Weather

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, David Kasson.

Today we are reaching back into the archives of questions that we have from a question that we received in 2023 but we found it to be quite prescient today.

The question reads, what are the reasons given for times of good weather and bad weather on the planet?

Good being the sense of that which is promoting or sustaining the life of God's creation and bad being the sense of that which brings death to God's creation.

Michael, do you want to start us off? Sure. When we think about the weather, we are reminded, first of all, how little control we have over the weather.

We cannot control the rain, can't control sunshine. If we have drought, if we have too much rain, too little of it, if things get too cold, things get too hot, what are we going to do?

How often are humans, how often is it in our human experience that we cannot respond adequately to the environment around us?

We just, we are reminded of our weakness. We are reminded of the power of God and how dependent we are in how he ordains the weather.

And the concern this question is asking is something that is felt most poignantly in times like recently with the hurricane that hit the

East Coast and the multiple tragedies, the absolute devastation that has occurred in North Carolina and other places.

We are reminded of things like Hurricane Katrina, we were reminded of the tsunami in 2004 in the

Indian Ocean, we reminded of all kinds of just terrible cataclysmic weather events.

And very often the question rightly is then asked, well where is God in all of this?

And if he really is in charge and so on, how do we understand this weather that occurred that killed so many people and has caused so much devastation and hurt and pain?

And these are moments that test the faith and bring questions like this about God's sovereignty into a very personal frame of reference for many people.

And it's a painful thing for us to think about even if we're not directly personally affected by these weather events.

As Christians we're still wondering as we see pictures and videos, interviews, the before and after photos and so on, we're still pushed in this regard.

How are we to understand this? So when we read the Scriptures, very often we're reading in the larger chunk of the

Bible is God dealing with Israel, right? So everything from Exodus to Malachi and even beyond that as the

Old Covenant is still in operation during the writing of the New Testament, we're dealing with Israel and how

God talked to Israel and in his covenant dealings. If you are faithful then

I'll be faithful to you and here there will be blessings in the seasons and the rains and the harvests and all these things are going to be very profitable to you and everything's going to work out well.

But if you break covenant with me then get ready for famine, drought. We remember the story of the three -year drought or the seven -year drought.

Remember stories of plagues and stories of locusts and stories of hail coming down destroying all kinds of crops and animals and so on.

So we read in a big chunk of the Bible God specifically saying to Israel, I'm upset with you.

You have failed to live righteously. Here is bad weather, right?

I mean it's a very common connection that we read about in Scriptures and then also we have the promise that if you do not, if you do well, if you repent then oh finally when the people repent and the prophets of Baal and Asherah are killed then the rain finally falls after the drought, you see.

And then this is all of course after the great flood, the worldwide flood which

God sent specifically as a judgment upon men for their wickedness, for the grievous sins.

And he said before the flood every intent of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually and after the flood, he's stated in chapter 8 of Genesis, the heart is still in the same condition.

I mean the great weather event that wiped out almost all of humanity, just a representative few left, just a handful relatively speaking of the created order left and yet it did not change the heart of man.

So when we think about terrible weather events very often our minds, if they're informed by the

Bible, will very often go towards is this a judgment of God? Is God bringing a terrible judgment upon our nation, upon our people?

Questions like this were asked during Hurricane Katrina, they're asked during the wildfires that consume so much of the

West in our nation. The question gets asked about other massive weather related events.

What about the tsunami that hit the nuclear plant in Japan? Even here in Oklahoma, people talk about the

Dust Bowl. Yes. We have our own. And of course the tornadoes that have ripped through here and the big one through Moore 2013.

So how are we to understand the good weather versus the bad weather in terms of the sovereignty of God?

What is he saying through it? Are these moral, not just judgments, but are they moral statements?

If we have good weather, is it saying you're doing well? If you have bad weather, is it saying you're doing poorly?

And are we to live our lives and adjust our morality? If we have really bad weather, we're not getting enough rain, or we have too much, is it,

I need to have more quiet times, or I need to witness more, or I need to be more attentive in church.

And everybody else around me had better do that too, because the judgment of God is upon us. But if the weather's good, then maybe that means that God is fine with us and we're all doing great.

And I'm probably not gonna change anything, because I feel like the weather is fine. So I'm not saying people actually plan all that out, but does that kind of how it functions.

We naturally go to that understanding. People ask that question every single time, and there is an element of truth to that.

