October 24, 2017 Show with Israel Wayne on “Questions Jesus Asks”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 24th day of October 2017.

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And last week we had on the program an excellent guest named

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Israel Wayne to address the Questions God Asks, which is the title of one of his books.

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This week, or today I should say, we are going to be addressing another book that he has written titled

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Questions Jesus Asks, and Israel Wayne is a conference speaker, a regular columnist for Homeschool Digest, Homeschool Enrichment, and the

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Old Schoolhouse Magazines. He's a site editor for christianworldview .net and an author of a number of books including

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Full -Time Parenting, A Guide to Family -Based Discipleship, and Pitching a

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Fit, Overcoming Angry and Stressed -Out Parenting. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Israel Wayne.

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Well thank you brother, it's a blessing to be back. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

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ChrisArntzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

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And just for the sake especially of those who have not heard you interviewed before,

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Israel, tell us something about your work with the homeschool movement and also christianworldview .net.

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Yes, well I've been working in Christian publishing for the past 25 years.

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I've worked in the capacity of being a publisher as well as working in marketing for Christian publishing.

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I've been a conference speaker since 1995. My wife and I both were home -educated back in, for my family, the late 70s was when we started.

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The early 80s was when my wife and her family started homeschooling. And so I grew up in the homeschool leadership world and worked as director of marketing for Homeschool Digest magazine for 20 years, and have been involved in running the christianworldview .net

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website, which is one of the larger Christian apologetics sites on the Internet, for 15 years or so.

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I have a great interest in apologetics, biblical worldview, and defending the

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Christian faith. So the book that we're going to talk about today is kind of a fusion of some of those interests of theology and apologetics, and really trying to establish a more biblical understanding of our relationship with Christ and with others.

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Now I know this is not the topic that we are discussing today primarily, but just to give some of our listeners who may be completely ignorant about what is going on in the public school system in the 21st century, their kids may have maybe already grown, and so there are things going on that were not going on when their own children were in public school, and perhaps there's some things that they need to know about because of their grandchildren or great -grandchildren.

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Could you summarize just some of the things that our listeners should be alarmed about in a briefest possible fashion, since it's not the main topic today, but I think it might be very important for our listeners to have some gist of the things that you're trying to protect them from.

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Right, well certainly within the last five years we've seen an increase in Common Core, which is a push towards international standards that are coming down through international standards, and a greater involvement of the federal government in the role of education.

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That certainly is a trend in the wrong direction, moving us more towards a globalist society.

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The reintroduction of a completely revised standard of ethics as it relates to sexuality has been a new thing, relatively speaking.

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I mean, we've had sexual relativism for a long time, but you know, this whole transgender issue, transgender bathrooms, transgender locker rooms, teaching even kindergarteners and second graders that gender is just a fluid concept and that you can decide for yourself what gender you are.

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You know, these are trends that are new and emerging and disturbing, but I think some of the older trends, you know, humanism and relativism and Darwinian evolution, and really just, you know, the fact that God is presented as either non -existent or irrelevant should be reason enough for Christian parents to move their children out of government schools into Christian education.

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We talked about on your show a while back, my book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion? I would strongly encourage parents or grandparents or pastors to pick up a copy of that book,

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Education, Does God Have an Opinion?, and give it a careful reading, because I think it's a very important topic.

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And one thing that I have had disagreement with, or disagreement over,

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I should say, with some of my fellow Bible -believing conservative

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Christians, is they will say in great number, we need to bring prayer back into the public school, we need to bring the

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Bible back into the public school. Well, it's one thing if you're talking about the freedom of children to read their

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Bible and to pray while in public school, but it's an altogether different thing to want pagans to be leading your children in prayer and saying anything about what the

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Bible teaches. To me, it's just bizarre how conservative evangelical Bible -believing

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Christians would want those things in public school systems, when the teacher could be anything from an active homosexual to a

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Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness or a New Age advocate, or it could be anything. Why on earth would you want a teacher or a school principal to have anything to do with your child's spiritual life in a public school setting?

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Well, it really is the parents' job to teach values and faith to their children. The problem is that education is not religiously neutral, and so someone's faith and values are going to be promoted and somebody else's faith and values are always going to be minimized and neutralized, and the current trend is that Christianity is the faith and the religion that will be marginalized and neutralized.

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And so in my view, this is why having parents be completely entirely in control of their own children's education is obviously the best path for all concerned, because I'm not paying with my tax dollars for somebody's religious values to be taught, and religious values will be taught one way or the other.

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You're either going to include God in every subject, or you're going to deny God and pretend like he doesn't exist.

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Both of those are religious positions. Amen. Well, let's move on now to your book,

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Questions Jesus Asks, and just because of the fact that there may be some who are puzzled as to why you would have a book titled

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Questions God Asks, and then another book titled Questions Jesus Asks, they may be puzzled and wrongly think you believe that Jesus is not

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God. Obviously, I know you do. If you could just explain why you have the two books, where some might jump to the wrong conclusion that there would be different questions asked because Jesus is not

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God, they might think you believe, and obviously Jesus would have unique questions that the other members of the

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Trinity might not have because of the fact that Jesus, although being fully God, he was since his incarnation also fully man, and he had a different role in the salvation of sinners than the

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Father and the Holy Spirit have. So there would be unique questions, obviously, but if you could tell us about why the two books.

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Yes. Well, I would certainly encourage anyone who didn't get to hear our previous interview talking about Questions God Asks to please look through the archives and listen to that broadcast as well.

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The first book, Questions God Asks, came out of a Bible study that I was doing personally, just reading through the

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Old Testament, and I began to notice frequent occasions when God asked people questions, and that really seemed odd to me, because one of the doctrines we know to be true of God is that he is omniscient, he knows all things, and so when

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God is asking, Abraham, where is your wife Sarah? And he's asking Balaam, who are these men with you?

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And he's asking Adam in the garden, where are you? And all these questions, it seems like this is an odd thing for God to do, and so I started to ask myself why those questions were there, because we know that God never does anything arbitrarily or capriciously, so if God is asking a question, there's a purpose in it.

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He doesn't use meaningless words. Jesus talked about how we would be judged on Judgment Day for every idle word that we speak, so we know that God won't violate his own principles, he won't violate his nature, so he's obviously not asking idle questions.

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And so I started to ask myself, who are these questions for, and what is their intent?

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What is it that God wants the people that he's asking to think about? And we do this as we instruct our children.

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Many times we will ask a question of them, rather than telling them what to think or, you know, giving them an obvious solution to something.

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We'll ask a question to try to draw them out and to help them think through the process, and God does that as well.

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And so in that first book, I outlined 19 different questions in the Old Testament that God asked, and when

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I wrote out the topics, I was just surprised to see that it was almost like an overview of systematic theology.

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It was like the major doctrines of the faith seemed to be addressed in these questions that God asked.

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And so I started developing that book, but at the same time, I started thinking about how

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Jesus was the master at asking questions. And so I put together 20 questions from the

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New Testament that Jesus asked, and developed this second book.

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So the first book is really a topical Bible study through the Old Testament, based on questions that God asks people, and questions

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Jesus asks is based predominantly in the Gospels, but entirely in the

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New Testament, on questions that Jesus asked. And this book was a little more complicated, a little more complex in some ways, but it was also extremely enjoyable for me to write, and I think the readers who have read it have found it extremely engaging and thought -provoking for them as readers as well.

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Amen. By the way, I found the copy of your book that I was looking for, so I do have that in front of me now.

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As many of our listeners know, I've been in a frenzy lately preparing for the upcoming

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Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon, which is day after tomorrow. It's Thursday, October 26th, 11am to 2pm, and I have been running around like a madman, or a chicken with its head cut off, or whatever proverbial description you want to go to.

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So I do want you to rest at ease that I have the book here. But I think something that you might want to bring up in the beginning, as you did in your book, in the introduction, is answering the question, was

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Jesus omniscient? This is something that seemed to come up last time we had you on, on a number of occasions, even though our specific theme was the title of your first book,

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Questions God Asked, people were asking a lot about Jesus Christ, because there are things that are hard for us to fathom, because of the fact that the hypostatic union brings about things that I think some issues in regard to that are a mystery to us until we are in glory.

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But if you could, tell us about the omniscience of Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's a super question.

