Chris Larson President of Ligonier Ministries: Responds to Elon Musk on Deep Time #DMW191

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Well, hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking.

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I'm your host, Greg Moore.

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Thanks for coming along on the ride.

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Yes, once dead in our sins and trespasses, but now alive in Christ.

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Raised to high in priestly places, Ephesians is where you can find that.

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Go check it out.

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Well, normally I would chat for a little bit, maybe tell you about my week, but we want to get right into it because we have a very special guest on this week.

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And I think we're going to be talking about something that is extremely interesting.

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I think it's important for our time.

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This gentleman is President and Chief Executive Officer of Ligonier Ministries.

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He joined Ligonier in 2004.

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He directs and leads all strategic outreach initiatives overseas, daily ministry operations, seeking to spread the historic Christian faith to as many people as possible.

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He previously worked in the educational and corporate world before joining the ministry, and he holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Central Florida.

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Yes, it is Chris Larson.

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Chris, how are you today, sir? It's good to be with you, Greg, and thanks for calling me a special guest.

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I'm not going to try and read too much into that.

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Well, I have to tell you, some of the listeners have messaged me and said, you know, you call every guest a special guest.

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And I said, well, when you have gentlemen on that are much smarter than you and very interesting and can hold a conversation about the Lord, well, then they're very special to me.

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So I appreciate you taking time today to come here and talk with us.

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But first, before we get into what we want to talk about, can you tell the listeners a little more about you? Maybe give us a little bit of your background.

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I know I read the bio there.

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Maybe a snippet of your testimony on how the Lord saved you, just so we can get to know where you're coming from.

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Absolutely.

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It's an honor to be with you and thankful for your listenership and the interviews that you've conducted.

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I think it's providing a great service to the church.

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So I just want to encourage you to keep on doing what you're doing.

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Yeah, it's a joy to talk about the Lord's grace, isn't it? Amen.

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He saved a wretch like me.

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And he saved me when I was in my teens.

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And I grew up in the church, conservative Southern Baptist church, but I wouldn't say that I knew the Lord growing up.

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And this is even relevant, I think, to some of our discussion.

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My father worked for NASA his entire career.

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And my grandfather worked for NASA in the early days of the space program, the Apollo program, Gemini even.

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And so always grew up around smart folks and really keen to look at science as well.

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And so I grew up in just kind of assumed Christianity.

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But my dad transferred from one NASA facility down to Florida, Kennedy Space Center.

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He wanted to be a little bit closer to some of the action and was involved with a lot of research and development projects for lunar and Mars missions.

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And anyways, it was that disruption when I was in high school that the Lord used to bring me to himself.

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When I left Virginia, which is where I was born and raised, my grandmother, who was an army wife and had traveled all around the world.

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And so she was well aware of what it was like to pick up roots and move.

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She said, whenever you move to a new town, always make your friends at church.

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And as a 16-year-old, I was like, yeah, right, grandma.

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Of course, of course, sure, I'll do that.

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The polite thing you say to your grandmother.

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Well, I did.

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And I met people who had a relationship with Jesus Christ that I did not have.

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They had a living relationship with the Lord.

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They sought to understand his word, to obey him, to follow him, to share the love of Christ with others.

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And so they shared the love of Christ to me.

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They were very kind to me, very patient with me, many of whom remain friends to this day.

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And so the Lord saved me when I was about halfway through high school.

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I'll fast forward a little bit and just kind of try and bring it a little bit current with even what I do today.

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Several years went by, always sensed that I wanted to serve the church in some capacity.

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I didn't know exactly what that would look like.

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I would later go on to test a call to preaching, to being in the pulpit by going to seminary, attending seminary.

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And it was really a friend of mine who was discipling me back when I was in college, who was trying to answer some questions for me about God's will, all right? So as teenagers, you're wanting to please the Lord, but you have all these questions about God's will for your life.

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What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to marry? Where am I supposed to live? All these things that can make you a little bit anxious.