You do see Genesis 1, did man's sin affect creation? Yes it did.

Do we see in Romans chapter 8, he says for verse 20, it says for creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, it's

God himself, in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption and attain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now.

We do see an element that man, as the regent of God, to steward creation, is held responsible for our sin, and our sin affects not just our own lives, our family's lives, but creation itself.

So there is an element to that that the Bible does speak to. I think trying to triage these questions,

I think it's the right word, especially as Oklahomans when Trinity comes through, what's our first response?

Our first response is going to be, how can we help each other as Christians and also help our neighbors?

How can we be a blessing? When it was prophesied up in Antioch of Syria to that church that there was going to be a great famine down in Judea and all sorts of problems, that's a weather event, okay?

Well the Christians are going to be impacted by that, not because they're doing poorly and being good Christians in their churches and preaching the gospel at risk to their own reputations and properties and freedoms and health.

I mean, they were being faithful, even sticking in places of very difficult persecution.

But when the famine hit, the magistrates, those who had royal authority in the area, certainly tried to do everything they could to secure food and bring in food to the area and to the population, but that was going to be distributed through the local authorities, which was the

Sanhedrin, and they're not going to give those apostate followers of the way a single fig. And so the

Christians knew that they were going to have to take care of the Christians, and so they organized support from Antioch for the churches in Judea, including the saints in Jerusalem.

One of the very first things that we got to be thinking about when we see a very terrible, disastrous weather event, whether it's famine where people could starve to death, or it's a hurricane or tornado where just properties destroyed, people are killed, families are decimated, and so on.

One of our first instincts then is like, how can we help, as Christians, help our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and then spilling over to other people as well?

How can we do that? Because we, in triaging the questions, I don't know why the timing,

I don't know why the intensity, I don't know why the devastation, and I can't possibly speak to every tragedy within the tragedy, why that in that way.

I can't. I'm not God. But what does God call us to do in that moment is to believe him, that he is all -powerful, that he's all -knowing, that he's all good, and even though we are in the midst of it being confronted by a terrible tragedy of great loss, we haven't yet seen the final page of the script.

Job was on his way to double blessings, but he didn't know the last page of the script.

By the way, Job didn't know the first page of the script either. Job starts off and the reader is told what happens in heaven, but Job doesn't ever find out, and in the middle of Job's suffering, he hasn't seen either the first page of the script or the last page of the script, and he's in suffering, and his friends are insufferable.

So what is he supposed to do there? Curse God and die? No. He's supposed to maintain a faith that God is righteous, that he is good, that he is sovereign, and that we, the created, don't get to say to the creator, how dare you?

Yeah, I think that's a big distinction, particularly the way the Bible talks about the way the world is.

Creation. We are part of the creation. When it talks about us as human beings, it uses phrases like grass that withers and fades, dew that is there in the morning and then gone, a breath, you know.

It talks about us, but to us, this is our lifespan, and those around us that we love are caught up in tragedies, and it's easy to ask why.

Why is this happening? What is the reason behind it? Where is God in all of it? And so it seems like a very weighty question.

So then as Christians, there is the intellectual why, and there's, like you said, there's the emotional, and trying to meet the need, help them, because something is happening right then, and then there's the answering of the question, and they are not necessarily new questions, because I think of two places in the

New Testament. One is where they ask, why is this man born blind? And he says, not that he sinned, or his mother and father sinned.

So they were trying to ascribe reason rather than saying it's in God's hands.

The reason is God's, and we are the creation, and so he makes the clay the way that he wants it.

And ultimately, Jesus says he was born that way so that he might glorify God, so that you would see this miracle, and it would glorify

God. And then the other place that I think of is Luke, where they're asking him questions, and he talks, he mentions a tower that falls, and 18 people were killed, and he says,

Luke 13 verse 1, they were present at that season, some who told him about the Galileans whose blood

Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other

Galileans because they offered such things? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you all likewise will perish.

Or these 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?

I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

In our time, we have hurricane or tornado comes through, and we can ask the same question, do we think that they were worse sinners than us, and that's why that happened?

It was said when Hurricane Katrina came through, hit New Orleans, it was said by many a preacher that the reason why they got hit with the hurricane was because of all the voodoo.

Right. Because they were an awful, awful place. Yeah. And of course some wags were asking, well then why doesn't

God send a hurricane to Las Vegas? But about the very same time that that happened,

Joplin got hit. Yeah. Not so long after that, Joplin got hit by a tornado. It was terrible, just terrible.