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It was one that I really struggled with in terms of figuring out how to address it within the book. As I was writing the book,

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I actually had a conversation with a guy in my church, and I was telling him about the book and how

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I was writing it, and he asked me, do you believe that Jesus was omniscient?

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And I said, well of course he was omniscient. He said, well what would you base that on? And I said, well he's divine, he's

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God, and God is omniscient, and Jesus is not less God than the Father or Holy Spirit, and there are divine attributes that clearly describe and define who

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God is and separate him from everyone else. And I said, for example, you know,

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God is eternal, he is omniscient, he knows all things, he's omnipotent, he's all -powerful, he's omnipresent, he's everywhere, and I said, these are things that God, and well, and he's perfectly holy, right?

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And so these are things that are attributes of God that are not attributes of anything that's not

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God, or anyone that's not God. These are non -transferable attributes, and so we have what we call the transferable or communicable attributes of God, and the non -communicable attributes of God.

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And the Latin phrase for this doctrine is the comunicado idiomatum, and the idea is that God does communicate certain attributes or aspects of his nature and character to us, but there are other attributes that he cannot.

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So for example, love and peace and joy and patience and those kinds of attributes of God, he does transfer to us in limited capacity so that we can experience that in some way, but you know, omnipresence, we don't experience that in any way.

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That belongs to God alone. Anyway, as I was talking to this guy in my church, he said, well, you know, it's interesting, but Jesus was not omnipresent when he was on Earth.

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He said, is it possible that he laid aside some of his attributes when he came to Earth, and that he didn't utilize those, even though he's divine, even though he's

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God, is it possible that, you know, maybe he didn't utilize some of those characteristics when he was here on Earth?

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And I thought, well, you know, obviously Jesus was not omnipresent, but I don't know exactly what

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I think of that, and so I started to really look into this and just to kind of lay all my presuppositions aside and to say, what does the

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Scripture actually teach? And so I'll try to go through this really quickly, but there are some things that give us the viewpoint that perhaps

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Jesus did mature and grow and learn in some capacity.

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One of the places we see that is in Luke 2, when Jesus, it says of Jesus that he increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.

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Infinite wisdom does not increase. Infinite wisdom, by definition, doesn't grow. We're also told in Hebrews 5, 8, that Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered.

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And so in what way did Jesus learn, and what way did he need to learn? And so it's really interesting that apparently there was a sense in which

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Jesus came to know things and learn things. And you know, I had to ask myself, when

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Jesus was two years old, did he know how to be potty -trained automatically? Did he know not to touch the hot kettle?

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Did he know how to speak every language that was known to humankind? Could he build furniture perfectly as a young child?

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Right, exactly. And so there are things that, you know, we wonder, what did he know?

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But the first time that we really see Jesus talking is when he's at the temple, and he's 12 years old, and it's interesting that immediately he's asking questions, right?

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We see him asking questions of the teachers of the law that would show the pattern for his whole life.

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But he knew, you know, the question that he asked his own parents, and he said, didn't you know that I would be in my father's house?

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It revealed that he had some divine revelation. He had some knowledge about who he was, even at the age of 12.

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And so what I want to communicate here, and kind of bottom line this, we can come back to it, but I just want to bottom line it for everybody, is two things that I want us to consider very carefully.

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Number one, I like what you said about the fact that there is some mystery to understanding

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God and who he is and how he relates to us, and I think that's healthy. I think it's important for us to remember that if we think that we can completely and totally understand

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God infinitely with our finite reasoning capacities, that really is an arrogant presupposition or assumption, because we are so limited.

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But what we can know is we can know everything that we need to know, right? The Scripture tells us that he's given us everything that we need to know for life and godliness, and so we have the knowledge that we need to know.

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The thing that we know, of course, is that Jesus was completely God, even from conception, and that there was never a point in time where he ceased to be

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God, and so at no point is Jesus divinity ever in question.

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The tension of, you know, as a human, how he was able to grow and learn and develop and yet still be divine is something that is a bit of a mystery to us, but I think we don't in any way have to question the validity of who he was, because the

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Scripture's just forthright and clear about that. Right, even though God is immutable, unchangeable, there still was something different that occurred within the divine

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Godhead, is that the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who existed from all eternity, there was never a beginning with Jesus Christ, but there was a beginning of his humanness, his conception, the incarnation.

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Yeah, yeah, a great point. Yeah, immutability also being one of those non -communicable attributes of God, it's what makes

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God God and separates him from everything else that is not God. God does not change, and yet we see that Jesus grew in stature as well, and so there is this divine mystery, and that's why

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I called the subtitle of Questions Jesus Asked, Where Divinity Meets Humanity, because we do have the tension that goes on here, trying to understand what it's like.

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And there are questions that Jesus asked that make some people wonder, make people consider, you know, was

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Jesus asking this question for himself because he didn't know the answer, or was, you know, was he always operating with divine knowledge and I think about the time, for example, where this woman touched

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Jesus, the hem of his garment, and he felt virtue go out from him, and so he says, and this is in Luke 8, 45 through 46, he said, who touched me, was a question that Jesus asked.

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And Jesus said, someone touched me for I perceived that power has gone out from me. And it seems like in this situation that he's asking because he sensed power go from him, and he's trying to figure out who touched him.

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The disciples are saying, look, you know, you have a crowd pressing around you. Why do you ask that? How could you possibly discern who had touched you?

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Other theologians say, well, it's very clear he's asking the question to draw out the woman who touched him, and there are questions like, you know, when he asks, my

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God, well, have you forsaken me? A lot of people point to that and say, was this a real moment of questioning on the part of Jesus where he feels forsaken or abandoned in some ways?

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And then, of course, Mark 13, 32, where it says that of the day and the hour of the return of the

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Son of Man, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.

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So we know there's at least one case where Jesus did not know the day and the hour of the return, at least during his incarnation.

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And so these questions, what I do in the book, is I deal with them and I address them, but I also want us to have the ability to reserve a bit of awe and wonder and amazement as we study to just realize that some of these topics are so much bigger than us and so much bigger than our ability to discern and understand infinitely, and that's why we have to continue to study and learn and grow.

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And I think that we should also make it clear that whatever limitations

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Jesus Christ as a man voluntarily brought upon himself on this earth, we can rest assured that those limitations do not exist now that he is seated at the right hand of the

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Father and ruling and reigning in heaven. He is just as omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent as the

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Father and the Holy Ghost. Yes, absolutely. I'd like to look at a couple of verses here if we have time.

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Do we have a minute before the break? Yes. Okay. You know, so just talking about how

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Jesus talked about the relationship He had with the Father, in Luke 10, 22,

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He says, all things have been handed over to Me by My Father. John 5, 30 says, I can do nothing on My own.

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As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just. But I seek not My own will, but the will of Him who sent

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Me. John 8, 28 says, I do nothing on My own authority, but speak just as the

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Father taught Me. And John 12, 49 says, for I have not spoken on My own authority, but the

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Father who sent Me has given Me a commandment what to say and what to speak. So Jesus had this viewpoint of complete and total reliance on the

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Father. And then in John 10, 17 through 18, He says, for this reason the

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Father loves Me, because I have laid down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.

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I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again. This charge

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I received from My Father. And so we have a wonderful example of how Jesus was willing to condescend to become a lowly human, and Philippians 2 talks about that too, how

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He humbled Himself and He became obedient, even though He was in very nature God, He became obedient to death, even to death on the cross.

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And so we stand in awe, we stand in wonder of the fact that this incredible, almighty, all -powerful, all -knowing

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God was willing to cross this chasm of space and time to come and be born of a virgin and to become like one of us to save us.

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And to me that's just, it's the greatest story that the world has ever heard. It's the greatest mystery, the greatest scandal, if you will, that we've ever heard, that God would condescend and become a man.

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Amen. Well, we're going to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal and private matter.

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And we'll be right back, God willing, right after these messages with Israel Wayne and questions

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Jesus asks. One sure way all

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Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor.

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And that was the voice of Bill Shishko, who is my keynote speaker for the first time at my next

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon, which is this Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m.

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to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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We have extended the RSVP date to Wednesday night, the 25th of October, and we are including in our invitation now any man who listens to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience. Just send us your registration so we have a headcount for the food, and the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and just put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.