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And I didn't have good theology to fall back on.

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And my friend who's discipling me and mentoring me, he helped me to understand that it's not the strength of my faith in the Lord, it's the strength of the object of my faith.

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And he illustrated that for me by helping me to understand God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15.

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And would go on to explain to me God's promises and then how God ratified that covenant there later in Genesis 15, where God gives this example of the animals and passes through the animals.

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And Abraham is a witness to this, but my friend was telling me, God is promising to do for Abraham something that Abraham cannot do for himself.

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And basically saying, I'm putting myself on the line, Abraham, if I don't do what I've said I will do.

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Well, come to find out, my friend, he's taking classes at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, and he's got this professor named Sproul.

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And I don't know who that is.

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Later to understand it's Sproul.

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Yeah.

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And so that was actually my initial voyage into understanding a covenantal framework for how God has revealed himself to be in his character and his sovereignty and his power, his holiness, his goodness, and his condescension towards sinners.

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And so my friend just gave me a taste of Reformed theology, and that was all it took.

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And really, you know, and so I kind of would tease RC in later years, you know, thanks for messing up my life, because it completely changed my trajectory in my thinking in terms of even work, marriage, vocation, family.

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And of course, I'm just so richly blessed that the Lord used RC in the life of this man who is discipling me to kind of help a teenager at that point to really, to come to understand a little bit better of who God was and who I am and how we can trust him.

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So that's, there's a lot more to that story, of course, but it's certainly relevant to why I'm so passionate about what Ligonier is doing today.

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Absolutely, and speaking of Ligonier, at the top of this show, I do wanna mention that you and Ligonier have offered each of our listeners a free gift.

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If listeners, if you go to ligonier.org forward slash theologians, you can get a free ebook download of RC Sproul's, Everyone is a Theologian.

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I'm going to link that up in the, when this podcast goes live, I'm gonna link it up so you can click on it, but we do appreciate that free gift for our listeners.

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I would highly recommend it, and it's gonna kind of focus on some of the stuff we're gonna be talking here today.

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So thank you so much for that gift to our listeners.

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Absolutely, we think that's a great place to start, to understand a systematic approach to theology.

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There's so much to study, of course, but Dr.

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Sproul had a way of communicating that really connects with people, and so many more people even today are just discovering his teaching now for the first time, and probably then even when he was alive, it's been quite remarkable to see the Lord's blessing.

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Yes, I've always said, and I've said it on the podcast before, so I won't belabor the point, but grew up in a non-denominational but very kind of legalistic Southern Baptist church, to where certain drum beats were from the devil, and then later in life, in my teens, went to a very Pentecostal church, where we're talking about feathers and gold dust and things like that, so had this swing in theology and said the sinner's prayer at seven, the Lord saved me at 24, and when I tell that to Reformed folk, they kind of understand it.

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When I tell it to non-Reformed folk, they kind of look at me funny, but I've always said, I was reading through the Bible, kind of shedding some traditions of what I'd been taught, which were just church traditions, really wasn't in the word of God, read a book called Debating Calvinism by James White, and I went, what? There's people who actually believe, right? And then the very next step was got ahold of R.C.

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Sproul.

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I'm talking 1970s, early 80s.

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He's wearing that sweet seersucker red vest.

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He's got the fro going, and he's just preaching.

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I mean, there's a reason why we call him the professor.

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I mean, just taking these deep things that I'd wondered about and thought about and asked my pastor about, and no one could really answer because they were so seeped in their traditions of just, this is what the word of God says.

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I'm forever grateful to R.C.

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Sproul and to Ligonier Ministries.

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And to any listeners right now, I've said it in the past, but I'm gonna say it again while you're on here.

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If you're listening to this podcast, make sure you go to Ligonier, go to that donate page and support ministries like this.

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They need to be supported.

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There's a lot of places we can put our hard-earned money, but I would absolutely say this one has to go at one of the top of your list for the kind of work that you guys are doing.

