into that question and i'd love to get the your guys's response from this.

What is i mean i let me stop for a second. It was it's been said oftentimes that we need to define our terms right. Um if one person is thinking the judgment of god is one thing and someone else is thinking that the judgment of god is something completely different it's gonna be very difficult for us to come to any understanding of that.

So i'd love to hear from you guys what your short answer is to what is the judgment of god. That's something that i think is gonna be desperately important. Um now we got phil. Uh phil actually just joining us as i was doing that intro.

So phil as soon as you are ready uh to connect you can jump in here introduce yourself and your podcast and i'll let you do that as soon as you unmute yourself. Uh but everyone be thinking about your answer to broadly speaking what is the judgment of god.

Phil go ahead. How you doing. Uh phil sessa from.

Stop and think about a podcast. It's been quite some time since i've been able to join you on a monday night and uh very interested in this topic tonight so thank you for uh having me join with.

Everybody oh yeah we're looking forward to it. Andrew's gonna be so jealous man. Our group is huge. Like see andrew if you just weren't here more often we'd have bigger groups. That's all there is to it.

It's gonna be it's gonna be huge. That's what he said. Yeah i believe it. Awesome awesome. Okay so uh let's go ahead. Uh if you want to uh jump on in here. I think you know. You can you can unmute yourself you can raise your hand wave it like this.

You can. There's a little digital hand that you can throw up. Who would like to start off by answering the question what is the judgment of god. Melissa. She started to move her hand but she's just scratching her nose.

So i'm gonna call.

On her. Go ahead. Keith. Yes. I have to raise my hand because i do the button. Your video is not on. I can't your hand. Oh really. Anyway um my thought on on this is under a certain senses. I mean yes america is under a judgment.

Because uh under certain uh senses we all are um as a entity a nation. I don't know that a entity a government would be under judgment. Certainly god would use poor governors to judge the people within that government.

And again i would say america is probably more under.

Judgment than not. Uh. So how do you define keith. How do you define the judgment of god. Someone talks about god's judgment. What's the first thing that comes to your mind. Well of god's wrath uh.

He's you know he's no longer a blessing. He's now uh turning you over away from blessing turning his back so to speak. And i think that america is as compared to where america has been. I think america is receiving some of god's uh curses you might say the lack of blessings.

Now keith you keep.

Jumping ahead on me. Man. Goodness you just you want to get to that you want to get to. That is america under god's judgment. But again let's answer this question let's see if we can figure out what is god's judgment.

I like what you were saying about the fact that you know god stops blessing. Uh consequences start coming into our lives. Probably a pretty good way of looking at judgment. Somebody else. What. How do you define god's judgment right now.

Yeah. Yeah. How do you define god's judgment. Yes. How do you define god's judgment. What do you think pastor dom. Yeah. Well judgment and wrath.

Would be two different things right. I mean you know people can be judged but god's wrath is something that hopefully and prayerfully no believers will go through. Sometimes believers will go under you know be under judgment.

But you know as the nation of israel was under judgment so wrath and judgment i would see as two different entities of god. Um whether or not america is under god's judgment of god's wrath is the topic for discussion right.

So i mean there there is two type you know judgment is something and wrath is another thing. So we want to be careful to define terms. Rightly. Right. I mean so um so i'm interested to see. You know uh i i don't know the crux of the topic really yet so i'm trying to see where where it's going.

So maybe it'd be better for garrett to explain what he thinks. You know america is under then maybe we can go off from there. Yeah.

I think there um i'm sorry that's okay. I think there are two extremes to this. I think for so long america did experience the blessing of god in this the establishment of the nation and i think the wrath of growth rapid growth and outpouring of resources.

And i think at the gentlest extreme of this the judgment of god looks like the removal of his blessing. But i think the other extreme of this is the thing that i think we see rising up. And you see this biblically when when a nation um is under god's judgment you see famine pestilence wars unrest.