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Our guest of honor will be Stephen Bloom, who is a vibrant, unwaveringly committed

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Christian, and he is the Pennsylvania State Representative as well as a candidate for Congress, and every man that attends this luncheon is leaving with a very heavy sack of brand -new books that have been selected by me from major publishers all over the

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United States and the United Kingdom. Almost every major publisher has been donating to these

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Pastor's Luncheons going back to the 1990s. This was a tradition that my late wife,

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Julie, began in the 1990s, and I have picked up the mantle and have continued on with her tradition to keep it alive after she went home to glory, and I look forward to not only meeting many of you for the first time, but also seeing old friends and acquaintances and enjoying a wonderful time of fellowship with you.

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Everything is absolutely free of charge. There's no hidden agenda. There's no ulterior motive. You're not going to be sold anything.

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In fact, nobody at the Pastor's Luncheons, according to the strict rules of my late wife, nobody could sell anything.

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There's not going to be a vendor booth where somebody is going to be selling books or trinkets or anything like that.

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Everything that is done there at those luncheons is absolutely free of charge.

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So we look forward to seeing you, and I look forward to receiving your registrations by Wednesday night, and the luncheon, again, is this

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Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. We are now back to our discussion with Israel Wayne on his book,

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Questions Jesus Asks, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I might as well go to some of our listener questions.

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We have Joe in Slovenia, who says, Dear Brother Chris, I can't tell you how much your great topics and guests bless me each day.

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My question for Brother Israel is, How important is it for us to determine and distinguish between Jesus's questions for communication effect and lack of knowledge, that is, if it can be assumed that Jesus lacks some knowledge about various topics recorded for us in Scripture?

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As an example, when he said, Where have you laid him, in reference to Lazarus's body in John 11, 34, was he unaware of the location of Lazarus's body, or was this a rhetorical question for effect?

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And how important, if at all, is it for us to discern this distinction in similar texts for interpretation and application purposes?

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Thanks so much for taking my question. Well, thank you, Joe, for your question, and that is a wonderful question, and one that I really wrestled with in this book.

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The first thing I'd like to address here is the fact that we know from Scripture that Jesus did utilize special knowledge.

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And there are a number of places in Scripture where that is the case. In John 1, 45 through 51, when

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Jesus meets Nathanael, he says, Behold, an Israelite, in whom there is no guile or no deceit.

36:17

Nathanael asked, Well, how do you know me? And Jesus told Nathanael that he had seen him under the fig tree, and that was when

36:23

Nathanael declared, You are the Son of God, you're the King of Israel. He recognized that Jesus' knowledge was not something that he could have known as an ordinary person, that it was specially revealed knowledge.

36:40

In Matthew 17, 24 through 27, Peter was asked by someone if Jesus paid the temple tax, and Peter said,

36:48

Yes, he does pay the temple tax. And then Peter entered the house where Jesus would stay, and Jesus raised the topic of paying tax, which was something that he could not have known if he was not involved in that conversation.

37:01

It was obviously special knowledge. Many other examples, like Mark 14, 27, reveals that Jesus knew the disciples would abandon him.

37:12

Matthew 26, 34, that Peter would deny him. John 13, 27, that Judas would betray him.

37:19

In Mark 9, 33, the disciples had been arguing about who was the greatest, and Jesus asked them what they were talking about, because he knew what was in their hearts.

37:35

And so in John 2, 24 through 25, it says

37:41

Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

37:54

And in John 16, 19, Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them,

38:00

Is this what you are asking yourself? What I meant by saying, A little while, and you will not see me.

38:06

And again, a little while, you will see me. There are many of these cases where he said things that he knew people were thinking.

38:14

We see that throughout the Gospels. In John 16, 30 through 31, following up an experience of this, the disciples said,

38:26

Now we know that you know all things, and do not need anyone to question you. That is why we believe you came from God.

38:34

And Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? So the disciples had become convinced that Jesus knew all things, based on his responses to people.

38:45

Your question, how important is it for us to parse this out, as to whether or not, in certain circumstances, he's asking a question based out of, you know, human curiosity, or an observational, you know, situation where he sees a need, and he just asks a question, how important is it for us to know?

39:06

I think the things that are important for us to know is, number one, that Jesus did operate in special divine knowledge.

39:18

We have many attestations of that within the Gospels, that he was divine, and so he had access to any information that he wanted to have access to.

39:31

And then, that also, that Jesus did give us a pattern, an example of how to live.

39:37

And so, I think that the humanness aspect of Jesus is one that is there in the narrative, that he shows us how he saw people, and he was moved with compassion.

39:49

He saw needs, he asked questions to help people. So I think that there's a sense in which

39:56

Jesus was trying to give us an example of how we as humans can live as he did, to see needs, to ask questions, to be willing to engage people with a desire to bring hope and help and healing and truth.

40:11

And then, in addition to all of that, he asked questions, and this is,

40:16

I think, primary, and the same reason that God asks questions. He asks questions because he's wanting the people that he's asking to stop and think about their assumptions, their biases, their preconceived ideas, their presuppositions, and these questions are recorded in Scripture for us as well.

40:32

They have life application for us, because in principle, most of these questions are applicable to us.

40:42

So when he asks, for example, who do you say that I am? Well, that's a question we need to wrestle with as well.

40:50

Well, thank you Joe in Slovenia, and thank you for giving us an American address where your daughter lives in Georgia, because you have just won a free copy of Questions Jesus Asks, and that will be,

41:06

God willing, arriving in the mail at your daughter's address in a couple of weeks, thanks to our friends, not only at Master Books, also known as New Leaf Publishing, but also thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping it out to your daughter at cvbbs .com,

41:25

cvbbs .com, and we thank Todd and Ali Jennings of cvbbs .com for shipping out all of our winners, their free books,

41:34

Bibles, DVDs, CDs, and anything else they win by submitting questions to our guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

41:42

We have David in Ada, Ohio, and David says,

41:49

You surely don't mean Jesus is following the inductive method of teaching or Socratic method.

41:55

I purchased an international inductive study Bible, and there were no study notes.

42:01

It was up to me to give the scriptures meaning. I intended a Bible study that was based on the

42:06

Socratic method, and it was a guessing game. As for me, I prefer to be taught, not questioned, about what

42:14

I don't know. Please separate the questions Jesus asked from either the inductive or Socratic method, if possible.

42:22

Thank you, David in Ada, Ohio. Well, I don't personally see that Jesus is afraid of the inductive or, you know,

42:33

I don't think that, honestly, you know, I think the, we call it the Socratic method, but questions don't ultimately come from Socrates, they come from God.

42:45

You know, I think Socrates is borrowing from something that we find that God was doing at the very beginning in the garden.

42:51

Yeah, isn't that basically... Where are you? Yeah, isn't it basically to ask a question to really get people to think deeper about an issue?

42:59

It's not really because the question is being asked out of ignorance. Right, yeah, the question is a method of teaching, and, you know, there are ways that you can teach.

43:09

One of them is just through didactic instruction, where you tell someone, here is what you should think, here are the things that you should believe.

43:17

That certainly is, in many ways, a valid approach to teaching, but in some ways, when you ask questions that cause people to think through and wrestle through an issue, they gain far more ownership.

43:31

And also, questions reveal fallacies, and in apologetics, it's a really good idea to learn how to ask people questions, because oftentimes, you can expose a fallacy simply through asking questions.

43:46

I'll just give you one that I did on a bus one time. I was talking with a Buddhist, and he was a college student, and I said, so as a

43:53

Buddhist, you believe that all religions are true and valid, don't you? And he said, oh, yes, definitely.

43:59

And I said, so if all religions are true and valid, then what they teach is also true and valid, right?

44:06

He said, oh, definitely. I said, so do you consider Christianity to be a valid religion?

44:12

And he said, oh, yes, definitely. And I said, so if Christianity is a valid religion, and all religions teach true and valid doctrines, then the things that Christianity teaches must also be true and valid, right?

44:27

He said, yes. And I said, okay, so when Jesus said in John 14, 6, that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can come to the

44:36

Father except through him, he is essentially saying, and he also said that he is the door, and that anyone who doesn't go through the gate or through the door is a thief and a liar.

44:47

And so he's essentially saying that anyone that does not come through him is wrong and is false, is a thief and a liar, and does not have access to God, which means that they'll spend eternity in hell.

45:00

So basically, what you believe is that anybody who does not believe and trust in Jesus is going to hell, right?

