WWUTT 2615 Q&A Anointing With Oil in James 5, How Often to Have Communion, Women Pastors in the SBC

Should churches be anointing with oil and praying for their sick? How often should we partake in the

Lord's table? And is women pastors the biggest issue that's going on right now in the

SBC? The answer is When We Understand the Text. You're listening to When We Understand the

Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God.

For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Let's start with Psalm 92. It is good to give thanks to the

Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.

For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands

I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord!

Your thoughts are very deep. The stupid man cannot know, the fool cannot understand this, that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever.

But you, O Lord, are on high forever.

So yes, though it may look like evil is flourishing, it's doing well, and there will never be any justice done against those who do such wicked things, it does have an end date.

God will judge the wicked, and they will perish forever. And the way that we are saved from the judgment of God is by faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us and rose again from the dead, so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

Jesus is coming back again to take up his saints to himself and bring judgment on the wicked.

Until then, the wicked may continue in this world, but it's not as if they're going to get away from it.

God will bring it to an end, and we continue to hold fast to Christ, knowing that he is bringing his kingdom to completion.

And in that eternal kingdom, there will be none of this anymore. No more evil, no more sin, no more death.

All the former things will have passed away, and we will dwell with Christ forever.

Remember, Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the things that we need will be added to us as well.

This is the Friday edition of When We Understand the Text. When we take questions from the listeners,

I'm flying solo this week. Becky is not along with me. We finished up that very last week of school with our oldest daughter graduating on Wednesday, so we now have a graduate in the family.

I'm that old now. Not so sure what she's doing next with her future, but we're working on that together.

And so since that was our week and it was really busy, Becky is taking the rest of the time to crash,

I do believe. But God willing, she'll be back on with me next week. We're still going to take your questions, though, and you can send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com,

or you can send a voicemail to speakpipe .com slash wwutt.

You can still get to the website. It's www .wwutt .com. If you don't want to type in that many

Ws and you still want to send us a voicemail, that's the way to do it. Speakpipe .com slash wwutt.

So let's start with a voicemail from Ryan. Hey, Pastor Gabe, this is

Ryan. I had a question on my wife and I both had a question for you from James chapter five verses 14 and 15.

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

So the question is, why aren't we seeing more churches do exactly what is called for here?

And is there, are you in sin to not be asking the church to do this?

And why aren't more pastors offering perhaps to do this sort of thing? And the last question is, do, is there a certain type of oil you're supposed to use for this sort of thing?

And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that and see what you had to say. So thank you and enjoy listening to your show.

These are great questions. I thank you so much for asking, Ryan. And this is something that I have practiced all 16 years so far of my, of my time as a pastor.

So let me go to James five. Let's kind of broaden it out a little bit and look at more of the context here.

So in James five, starting in verse 13, I'm reading from the English standard and I'm going to look at the legacy as well, which

I think was what you were reading from. So is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick?

Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Now it's that verse

James five 16 that the Roman Catholics will take to say, see, this is why we have confession because you need to confess your sins to a priest who has the power to absolve or forgive you, which is not true at all.

That's reading a lot more into the text than what we have here. But what is this instruction? Let's look at those three main questions that Ryan was asking.

First of all, why don't more churches do this? And kind of going along with this, why don't more pastors offer it?

Secondly, are you in sin if you don't ask? And then thirdly, is there a certain kind of oil to use?

So first of all, as I said in the beginning, this is something that I do practice. If someone calls upon me and says,

I'm ill, I would like the elders to come and lay hands on me and pray, then we will do it.

I've been a pastor at three churches. I've done this at every church that I've been a part of. Why don't more churches do this?

Was Ryan's question. Well, to give the blunt answer, because the majority of churches just simply aren't biblical.

So you won't see a lot of attention to details of ecclesiastical practice, as we would call it.

Ecclesiology is the study of churches, how they're governed and things like that. And so there's not a lot of attention to what should we be doing as a church.