And our our nation for so long has been a romans one nation where you see all the sins of embraced and approved of. And i think for so long we've just just to do one thing. We've murdered the innocent for so long that i think now it's it's foolishness to believe that god will look away.

And i do think unlike pastor dom says i do think that the the nation may experience the wrath of god whether or not believers do. Um and i think we've edged into that territory. I think that things have changed dramatically in the past few years.

And now if you look at like the summer of love when portland burned for a hundred days straight i think we've entered into a new age of unrest where we may actually be seeing some of god's wrath poured out in judgment for our wickedness um and notice all the qualifying terms i've used i've used i think and we may be so um it'll be interesting to hear what everybody has to say no and that's well said now we can.

Piggyback off that. That's well said. Thank you. So phil what do you think. Well i mean i think that.

There are different kinds of wrath. In one sense i think that there is the wrath of sowing and reaping that um we reap what we sow so in the same way that um you know many people may be engaging in homosexuality and they come down with aids and monkey pox and other such things.

I think that aspect is some god's wrath. Certainly agree with romans 118 that as man continues to live in wickedness just kind of heaps uh god's displeasure and and god's wrath presently upon the head.

So i i think there's both a present aspect that it's happening now and a future aspect that will kind of be like fully unleashed uh at a later time um upon the return of christ. So i think it's it's kind of a now and later uh type of wrath uh and some people experience that um in a tangible way even now.

And some um will experience it later on as the Niagara fall of god's wrath just the dam just unleashes upon them. I'm glad you're we're starting to get.

Some good qualification in this and this is why i asked the question if god's judgment. I'm obviously i don't want to i don't want to miscommunicate anything. God is sovereignly in control of all things right.

So in a way god is never passive right. But understand what i'm saying in a certain way. There is the idea that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Is it god's judgment when i'm being unsafe on a rooftop and i fall.

Well i guess it all depends on how you look at it. So i think the the consequences of sin. Someone may say well that's the judgment of god. Somebody else may say well no that's just the consequences of sin whereas they may see the judgment of god as being this very formal thing condemnation to hell for example.

Or the judgment that god passed on certain nations in the old testament. So there's a there's a kind of an informal aspect of this. Are we going to say that the consequences of sin that god has promised since the beginning of sin genesis chapter three that are going to come into this world.

Is that what we're referring to when we refer to god's judgment. Because i think if that's the case every single person here we're going to agree that yeah well of course god's judging america. Because there are people in america who are sinning and everyone who sins us people listening everyone else as receiving god's judgment.

However i think to clarify and to say well no there's a formal concept here. There's a there's god judging a nation similar to the way he judged the nations of the past. There there is something akin to um final judgment.

That's going on here. That's where i think we might have some disagreement. So i think it's really important to clarify what we mean by this idea of judgment. I'd like to invite any of the ladies who haven't chimed in yet to uh to do so.

Yes. Rebecca. Oh sorry. I'm sorry. Rebecca raised her hand. Eve was unmuted. I was torn. I didn't know.

What to do. Go ahead and start. Well you brought up an interesting point because i was thinking while we were defining judgment that one of the definitions would be to look at the old testament to see when god did judge.

And some of the examples that we can pull out of the old testament are obviously the the flood of noah where he judged the whole world uh for for sin and only rescued eight people on the ark. And then there's the the judgment on sodom and gomorrah where he he took lot and his family out but then wiped out um sodom and gomorrah.

And then we also have uh the story of nineveh uh where uh nineveh repented but because jonah took you know the the message that they had to repent or they would be destroyed. But then you know a generation later they went ahead and were destroyed because their repentance didn't last.

Uh those are the kind of of big judgments that we see in the old testament and those all came as a result of everybody sitting so it and god took out the people who weren't sitting and and he issued you know total destruction on these people.

And i don't know that we have necessarily pinpointed a biblical example of that in the new testament and beyond. But i can look at you know stories of like the roman empire i i think you know the argument could be made that what happened to the roman empire was you know god's judgment it may not have been as extravagant as sodom and gomorrah like raining brimstone from heaven.