45:11

And he said, no, that's not what I believe. But you believe that the things that Christianity teaches are true, right?

45:20

He said, yes. I said, well, Christianity teaches that everyone else who is not following Christ is wrong.

45:27

Is that what you believe, that everyone who isn't following Christ is wrong? And he said, no, that's not what

45:33

I believe. And I said, well, then you don't believe what Christianity teaches is true. He goes, oh, yes, I do. And I was, you know, eventually he became frustrated, and he could see the contradiction in his worldview.

45:44

And so asking those questions really helps to be able to expose fallacies in people's thinking.

45:50

And I think you see Jesus doing that, you know, with the woman at the well and others, where, you know, he's probing and asking questions to help them to open up about their assumptions, and help them to see the fallacies of their own thinking.

46:04

Yeah, when people start to, this would typically be a liberal individual.

46:11

Of course, liberals aren't all alike, because you have liberals that disdain any notion of religion.

46:17

But you have a religious liberal who will make the claim that all religions are equally valid. And I have said to them, oh, you mean like the

46:25

Church of Jesus Christ Christian, which is the church of the white supremacist movement, the

46:31

Aryan nations? No, not them. Well, what are you talking about, then? How can you? If everything is the same, and equally valid, how can you rule them out?

46:41

You're using some kind of discernment to exclude a group from this, this theory that you have.

46:48

And it's obviously it's a unattainable theory that is ridiculous at its root, because there are religions that have diametrically opposed teachings.

47:00

So you can't have everything being the same, or equally valid. Yeah, exactly.

47:06

And let me just go back to the question for a minute. I think the concern might be that, and maybe

47:12

I'm reading more into the question than what is there, but I've heard people express concern along this line that, you know, surely

47:19

Jesus is not utilizing the Socratic method, and people have juxtaposed the

47:26

Hebraic method of teaching and learning over against the Greek method of teaching and learning, and they're saying, surely

47:33

Jesus would not have been following the example of Socrates in utilizing an inductive kind of Socratic approach.

47:44

My argument would be, Jesus is stealing nothing from Socrates. Socrates is simply borrowing something that God revealed in his relationship with humankind, and something that Socrates found that works from just general revelation.

48:02

And so it's not really the Socratic method, in my view, it's really, you know, anything that's true belongs to God.

48:09

And the atheists, and the agnostics, and the humanists often borrow, from our worldview, the things that are convenient for them to build and promote their own.

48:20

But Jesus didn't borrow anything from paganism to further his ministry or promote his, you know, his agenda.

48:27

He said, the things that I'm doing, I do only what I see the Father doing. But we have this example, you know, from the

48:34

Old Testament, that this is God's method. He often asks questions. He'll make statements, but he'll also ask questions.

48:41

Well, thank you, David in Idaho, Ohio. Please give us your full mailing address, because you have also won a free copy of the book we are addressing today,

48:50

Questions Jesus Asks. Thank you very much for contributing your question to the program today.

48:56

And we have Daniel in San Jose, California, who asks,

49:05

Hello again, brothers, could you ask Israel Wayne to explain the significance of what seems to be

49:10

Jesus's rhetorical question in Matthew 19, 4, when he says, Have you not read?

49:17

Jesus knew that they have read the scriptures. Was this an attempt to tear down the

49:22

Pharisees who tried to trap the Son of God? Also, answering questions with questions in order to clarify presuppositions is a great form of apologetics.

49:33

Are we as Christians justified in asking these rhetorical questions that would seem to be harsh on the service?

49:41

And he has another question that I'll ask after you address that. Yeah, you know,

49:49

I think there are some questions, and maybe one that would even be a little more stark than that, is when

49:55

Jesus asks the disciples, Are you still so dull? Or like, How long have you been with me and you still don't understand?

50:04

And so, in one sense, you know, we may feel a little bit offended in our postmodern sensibilities with the phrasing of Jesus' questions there.

50:15

But I think, you know, in some cases, it almost sounds like Jesus is a little exasperated in the way that he relates to these people.

50:25

But I think he's asking them the question because he really wants them to think about the fact that they should understand this by now, that it's been very clear, it's been very revealed to them, and yet their thinking is blocked because of the fact that they have false assumptions.

50:42

And, you know, there are just so many ways in which we have mental roadblocks in our own minds based on our preconditioning.

50:52

You know, we've talked about in the past, we've talked about the education issue. You know, there are presuppositions that people have about education that are from their cultural experience.

51:05

There are presuppositions they have about education based on the way that they were raised, or the fact that their mother was a teacher, or whatever.

51:11

And they assume that they know what education is supposed to look like, because they have a cultural bias toward it.

51:20

And yet, they don't necessarily think biblically on that issue. Just taking one. I mean, you can take any number of other things.

51:27

And so I think those questions that Jesus is asking is, like, trying to help us understand that our thinking is not coming from Scripture, because Scripture is really plentiful on most of these matters.

51:36

Our fuzzy thinking is coming from our cultural paradigms. And so it really reveals those questions that help us to recognize that we are basing our beliefs, oftentimes, on cultural paradigms rather than on revealed

51:50

Scripture. And Daniel also asks, are you having any homeschool conferences around the

51:57

San Jose, California area in the near future? My wife and I would love to attend. Well, I would certainly love to.

52:05

I have spoken in San Jose in the past. I'm going to be in Sacramento 2018. So it's going to be the

52:12

SCOPE conference in June of 2018. I think it's the weekend of June 8th through 10th, something like that.

52:19

If you look up SCOPE, Sacramento, California Homeschool, I will be speaking over there.

52:25

It's a little bit of a drive, but if you don't mind me from the Bay Area, we would love to see you over at the

52:30

SCOPE conference June 2018. And we'll be providing contact information for Israel Wayne a little later on, so you can keep up to date as to everything that he's doing.

52:42

Well, thank you very much, Daniel. And you will also receive a free copy of the book we are discussing,

52:50

Questions Jesus Asks. Please give us your full mailing address in San Jose, California, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that out to you.

52:59

And we thank, once again, our friends at Master Books, a subdivision of New Leaf Press, and we thank them for giving us the free copies of this book that we're giving away.

53:16

Don't go away. We are going to our midway break. It's a longer break than normal, because it's according to the requirements of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida.

53:30

They need an elongated break in between two hours. So don't go away.

53:36

We will be right back. And send in your questions at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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01:00:40

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

01:00:46

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time on WLIE radio, www .wlie540am

01:00:56

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

01:01:04

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor.

01:01:15

And once again, that was the voice of Bill Shishko, who is my speaker, my keynote speaker at the next

01:01:21

Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheon this Thursday, October 26th, 11 am to 2 pm at the

01:01:28

Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The event is absolutely free of charge.

01:01:35

There is no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive other than to bless men in ministry leadership with a free afternoon of fun, fellowship, food, and being fed spiritually as well, not to mention being given basically what would be considered half of a library for free.

01:01:57

You're going to be leaving with a heavy sack of excellent books. This is not your discount bottom shelf rack of books that are going for a quarter at some secondhand store.

01:02:13

These are brand new books that I have actually selected myself from the catalogs of major Christian publishers all over the

01:02:22

United States and the United Kingdom. And these publishers have been so generous every year, going back to the 1990s, to donate free copies of the title that I select for each man in attendance.

01:02:36

So each man will be leaving with probably a couple of dozen books at least. And it's really amazing that I have been doing this for so long, and these publishers keep providing these books.

01:02:50

And as I said earlier, the invitation has been extended to any man that listens to Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio.

01:02:56

Just send me an email to register at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:03:03

and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. I can't believe how far people are traveling to get here.

01:03:11

I just got word from Pastor David Anglin of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Amityville, Long Island, New York, who's driving all the way from Long Island to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to attend the

01:03:24

Pastor's Luncheon. I've got pastors coming from Virginia. I've got pastors coming from all over the place.

01:03:31

So if you live in this area in Pennsylvania and you love this program, but you do not attend my luncheon, you deserve a very strong, swift backhand across the face.

01:03:42

Just kidding. But if you can at all make it, please try to get here.

01:03:47

You're going to have a great time. And please register by Wednesday night. The second event that I'd like to let you know about is the

01:03:55

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals annual Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

01:04:03

The theme is For Still Our Ancient Foe, which is a reference to Satan from that classic

01:04:09

Reformation hymn, A Mighty Fortress by Martin Luther. This is going to be held at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, November 17th through the 18th.