This was one of the first things that I really wanted to study and come to an understanding of when

I became a pastor was, is our church operating according to what

I would see to be a biblically accurate model? And so I'm looking at scripture and then examining what we're doing in church and trying to see, are we following scripture closely in all of our operations?

And this was one of those. I saw that there was a call upon elders to offer this kind of prayer and even anointing to those who would ask for it, anointing in the sense of anointing with oil, as it says in verse 14.

And so if somebody asked, then we would do this. Now, I did not have a plurality eldership until about five years into being a pastor.

Was it five? Yeah, about five years. So for the first five years that I was a pastor, there wasn't plurality eldership.

There would still be people that would ask me to do this and I would do it. But I still saw it was that this is addressing a church as though it had a plurality eldership.

Let him call for the elders of the church. And so this was one of the passages that I used to argue for why we needed plurality eldership.

And then once we had those elders, whenever we were asked, we would do so. Why don't more pastors offer it?

So let me give you the broader answer that goes beyond most churches aren't biblical.

A broader answer would be that we have a bad understanding of spiritual gifts.

And so there's probably a lot of pastors out there who don't want to step on what they think is someone else's spiritual gift.

Or maybe the pastor thinks, I don't have this spiritual gift of healing. I don't want it to be on me if someone doesn't get healed.

And they may not consciously think this, right? But it could be all wrapped up in this bad understanding of how spiritual gifts work.

So if this pastor thinks that there's got to be somebody in my congregation who has that gift of healing, it's not me.

I've never laid hands on somebody and healed someone. So I don't want to step on their toes if that's the gift that they have.

So we're going to have a healing ministry. Might have that sort of a thing. Since the majority of churches in the

United States, the majority of evangelical churches, I should say, are charismatic or have some charismatic tendencies, leanings to it.

Even if they are like big evangelical, it's still on the charismatic side more so than it's going to be on the reformed or cessationist side.

And so you have those charismatic tendencies to think that there is somebody in your church that has this gift of healing or we're going to establish.

That's like a committee or a group that becomes our healing team. That's our healing ministry.

They're either regularly praying for sick needs in the church and things like that, or you probably have even commissioned them to go out and lay hands on people and pray.

So that could be another reason why more churches don't do this. But it still mostly comes back on.

Most churches are not trying to follow a biblical model of operations, even in the existence of a plurality eldership or what those elders are supposed to do.

Now, going on to Ryan's second question, are you in sin if you don't ask?

And in answer to that question, I would say no, because I don't think that this is necessarily being provided as an imperative.

As in, if you are definitely sick, then you definitely need to call upon the elders of the church.

And if you don't follow this instruction, then somebody who is sick is therefore in sin. Now, I said

I was reading from the English Standard. Ryan, I think you read from the Legacy. In the

Legacy, it says in verse 14, is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him.

What did we read in the ESV? Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church.

So there's really one Greek word there, and it's best rendered summon.

So is anyone among you sick? Summon the elders of the church. I don't know why most translations don't use that word.

Maybe because, I mean, it sounds like you're summoning a wizard in our

English. When we think of that word summon, that's not really a word that we typically use.

So maybe that's why we avoid using that. I don't think it's given as an imperative, like you are commanded to have to call upon the elders of the church to do this.

So if you are sick, call for the elders and let them pray over him.

There is not a faith healer in your church. This is what is designated for healing in the church, that the elders would come and pray.

And if it is God's will that one would be healed from this, then

God will heal them. It's not upon a person to have the power of healing to be able to do this.

It is the elders fulfilling a responsibility that they have. And then if it be

God's will to heal the person through this prayer, using the prayer to do so, then

God will heal that person. Sometimes he heals and sometimes he does not. I actually have the benefit of having seen

God heal in these circumstances where we have gone to a hospital, to somebody's home, anointed with oil, laid hands on and prayed.

And we have seen that person healed. It wasn't immediately. It wasn't like we're anointing somebody who didn't have use of their legs and suddenly they're standing up and dancing around.

It wasn't like that. But we have prayed and even in circumstances where doctors have said, it just doesn't look good.