Joplin wasn't full of voodoo. Mm -hmm. So, so... Creation, creation has fallen.

When man fell, creation fell. So we, we do know that. And then you, you had mentioned that there were covenantal curses, you know, to the nation of Israel.

Yeah, it's good to bring that up. As to say they would send, send bad weather. We also sent armies. So there are people who says, well did this happen?

Because these people were great, great sinners. Is that, is that why this tornado came through? Who says, well maybe you started the next war because you were such a great sinner.

You, maybe you have that much, that much influence. But to think that your sin has caused wars, or it has, you know, caused, you know, a tornado.

And in particular, no. But we would say sin has caused creation to fall. And sin has caused these wars.

I get the idea that, well, maybe if we had prayed more, maybe if we had been better, you know, this, this tragedy would not have happened.

I, I get that. I understand the, the, the mentality. But I mean, what you just said from, from Christ, Christ's words, it's like, no, that's not the point.

You are not actually what's important here. Well, and it goes back to understanding our place.

Because here he's talking about everyone is sin, all have fallen. And unless we repent, ultimately everyone perishes.

And so when evil happens, we start asking these questions and it's like, well, where are we going to end up ultimately?

And we, we think, well, we use terms like good and bad. This was bad weather. But when we think morally, was this morally bad that happened?

No, it's a tragedy and suffering. And people want to say, well, suffering is bad. It shouldn't happen.

But that's not the way that the Bible talks about suffering. Suffering often, out of it, comes good.

And so to think, well, I can know all things. I know all of the outcomes. And this is just ultimately bad.

Nothing can good, can come out of this, that there's no justification or that can't be used for good.

But in all of that, in suffering, we see that God works all things together for good to those who are called according to his purpose.

And who, I mean, all of us can think of instances where something tragic happened. And then we look back and we're like, because that happened, this happened.

And because that happened, this happened. It's just a chain. And who of us is all knowing or who knows all things and all purposes in any circumstance that in any family's life, but things are happening that, that we are not part of because we are created.

It's so hard to do that in the midst of the suffering. It's, it's, it's, it's horrible, which is why our first instinct and Michael, you said it, our first instinct, it's okay.

What can we do to help? How can we serve? How can we minister? That should be our first instinct not to figure out why did this happen or what was the, you know, the, the, the moral cause for it.

It was, what should the church be doing? How do we do church? How do we be the church to these people? How is the looking for the moral cause and that way, how's that different from the climate change argumentation where we continue to do this immoral thing by burning up quote fossil fuels.

And because of those moral sins, we change the weather in the same way.

How is that? It seems very similar, like a very similar argument. There's a bunch of moral weight behind human action that changes the weather.

We're just now saying, instead of the pagan gods, we're saying that the God of the Bible is the one bringing it.

Is that, is that a different, yeah, it's just, you just can't ever escape as those made the image of God.

You just can't ever get away from that. You know, you know that there's something wrong and there's an account, there's an accounting, there's a day of judgment and you know, the new, uh, the new twisters film that came out, you know, they're, they working real hard to sell

Dodge trucks so they couldn't be too hard on the oil industry. But the whole messaging was that, you know, it's

Oklahoma, it's all about oil. Right. And that's why we have really bad weather here because we're all about oil. Um, and even the, the final big tornado that was, you know, the, the most terrible thing ever, you know, the tornado was set on fire by an oil refinery that it hit.

So it's a big flaming oil demon of death. And, and it, it was caused to be far more intense and worse than it would have been because it hit the oil field.

Interesting. That's the message that this oil industry is making your weather worse. That was the message of the movie.

But you know, technology, technology that was invented will, will solve it, you know?

But anyway, so it was, it was a silly thing. But the point is we have an instinct to say, well, this people are dying and there's, and there's suffering and there's misery.

There's something wrong with this. And that we know that because we're made in God's image and we know that this is not the way it's supposed to be.

So some people will cite a pagan God for that and try to appease that pagan God, however that form takes, whatever witchcraft is necessary, we'll, we'll do it.

As Christians, we'll have an instinct from the scriptures because of Israel, the stories of Israel, but we'll identify ourselves with Israel and we'll take ownership of those covenant blessings and curses as if they apply to us directly rather than seeing them as fulfilled in Christ.

