Roundtable

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 Kiesler, and Andrew Hudson.

We've covered a lot of topics this season. As we come to a close, we'll be revamping how we sort through the questions we received since our first season, season one. So as we work on that for season four, please look through our episode listing descriptions to see what questions or topics we may have already covered.

That way you don't have to repeat the question and listen to us say it twice. As our season closes, we'll be doing a round table discussion with this last episode of questions that we've kind of been pondering ourselves as we kind of go through life, because we've been given your questions all the time.

We have stuff that we ask, believe it or not, on our own. So we're gonna start off with a question that Michael and Andrew kind of had together, and if you would take it away, boys.

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Deity of Christ

Okay, sure. I have conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses who are at the university every week. I talk with them. I talk to them mainly about the divinity of Christ. And so one of the things that has come up, I don't know if you know anything about their theology, but they say that Michael, the archangel, was the preexistent state of who we call Jesus of Nazareth.

And then after he left, he assumed that previous glorious situation. Now, I don't agree with that. That's their position. And they've asked me about this topic before and pointed to 1 Thessalonians 4.

And I was like, hmm, I wonder where they're going with this. So in 1 Thessalonians 4, I'll start at 15. For this, to you we say in the word of the Lord that we who are living, who do remain over to the presence of the Lord, may not precede those asleep.

Because the Lord himself, in a shout, in the voice of an archangel, and in the trump of God, shall come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are living, who are remaining over together with them, shall be caught away in clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so always with the Lord we shall be. So then comfort ye one another in these words. They say, aha, see, with the voice of an archangel. Well, the archangel is Michael. So Jesus is Michael. Michael, can you tell us what you were talking about previously?

Yeah, I mean Michael Durham, not.

Yeah, I got you.

In the trumped sound.

Okay, so there's a lot of layers of things going on here. It's interesting, because they want to engage at the level of, hey, let's open up the Bible and look at these scripture passages together. What's important to remember is that their source of authority is not the scriptures.

It is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is the kingdom of God on earth for them.

That's right, and I've talked to them about that, and I've asked them, like, hey, can you have your own ideas about what's true or not? They cannot. They cannot have their own ideas of, well, this is what the scriptures say.

Hey, this is what the scripture says. What you're teaching is not what the scripture says. You have to conform to what the Watchtower says.

Yes, so it's important to remember that, because you may think that you're gonna be engaging with them on the merits of the scripture and the interpretation thereof, but they're gonna be required to agree with interpretations handed down to them by others, and often it can be frustrating if you're trying to engage about a particular passage and all they're doing is clicking on their iPad and just telling you what the official interpretation is.

They're not allowed to work in the text on their own.

I experience that very often.

Yeah, in this way, Jehovah's Witnesses are much more advanced than Roman Catholics in that rather than leaving their people in confusion about what the magisterium says that they have to believe, they hand all their folks the software to say, repeat after us.

Yeah.

So they're much more efficient, and it's the same idea. So we just have to know that when we're talking with them, and then we add in the additional complication that they're using something called the New World Translation, which is, who was it, was it, I don't know if it was Hank Hanegraaff or was it Walt?

Martin.

Walter Martin.

Yeah.

It's the most dangerous book ever invented, is to take the scriptures and then slightly modify it and misinterpret it or mistranslate it so as to try to disprove the divinity of Jesus Christ and other things that.

It's a very concerted effort.

Yeah.

I compare translations all the time because I have their app to know what they're looking at whenever they reference their app. And so places like in Colossians, they've inserted all other. When it talks about creating all things, all other things.

Right.

And so this is all because of what Charles Taze Russell found acceptable versus what he found unacceptable, and it was kind of modeled around what he thought it should be and how he thought it should all make sense.

In his mind, he rejected eternal damnation. He rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He rejected all kinds of things that he felt were unreasonable and nonsensical to his mind. And he wrote six scripture studies in which he was putting forth his own beliefs about what the Bible actually said and why everybody else was wrong.