And then they suddenly improved. And the doctors are going, well, we did not give you good odds here, but you came out of this much better than we thought.

And we rejoiced as a church. We rejoiced because we knew that that prayer of faith worked and God did an amazing work in that person's life.

And we as a church celebrated together. Now, again, I say this is not a faith healing sort of a situation.

So that doesn't mean every single prayer is automatically going to have a healing power, but the prayer is always going to have some spiritual effect.

It will have some healing effect on us, even if we're not seeing the physical healing of the person that we are praying for.

Now, let me add something else to this too, as we're considering this passage in James chapter five, we're seeing this very specifically in the context of someone who has sinned.

So this is not necessarily a broad instruction regarding everybody who is sick.

There is a particular context here. And that's not to say I won't pray for anybody who's sick.

If somebody's just sick and they're calling me to come and anoint them with oil and whatever else, so I'm not going to do that because they have to have sinned and they're confessing their sins.

That's not what I'm saying. But that is the context in which we read this. So this very specifically does have to do with a person who has sinned.

That seems to be what the context is indicating. So verse 16, or well, let me finish 15 rather.

The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. See, we have a saving aspect there.

And when you go on, it appears as if the saving application is to somebody who has sinned and the

Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Verse 16, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

So the healing doesn't just exist there in the context of a person that is sick.

It is a healing that comes upon a person who has sinned and confessed their sins and is therefore received healing because of it.

And like I said, that healing may not be a physical healing. Maybe it is a deep spiritual, psychological healing or something like that.

Somebody was burdened greatly with their sin and now having had hands laid on and prayed for and the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working as verse 16 goes on to say.

So that person feels a great burden lifted from them by the spirit of God and they do receive healing when hands are laid on and they are prayed for.

So again, this does seem to have the context of a person who is sick because they have sinned and so they are confessing sin and not everybody who is sick is sick because they sinned.

We are all sick because of sin. As we read in Romans chapter eight, this world has been subjected to futility because of man's sin against God.

So we, our bodies decay, we get sick, we die and all of that happens as a result of sin in the world.

So that's definitely true. But not every person who gets sick has that illness or that affliction because they had done something sinful.

But there are many people who do get sick and they feel great, great heavy,

I want to say psychological burdens, but just like mental burdens, a guilt, they feel a great burden upon themselves, something, something spiritual, something deep that is within them.

They feel burdened and heavy laden due to some sin that they have either done or are doing and they feel burdened by it and they just can't get out from under it.

It's like what's said in the Psalms, Psalm 32, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me.

My strength dried up as by the heat of summer when I was silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

And then verse five says, I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

So what shows there in Psalm 32 is God's heavy hand upon a person who has sinned and they are feeling the weight of that sin.

They are feeling guilt because they have sinned against God. It is God who I have offended.

And this weight that is upon me is because I have offended the almighty, the creator of the universe, he who is holy above all.

And I am not holy and I have sinned against him. And so the effects of that,

I am feeling that now in my body. The way that Psalm begins, Psalm 32 is blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

And when this man, it's a mascal of David. So when David is in sin and he hasn't confessed that sin, he feels the weight of that sin and he feels so burdened by it.

And it does affect us physically. And I've shared this before. I've shared this out of my own life before, a period of time in my life where I was sinning with my girlfriend and like the whole time we were dating,

I was ill and I felt awful. I did not connect my illness with what we were doing, but I was feeling tremendously guilty because we had crossed a line that a man should not cross with anyone but his wife.

And so I felt so burdened by the sin that I was doing, but not knowing that the reason why

I felt sick and it was affecting my body the way that it was not even knowing that it had anything to do with the sin that I was that I was enjoying and trying not to let anybody else see.

Doctors would look at me. I got prescribed different things. I remember there was a certain pill that was like brand new at the time.

I saw a bunch of commercials on it later, but had never heard of it at the time that it came out. I'm not going to say what it is because I'm not going to give any plug for it.