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So with that being said- Local church first.

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Local church first.

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Always local church first.

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So out of the offerings above that, make sure we're supporting Ligonier.

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Absolutely.

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So I wanted to talk to you about something that I saw on the internet.

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I really loved the response.

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I saw that, I saw probably seven or eight different people on my feed had retweeted it and it got some traction.

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And I just went, hmm.

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Because we sign off on this podcast every week with the chief in demand is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

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And sometimes even, you know, we get into these Christianese where we just kind of say things and then we don't really stop and think of the deepness of it and what it is.

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Even Bible verses sometimes we'll just kind of spit out and use it for something we really focus and meditate on it.

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I want to read this tweet.

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So Elon Musk, I think this was early in September.

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He said, may you live forever is the worst possible curse once you understand deep time.

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And I just loved your response.

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It was respectful and it said, man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, happy to discuss further.

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And I went, wow, that's a podcast episode right there because I would love to discuss that further.

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Now I know Elon Musk, maybe one day you'll be able to sit down with him and I'll be the first one watching that interaction because I'm praying for that brother as well too.

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But what are we talking about when we say the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever? Obviously we're referring to the very first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I'm confessional to.

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I would assume you are as well.

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What are we talking about there? When we're, are we talking, you know, he also mentioned deep time and he's getting a little, you know, philosophical.

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What was your response? What did you mean or what did you intend to say in that response? Yeah, first of all, I think, you know, we have to remember that we should pray for everyone to come to know the Lord.

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We do not know who the Lord's elect are.

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And so we should, we should pray that the Lord would bring these influential people to himself, whether it's a movie star or a politician or a businessman.

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And I think all of us have kind of seen that there's something that's restless in Elon's heart, even just, he kind of puts it all out there.

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And a number of us have observed this and pray for him to come to a peace of knowing who the Lord is.

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Because I think that, you know, that of all that he's accomplished, you and I both know that it means nothing in the light of eternity.

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And it's actually that idea that he was bumping up against in that tweet.

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I don't know, are you going to put up the tweet so people can see it after you do the edit? Yeah, so, you know, when he puts this in quotes, may you live forever, let's get to that in just a moment.

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But he brings up this concept of space time or deep time.

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And so initially I was thinking, okay, what are you saying there? And it relates to this other quote that he puts up there, this common phrase that, you know, subservient people would say to, you know, a king or a queen or something like, you know, may you live forever.

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We see these things in movies all the time.

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But, you know, he brings up this idea of understanding deep time.

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And there's a little bit of hubris in that.

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It was like, because I think that's actually the point.

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We don't really understand deep time.

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He doesn't understand deep time.

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I don't understand deep time.

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I mean, we can scratch the surface of astronomical time, geological time, even there, there's wide debates as to some of these date ranges.

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But even if you just take, you know, the vast distances in the universe, you know, I mean, our closest star or star system, Alpha Centauri, you know, the light from that is gonna take about, what is it, about four hours, or is it four years to get to us? And then you look at some of these images that the Hubble Space Telescope would send back from years ago.

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They have this one image of the Eagle Nebula.

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And the light that is reaching the Hubble took 7,000 years to reach it.

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And so once we're dabbling in this concept of time, we're starting to bump up against other realities when you conjoin it with space time.

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And I grew up again, you know, a NASA, son of a NASA employee, and growing up around the Pioneer launches.

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I still remember going with my dad out to NASA when they were receiving the first images back from the Pioneer probe of, it was sending back images from Saturn.

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And this was, you know, just amazing.

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I put this huge poster up on my wall, amazing.

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And then Hubble would come along a few years later with its deep field images.

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And that just blows your mind.

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When you're not looking at stars, you're looking at billions of galaxies with, you know, innumerable stars.

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Incidentally, the Lord says he calls them all by name.

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So again, testifying that the heavens are declaring the glory of God.

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More on that later, I think.