And my favorite quote from Charles Taze Russell is that it takes two years to get through his scripture studies and finally people are in the light. But if they were to only read the Bible for six months without his scripture studies, they would be back in darkness again.

That.

What a quote.

Yeah, that should tell you something. And that's actually, that's a really great way of summing up how the Jehovah's Witnesses work. The only way you end up believing what they believe is not by depending upon the Bible, but just being drenched and drowned in their own literature.

So when it comes to this passage and they say, hey, look, look at this passage here. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of an archangel, with a trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

It tortures grammar and any kind of reasonable reading to say because he has this description, he descends with three things. He descends with a shout, he descends with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, this means that he's an archangel.

Okay, you would have to be able to support that from the rest of scripture, which this is just grabbing at straws. This is just trying to grab at anything to try to prove their point. And as I think we discussed prior to the podcast recording, if we take their claim that the only archangel is Michael, and we take a look at the archangel Michael and Jude, and how he was very careful in not rebuking Satan.

That's right.

We find Jesus, without caution, just straight up rebuking Satan. And that's very un-archangel-like of him. So this thing falls apart pretty fast, but even if we were just gonna take the strict grammar of things, he possesses a voice.

Well, of course he possesses a voice, but it's described as a voice of an archangel. So he must be an archangel. To me, this is as ludicrous as it can get. But if you were to say, well, by the same merits of interpretation, the last description says he descends with the trumpet of God, because this is the trumpet of God, he must be God.

Because by the same merits, this voice is the voice of an archangel, so it must be possessed by an archangel. This is the trumpet of God, therefore it must be possessed by God, right?

That's a logical conclusion with how they're trying to interpret the text. You're stepping into it.

Yeah, and they would definitely say,.

No, no, no, no, no, no, he's not God.

Okay, well, okay. So if you're gonna be ridiculous, I get to be ridiculous as well.

Or lead you to your ridiculous conclusion one step further.

Now, that particular approach, you don't need to be snarky about it, but it's to point out the folly. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be wise in his own eyes.

And this is a situation where I'm not gonna use the same tactics as they do. They're gonna give me one little scripture passage out of context, ah, we've proved our point. And then I'm gonna give you my one little verse out of context and prove my point.

And then when you quote your authorities, then I'll quote my authorities. And that's just being foolish. But if they are going to act that way, then let's just show you the reductio ad absurdum. Let's just, let's take this down all the way and show you how absurd it is if you're gonna act that way.

And I think that that is an effective way to like, oh, come on, really? You know, so.

Yeah, you know, I've talked to them before about the divinity of Christ. And this is along those same lines. And I talked to them about like, hey, you know, I thought Elijah was supposed to, or this messenger was supposed to prepare the way for the Lord.

The Jehovah himself would visit the temple. And, you know, I tried to lead them down that road. Like, well, didn't Jesus say that John is Elijah for those who don't accept it? And who came to the temple?

It was Jesus. So, you know, I'm trying. The witness, the whole body of scripture says one thing. They have to translate it differently. And they have to have this other set of authority or interpretation to point to to try to obscure the divinity of Christ.

Authority, Inerrancy, and the Roman Catholic Claim

Yeah, yeah. So again, when these discussions come up and you're in an apologetic moment and an evangelistic moment, obviously it's going to cut back down to the authority. And I was in a conversation with some Roman Catholics this last week.

And as I shared with them, I said, you know, there's the kind of authority where you're looking to find a really qualified authority if you have to have like a very complicated surgery. And you're going to be talking to the doctors and getting their records and seeing if this guy's really legitimate.

Is this, and you'd be very careful, but that's just your body. And Jesus said, I mean, it'd be better to go into heaven without an eye and without a hand and without a foot than going to hell with everything intact.

I said, so your soul is far more important than your body. Your body will be raised again. But, you know, this kind of authority by which you're basing, whether or not you're saved, your everlasting destiny on this, I would say that this authority has to be immaculate.

And I'm using the term immaculate because I want to, you know, get the attention of a Roman Catholic.

Exactly.