But god does judge modern cultures for their sin. And sometimes that judgment is not necessarily the what we would consider biblical in proportion. But uh sometimes it is like the romans one or where you know he just gives us up to our our sin and those of us who are the remnant the people within uh the sinning culture have to stand firm.

That's a good summation.

Yeah there is a difference between the sodom and gomorrah judgment and the flood judgment than perhaps what america may or may not be experiencing. Rebecca please totally agree with.

Agree with what eve just said for sure um and this obviously is just my opinion because i can't speak for god in any of this and i personally pray it's not too late for our nation. But my feeling is that we are indeed living in a romans one world and that what we're seeing happening happening around us in our society is stemming from um looking at romans one talking about how god gave them over and then it lists the things that god gave them over to and the widespread practice.

Now that we're seeing the acceptance of celebration and you know of the usurping of god's created order and this sexual immorality that's progressed from bad to worse and it's continuing to progress at a really um frightening speed.

And so for me when i look around what i see in here it for me it seems that god has said have it your way this is what you wanted. This has been going on for a while and he is letting us have our way and we are really feeling the consequences of god saying.

Have at it. Hey steven and melissa you guys uh haven't had a chance to speak into this yet.

But for me there's there's so much to to think about um especially when you think about sodom and gomorrah and looking at exactly what the issues were there i mean rampant homosexuality and things like that.

And then you look at our culture today i mean we're that is rampant as well and not only homosexuality. You've got the killing of babies uh in droves and uh you've just got so much wickedness going on in our world today that i wonder how much longer will it be until god does hand us over to complete destruction.

When we look back at sodom and gomorrah and i even think about the temple in 80 70 you know uh the judgment that came there uh there's so much judgment in throughout the bible that we see because people turn their backs and we still live in this romans one world right.

So you know for me i mean i think that we are under some form of judgment by god and the question i have for myself is how long until this thing is just completely wiped out and we're left in ashes so to speak um i just can't help but this think about the timing of this topic uh i don't watch the grammys nor will i ever i don't think um better off because of that.

Yeah but i mean you guys have and and ladies have likely seen the social media posts today from last night and uh i can't remember the guy's name but he's a popular singer dressed up with all in red with his horns and uh all the people in red and they're bowing down to him you know they're on the stage and uh cbs saying we're ready to worship things like that.

I mean uh if we're not under under some form of judgment then i would be highly surprised because there's rampant wickedness all around us. And unfortunately uh this is another i'm just going to throw this kind of curveball in here.

I was talking to my wife about this earlier and she said unfortunately this isn't something that's just happening outside the church because there's many people in the church that don't care about holiness and they're living wicked lives as well.

So unfortunately we have to deal with it inside the you know the local church so this thing is bigger than i think any of us really think it is okay. So what i want to do is i want to get.

Melissa's thoughts on this i wanted everyone to have a chance to speak into really how they understand and view the judgment of god. And then uh what we're going to do is um i have another question for everybody that everyone has to answer.

Okay i'm gonna do this. A little bit different than this is what he gets for putting me in charge. I'm not in charge but you know giving me the reins i guess um i have a question everyone's going to answer either a yes or no and then we can just open it up kick the door down and talk about the application specifically to whether or not america is under god's judgment.

But melissa i'd love to hear your thoughts on god's judgment in general. Oh she's got. Yeah we're working on it. There it is. I don't know it's like my keyboard.

Going in and out. Um yeah. So immediately when you started asking about um judgment and opposing it to wrath and looking at the distinctions i immediately thought of where. Um you know john 318 he he says that whoever doesn't believe is already judged.

Um. So when i think of judgment which i agree we are under a judgment. Um and i do think we definitely see wrath. Um. Right i agree with the the wrath on a nation and overall will be in a culmination of a wrath on the whole world.

Um when jesus before jesus returns. But um when i think about um judgment i think you know um about the removal of the holy spirit basically the removal of the word of god. And from there you just get a trickling down of just sinful behavior.