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So Einstein bumped up against these questions of dimensional reality, whether it's the relativity when it's related to space time, the gravitational impacts on light.

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And I don't think we can say we understand deep time.

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And I'm guessing that if I was able to sit down, you know, and have a cup of coffee with Mr.

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Musk, he'd concede that point as well.

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Nobody understands deep time.

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You can just postulate vast distances, vast time.

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But then you get to this question of may you live forever.

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Okay, well now that's a really interesting thing to conjoin there because you and I, we know that we will live forever.

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In fact, all humans will live forever, okay? And I would love to be able to sit down and just, you know, talk with him about the idea that, you know, like C.S.

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Lewis said, fish, as they're swimming, they're not sitting there thinking, boy, this water sure is wet, right? Right, yeah.

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But Lewis goes on to make the point to say that isn't it interesting that we're always going around saying, boy, how time flies? Or look at your son, look how quickly he's grown.

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And we always relate things to time.

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We're always talking about time.

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And we're surprised by the passage of time.

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And Lewis basically says, this is very strange.

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He says it's almost like we're made for another world.

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And of course.

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Yeah, it's not natural, yeah.

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Of course we are.

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Yeah.

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And then you add to that, you know, from the Lord's perspective, I mean, certainly we have the testimony that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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And there's a time-based context to that.

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But you have the Lord who created time as a construct, which he himself inhabits.

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And for him, time is all now.

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Absolutely.

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He never has to see something in the future to learn of what is going to happen.

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He never has to unite this present moment, in which you're speaking right now, to what's happened before, because he perceives it all as an eternal now.

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And so I think, you know, that would be a great place to start to talk about, well, deep time.

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Yeah, which very quickly too is, you know, in this realm in which we are, which we are not made for, there is no now.

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When we say now, we're talking about the very near past or the very near future.

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There is no absolute now.

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As soon as you say now, it's now past.

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And if you're talking about a time and place that you're going to say now, it's future, right? So even saying Christ is now, we don't have access to that in the time-space kind of continuum which we are.

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So I really like the philosophical view he takes too, I would say, and maybe you can comment on this.

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Yeah, if he says, if you understand deep time the way I'm interpreting it, most likely without an eternity in heaven or hell, without a creator, without a God, then yeah, living forever can be pretty terrifying.

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And to me, it looks like, I go, yeah, yes, you are correct, Elon.

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If you do not believe in a creator or a maker, then yeah, that can be very terrifying.

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And I like that you followed it up with the very first point of Westminster, which gets it right out there in the open.

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It's our very first question and answer, and it's dealing with time.

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It puts it straight forward.

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Yeah, I mean, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

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Going back to Lewis, he says, you've never met a mere mortal.

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Whenever we're dealing with men and women around the world, he says, you're either meeting somebody who's going to be an everlasting splendor or an eternal horror.

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And eternity is now.

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It's not something that we're waiting to experience because we inhabit time as creatures right now.

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In fact, we did an issue of Table Talk a couple of years ago, 2020, just on the subject of time, what is time.

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But we're creatures who inhabit time, but we have an existence that's going to last now, but that existence doesn't cease when our heart stops beating.

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And of course, this is the materialist view that this is all there is.

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And if the materialist is right, then Paul would say, okay, fine, eat, drink, be merry, because tomorrow you die.

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And Paul would even said, if in this life only we have hope, we are the most to be pitied.

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But of course, we have an eternal hope, a substantial hope, a hope that is sure and certain because God came into time in the person of Christ into space-time to fulfill the law, right? And to take the punishment that we deserve so that the relationship that God intended from the beginning as we learn in the opening pages of Genesis, God created the world not because he needed the world, but it was an overflow of who he is to have fellowship.

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In the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Spirit has perfect fellowship.

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He's lacking nothing.

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And it's out of that overflow of love, inter-Trinitarian love that the world is created.

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Edwards makes these points so much better than of course I'm able to, but that starts to get at, you know, why were we created? Why are we here? What is time? We were created to inhabit a sphere in which we would glorify God.