Okay, so I'm saying.

They're like, oh, well.

Yeah, yeah, this has to be immaculate. And so when I'm talking about the scriptures and the inerrancy, infallibility, the trustworthiness of the scriptures and so on, I contrast that with the ways in which the Roman Catholic Church has seen fit to contradict themselves and they're all over the place and nobody can agree about what anything means anymore and so on and so forth.

And I say, you know, on what am I basing my eternal salvation?

How many different good news have they had across the centuries?

Oh, yeah.

Right?

Yeah, and I said, you know, some guy in the 600s believed stuff that today, based on the later councils, would have anathematized him out of the church. So is he saved or not? You know, and if so, based on what?

And who gets to say? And again, if it's a group of men somewhere, whether they're the Watchtower Tractant Bible Society or whether they are the living interpreters of Roman Catholic dogma today, you know, or the Mormon elders or whoever it is, they're not immaculate.

Amen.

Right?

They're not dependable, but everywhere in the scriptures, the Father speaks to the Son by the Spirit and we're given the word of salvation here.

Amen.

Well, Chris, do you want to move on to your question that you have?

Sure.

Anxiety, War, and Disunity in an Age of Information

So this is something I've been pondering over, coming out of kind of a crazy time during COVID. Are we allowed to say that? Or are we back to where we can say? We'll have to put the E.

If it were up to them, COVID would never end.

Yeah.

The state mandated emergency.

We might have to put the E for explicit on this point.

Oh, you meant the C word.

So there was all of that craziness and I'd found myself constantly falling into anxiety, just being anxious over it. And I think God was sanctifying me and putting me in touch with people who could point me to scripture and further ground me in who Jesus is and my hope for the future.

So now people are kind of come past that a little bit and people are trying to get back to normal. I'm kind of thinking, and this is maybe within the church and within the world, what are some things that could make you anxious?

Things that you see that need to be addressed or are on the horizon that are things we should be praying for or addressing. Things that might cause people anxiety, but we know that we are to give those cares to the Lord, but nevertheless, there's still things that have to be dealt with.

Michael, we'll start with you and then Andrew and then me and we'll go back to Chris.

Well, I see there's a lot of uncertainty in the world with wars and rumors of wars and natural disasters and stellar phenomenon and people get really upset and they forget this happened five years ago or three years ago and so forth.

Things can get really stirred up and you can feel anxious about the level of violence and warfare in the world around you. I think that there's also a lot of concern about tyranny, deception from leaders, a lack of trust in anybody who has authority in a public office, and then a lot of lack of trust in people that you see around you, even in your neighborhood and so on.

You have no idea what they're gonna do in the loss of Christian culture and the influx of other cultures, not normal American cultures. You just have a lot of uncertainty. You don't know what kind of values people are using to assess any particular situation.

This is not a world in which we live where you can trust the word of your neighbor, make a deal on a handshake, proceed with a sense that everybody is interested in keeping their good name and having good integrity.

So a lot of distrust of neighbor, a lot of distrust of leader, a lot of distrust of news, and just nobody seems to know what really is going on. And in that sense, there can be a lot of anxiety, I think, and anxiety because we live in an age of information, but we don't live in an age of truth.

And the confluence of both of those causes a great deal of anxiety with a lot of people. So there's information overload, but there's no understanding or certainty that what the information we have is any good.

So you might call it fiat information. There's just so much of it everywhere, but is it worth anything? So I think I see that around the world today, and I think it impacts the church in that there is a lot of desire for some people who have a lot of influence in the Western evangelical church to try to ride herd on all this dissent, shall we say, amongst the churches and pastors and so on.

But there's good reason to distrust people who are just trying to maintain power and funds, and you don't trust what they're saying because you see that there's a lot of compromise. So there's a big split going on.

There's a new fundamentalism going on, neo-fundamentalism in a Christian sense that people are saying, no, we're done with this project called neo-evangelicalism. We're just kind of done with it. The old-timey fundamentalists were right.