And. And. And that all starts with the church. So it all starts with where the church. Um how they exalt the word of god. Um do they proclaim it. Is the gospel proclaimed. Um. And. And. Um what's the verse.

I'm thinking of where it begins in the house of god. Is it literally saying judgment andrew or aaron. You would know. You're really good at that. Um give me more. I don't know. I'm sorry i can't think of what it is.

You're trying to say. I think it is it does somebody know. Is it judgment. Or is.

It actually in the house of god. Yeah if it starts with the house of god how much worse would it be.

Right. So that's what i what i was thinking. Um it's just a removal of the holy spirit among the churches and then a removal of the light among the nation all. Right. Good. So the reason i asked.

That question is that honestly uh for me when i was thinking through this and this is not something that i've studied in great detail so i'm not speaking as any type of an authority but i kind of struggled because i saw on one side the the natural consequences that are part of life um and then i also see that that judicial god declaring you know like he has prophesied this nation if you do this you will be destroyed.

It's a big biblical apocalyptic type of a thing. And then somewhere you know all the different things the shades of gray in the middle i was having a hard time um saying you know one way or another yes or no.

I actually i was having a hard time being able to pull from the scriptures and being able to answer today's question. So here's what we're going to do. Um i'm.

Going to start off i'm going to i'm going to ask before we move out move on tonight. Can i go ahead and read that scripture because we keep referring to the romans 1. And i thought it might be good to just actually read that scripture.

Definitely. Um so the the passage that we're referring to is romans 1 18 through uh 25. I believe. For god's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Since what can be known about god is evident among them because god has shown it to them for his invisible attributes that is his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen since the creation of the world being understood through what he has made.

As a result people are without excuse. For though they knew god they did not glorify him as god or show gratitude. Instead their thinking became worthless and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal god for images resembling mortal man birds four-footed animals and reptiles.

Therefore god delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of god for a lie and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the creator who is praised forever amen.

And there's more beyond that. But i think that's enough. And then the first peter 4 17.

Passage says for it is time for judgment to begin at the household of god and if it begins with us what will be the outcome for those who did not obey the gospel of god. Really very powerful. So um yeah dom real quick we'll come to come back to you and just go ahead just to throw a red herring.

Into this argument right. Just so no just a little bit that's all i'm not going to start no trouble but you know like a lot of reform guys today are post mill guys especially like you know you got a lot of the main guys like dr white and stuff like that so now if you're a post mill guy you think the world's going to get a lot better before again.

So now there's another red herring you throw into this right. I mean right garrett you're smiling. Right. I mean yeah i don't think smells.

Fishy. It's inevitable that this conversation goes to eschatology. It has to it has to right.

There's no way you can get out of it because if you're a post mill guy you feel this is going to get better at one point and obviously and then there's the other. The biblical standpoint would differ.

Yeah no. Oh. Gloves are off gloves are off. I told you i just threw a red herring. I'm not.

Looking to start a beef or anything like that but anyway all right. So real quick um uh i i found this article. John piper i don't turn to piper for everything uh but he was really able to articulate this pretty well.

He says that there are at least five ways the bible talks about god's judgment in general. Number one in judgment god hands over the impenitent to hardening in this life. And he quotes romans 1 18. Number two in judgment god punishes nations in history both israel and others.

Number three there will be a final judgment of all people at the end of history. Number four the death of jesus was god's final punitive judgment on all who believe in christ. And number five individuals are sometimes judged in this life.

But for christians all judgments are disciplinary not destructive. So with that said what i'd like everyone to do is this everyone unmute yourself so we can do this quickly. I'm basically going to say your name and what i want you to do is give a one word answer yes or no to the question is america under god's judgment.

Now when that's done everyone's going to give a yes or no answer. Um then i'm going to open it up and we're going jump in here and i like you know we're going to say okay. Well this is why i answered that and i think the best thing to do obviously you know because this is theology throw down is to make sure we can support what we're saying from the scriptures.