01:04:19

And the speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

01:04:25

If you'd like to register, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

01:04:34

Then coming up in January is the G3 Conference, which stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory.

01:04:43

The theme of this upcoming G3 Conference is Knowing God, a

01:04:48

Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. It's being held January 17th through the 20th. The 17th is exclusively a

01:04:55

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and the 18th through the 20th is exclusively in English. The speakers at the

01:05:02

English conference are Stephen Lawson, Bodie Balcombe, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P.

01:05:08

Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, who is no stranger from New Leaf Press and Master Books.

01:05:22

Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters. If you'd like to register for the

01:05:27

G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

01:05:34

If you register for any of these events, please let the organizations running them know that you heard about them from Chris Ornzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:05:46

And now it comes time for that daily portion of the program that makes me most uncomfortable, but it's something that I believe needs to be done.

01:05:57

If you love this program and you don't want it to go off the air, please consider donating to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:06:11

click on events, I'm sorry, click on support, and you'll be given an address where you can mail a check made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for any amount you can afford.

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Please never, ever, ever siphon money out of your regular giving to your local church and never take food off of your family's dinner table.

01:06:33

But if you're blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and your home with your two commands of God, then please consider using some of that extra money to bless

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If indeed you love the show, you listen to it every day or a lot of the time and you just look forward to it and you don't want it to disappear, please consider helping us out.

01:06:56

And even more so if you can help us out every month, that'd be even better. And I know that some of you are very generous to include us in your monthly giving.

01:07:07

And, of course, if you want to advertise, go send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:07:14

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. And whatever it is you want to advertise, as long as it's compatible with the theology expressed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, it doesn't have to be exactly the same, it just has to be compatible, we would love to hear from you.

01:07:29

Just send us an email, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:07:34

and put advertising in the subject line. So we would love to hear from you, whether you want to advertise your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, your professional practice, whether you're a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, whether it's a corporate advertising campaign that you want to promote on this program, whether it is just a special event, as long as it's compatible with the theology that we express here, then we would love to hear from you.

01:07:59

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We are back with our guest,

01:08:06

Israel Wayne, and we are discussing his book, Questions Jesus Asks, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:08:18

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:08:26

USA. I want to read a commendation for this book that was written by one of my very favorite

01:08:34

Christian recording artists, Michael Card. Michael Card, who has always been known not only for beautiful Christian music, but also for very deep and biblically faithful lyrics, which is something that is sadly lacking in much of contemporary

01:08:52

Christian music. Michael Card has always stood out amongst the pack as someone who is more deep and thought provoking in regard to the meat of the lyrics, the biblical meat in his songs, and he has said about this book, someone once said, there is more learning in the question than in the answer.

01:09:19

Jesus of Nazareth understood this. He is known for responding to questions with even more difficult questions.

01:09:26

Most often, he offered himself as the answer. Israel Wayne seeks to gain as many answers as he can from the meaningful questions of Jesus.

01:09:35

I think that that commendation helps really explain the reason and the content of this book that you've written,

01:09:43

Israel. And I would love to get Michael Card on the program, by the way, if you want to let him know that.

01:09:50

I would love to have him as a guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Well, I'm sure he'd be glad to do it.

01:09:56

He's a very insightful Bible student and scholar of the scriptures, as well as a fabulously talented songwriter and musician.

01:10:05

Yes. In fact, he wrote a book, and the book title, I think, is

01:10:11

Slave, very similar to the title of a book that John MacArthur wrote.

01:10:16

But he wrote a book where he included the story of a slave owner who loved one of his slaves so much that he allowed this slave, who was a talented carpenter, to purchase his freedom by selling furniture and also purchase the freedom of his wife.

01:10:36

And then when that slave died, he gave that slave a place of honor in the family cemetery.

01:10:46

The master had the slave buried amongst his own family in the cemetery with a statue paying tribute to the slave.

01:10:58

And Michael Card put this in his book. And then after I read this, about two weeks later, a dear friend of mine had went home to be with the

01:11:09

Lord. He was from England originally, and he was living in Tennessee. And I called his wife to offer my condolences.

01:11:18

And she said, well, Nigel is buried in a very interesting place.

01:11:24

We used to take walks every week through this beautiful cemetery. And one day, the owner of the property came out and asked why we would be regularly visiting that cemetery.

01:11:38

And we told him that it reminds us of one of the beautiful quaint country cemeteries in England where we're from.

01:11:45

And the owner of the property said, well, when you leave this earth and enter into glory, we would be honored to have you buried here.

01:11:55

And Barbara said, and Nigel was buried in the cemetery next to a statue paying tribute to a slave who his master allowed to sell furniture to purchase his freedom.

01:12:07

This is just like two weeks after I read this. When I told Michael Card this, he was absolutely blown away.

01:12:13

He couldn't believe the providence of that. But yeah,

01:12:19

I had chills when Barbara Stone, who is the widow I was speaking about, told me this.

01:12:27

By the way, the book by Michael Card is called A Better Freedom, Finding Life as Slaves of Christ.

01:12:33

That's the full title of Michael Card's book. But we are discussing the book,

01:12:39

Questions Jesus Asks. And if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:12:46

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we have a question from BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

01:12:56

And BB asks, when we ask questions of people that we are witnessing to, shouldn't we do the same thing that Jesus did to get them to really think harder and more deeply about the differences they have with us?

01:13:17

Should we merely be letting them take us on rabbit trails, as unbelievers often do, by bombarding us with questions?

01:13:26

Shouldn't we be asking them questions of our own to bring them back to the focus of Jesus Christ and the gospel?

01:13:33

So many times, unbelievers dominate our conversations, and we wind up being tongue -tied and taken away from the central issue at hand, which is the issue on which hinges the eternity of these people we are talking to.

01:13:53

Yeah, I think the person who's asking the question, in many ways, is in the driver's seat in the conversation.

01:14:01

And that's why, in a classroom, it's the teacher who really is dominating the classroom setting, because he or she is the one who is asking the questions.

01:14:13

The students are in the defensive posture, listening to the questions and trying to come up with answers.

01:14:20

And certainly, I think it's important to be willing to answer reasonable questions that people ask.

01:14:28

But you're right, very often people throw out these red herrings and these questions that just sort of lead down rabbit trails to try to get us off the important topic of making a decision about what we really believe, and to be willing to take a stand on a thesis.

01:14:48

And so the point is well taken, I think, that it's very effective both in evangelism and apologetics to learn the art of asking questions.

01:14:58

And I think I've learned an awful lot about the types of questions to ask, and how to ask a question, and when is the right timing to ask a question, from studying both the questions that God asked in the

01:15:10

Old Testament as well as the questions Jesus asked in the New Testament. Well, thank you, B .B. You've also won a free copy of Questions Jesus Asks, so please give us your full mailing address there in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

01:15:23

In fact, since you're in the same vicinity as Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service in Carlisle, why don't you just stop by there and pick up the free book yourself?

01:15:33

It's probably within minutes of where you live. Thank you very much for joining us on the air today.

01:15:39

Well, one of the questions that you start the book with, a very important question that Jesus asks, who do people say that I am?

01:15:51

If you could respond to that. Well, I wanted to include this one first, really, on the doctrine of Christology, because I think it is so foundational for everything else that we consider.

01:16:03

I mean, if we're going to study a book about Jesus, I think it's important for us to think about who

01:16:09

Jesus is. And there was a question that Jesus had asked his disciples in Matthew 16, and it's also recorded in Mark 8.

01:16:16

He said, who do people say the Son of Man is? And the disciples replied and said, well, some say

01:16:22

John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And it's interesting that I had to think about why

01:16:30

Jesus asked that question. You know, if we asked that question, we probably would be doing so from either a position of narcissism or insecurity.

01:16:40

You know, either if we're doing an opinion poll on what people think of us and what people's opinion is of us, or how do the masses perceive us.

01:16:48

We're probably doing so from less than ideal motives. But Jesus obviously was, again, in my view, not asking this question because he was in doubt about what people thought of him, and he didn't know what people thought of him.

01:17:07

I think the reason he's asking this question is he wanted to hear what the disciples had heard, and to impress upon the disciples the importance of knowing what people think about Jesus.