But since it was an experimental drug, then they're like, we can't figure out what's wrong with you. We don't know what else it is.

So why don't you try this? So I was like one of the early testers or something.

I don't know. Yeah, one of the early people they would use that pill on to test and see how I felt. I didn't feel any better, so I certainly didn't give them good numbers on that experimental drug, but I was never able to make that connection until much later.

Even after I broke up with my girlfriend, it wasn't like I was realizing, oh, I'm doing something sinful. I need to break up with her and then everything will be fine.

It wasn't until years later that I realized what was going on and nobody could figure out what was wrong with me and why

I was feeling so sick. And it was because of the guilt that I was feeling because of my sin. These instructions here in James five,

I think have a lot more to do with that than just a general, if you're sick, call for the elders of the church, they'll lay hands on you and pray and anoint you with oil.

So that's just to provide you with what I see to be the main context there.

And again, that doesn't mean you can't call upon the elders and pray, but that just appears to be the main context regarding someone who is sick.

It's not just a general illness, but it is something that may be connected with sin.

You don't want to look at every sickness as being caused by someone's sin.

Oh, you're sick because you've been sinning. Then you must be sinning in some way and you need to confess it. That's not the way that we approach it.

Although as a pastor, there have been times where I have confronted somebody who is sick and can't figure out what's going on and have said, have you considered that the reason why you feel this way is because you may have some sin in your life that you need to confess.

And if they tell me that there's not, then I'm going to believe them. But as a pastor, I just need to put it out there so that they are looking, they are examining in their lives to see, is there something that I'm hiding that I need to confess and lay before God?

Because we certainly need to do that. If we try to conceal our sins, as said in Psalm 66, if I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the

Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer.

If we have sins and we're holding onto those sins, then it puts enmity between us and God. So confess your sins before God.

And as said here in James 5, that prayer has healing power.

The Lord will raise him up. If he has committed any sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

Okay, the other part of Ryan's question was, is there a certain kind of oil that you should use?

Well, when I've used oil for this, it's just simply a kind of an olive oil. You don't have any chemicals in it.

It's a pure virgin olive oil. So it's natural. I know that pouring this over somebody's head, it's not doing something weird to them.

It's just the natural oils like we see being used even in scripture.

I don't know that there's necessarily a scriptural prescription, though, with regards to what kind of oil that you have to use.

I have used like a pomegranate oil in the past, something that was a little bit more scented and aromatic, because that was the use of these kinds of oils in the

Old Testament. It wasn't just the purpose of the oil for anointing, but even that it had been mixed with other scents and spices so that when the oil was poured upon the head, you also get the effect of just that wonderful, pleasing aroma.

Just as scripture says to us that when we offer a sacrifice up to the Lord, it is a pleasing aroma to him.

Or when Noah had offered a sacrifice, it was a pleasing aroma unto the

Lord. The sacrificial system is given to Israel. It's the same sort of description there. I think with the anointing oil, we have that same thing.

That's for us, that we get to enjoy that wonderful, pleasant scent of knowing that the

Lord is in our prayers. That's what even these kinds of pleasant senses can mean to us, that the

Lord is in our prayers and he is working. That's what that reminder can be. I think

I'm more just kind of giving advice on what kind of oil to use, not necessarily what scripture says we should use as far as the kind of oil is concerned.

And remember that the power is not in the oil. The power is in the prayer and God working through that prayer.

So it's not like if you've used the wrong oil, then somehow this person is not going to be saved.

Now, I grew up in—well, I didn't grow up in. It was much later. It was when I got to college. But I was in charismatic churches for over a decade.

I've talked about this before as well. Anointing oil was very common. It was almost like somebody would walk around with it.

Ladies would have anointing oil in their purses. They would just have it on the ready for whenever something needed to be anointed.

Here we go. I had a friend who carried it with him everywhere.

And anytime anything bad happened, he was pulling out his anointing oil and anointing it with oil.

I remember driving along with him one time and his car went out because it was an old car.