Evangelicalism was just liberalism in slow motion. And the slow motion has brought us to this point. And there's a big split that has been occurring and is occurring in the church. And so there's a sifting going on.

People are ending up in different camps and that kind of thing. And I see a lot of disunity, and I see a lot of people ready to fight. And so to me, that's a concern for the health of a local church where sometimes the greater uncertainty and anxiety and the fighting mood of the larger issues can sometimes soak into the life of a local church.

And that's not really the venue to be hashing that out. There needs to be unity in the local church where we are here to serve and edify one another. If there is an issue that we disagree on, this is an opportunity to grow, go to the word, help one another.

But it's not time to, you know, fisticuffs, you know.

Andrew?

I don't know if I can follow that. You know, I think about these very things. My mind dwells upon the possibility of a worldwide conflagration that's greater than it's been. And what I think in my lifetime with successive foreign wars that have no end in sight and backing organizations or nations that are obviously opposed to Christ, and it's just not being able to, like you said, trust politicians or you feel like you're really represented as a believer.

Who speaks for me at the state level? Who speaks for me at the nation level? There's not a single man I wanna vote for. But I do want the truth. I have a hunger for the truth in this day and age of, like you said, information without truth.

I have a hunger for the truth. I am driven to the word so many times. I thank God for that. That's what I see in me. As far as in the congregation, there's the ability to have conflict with brothers and sisters.

I'm an only child. I didn't grow up with brothers and sisters. So in my household, I have three children. Two are closer to each other in age, and they tend to have conflict. You know, the other day I realized that I had missed out on the ability to resolve conflict in the Christian way with a brother and sister.

I missed out on that. I am learning now what it's like to have brothers and sisters in Christ in the congregation where you don't believe what they believe, or you think that you should go a different way, and it's like, but how are you gonna handle that?

It's not like the world handles conflict, right? I'm supposed to be forbearing, forgiving, serving these people that I have problems with. You know, it's like, Jesus, you're amazing.

Just say my name next time, Andrew, just say it.

I saw these eyeing you the whole time.

No, but I understand that. I grew up with brothers, so I got to learn how to not handle those situations in a Christianly manner to my brothers, right? Like, I saw how poorly I did it for so long, and we have Christ to fill those gaps, right?

Like, if we didn't have the examples, then he's our example now, and we've got it in full, and we've got it immaculate, as we might say. Are you okay?

No, I'll just say, you know, along those lines, how often do we actually thank God for showing us how to deal with conflict, and then giving us an opportunity to exercise our faith? You know, like, okay, I believe what the word says, but hey, this is an opportunity.

What are you going to do with it, you know?

So I kind of see things just a little bit differently than everybody else in the room. As far as in the world goes, the things that I'm seeing that should set off some sort of alarm bells or some sort of, at least awareness for us, you guys, you're seeing all the chaos, you're seeing all the disorder, you're seeing all the stuff that doesn't seem it's going to end, and I see unsustainability.

I see a lot of, so much debt racked up in the world that cannot go unanswered, and it will be answered for, to where I actually don't see, I see an end in sight, if that makes sense.

It has to come to an end, doesn't it?

It has to come to an end, and it'll come to an end in a way that will be awing. It'll be awesome for us to see, both in the most terrible and probably the most glorious way. So I'm seeing a lot of instability because of debt.

I'm seeing a lot of instability in reactions from the world, which I would say we have, we need now to recognize that we have loads of enemies in the world. We can't have a commandment in the church of not just thou shalt be nice, but thou shalt have no enemies, because I think we do, and we need to recognize who they are, we need to point them out, and we need to treat them with love, as we were commanded to do, but we need to say that we actually have them.

I think some of the attacks that we're going to find from the world, not only just the church, but the rest of the world as well, are privacy issues. I think it was Sun Tzu that said all warfare is deception.

I find most of the cacophony, most of the noise, as that distraction, as that deception.

Is it the fog of war?

It's the fog of war, and I know in the art of war, he basically says that at some point, the enemy is going to make his plan. It's going to be clear. They're going to overstep a bound. You don't overstep first.