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And it's not because God needed worship.

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He needed nothing, right? He brings us into that relationship of love.

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And that's what it means to glorify God.

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And I guess we can talk to some of the practical applications as well.

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But when you think about forever, we're not waiting for that day to arrive.

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We don't, as believers, go through life thinking, you know, I can't wait till eternity arrives.

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Now- Unpack that for us a little bit.

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Yeah, I mean, the weight of sin, our own discouragements, our frustrations with indwelling sin in ourselves, certainly make us long to be free of that.

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But our relationship and our continuity of that relationship with the Lord and with his people will go on forever.

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And so he's bringing his people to himself.

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He's done the work of redemption and atonement for our sins through Jesus Christ.

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Once for all, we don't have to go to some purgatory to be made perfect or intrinsically righteous.

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God declares us righteous and imputes the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us.

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And therefore we have great hope.

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And so now we know that Jesus Christ says, I have come that they would know you, Father.

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Okay, well, we will know him now, but that knowing doesn't stop.

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It only accelerates, it only accelerates.

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And again, speed and time are closely related.

25:39

So we trip over our words here, Greg, when we're starting to talk about that which is ineffable, really almost, because we're starting to talk about a realm that we were created for.

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And we have a memory of what we were exiled from in the garden when we fell in sin with Adam.

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But we know that there's a restoration coming in a way that we are not experiencing just yet.

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And yet, eternity is now.

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And so, that's why we call people to faith in Christ with urgency, because today is the day of salvation.

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We urge people to come to Christ today.

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Don't think you will get around to it.

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Come to faith in Christ today, trust in him today.

26:40

And that's what I would even want to lovingly say to Elon, another titan of industry that this day that we're actually recording is the anniversary of Steve Jobs' death.

26:54

One of his famous speeches that I think he gave to Stanford University graduates at a commencement ceremony was he talked about death being the greatest change agent.

27:05

And part of that was the idea that we're all going to die, therefore we must use our time well.

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And he would talk about wanting to create a dent in the universe, whether or not he did that, frankly, eternity will tell that tale.

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But this is what materialists have.

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They have an end of the road that is waiting for them.

27:34

Now we understand the preciousness of time because time has been given to us to glorify God and to enjoy him even now.

27:44

But so many materialists, yeah, they see death as this, I got to get it all in.

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And they have their bucket list and all that sort of thing.

27:54

I don't have a bucket list.

27:57

I mean, there's a new heavens and a new earth coming.

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And Paul says, it hasn't even entered into our minds or our hearts what the Lord has prepared for those who love him.

28:08

And so I would just say and plead to Elon and to anyone else watching this, don't wait to trust Christ.

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You can know the Lord now, you can glorify him now, you can enter into this relationship of love with him even now.

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And so you can say, may you live forever in the knowledge of God and knowing him and going from glory to glory.

28:35

I mean, that's what believers live for.

28:39

And we're not waiting for some rescue.

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Yes, we wanna be rescued from this fallen world, but we have already been rescued in Christ from the greatest calamity that could ever happen.

28:52

And so to glorify God and to enjoy him forever means that we wanna save people from hating God and despising him forever, which is what those who are in hell will be doing.

29:06

They will be gnashing their teeth against the Lord.

29:12

Yeah, I think one reason why I was attracted to that tweet response was because of the difference in the worldview as well too.

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Not only is the materialist saying, let's get it all in and let's create the bucket list, but now we're in an area where secular science says, well, there is no creator, we're just a bunch of atoms floating around from space dust.

29:38

Morality is subjective, right? So we've gone into this insane kind of secular pagan world to where it's not only just you die and that's it, but now even the world that you're living in is, like I said, subjective morality and there's no creator and no image bearer of God, which I believe is a very drab view of life.

29:59

I don't know how anyone without the knowledge and the saving grace of Christ can walk around and not just be depressed and kind of reflect what Elon is saying.