It was a beat -up car. We're driving in the hot summer in western

Kansas, and it overheated and went out. And he grabs his anointing oil, and he gets out, and he's throwing it on the hood of the car and thinks he's rebuking demons and all this stuff.

It didn't fix the car. But anyway, that was pretty common in the charismatic circles that I was in, to always have anointing oil.

There was a video I just watched the other day. I shared it with Fred, in fact, where Bryce Crawford goes to the

Satanic Temple in Massachusetts, and he takes with him this big thing, this big bottle of anointing oil.

He calls it anointing oil. I think it was just olive oil. He sticks it in his pants, and he goes in there.

And I'm really ready in this video. I'm ready for him to pull that thing out. And when he gets to the Baphomet idol and all that stuff, he's just going to pull it out and just toss all this oil on it.

That's what I'm hoping is about to happen. There's a whole reason I was watching the video. And no, that's not what he did.

He dabbed his finger in it, and he just makes a tiny little cross on the floor and goes,

I rebuke this place. He whispers even. He whispers it. I rebuke this place in the name of Jesus. I'm going, that does not do anything.

There is nothing, no power in that at all. As Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

Everybody hears you whispering, and you're dabbing oil on the floor. That's not accomplishing anything at all. We must proclaim the gospel.

You want to cast demons out of that place. You share the gospel with the people who run that place so that they will turn from their sin to Christ and be saved and renounce all of these satanic practices and turn away from them.

That's how you're going to overturn that work. But that's not what they do. They really think that they're going to have some sort of power in the anointing oil.

And all of that becomes a very, very silly practice. But here in James 5, I believe this is something very serious.

And I think it is good for us to practice. Whether or not a church is in sin, if they don't do it,

I'm not going to issue a blanket statement and say one way or the other, because I don't know what's going on there.

But I do know that for me as a pastor, I see this instruction. Is anyone among you sick?

Summon the elders of the church and they are to pray for him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And I read that as a pastor and I'm like,

OK, if somebody calls upon me to do that, I need to be ready to go and do it.

And one thing, and I've said this to people in my congregation, like I'll offer this as something for you if you want it.

But there's no obligation on anybody to have to ask for it. And I'm not judging you if you don't ask for it.

And furthermore, I'm not really going to offer it like like in special circumstances. So I've I've made it known and I've said, if you want this, then call and ask and we'll come and lay hands on you and pray.

And and all of us elders, by the way, we're all cessationist. We know that God is not working through some sort of faith healer in our church and we need to let him do that work.

This is the instruction that's given for elders. But it says call upon the elders. So I'm not calling everybody and saying, hey, we need to come and anoint you with oil and pray for you.

Rather, I just make them aware that this is a service that we will do for you if you call us to come and do it.

But it's not something that we're forcing upon anybody or I'm even, you know, this week counting on my ledger how many times

I've gone out and done this. It's for those who call and ask for it, especially if they have committed sins and there's something that they need to confess to the elders and that we, as their shepherds, can help work them through in guiding their spirits and pointing them to Christ and and helping them in understanding their sin and need for a savior.

As said in 1 John 1 9, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So who really needs to hear your confession most? Who you need to confess to is

God. I appreciate your question, Zach, and I hope that that was helpful to you.

Next question also comes from. No, I'm sorry. That was Ryan. I was going to say this is also a

Zach. No, different, different question. So Ryan asked that question about anointing with oil. This one is from Zach.

Hi, Pastor Gabe. How often should a church do communion?

I've been in churches that do it monthly, twice a month and more recently weekly.

A few friends of mine started attending a church that does communion quarterly on fifth

Sundays and then also on Christmas and Easter. Should we understand as often as you do this in 1

Corinthians 11 25 to 26 to be a command to do it often or just as often as you choose to do it?

Would love your insight on this topic. So that's another great question with a good scripture to go along with it.

So let's jump to 1 Corinthians 11 and read what Paul says there about how often we are to have communion.

Is there something that we can glean from this in what Paul instructs in 1 Corinthians 11? Now, this is a long section, so I'm going to work through a little bit here.