01:17:21

You know, you think about that application for us. Who do people say that Jesus is? Well, some people say he's a good teacher, some say he was, you know, a good moral or religious person, some people say that he was a madman, you know, there are different atheists that I quote, and religious leaders, and people in my book, you know, quotes about who they believe that Jesus is.

01:17:49

But, you know, a poll that was done in 2013 said that most believe that Jesus is

01:17:58

God, or that Jesus is the son of God. It's gone down quite a bit since 2005, but people still in the

01:18:07

United States have a very high regard for Jesus. They may not have a high regard for religion, they may not have a high regard for the church, but a lot of people still have a very high regard for Jesus, and I think that's something we can utilize in evangelism when we reach out to others.

01:18:24

But the more important question that Jesus asks, and in verse 15 of Matthew 16, was when he turns it and makes it personal, and he says, who do you say that I am?

01:18:33

And that really is the question that each one of us needs to internalize and know the answer to, is who we believe that Jesus is, and what we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart, because that's ultimately what

01:18:49

Scripture tells us is the defining, deciding line of, you know, whether we are in the process of being saved by him, or whether we're still lost in our sins and transgressions, is, you know, do we acknowledge that he is who he said he was, the

01:19:10

Christ, the son of a living God, or are we still in unbelief? And we have a clarifying question that David from Ada, Ohio has for us.

01:19:26

I believe he was the one that asked about the Socratic and inductive reasoning. Let's see here.

01:19:33

Just a point of clarification on my question. It appears in the two study methods that they have been used to ask questions that the person addressed doesn't know the answer to, i .e.

01:19:43

lacks knowledge of. However, if the person does know the answer and you're drawing on the knowledge of the person, that is a different situation.

01:19:52

In some studies I referenced, it was obvious nobody knew how to answer the question.

01:19:57

For example, a question was asked and nobody answered. I spoke up and said I was going to wait and hear what the teacher had written as the answer.

01:20:07

The teacher said he didn't have an answer. We spent a lot of time not really learning, just questioning and supposing the passage could mean this or that.

01:20:16

Thanks, I liked your answer, but I didn't clarify my previous question. Sorry. I wonder if Jesus taught differently than the teacher of the five -fold ministry he implemented for the church.

01:20:31

Well, I think obviously the goal as a teacher, a Bible teacher or a group facilitator, is that you want to bring people to answers.

01:20:41

In my book, Questions Jesus Asks, I'm raising an awful lot of questions.

01:20:47

I think that's great because it causes us to hunger and thirst for more righteousness.

01:20:53

We want more answers. We want to study more deeply. We want to learn and grow. Ultimately, I do want to provide some answers, but I don't want to just leave everything open -ended because that's not helpful.

01:21:04

I think there are some things we may not be able to nail down with absolute certainty, but we want to be ever -growing and maturing in our spiritual walk.

01:21:15

I agree with you in that sense that the purpose of asking questions is not just to have some sort of vague search.

01:21:24

I mean, that really is what the emergent church movement was trying to do. In a way, the postmodern emergent movement was just sort of saying there are only questions, there aren't definitive answers.

01:21:35

Postmodernity kind of embraces that concept that there are only questions, that there should only be questions, and to presume an answer to something is arrogant.

01:21:48

To presume that you know something with certainty is arrogant. I think that doesn't line up with Scripture.

01:21:55

We were given these things that we may know. Look at John's writing. We're taught these things so that we can know that we have eternal life.

01:22:04

So there's a lot of emphasis in Scripture about knowing and certainty. We'll know the truth and it'll set us free.

01:22:10

So we ask questions to guide people toward the direction of absolute, concrete, immutable truth, humility in the pursuit of that truth, but not denying fixed absolutes and fixed reference points of truth.

01:22:27

Well, let's move on to a question that Jesus asked that is connected with his virgin birth.

01:22:36

Didn't you know? Yeah, I thought that question was really interesting because of the fact that he asks it of his parents, and particularly of his mother.

01:22:48

Didn't you know I would be in my father's house? I just think it's fascinating that he presumes that she would know this, that she would understand this.

01:23:00

Well, of course she understood it. How did she know? How did she understand? She understood it because she knew who he was.

01:23:10

Anyone in the earth knew who Jesus was. She knew that he was virgin -born.

01:23:17

I talk about the importance of the doctrine of the virgin birth. It really has been discredited in some ways within our church.

01:23:26

We don't talk much about the virgin birth anymore. In fact, I read a book a while back by...

01:23:34

I'm just going to state my view on the radio. You can bleep me out if you have to, but a heretic named

01:23:40

Rob Bell, who... I'm not going to complain with you. Okay, I understand

01:23:47

Christians have different views on these things, but I'm just going to say he's a heretic. But he was teaching that if you found out that Jesus wasn't really virgin -born and that he was just the son of two ancient

01:24:00

Hebrew people, there's still a lot of really good reasons to be a Christian even if Jesus isn't virgin -born.

01:24:07

Well, frankly, I can't think of any. Because if Jesus is not virgin -born, then he's not divine.

01:24:14

And if he's not divine, he's not God. And if he's not God, then his death on the cross means absolutely nothing in terms of a meritorious atonement for you and me.

01:24:23

We're still dead in our trespasses and sins if Jesus is not virgin -born. And so, you know, the concept that, oh, there's still a lot of good reasons to be a

01:24:30

Christian, that's just a heretical concept. And so these doctrines that are set forth in the ancient creeds of the

01:24:37

Church are so important for us, and we dare not just be dismissive of them and think that we can reinterpret them or to quote another thing

01:24:46

Rob Bell said, you know, we need to stop taking our cues from some 2 ,000 -year -old book. Well, if we don't take our cues from some 2 ,000 -year -old book, then, you know, we're lost in our sins because there is no other word of God but the 66 books revealed in the

01:25:03

Scripture. Yeah, how about looking at it like a book that has stood the test of time for 2 ,000 years, in fact, longer than that, if you include the old

01:25:13

Hebrew Scriptures. But it's interesting that you brought that up because I have had conversations with even conservative

01:25:25

Bible -believing evangelicals, and on a couple of occasions I was surprised, and it might be because they didn't really think through what they were going to say before they said it, but I have heard a couple of men say, well, if they found the bones of Jesus, I would just have to go to a plan

01:25:47

B as to what I believe about the resurrection. I'm like, what? I mean, what are you talking about?

01:25:54

I mean, Paul said we are men most miserable. I mean, that's an absurd way of looking at it, as if the claims of enemies of Christ are supposed to alter the truths of Scripture and the

01:26:09

Gospel. Yeah, at that point, not only are we dead in our trespasses and our sins as falses, but Christ is a liar.

01:26:19

He's not even a good moral teacher at that point. I mean, he's a false deceiver and one of the greatest conmen in the history of humankind, and should be disdained by any rational -thinking person.

01:26:33

But these doctrines are so core, and it really is in some ways these core doctrines that I try to address in the book, you know, about who he is and about our relationship with him and our relationship with others, the doctrine of the resurrection, his lordship, you know, his divinity.

01:26:57

These are things that we need to be confident in, and I think he asks certain questions to try to solidify in our minds, do you really understand the importance of these issues?

01:27:10

Amen. And here we move on to a question that comes up in a lot of my conversations with Roman Catholics.

01:27:20

Jesus asks, Who are my mother and brothers? If you could explain. Yeah, well, it's interesting because Jesus seems relatively dismissive in some ways of the relationship with his earthly family.

01:27:37

Ultimately, he's not. He makes sure that his mother's taken care of, one of the last things that he does when he's on the cross, and making sure that she's taken care of.

01:27:47

But Jesus was totally committed to doing the work of the

01:27:53

Father, and when his family did not agree with him, and when they thought that he was out of his mind, and they thought that he was crazy and so forth, he didn't allow himself to be dissuaded and moved off course with the

01:28:11

Father's will. In fact, in Mark 3, 31 through 35, it says his mother and brothers came standing outside.

01:28:18

They sent to him and called him, and a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, Your mother and brothers are outside seeking you.

01:28:24

And he answered them, Who are my mother and my brothers? Looking about at those who sat around him, he said,

01:28:32

Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

01:28:41

You know, the true saints are the ones who belong to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and who have found salvation through him.

01:28:49

Not those who have died and gone on that need to be venerated because they've been approved by the church or whatever.