And so when bad weather happens, we're like, oh, that's God's judgment upon us. Well, when you say it though, you're like, you're saying that we're applying old covenant standards to new covenant realities.

And when, if there's a war or if there's weather comes down on a group of people, then I guess all the saints and the

Christians who love Jesus were wiped out because they didn't perform well enough. And it does, it doesn't fit with the narratives that we get in the gospel when the storm comes to Jesus and the disciples on the sea, have they done something wrong to incur this weather upon themselves?

Or is it about making the appeal to the one who can rebuke the wind? Yeah, he shuts it down. And calm the seas.

So let's go back to some God, when he was making covenant with Noah and his descendants and with all the creation.

Okay. And Genesis nine 11 says, that's how I'll establish my covenant with you. Never again, shall all flesh be cut off by the water of the flood.

Never again, shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. Why was it important for him to say that? Because all whole earth deserved another one.

As soon as the first flood was over that killed everybody, except for Noah and his family and those animals, another flood was immediately deserving to be, to happen right immediately afterwards.

And probably right at the cross. Yeah. Noah, Noah and his family deserved a second flood.

His descendants, his immediate descendants deserved a second flood. Everything did. So, because he said that,

God said that in Genesis eight 21, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. Although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Nor will I again, destroy every living thing as I have done. But we live in fear of that. And the people who gathered in the plains of Shinar to build for themselves a tower to make for themselves a name, covered that tower in pitch.

Like Noah covered the ark in pitch because they were going to save themselves because they were scared. They knew they deserved to die.

They knew that they were, they were doing wrong, that they were wrong and that the world was wrong because of them.

And one world government was formed to save themselves through the latest greatest technology, right?

Like how often does this happen over and over and over again? But what does God say? And after he says,

I'm not going to curse the ground again. I'm not going to destroy every living thing. What does he say immediately after that? Genesis eight 22, while the earth remains, see time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night shall not cease.

Climate change will not cease. It's going to get hot and then it's going to get cold and it's going to be day and it's going to be night.

And God says, I'm going to keep the weather patterns of the earth going. I'm going to keep this rolling.

So God is just. Everybody deserves to die. Everybody deserves to be destroyed and wiped out because they're completely evil, but God is merciful.

And so he promises to providentially care for those made in his image, even though they deserve absolute death and destruction.

He's going to show them grace. He's going to show them mercy and compassion by giving them in the main stable weather patterns.

The reason why hurricanes stand out is because they're not normal. The reason why EF5 tornadoes stand out, they're not normal.

They're not the norm. The norm of weather is mercy, grace, compassion.

And to make us remember that God is good, even though we don't deserve it, God gives us a sign in the cloud, the rainbow.

He puts the in the sky and says, by this, I'm going to remember my covenant and you remember too.

So what happens? Well, I was going to say that that image of the clouds continues throughout the

Old Testament. He uses that imagery when he shows up in judgment. But all that time, as he's judging these nations, his covenant of looking down and seeing the rainbow is still there.

He will not flood the entire. So within the same symbol, the cloud and the rainbow, we see both of those there.

There's judgment and there's mercy. And so the one who bears the curse and the judgment is completed upon someone in our place.

And for our sake, the clouds of judgment are completely expended on somebody for us. He bears the curse.

And then he goes and sits down having accomplished his work and what surrounds his throne?

A rainbow. A rainbow. So we're told not to live in fear of weather curses.

What are we told? Matthew 5, verses 43 through 45, Jesus says, here's how it's going to work in my kingdom.

He wasn't saying, here's how it works in the old covenant. He's not saying, here's how it's going to work in the older covenant, remixed into a newer one that's not very different.

He says, you have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies. He quotes Leviticus and then he summarizes instructions from Deuteronomy to the

Psalms and so on about how bad you're going to need to hate Amalekites and Ammonites and Midianites and how you need to ban them and hate them and generation after generation.

He says, you have heard it was said, he quotes old covenant stuff, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. But I say, do you love your enemies?

Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. And you're like, they don't deserve that.

What a great point. Thank you for bringing that up. You know what we don't deserve? We don't deserve summer and winter, seed time and harvest.

We don't deserve day and night. We don't deserve normal weather patterns. We don't deserve that at all.

That's grace. That's not justice. That's grace. The environmental activism is called climate justice.

What are they saying? They're saying normal weather is justice. No, the Bible says normal weather is grace.