He's going to show you what he's going to do. The deception's going to fade away, and I think in certain privacy issues that have come up of recent, especially the ability to exchange freely without intervention, or intervention in your own private life is the thing that's going to be attacked hardest and quickest because that's the way they get to uphold the debt.

So if that falls, then their debt comes due on them and on their heads, and I think that's what we're going to get from the world, and all the other people who are being affected by the fog of war will be tools that they'll use in that war.

So I kind of see an unsustainable path. I see calamitous things as well, but I'm pretty hopeful on how there are tools, there are stones in the brook, if we will, to knock down all the giants in the land, and there will be a path on the backside to all of that stuff.

Within the church specifically, Michael, you mentioned a sifting earlier, and there's a camp here and a camp there. I'm not really worried about the other camp at this point. I see it, but I'm just like, all right, you guys are going to go, you're going to do your regime evangelical stuff, and you're going to hang out over there, and that's fine, but what I'm kind of seeing within what we might call our camp, or like a neo-fundamentalism, is a generational divide and a generational argumentation that's going on of certain things, certain areas that cannot be either questioned or crossed by the old guard, and then a pompousness that comes from the younger guard wanting to press those things, sometimes to an extent that is just unnecessary, especially with the time that we're given.

So I think in that neo-fundamentalism, especially within the U .S. context, there's that generational issue is going to pop up, and I think that just needs to be dealt with from the scriptures, and there's a simple solution to that.

Quit being a young hothead, and don't be an old curmudgeon. Like, I mean, and that's not like from the text or anything, but there is a certain wisdom to that to know your frame. If you're young and you're energetic, dial it back, and then if you're older, use the wisdom that the Lord's given you and understand that wisdom can come from younger men in the faith as well, younger brothers.

Those would be the ways that I see the concerns in the near future for us in the church and out in the world. What about you, Chris?

I think for me, going through all of that turmoil, things going on, anxiety and things like that, the ability for people to talk to one another, that that has been lost. And so you can talk about all kinds of political, economics, health, education, you name it.

Down to the food.

Down to the food, how do we get our food, all of it. But everyone has these ideas, and as we move away from Christian foundation, you get some weirder and weirder ideas. But then to be able to talk to people that, no, you're in that camp, I'm in this camp, we're not gonna talk.

I think there's gonna be a lot of conversations that need to be had about all of those different topics because of the, you mentioned the generational divide. Things were done a certain way for a long time, and then you've got younger people think, well, here's a different way, or we know better.

Or that way didn't work.

Or that way didn't work. And I think there's a lot of, the Bible talks about older men teaching younger men, older women teach you younger women. Specific things. And then gender roles. All of that different stuff.

So I think the ability to talk, and that's gonna come through the gospel. I think it was so difficult for me because the disagreements I was having was not with unbelievers. It was with people that were Christians, that were professing Christians, and I felt betrayed by them.

I was like, well, I just wanna talk. Like even if we don't agree, I just wanna talk about it. And it was all kind of shut down.

Off limits.

Because priorities, you've got presuppositions. If health is your highest goal, and you're putting people at risk, then you don't believe in this, then I can't talk to you. Because you might not be, and then so then your salvation is called into question.

So I think in the Christian world, where we're supposed to be about grace, we know there is eternal life. We believe in the resurrection of our physical bodies. There is more than what's happening right now, and yet we are right now.

And we do have to talk to people right now. So I think being thoughtful about all of these different areas. We didn't have to think very hard. We were kind of complacent and comfortable. And now we're having to think about, what about our healthcare?

What about education? What about politics? What about all of these different things? What about Christianity over all of those things? What does Christianity have to say about those things? And then applying it.

And I think just being able to listen and have the conversations. Knowing what you believe, knowing right and wrong, knowing the word, because there are some things that are just evil. I've heard a lot of discussion about the Overton window, and everyone gets a seat at the table, and we all have our own opinions, and you just need to listen to them, and they just need to listen to you.