Let's start in verse 17. But in the following instructions, I do not commend you, he says, kind of offering this admonishment, because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse.

For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

When you come together, we're seeing this again and again. This has come up now three times.

When you come together, verse 17, when you come together as a church, verse 18, and then when you come together, verse 20, it is not the

Lord's supper that you eat for in eating. Each one goes ahead with his own meal.

One goes hungry. Another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?

Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you?

Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. So what Paul is addressing here are what we would refer to as the agape feasts, the love meals that they would have in church.

And this church is using that meal as like the Lord's table. So somebody eats a whole lot and another person doesn't have as much.

And there's segregation now. There are favorites. It's like class categories that are going on at the

Lord's table. So when you come together, and we can see that these three when you come togethers in verses 17 to 22 are all definitely whenever the church comes together.

So we would understand that as weekly, right? When you come together, it's not for the better, but for the worse.

Verse 18, for in the first place, when you come together as a church, so it's every time that they gather as the assembled body.

That's the context. That's what Paul is addressing. So just wanting you to see that as we go on. Verse 23, for I received from the

Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me in the same way.

Also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the

Lord's death until he comes. As often, as often as you eat and drink, it is proclaiming the

Lord's death until he comes. And again, this is still in the context of when you come together.

So verse 27, whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the

Lord. Let a person examine himself then. And so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

And we can tie this into the previous question that I answered about a person who is in sin that they have not confessed.

Confess your sins before God that you will not eat or drink of the body and blood of the

Lord in an unworthy manner. Verse 29, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body themselves, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judge ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then now, verse 33, as we kind of close up this section, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home so that when you come together, it will not be for judgment when you come together.

So we still have that context of it's whenever the church is gathering and then the close of that about the other things

I will give directions when I come. So other questions that they've asked, other instructions that he has to give, he'll talk about those things when he comes to them.

So with regards to the gathering of the church and the practice of the Lord's table, this that we read about in First Corinthians 11 appears to be indicating weekly practice.

Now, I want to say that I came into this conviction sometime around year

I'm not sure when seven or eight, perhaps when I was a pastor,

I started out. You can see some obvious growth concerning my convictions about the

Lord's table from the first year I was a pastor until now. This is one of those areas where I believe that I've grown in this.

So when I first started out, it was it was very seldom. It was quarterly.

It probably would have been now. Now, I was an associate pastor at the very beginning. So the way that senior pastor was implementing it, it may have been about fifth

Sundays, just like like you've seen done, Zach. So so that may have been only about as often as it was on a fifth

Sunday. And then when I became the senior pastor, I was doing it quarterly. So I was saying this month, this month, this month and this month.

These are when we are doing the Lord's table. And and I really did not have a conviction regarding frequency at that particular time.

I was thinking that the less often that we do it, then the more special it is that that was what

I had in my mind. But we had a church that came and joined ours. And I want to say this was

I can't remember if this was in 17 or 18, but another church that had about 30 plus members in it in our community wanted to come and join our church.

And when they did that very first Sunday, which if I recall, was January 1st.

So whichever one of those years, 2018, that had a January 1st on a

Sunday, it was that year that that our churches came together for the first time.

And we had already started doing communion monthly on the first Sunday of the month.

And so since this was the first Sunday, Sunday of the month, first Sunday of the year, first time that our churches were gathering together like this, then we all had communion together.

And I want to say it was right about then that I was going, we need to be doing this all the time. And I thought somewhere in there, it needed to be a weekly practice.

But the problem became that there there were not the volunteers to put it together every Sunday. So we just kept doing it monthly.

And then when I wanted to finally go, OK, that's it, we're doing this weekly, which was right after we had like a big, there was a big discipline issue that happened at our church that was resolved.

Everything finally came to an end in January or February of 2020.

And it was then that I was going to say, let's do the Lord's Table weekly, especially because some of the of the big discipline things that had happened in our church, the

Lord's Table actually had something to do with that. So I was I was going to implement, let's do it weekly from this point on.