Normal weather is grace. Now, why are we to be kind in this way? Because Jesus says this, verse 45,

Matthew 5, that you may be sons of your father in heaven. So being godly, take after your father in heaven.

Why? For he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends his rain on the just and on the unjust.

You know what happens when you mix both of those together? Cycles of sun and rain, rain and sun, what shows up?

Rainbow. Rainbow. Jesus is citing the Noahic covenant, bringing it forward and saying, here's how it works in my kingdom.

So all these violent men who lived prior to the flood, as well as those who live after, it's like, hey, yeah, violence is the way.

We got to live this way. We got to take what's ours and so on and so forth. And yet God sent,

God appoints Noah by grace. Noah's name means rest and comfort. But Noah being dead still speaks about Christ.

Noah was filled with the spirit of Christ. He preached Christ to those who are now in hell, verse Peter 3, 19 says. But Christ says in Matthew 5, if you want to be true sons of God, think about how he gives his son and gives his rain to the undeserving.

He preserves life on earth by these graces. And when God sends his son in his rain at the same time, he puts his rainbow in the sky.

So when something terrible, terrible, terrible happens, weather -wise, we're not to think to ourselves how unfair, how unrighteous

God is showing him. If there was a real God, then this would never have happened because this is so wrong.

Actually, it only emphasizes how gracious God is all the time.

And then when something terrible happens, we're reminded how precious that mercy is, how precious that grace is.

And when something terrible happens, we are reminded what Jesus says. And I'm glad you brought that up about the Galileans and the

Tower of Siloam, because Jesus says, here are these Galileans and these people from Jerusalem. And they were, because of the location, they were considered in Jerusalem to be more righteous, far more righteous and deserving than those who lived in Galilee.

And yet these men died by Pilate's hand. These men died because a tower fell on them. And Jesus says, unless you repent, you will likewise perish.

What does he mean? Does he mean if you don't repent, some soldier's randomly going to kill you? No. If you don't repent, then a tower's going to fall on you.

Likewise, he says, you will likewise perish if you do not repent, meaning you will perish unprepared.

You will perish, not ready to die. That's his point. And that was the common denominator between those

Galileans and those Judeans. They died unprepared. And this is the heart -wrenching thing that when we see a hurricane, see a tornado, we see a great disaster, and people, it gives death and destruction.

We are stunned with how fragile our lives are. We are reminded of how weak we are and how needful it is that we not die unprepared.

I think what Dylan was talking about with climate change activists, and you've got this desire to blame something.

We have to find that answer. We have to have an answer. And it has to be us. Yeah, it has to be us or God, because they'll say, well, we're causing the problems.

It's the oil. It's the coal. We're the problem. We need to fix that. Or it's, this is judgment from God.

Yeah, but even then, that's still blame on the people he's judging, right? Like, you brought this on yourself.

You are reaping what you sow. It's still us. But then the answer to both of those is the rainbow, is that covenant, that mercy, and that grace that's found in Jesus, who takes up all of that blame, that sin that should be poured out on us all the time.

And yet he takes it on himself. So we have this questioner who says, why does

God allow the kind of weather that brings death to creation when it should have only the kind of weather that benefits creation?

Because it is presupposing that God ordains the weather. And we do know that creation itself groans for its own redemption.

But I think the point is that we, like creation itself, we are to look to the one who subjected it.

We are to look to the one who is our redemption, because there will come a time when we likewise die, and we are not to die unprepared.

This is a little bit of a twist. But everyone talks about the climate change and all this stuff.

But how long have we been recording weather for? How interesting if we wait another few hundred years.

I think of the new heavens and the new earth. What direction will we see weather patterns going in as the world is being made new?

Will it prove all of it wrong? It's like we used to have hurricanes, but we don't anymore. The world is being made new.

There's some guys out there, and I don't know if they're apologists or scientists. I've just seen a few clips where they talk about filtered sunlight and warmer temperatures.

They act like we need warmer temperatures. We need higher carbon dioxide levels. We need more

CO2 for the greening. Yeah, it's like the opposite of everything. And we need more oxygen too.

We would grow to be like Nephilim, and all of our plants would fill Walmart super centers and yield 15 ,000 times.

And they've actually done this in places where they took roofs of super centers, and they did filtered sunlight, and they stuck a tomato plant down there.

And one tomato plant went all the way up to the roof and went out and yielded thousands of tomatoes.