01:28:59

If you are in Christ, then you are a saint. You belong to the family of God, and in many cases, our family of faith in Christ is way stronger in terms of the bonds of relationship than even what we experience with our own biological family sometimes.

01:29:18

Because we share the same values and the same beliefs and the same faith, unfortunately, we don't always have that with our family or extended family.

01:29:30

Yeah, I can never figure out how our Roman Catholic friends, other than the fact that obviously people are blind until they are regenerate, and they can't see things that we who are born again look upon as obvious.

01:29:48

But in Luke 11, you have that remarkable occurrence where Luke 11 and starting in verse 27, while Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed.

01:30:09

But he, Jesus said, on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.

01:30:17

It's just remarkable how people could still hold up Mary to the level of adoration and veneration, which

01:30:27

I believe is idolatry, that they do and completely ignore such a clear and obvious passage.

01:30:36

Yes, obviously Jesus put the highest premium on being attached to the family of God through the

01:30:45

Lord Jesus Christ, and those who are doing the will of the Father are those that he identified as his family.

01:30:53

We do know that a couple of Jesus' brothers, who apparently had been skeptics at a point, became followers of Christ, at least after his death and perhaps resurrection and ascension.

01:31:07

You know, the Apostles Jude and James were the Lord's brothers, and so we're thankful that at least a couple of them followed

01:31:16

Jesus as the Savior. We don't know exactly about all of his family, but I would like to think that they all have experienced salvation.

01:31:31

I'd like to think so. But you know, I think the fact, again, of Jesus' humanity, how many of us have gone through situations where maybe we had family members who were not believers, or family members with whom we didn't have close relationship.

01:31:47

Jesus and his humanity experienced that, and so we have a high priest who identifies with us, even in something like that.

01:31:55

We don't think about that often, but Jesus knows what it's like to have unbelieving family and have family that he's not close with relationally, and Jesus felt those things as well.

01:32:05

It's an interesting point. Yeah, and it's absolutely mind -boggling that Mary, one of the proofs that she was not sinless, that Mary, even though she knew from the angel that she was going to conceive the

01:32:21

Son of God, she still was joining her sons in questioning his sanity.

01:32:30

She was with them when they were trying to get Jesus back home and rein him in from preventing himself from acting like a madman.

01:32:40

It's very bizarre. The family intervention, essentially. Yeah. They basically were trying to stage a family intervention, and Jesus had no part of it.

01:32:51

He wasn't going to be deterred from his mission. Yeah, and obviously Mary was in sin when she was questioning the one whom she already knew was conceived of the

01:33:01

Holy Spirit. Very strange indeed. But we are going to our final break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air,

01:33:08

I would do so quickly because we're rapidly running out of time, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

01:33:15

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Israel Wayne and more questions

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When we are back now with our guest, Israel Wayne, and our discussion of questions

01:39:29

Jesus asks, if you'd like to join us before we run out of time with a question, our email address is chrisornsen at gmail .com,

01:39:37

chrisornsen at gmail .com. And one of the questions that you have in your book is, what are you seeking in regard to discipleship, if you could explain?

01:39:53

And in John chapter 1, we have this account where John the Baptist was pointing people, including his disciples, to Jesus.

01:40:03

And it says in verse 35, the next day, again, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said,

01:40:12

Behold, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them,

01:40:21

What are you seeking? I think it's just such a poignant question to ask someone. You know, they've decided to follow

01:40:29

Jesus, but Jesus is questioning them to assess if they really understand what their motives are and what it is that they think that they will find.

01:40:39

And in this question, I really try to ask and apply that again to us. What are we seeking?

01:40:45

And you have a lot of people who say that they're following Jesus, that they want to be

01:40:51

Christians, but what do they think that means? And what is it a path towards for them, especially with today's sort of seeker -sensitive movement and prosperity gospel and so forth?

01:41:04

A lot of people believe that Jesus is simply a formula for a more successful life, helping them to become a better them, helping them to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

01:41:16

They don't necessarily understand that the end of Jesus' life and ministry was a cross.

01:41:23

And in some ways, there's a cross for us as well. Jesus said, If you don't deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me, you're not worthy of me.

01:41:32

And so, you know, is this that we just want a Jesus plug into our lives, or do we recognize that if we truly are his followers, that means that he's a king, and we are become slaves of Christ, and we completely and entirely belong to him, and that his claim of ownership is over every aspect of our life, and that there's no part of our life that he does not demand allegiance and kingship over?

01:42:02

And so I think that question is really relevant for us. You know, what are we looking for? What are we seeking when we say that we want to follow

01:42:09

Christ? Dr. Reagan And you move on to a question, which is one of those biblical references that seems to be globally known, even by many outside of Christianity, who have a very cursory knowledge of what the

01:42:31

Bible teaches. What will it profit a man?

01:42:37

Interesting, quick story about that is that a friend of mine, Rich Romano, who happens to be the

01:42:46

Christian brother of world -renowned comedian Ray Romano, when

01:42:53

Ray got his job as the lead in the sitcom

01:43:00

Everybody Loves Raymond, and he was moving away from New York to California, Rich put a note in his wallet that said,

01:43:11

I hope you never forget this, with all the fame and fortune that may accompany your trip to California, and it was that text, what will profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

01:43:23

I was very surprised that Ray actually took that out of his wallet and read it on the

01:43:29

Oprah Winfrey show and said that he carries that note with him wherever he goes. I hope that actually has more meaning to Ray than just sentimentality.

01:43:38

But anyway, if you could, tell us about this reference that you have. Dr. Reagan It's fascinating that Jesus talks so much about money and about finances.

01:43:51

We often think that Jesus only talks about love, or he only talks about hell, or he only talks about salvation, or people have different concepts, but there's so many things that Jesus taught us about, and finance being one of them.

01:44:06

And really the thing I try to impress in this chapter is that the biblical view of finance is that the

01:44:13

Lord owns everything, and again, if we belong to him and we are slaves of Christ, we really own nothing.

01:44:20

And so everything that we have, our time, our talents, our possessions, they all belong to Christ, and we have the blessed opportunity to serve him and to love him and love others through the things that he's entrusted with us.

01:44:39

And finances are a wonderful means, they're a wonderful tool, but they're never a good master, they're never a good end in and of themselves.

01:44:51

We shouldn't seek them as an end, but we should use them as a means to do the work of the kingdom and to bless and love others for the cause of Christ.

01:45:04

Amen. And a question that you move on to right after that is, well actually you already addressed who touched me, let's move on to, do you want to get well?

01:45:26

Yeah, do you want to get well? You know, really I have two different aspects there. There was the chapter on physical healing and then the chapter on emotional healing, and people really struggle with those issues of why does

01:45:41

God allow people to deal with physical suffering? Why does he allow

01:45:46

Christian people who love him to have illnesses? And that's why an understanding of the sovereignty of God is so important for us as believers, because we have to trust him.

01:46:00

We believe that God is all -powerful. God can do all things, and yet sometimes he chooses not to heal someone, and we don't understand that.

01:46:09

That doesn't make sense to us, especially because we would probably have it based on a merit -based system, wouldn't we?

01:46:14

You know, people we like get healed, people we don't like don't get healed, but then the question of emotional healing, you know, why is it that even as Christians we struggle with depression sometimes?

01:46:28

Why do we struggle with, you know, emotional issues?

01:46:34

You know, aren't we supposed to be above that and never have those kinds of problems and never face those kinds of situations?

01:46:40

And so, you know, I deal with the fact that there are teachings in the

01:46:48

Scripture that help us to apply to all things, and I even include in this chapter some wisdom from Richard Baxter, the great

01:46:57

Puritan preacher, where he outlined 10 steps for someone who is struggling with emotional pain and struggle.

01:47:04

I won't go through it here, but I encourage somebody to check that out, because, you know, even back in Baxter's day, which was really 400 years ago, he was writing very relevantly to things that Christians were struggling with at that time, including, you know, depression and just, you know, a sense of dealing with loss.

01:47:25

And so this question, I think, is really important as well, because, you know,

01:47:33

God does have the ability to heal us, but He also allows us to experience suffering, and we have to learn to be patient and endure through that.

01:47:44

Amen. And how about the question, why are you afraid?

01:47:52

I have to admit that even though I firmly believe in Jesus Christ, I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe that everything that happens is according to His decree, and yet I find myself being filled with anxiety and fear about things all the time.