30:09

And oh yeah, it's a scary thing to live forever.

30:11

Yeah, it is if you don't have Christ as your savior and you don't understand that you're an image bearer of God and there is a creator that sits outside of time, space and matter and all these things we've been talking about to where then you reply with, oh no, our chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

30:27

What, I don't wanna reduce it down to just a positive message, but what a worldview, what an uplifting, positive, enthralling worldview compared to what was just tweeted and that's what I believe the Christian holds to.

30:43

I completely agree with you.

30:45

I completely agree with you.

30:47

We can look around and see the corruption and the craziness of this world and it seems to only be getting crazier and the fabric of society is unraveling before our eyes.

30:57

And somebody like Elon actually sees that and he's decried the woke mind virus and some of the progressive ideologies because he sees how destructive some of these ideologies are but even for those who inhabit what would be a conservative sociopolitical sphere, more oftentimes than not, what I hear are people playing for very small stakes.

31:27

Their ideas are just as man-centered as some of the others on the progressive side because they don't have an eternal reference point.

31:40

And so without that eternal reference point, every other stop along the way becomes meaningless or just an exertion of might makes right.

31:52

Yeah, yeah.

31:53

It's funny because you said meaningless and it just, we're in probably the first couple months of a year-long study in Ecclesiastes and just an older man, Solomon, with his wisdom, looking back and saying, these things are vanity, they're meaningless, they're but a vapor against the backdrop of eternity and an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present God and all these things.

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And some people in the church went, oh, Ecclesiastes, what a tough book.

32:18

And I went, man, Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, some of my favorite books in the Bible because it's so rich in understanding the fear of God, understanding who he is, who we are in relation to him.

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And I really hope for more of that in the Western Christian church.

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And I know at Ligonier and through the Table Talk magazine that I receive each week, I get a renewal of that and almost underlining in all articles and I think it's very healthy.

32:42

But let's kind of put bookends on this here and maybe we could just talk about for a few minutes some of the practical ways that we glorify God and enjoy him forever.

32:51

Maybe touch on those things because I think you might have a few examples or things to say about it that most people might not be thinking about, might not be the normal way they'd respond.

33:02

What do you think are some practical ways to live out glorifying God and enjoying him while we're here on earth or you can talk about in eternity? Yeah, well, I love that you've been studying Ecclesiastes because it's even in there that we see that God has placed eternity in our hearts, right? And then we're called to remember our creator in the days of our youth and to fear God and to keep his commandments.

33:29

Yeah, to put a practical point on this exhortation, this huge goal of the chief end of all of humanity is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

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We go right back to the garden because that is the purpose for which we were made.

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And so the very first practical application is fellowship with God because that's what Adam and Eve had.

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That is why we were created to have this relationship that is worshiping the Lord, is in close fellowship with him and to commune with him.

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And so it's to know him and through his word is how he's revealed himself.

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And so that is how we come to know him in a special way.

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But on the other side, R.C.

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would talk about, as theologians have observed through the ages, that there's the book of nature as well in which God has revealed himself.

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And so there you have, even in Psalm 19, that the heavens declare the glory of God.

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I was flying back home last week.

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I was coming back from a meeting in Colorado and I was at the end of the day.

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And so I'm flying east and the sun's going down in the west.

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And the sun is just at an angle where it's just kind of bouncing off the tops of the clouds out my plane window.

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I took a picture of it and showed it to my wife when I got home.

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And I said, sweetheart, God gets to enjoy this every second of every day because there's always a sunset somewhere.

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And I said, I think I even understand even more now where it says in Psalm 19, day after day, it's pouring forth speech.

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And even now just talking about it, but talking about it with her is like, what have we just bumped up into just observing that testimony that the heavens are shouting the glory of God.

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And so here's a practical purpose.

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Observe what the heavens are saying.

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Observe, observe what nature is saying and declaring.

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And so again, that's not that you can just do that without interpretation because you have to have the scriptures to be able to interpret general revelation.