The quality of those tomatoes, I don't know, but the yield apparently was amazing. I mean, there's theories out there about how that sort of stuff would work.

But that, I think, is a little bit of the Lord blessing His people with wisdom, blessing people with wisdom to learn these things, seek these things out.

It's the glory of kings to search out a thing and to apply it and see the magic that just occurs from it, how it was designed to occur.

So to that point, I think you might be onto something there, what would it actually be like?

And it's probably the opposite of exactly what the climate change people want, right? Just take the inverse and just think, oh, that's probably it.

Well, and all of it comes back to trusting God for it because it's His world, it's the way He made it.

Science is just thinking God's thoughts after Him. We're just discovering it. And just take the presupposition of this was designed.

Yes. Right. This is a creature, it was created. And the presupposition of we have dominion, we can know this thing quite well.

We can figure these things out rather than assuming that we're just here to harm it. And when we take that presupposition to it, we're not going to really want to delve into any mystery whatsoever.

Well, I think we have covered that quite well. And hopefully anybody that sends in questions and feels as though we missed the point or missed the question, go ahead, feel free, send us in another question.

We'll be happy to answer or even clarify on things that we've said in the past. That's one of the things we were talking about here, round -tabling old subjects, old content.

Even if we have covered it before, but you think your question is a little bit different, do not be afraid, send it in, feel free.

We welcome every single question that you're going to send our way. But we're going to move on to recommendations for this week.

Will you start us off, Michael? Yeah. Got a book by Jason C. Meyer. It's in the

New American Commentary Studies in Bible and Theology. It's called The End of the Law, The End of the

Law, Mosaic, Covenant, and Pauline Theology. So we looked at a book in this series.

I don't think we've published the podcast yet on it, but on baptism. And there's a part of that series on baptism.

And this is a book that's not an anthology with different essays.

It's just one author, but it's walking through all of the language in Paul's letters about old and new and the sense in which the law is fulfilled in Christ and how

Christians are to relate to the Old Testament. Obviously, it's not something where we unhitch ourselves from the

Old Testament, but that we see the doctrine and the correction, instruction, and reproof of all the scriptures as fulfilled in Christ, and that we can be directed by the wisdom and the prophetic power, the truth of even the law, even though some of it seems very foreign, kind of fabric you use in your clothes and how you work with your animals.

And some of these things that seem so far off from us are brought near in proper application and understanding in Christ.

So this is a great book, End of the Law by Jason Meyer. Before we move on to Chris, Michael, do you mind plugging

Let's Church as a resource for all of our listeners out there? Yeah. So there is a website that's called

Let's Church, and it is, I think it's put on,

I don't think there's only one guy trying to run this whole thing. So he's obviously very good at what he does, but he put together

Let's Church in order to have a church search. On the one hand, it's connected with something called

TruthScript, which if you know what the Gospel Coalition is, they have all these articles about various current topics in Christianity, but the

TGC overall is leftward leaning. But TruthScript is something that is far more comfortable in holding closer to biblical

Christianity, that's the best way I can put it. And they have several articles every week dealing with current issues from a biblical worldview, and I think they do a much better job of holding the line on the faith than the

TGC. In any case, Let's Church has partnered with TruthScript as a church finder. So if you're looking for a church that is conservative and Bible -believing and so on, it's a great way to find those churches.

But also, Let's Church has a feed where you can subscribe to all manner of audiovisual resources from a variety of churches and YouTube personalities, podcasters.

If you like Keith Foskey or Jonathan Harris or A .D. Robles, they're all on there. And a whole bunch of local churches, they're putting their material on there.

In Sunnyside, we're putting all of our sermons and summer session recordings and podcast recordings and everything on as well.

It's all part of the feed. So check out Let's Church. It's L -E -T apostrophe

S, church. And look it up and you can find all kinds of good resources.

And you can even search the sermons and podcasts and so on for particular subject matter.

There's an AI -assisted search, transcripted search, where you're going to type in some keyword, something that we've talked about a lot or that you're interested in hearing about.

You can type that in and see, find episodes on those subjects. All right, Chris, what's your recommendation?

The last recording, I recommended a debate between Doug Wilson and T. Russell Hunter. This is another one that Doug Wilson participated in, but it was with the founder and the voice of When We Understand the

Text, Gabriel Hughes. And it was on the topic of profanity, the use of profanity, serrated edge and that type of thing.