01:48:10

Not proud of that, but tell us about this question, why are you afraid? Yeah, you know,

01:48:18

I did a book, Itch and a Fit, Overcoming Angry and Stressed -Out

01:48:23

Parenting, and I learned something in the process of writing that book about where fear comes from.

01:48:30

And in one sense, fear is first an impulse, and then it's an emotion, and then it becomes an action, and really fear and anger will come out of the same place, and it really biologically starts with our adrenal system.

01:48:45

You know, if we're walking down the street and a pit bull comes charging at us and looks like it's going to attack us, we have this adrenaline rush that first gives us this jolt of fear, but then also can give us this extra strength to fight our fight mechanism, you know, to stand and fight or to run.

01:49:02

And so, but fear is usually our first impulse, and then that can often turn into anger, and so the impulse, the immediate impulse of fear is

01:49:13

God gives, you know, we're up on a roof three stories high, and we start to slide off the roof, and we're going to have an impulse that we don't have any control over, and our heartbeat's going to pick up, and we're going to sense this fear, but I think the fear that the enemy, the spirit of fear, you know, the scripture talks about that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and a power of a sound mind, it's when we move from that impulse to the emotion, and then we allow the emotion to start dictating our cognitive decisions, and we start making actions that are based in fear rather than in faith and obedience, and so I go through that process.

01:49:52

This is something that all of us struggle with to some extent, but the scripture also is very practical in teaching us how to work through that, so that even though we feel the emotion of fear, we still choose by faith to walk in obedience to Christ.

01:50:09

Now, here is a question that kind of sends chills up my arms when

01:50:15

I think about it, but Jesus asking, what is your name in regarding to the demoniac?

01:50:23

Yeah, you know, this is really a question that may have been the only question he didn't ask a human.

01:50:31

There's a question, did he ask the demoniac, what is your name, or did he ask the demon, what's your name? We don't know exactly, but the demon answered, and the demon said, we're legions, and so I go into, in this chapter, the issue of just a study of demonology and what the

01:50:48

Bible teaches about it, because, you know, we tend to be sometimes Christian rationalists and act as though there is no supernatural realm out there and reduce everything to natural explanation, but there really, according to scripture, is a supernatural realm, and there are created beings who occupy that space and even have the ability to interface and interact with our physical world, and so there's much that the

01:51:16

Bible teaches on this, but it's kind of an under -discussed topic, so I wanted to address that in the book, and I think a lot of people have just been really intrigued and in some ways helped by taking a theological walkthrough that the

01:51:30

Bible teaches about these beings that we don't think a whole lot about. We have a question in regard to that from Ronald in eastern

01:51:41

Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He wants to know, do you believe that a truly born -again

01:51:48

Christian can be demon -possessed? Absolutely not. Absolutely not, no.

01:51:54

I know that Christians can be oppressed, you know, by spiritual forces, and spiritual forces can, you know, influence us in different ways,

01:52:07

I think, through temptation and things like that. There are probably many ways that we don't understand how our lives are impacted by demonic forces, but really, you know, when the

01:52:19

Holy Spirit indwells someone, you know, Jesus talks about that.

01:52:24

He talks about when a demon is driven out of a person, he goes around and he looks for a place to dwell, and he comes back and he finds this house unoccupied, and he brings back seven unclean spirits, you know, that are worse than himself, and it's worse for that man than it was before.

01:52:42

The fact is that when you are occupied, when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the spirit of fear, that spirit of that demonic force from the enemy, it can't control your life.

01:53:00

You know, you can be tempted, you can be influenced or oppressed in an external sense, and just as Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, but possessed and controlled, absolutely not.

01:53:12

Well, thank you, Ronald. You have also won a free copy of Questions Jesus Asks, so please make sure we have your full mailing address in eastern

01:53:20

Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and if you could, I want you to have five minutes of uninterrupted time where you can summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:53:32

Okay, well, one thing I'd love to do is to go over just the list of topics that are included in this book.

01:53:40

We've talked about a couple, but I'll just reiterate some of them here. But who do people say that I am on Christology?

01:53:48

Didn't you know on the virgin birth? Who are my mother and brothers on family? What are you seeking on discipleship?

01:53:55

What will it profit a man on money and finance? Who touched me on healing? Do you want to get well on counseling?

01:54:03

Why are you afraid on fear? What is your name? Demonology. What were you arguing about on servanthood?

01:54:09

That's a question he asks his disciples. Whose image is this? That's on government. Has no one condemned you on the topic of forgiveness?

01:54:18

Are you not in error? A question he asks the Sadducees and is unapologetic. Why do you call me

01:54:24

Lord on lordship? Are you still sleeping on prayer? Why have you forsaken me on suffering?

01:54:33

Do you love me on love? Why do you persecute me? This is on persecution, and this is really the only question that Jesus asked, at least that I found and included outside of the

01:54:47

Gospels. This is a question he asked after the resurrection and ascension to Saul of Tarsus, where he said,

01:54:55

Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And deals with the topic of Christian persecution.

01:55:01

And then how are you to escape from hell? And I deal with the doctrine of hell. And then finally, do you believe this on the resurrection?

01:55:10

And I have two appendixes where I deal with the hypostatic union, talking about the contrast and the interesting relationship and correlation between Jesus as divine, as God, and as man.

01:55:28

And then communicatio idiomatum, where we talk about the communicable attributes and incommunicable attributes of God, and how

01:55:37

Jesus exhibited and dealt with and demonstrated the issue of his divinity and humanity, the hypostatic union, as it relates to those issues.

01:55:52

So I really just hope, most of all, for both of those books, Questions God Asked and Questions Jesus Asked, that they will come to do what

01:56:02

John 17 3 says, that they'll come to know God and Jesus Christ in the ascent. Because Jesus said that to...

01:56:08

that's sort of the essence of eternal life. Knowing God and having an understanding of who he is and our relationship with him through the

01:56:15

Lord Jesus Christ, this is what we're going to do through eternity. We're going to spend all of eternity in awe and in worship and reverence and relationship with our creator

01:56:27

God through his son Jesus Christ. And so coming to know him better is really my heart's desire.

01:56:35

It's why I wrote these books, and I honestly believe that if you read through these books, you will come to know

01:56:40

God better, you will come to know the Lord Jesus Christ better, you'll come to know yourself better, you'll understand your relationship to God, your relationship with others better.

01:56:50

I think, you know, these are not self -help books, but they're books that help you to do the most important thing, and that's to know

01:56:58

God and Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the information they need to order your books and to get into contact with you.

01:57:11

First of all, we want to thank again our friends at New Leaf Publishing Group and Master Books for providing us with these free books today, these free copies of Questions Jesus Asks.

01:57:26

New Leaf Publishing Group's website is nlpg, which stands for newleafpublishinggroup .com,

01:57:35

nlpg .com, and their division known as Master Books, that website is masterbooks .com,

01:57:43

masterbooks .com. Of course, you can always order books that you hear about on Iron Trip and Zion Radio from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:57:58

cvbbs .com, and christianworldview .net is a website of our guest,

01:58:06

Israel Wayne, christianworldview .net. Do you have any other contact information that you care to give,

01:58:12

Israel? Yes, I would encourage people, if they'd like to sign up for my email list, they can do so at familyrenewal .org

01:58:19

forward slash subscribe, familyrenewal .org forward slash subscribe.

01:58:25

If you're interested in having me speak at your church or at your event, please contact us at familyrenewalevents at gmail .com.

01:58:36

Also, please check us out on Facebook. We're at forward slash family renewal and forward slash

01:58:41

Israel Wayne author. I'm also on Twitter at Israel Wayne. We would love to be able to keep in touch with you through those methods.

01:58:50

Great. And don't forget, folks, that the Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastor's Luncheon is this

01:58:55

Thursday, which has been opened to all men, whether you are in ministry leadership or not, who are listeners of Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:59:03

Please send us a registration if you would like to attend to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:59:11

That's for the Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastor's Luncheon this Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m.

01:59:16

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, featuring keynote speaker

01:59:23

Bill Shishko, who is on the faculty at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor's, South Carolina.

01:59:31

And also our guest of honor will be Steve Bloom, who is Pennsylvania state representative and candidate for Congress.

01:59:37

And much more than both of those things, he's a dedicated Bible -believing born -again Christian. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:47

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.