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And so that's where we understand how to appropriate what God has revealed in nature.

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And so whether it's the, yeah, go ahead.

36:25

Oh, no, I was just gonna say, I totally agree with you because we talk about this a lot on the podcast.

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I'm an avid hunter.

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I own some property in Northern Michigan and the creation is a common grace of God that just reflects his glory, continuously crying out.

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And we just choose to ignore it.

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And when I say we, unbelievers, even some believers will just choose to ignore that.

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For 15 years, not a little less than that.

36:50

Yeah, I can take it for granted.

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And it's that these moments that the Holy Spirit just comes and it's like, look, observe, see what I have done.

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And so that's a practical aspect, but some other practical aspects are seeking to follow the Lord.

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And so I do like Piper's twist that he adds.

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And one of the ways that he's sought to understand the Shorter Catechism, question one, to glorify God by enjoying him forever.

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There's certainly more that is there than just changing the word.

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But I think that we do glorify God as we enjoy him, just as we were talking about there, enjoying the beauty of his handiwork, enjoying the beauty of a new life that's come into the world and the preciousness of life.

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And so we glorify God by fighting for the unborn because these are eternal beings that have been made in the image of God.

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And so we advocate for ending abortion now because it is blasphemy against the image of God and defaces the image of God.

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We glorify God in being faithful to our marital vows.

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We glorify God by letting our yes be yes and our no be no.

38:32

We glorify God by worshiping and gathering with his people on the Lord's day and hearing his word preached.

38:40

I hear a lot of preaching, Greg.

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I meet with a lot of churches around the world, but I gotta tell you, it pains me when I'm not with the congregation that I'm a part of at St.

38:54

Andrew's Chapel.

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To be with people who know me, a pastor and elders who know me, I am under the ministry of the word there and I can glorify God best by being part of that body.

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I can't do it out on my own in that special way in which God has promised to meet with his people on the Lord's day.

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Loving our children, teaching them what the Lord commands, training them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, seeking to obey the Great Commission, seeking to help people to understand all that Christ has commanded so that the nations would come to know him.

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And we love to see the way God gifts different people.

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I'm not an engineer.

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My dad is a computer scientist and understands engineering and different programs and he's a really, really smart guy.

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And he has gifts that I don't have.

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You have gifts that I don't have.

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And I think that's the other way we glorify God is by celebrating the diversity of who he's made us as part of his body.

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Christ is the head, but he uses all of us.

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Maybe I'm a big toe.

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You might be a right arm.

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I don't know.

40:31

So that can sound a little bit simplistic, but I really don't think we need to complicate this.

40:38

No, I don't think so.

40:39

And I also would say too, I've had friends and people and even on podcasts and on videos say, well, enjoying him, embracing those things that he's allowed us to enjoy that are physically or emotionally or mentally pleasing to us, those are good.

40:56

Having a meal, Sabbath meal with brothers and sisters in the Lord or these types of things.

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But I would also say the Lord has, as he said, continues to sanctify me each second of each day.

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I've noticed that I can, yes, I can continually enjoy him in the valleys, in the correction, in the chastisement.

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There's also enjoyment there in a way of those he corrects, he loves.

41:21

So I would put that out there for listeners too.

41:23

The enjoyment of God just doesn't go to things that feel good or are emotionally pleasing or physically pleasing, which those things are there for us to enjoy and glorify him with, right? I think Spurgeon famously said after a two-hour sermon, someone asked him, what are you gonna do? And he said, well, I guess I'm gonna go home and roll up the cigar and smoke it onto the glory of God.

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So there was something there where he was giving glory to God, even in that cigar, whether you smoke or not, that was his quote, not mine.

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But I would say even in those times of chastisement, correctment, Lord, what are you teaching me? Repentance, all those things, there's an enjoyment there when you understand who you are and you understand who God is in the juxtaposition of those two things.

42:07

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing across the board.