And I just enjoy seeing Christians talk about these things, but particularly stronger Christians. I know

I was encouraged by Doug Wilson and their group because they took a strong stand on certain topics when

Big Eva caved on certain things, and we saw kind of the wokeism go in and liberalism sweeping.

But then to see other men rise up with a different perspective, maybe not so hot -headed as some of the

Moscow guys, kind of gave a perspective that I think more represents kind of where I am in my theology.

So they went back and forth, and I thought it was really good on that discussion. And it was Doug Wilson versus Gabriel Hughes.

And remind me of the subject matter? It was kind of on Christian and profanity or speech. It came out right after they released their ad talking about...

Johnny Cash's favorite finger? Favorite finger. But it was more broadly speaking, and I thought they came at it from a little bit of a different angle.

He wasn't just dismissing Doug Wilson. It was two brothers sitting down talking, but he was pretty strong in his stance.

He's like, I don't think we should be approaching it that direction. All right. David, what about you?

I don't think I have recommended this book before. Tom Nettles is an amazing historian, great writer.

I could recommend almost anything he has ever written. He's professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and he's written a couple of history books.

Volume one, the one I finished a couple of months ago, I'm in volume two now. This is called The Baptist, Key People Involved in Forming a

Baptist Identity. Volume one is Beginnings in Britain. So you're going to start learning about where we came from.

The Baptist in Britain didn't really come out of the Anabaptist or the radical reformation movement on the continent.

We really came out of the Puritans and the English Reformation, 1500s and the 1600s.

And the early 1600s, you know, by John Smith and John Pillsbury and these little bitty churches that were starting in London with these people that were convinced of Baptist mode.

They were starting to break away from the established church because of what they were reading in the

One of the first confessions of faith written in 1644, revised 1646, was written by seven particular

Baptist churches in London and published anonymously. And the first page, it says that they were mistakenly called

Anabaptists. It says, we're not Anabaptists, we promise, because the Anabaptists were considered radicals and anarchists on the continent, but they were just trying to establish their identity.

And you go all the way up through. So this volume one ends with William Carey, but somebody that you don't know about, well, some people may know him, but Andrew Fuller was a real mentor to William Carey and helped make

William Carey who he is and William Carey, father of modern missions. And I love to bring up to some of my more

Arminian Baptist friends that their father of modern missions, William Carey, particular

Baptist. He's a big old, big old Calvinist. And it talks about the missionary zeal that these particular

Baptist leaders had. And it was so encouraging to learn about our forebears, learn about where we come from, because most

Baptists in America don't know what happened prior to about 1890.

They think Baptists started with perhaps Schofield or D .L.

Moody, or maybe some of the tent revivals in the 1800s. And they know nothing about the people who started

Southern Seminary, like James Pettigrew Boyce and people like that. So I've really been enjoying this as I've learned about our forebears.

And I encourage anyone to read The Baptists, Volume One, Beginning in Britains by Tom Nettles.

And when I finish up Volume Two, I'll be probably recommending that. I'm about halfway through it right now. And that's

Baptists in America. And I'm just halfway through a chapter on Adranium and Ann Judson and how they came out of congregationalism and were convicted by reading the

Bible to be Baptists. So these are amazing people in our history. And I hope you enjoy the book.

You naturally like the American Baptist better than the English, right? Yeah, I'll say that I've truly enjoyed them both.

But learning about the American Baptist, that close connection with them,

I'll joke and aside, to see the impact that they had just in the

Revolutionary War and to see in Volume One where they started to get the idea of separation of church and state, where that came from, it's very

Baptist. It's a very Baptist idea. Because they said that we have no king, but Christ is our king.

We will follow the lamb wherever he goes. It was great. So following the line of logic that people say that John Calvin is personally responsible for American separation of church and state or those ideas, he caused

Baptist then, right? It's his fault? It's John Calvin's fault. He's the reason. He caused Baptist.

They were just trying to kind of break away from the close alignment between the church and the state because that's what you had with the

Church of England. That's really what you had. And the Baptist is like, no, king, you have your lane.

Church, we have our lane. These spheres, the sphere of sovereignty, that's where we kind of get those ideas.

So separation of church and state doesn't mean the church has no impact on the state. It means that the state has a lane, the church has a lane, and then the family has a lane.

And the Baptists were really, really big on that, especially in Britain. But of course, it cost many of them their lives.