There are some things you just have to call evil, a spade a spade. And then there's other things like, I can understand where you're coming from. I can understand why you're anxious about X, Y, or Z, but what does the word say?

Maybe I can help you in this. Maybe you can help me in this. And I think that's kind of my concern going forward, because it seems so multifaceted. It's like, well, where do I focus? Okay, I'm gonna focus here.

Well, now this other thing's blowing up. I think it comes down to the Christian being able to not just listen, but to give grace, and then be grounded in the word, regardless of what others are saying.

So you have to be the one to bring order to the conversation, even though the chaos and the babble language is coming from somewhere else.

Right, I think being grounded in Christ, we talk about our identity in Christ, but then all of these other aspects that we have concerns about, if I know he's sovereign over all of it, not just parts of it, he's sovereign over the healthcare, he's sovereign over education, he's sovereign over economics and politics, so what am I supposed to do as a Christian?

Let me trust in him, and then when someone tells me something that's distressing, or won't listen, I can trust God. Okay, I'm just gonna, I can pray for them, instead of I have to fix this now because my world is turned upside down.

Man, just going back to what the master said, right? What do you say about it? It's so amazing that literally everything in life, we can just, what did he have to say about it? You know, and just trust that.

What you were talking about reminded me, you were talking about overplaying your hand.

Yeah.

I believe like so much of this is the hand that was overplayed in 2020.

Yeah.

We saw what happened. I know exactly what they're gonna do, right? They're gonna overreach again and again and again to get whatever they want, and you know, it's interesting, I used to listen to This Year in Prophecy, which was like a false prophet review, and they were talking about reviewing what happened in 2020.

No one was calling for that. No one was calling for that, but you know what they were calling for? That it would be a year for 2020 vision. We'd see clearly. Well, you know what? Okay, maybe I'll give you a pass on that because I saw clearly in 2020 what's going on.

They lifted the veil.

Yeah.

I think it's interesting to talk about some of the things that have been happening lately in terms of we do not have to be tossed to and fro by every new wind of doctrine. We can't ask the Lord for wisdom who gives generously and be grounded in the wisdom, which is in its fullness in Christ.

And that false teachers go from bad to worse and their folly becomes obvious to all. And so there are, we're watching as various false teaching, various false teachers very quickly over the course of just a handful of years move from bad to worse and then their folly becomes more and more obvious.

I remember five years ago, some of the rising stars of the church woke movement, and how they were hedging and using equivocations and trying to grab a big audience and so on. And then, I mean, some of us knew there was like massive problems with this and we're calling it out.

And other people were like, oh, well, you know, and we'll just, but now those same people, the things that they're saying makes them sound like unhinged lunatics. They proceeded from bad to worse and their folly is becoming more and more obvious.

And I've seen that in the church and I've seen that at a wider scale where you have people whose ideologies are getting worse and worse and becoming more and more obvious how ridiculous it is what they believe.

And so it's like a wildfire that burns itself out. It's gonna do a lot of damage in the meantime, but wildfires kill themselves. They burn themselves out. And the fact that there's wildfire over and over again, what follows it?

Regrowth, regeneration.

New growth, new opportunity. And there's opportunity to say, you know, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Here's the good news. It's not chaos forever. It's not uncertainty forever.

Amen.

Here's the supremacy of Jesus Christ. He's in every way, an everyday savior, king over everything. So it doesn't matter what's happening, we can talk about it in the light of his authority.

Amen. Speaking of opportunity and regeneration or rebirth from a sort of like nation death or empire death, what are our long-term goals around the table? That's what I've been thinking about a lot personally.

It's probably been since 2020, around that time. What was that? That was our first year of marriage. So I had our first son. We had our first son and I was struggling to find employment and I'm trying to make long-term plans.

So instead of appealing to other places for work, I started trying to make my own way through things, learning different technologies, learning financial speak first of all, so I could even enter into it.

That way I could do something for my family because I had been on the outside of things for so long. And I got to thinking about long-term things and what things have lasted throughout time before me and will last after me.