42:11

Just wanted to put my two cents on that.

42:13

But let's give you the final word and then, oh, go ahead.

42:16

I was just saying, I mean, that's how Calvin begins his magnum opus of the Institutes.

42:22

It's the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man.

42:25

We have to have knowledge of God before we understand who we are and our need for a savior and the work that he's done on our behalf.

42:33

Yeah, so I'll give you the final word here.

42:36

Give us a summary to the people who are listening.

42:41

Glorify God, enjoy him forever.

42:43

We've covered a lot here.

42:44

And then let's talk about, just for a minute, what's on the horizon for Ligonier and what's coming up in your life.

42:51

Sure, absolutely.

42:53

We're so excited to just continue to take this mission forward in an unwavering way.

43:02

We have about 200 employees now at Ligonier who work at both Ligonier Ministries and Reformation Bible College.

43:11

And we're developing what we believe is the world's largest library of discipleship resources that are faithful to the historic Christian faith.

43:19

And of course, a lot of that is because of Dr.

43:22

Sproul's faithfulness over the years and his rather prolific output of teaching that we have even now.

43:29

But we've continued to add to that, of course.

43:32

R.C.

43:33

never wanted Ligonier to be about him.

43:35

He wanted it to be about a message that fueled a movement, helping the church around the world to understand the riches of Reformed theology.

43:47

And so we are focusing a lot of time and resources on translating our substantial library into the world's top 20 languages.

43:57

That covers about 80% of the world's population currently.

44:02

And some demographers and statisticians say that those top 20 languages will grow to be about 90% of the world's population in the next 20 or so years.

44:14

And so for us, it's just a strategic focus area.

44:17

It's a way to marshal our resources in one particular way.

44:21

We've got foreign language websites.

44:23

We're taking the Reformation Study Bible, seeking to distribute that around the world in Africa, South America.

44:30

We're putting it into French, Lord willing, in 2024.

44:34

So that's a big push for us.

44:36

Certainly it'd be a great blessing, we think, for the continent and Europe, but we're thinking how helpful this is gonna be for the church in Africa, for all those French-speaking nations there in Western Africa.

44:48

And so trying to put good, trusted resources in the hands of Christians around the world to be able to serve the church, come alongside the church, never supplant the church, to be able to give the church these discipleship resources.

45:04

Again, not even so much that we're raising the name of Ligonier or promoting R.C.

45:10

Sproul.

45:11

It's rather trying to pass that baton of truth to future generations because the church is moving and has moved to the global South.

45:20

It's just some folks here in North America haven't caught up to that reality, but I've seen it firsthand.

45:26

The church is growing.

45:29

There is an appetite for truth, but there's a great need for discipleship and for training.

45:37

And so we're trying to push real hard in that direction.

45:41

So doing that through digital means, physical distribution, conferences, you name it, but we're encouraged and very thankful for the opportunities God has given to us.

45:54

Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, taking time out to discuss these issues and matters with us.

46:01

I really do appreciate it.

46:03

That's a great joy, Greg.

46:04

May the Lord bless you and your listeners.

46:07

Amen.

46:08

So guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

46:12

Remember too, free gift from Ligonier to the listeners.

46:16

You can go to ligonier.org forward slash theologian and you can get R.C.

46:21

Sproul's ebook, free download.

46:23

Everyone is a theologian.

46:25

So we appreciate Ligonier doing that for our listeners.

46:28

I would say, make sure you go to that site, ligonier.org, check out what they have to offer, their resources.

46:33

And if so led, feel free to donate.

46:37

Guys, we appreciate you listening.

46:38

We appreciate you following us at dmwpodcast.com.

46:41

You can check out more about the show.

46:42

We're on social media, Dead Men Walking Podcast across all socials.

46:46

We love the constructive criticism.

46:47

We love the input and we just love you guys for coming along for the ride and hanging out with us every week that we do this and we try to glorify God.

46:56

Remember, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

46:59

God bless.

47:00

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