And then you had the Great Ejection, and then it kicked a whole bunch of us out. So anyway, I was raised

Episcopalian, raised in the Church of England, and then I come to Baptist, so I feel like I have my own. It all comes full circle then.

It does. Yeah, I had my own Great Ejection. But no, it was good.

It was really good. So I've enjoyed it so far. My recommendation this week is a substack called the

American Tribune. I came to it tangentially through my interest in regenerative agriculture and its beginnings.

And oddly enough, those beginnings were in a little known country by the name of Rhodesia in the

South of Africa. And the state that was established there, the type of agriculture, culture, and governance that was really the culture that bore the governance, which is reported to be more

British than Britain at the time of its fall between the 1960s to the 1980s.

If you want to have an interesting little bit of reading about history and the

US's teaming up with the communists to take down a country in Africa, that would be the reading for you.

So the American Tribune, the guy who runs it, his name's Will Tanner, and he's got some interesting threads on X as well that are pretty helpful in entering into some subjects that deal with the country of Rhodesia itself.

And it's not all about Rhodesia, obviously, it's the American Tribune, but I really enjoyed his content on the country during that time period.

If we're ready to go on to what are we thankful for, Michael, we'll start with you. I am thankful for my brother.

He's 13 months older than I am, and he's always got my back, always got his, and I really love my brother.

We are always happy to spend some time together, and I just thank the Lord for the way in which he has worked so that even though we've spent many years apart, you know, doing ministry in far off places like, you know, he was in Hawaii, I was in Tennessee, but the

Lord has brought us back both to the same city. And to find out that the Lord has really united us in so many different things that we agree on and enjoy together, and, you know, we can sit and speak with one another and encourage each other, and I'm really just thankful for that.

Amen. Chris? To piggyback on Michael, just a side note, in part,

I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for your brother, so I'm also grateful for him. You know, for me this week particularly,

I'm immensely grateful for my wife and what she does around the home, and then we've had some additional things come up in our life that we have to take care of and deadlines and things, and I'm out of the house, and so she takes care of it.

She just picks up that added responsibility and gets it done, and then I get home and get to spend time with my kids because she's done all this extra work.

I greatly appreciate her for that and taking up that responsibility, and then also dealing with me when

I'm frantic and panicking and she's level -headed and like, we'll just take care of it, and points me back to trusting in God and His timing, and it all worked out, so I'm very grateful for the spouse that God has given me.

Amen. David? This past week when I was in Dallas, I got to have lunch with my sister, and we were trying to think when was the last time it was just the two of us, because usually it's the rest of the family, or it's my mom and my two siblings, or it's with my mom and my sister and me, or something, and it was just her and me, and we spent about an hour and a half just talking, and she sent her kid off to college, and mine's slowly, it's coming quicker than I thought, is on her way as well to being out of the house, and we just were able to share some things that we hadn't been able to do in years, and I'm very thankful that I get to work in and out of Dallas and rebuild some of the relationships that I've kind of let atrophy over the years, usually because I'm not there, and I'm thankful for the time,

I'm thankful for my sister, I'm thankful that I had a day off where I could just enjoy a meal with her.

Amen. I'm thankful to the Lord that with each passing day, he makes it harder for me to leave home.

Every single day, it's getting harder and harder to go to work, it's getting harder and harder to come to podcasts, because I want to be with my wife and kids.

I was telling Heather about that today, I think just a couple of days ago, Killian got up early, and he didn't wake up on the right side of the bed, he was a little bare, and he was a little upset, and I had mentioned that I have to go to work early, and it was a

Saturday, so I think he wasn't necessarily assuming that I wasn't going to work, because I do work six days out of the week right now during this time of the year, but he kind of broke down on me, and he said,

I don't want you to go, and I said, well, why don't you want me to go, buddy, and it was the simple answer, because I love you, and I'm going to take that at absolute face value, and I'm going to love every response like that that I get from my kids, but I see how hard it is for them to watch me leave, and I know

I was a kid at one point when daddy would go, and he wouldn't be back till after the football game at midnight or whatever, so I didn't get to see him, and I get to come home every night,

I get to come home while they're still awake, except for on podcast nights, but I'm so glad that it is actually a difficult thing for me to leave the house, it's difficult on me, it causes me to rely upon the

Lord when I'm away, and to think about what is required of me to get back home in a right way, and to come home and be dad as I'm supposed to.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners, and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?