But then what happened there at the start of 2020, COVID happened. And and we had very scant turnouts after that.

Not a lot of people coming to church, even for the rest of the year that I was there in Kansas at the end of the year, I ended up moving to Texas.

When I was moving to Texas, I was going through that that interview process over the course of 2020, meeting with those elders, sometimes by like video chats and stuff like that.

And one of the questions that would be asked of me in those chats is, how often do you think we should be doing the

Lord's Table? And without hesitation, I said weekly. And they said, really? There was even a questionnaire that they gave me.

And I said that on the questionnaire as well. I think that's why it came up in the video chat. And they said, if we only do it weekly, is that a problem for you?

And I said, I'll go along with that. But I my personal conviction is that I think we should be doing it weekly.

There was me and one other elder that felt that way. There were six of us elders all together, and we were outnumbered.

So there's a much larger church as well, though I don't think the size of the church should slow us down or hinder us from weekly practice of the

Lord's Table. So when I came here to Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona, I was delighted that they were already practicing the

Lord's Table weekly. This is the first church that I've ever been a part of where the practice of the

Lord's Table was weekly. And I cannot even begin to tell you how much I think it sanctifies me.

That would be a testimony for a whole other time to talk about that. But I love it. I love the weekly partaking of the body and blood of the

Lord, and that we come together at this table, and we examine ourselves, and we pray, and we eat of the bread, and we drink of the cup, and we proclaim the

Lord's death, and we're continuing to do that until he comes. I think it's a wonderful practice, and I think that a church should be doing it weekly.

Does that mean that I think that a church is in sin if they're not doing it weekly? Not necessarily, but I do think there are some things they should examine about why they do it that way.

It's good to ask the question, why don't you do this weekly, and examine themselves with regarding how often they do the

Lord's Table and the reasons that they have the limitations on it that they do.

So every church, it's good for them to—it's good for all of us to always examine. Our ecclesiology is the way that we're operating as a church according to what

Scripture says. Are we obedient to God in our gathering together for worship?

Always good to examine ourselves in that way. So I hope that was helpful to your questions.

Let me make sure that I didn't miss anything else. Should we understand as often as you do this? Well, okay.

So as often as you do this, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, 25, and 26, it needs to be in the context of whenever you gather.

So that's really more the indicator there is when you come together as a church, verse 18 in particular.

So all of the context there in verses 17 to 22 indicate that Paul is talking about the weekly gathering.

So as often as you do this should be in the weekly gathering of the church.

So some friends of mine, you said, started a church that does communion quarterly, fifth Sundays, also at Christmas and Easter.

I do not do communion on Christmas Day and on Easter Sunday because they are those holidays.

We do communion on Easter because we always have communion on Sunday. So therefore, we're going to do the

Lord's Table on Easter Sunday. But I'm not doing it because it's Easter. That's what I'm saying. So like Thursday night, for example, the previous two churches that I've been a pastor at in Kansas and in Texas, we did have a special Lord's Table that we would do on Thursday night because we remembered when

Jesus implemented this, when he did this with his disciples, taking the Passover meal and turning it into what it was about to become, what had not even yet happened.

Jesus being arrested and dying on the cross. But he's having this meal with his disciples, breaking bread, passing the cup, though they don't understand it now, they will understand the purpose of it later and saying to them, this is my body which is given for you.

This is my blood that is poured out for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom.

And so because that happened on a Thursday night, I've been in a church where we would do that on the

Thursday of Holy Week. But we don't do that here because we do it every Sunday. And I don't want

Thursday, see Thursday during Holy Week services, because we'll do a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday service during Holy Week.

For those services, those are special services because really being determined by the calendar more than anything else.

And not all of the church gathers in those evening services. So that's one of the reasons why

I don't want to do the Lord's table on that Thursday night, because that's something that needs to be done with the whole church.

They're all going to be there Sunday. So that's where we're going to have the Lord's table. So thinking about it less in terms of what's on the calendar and more in terms of what should be our regular practice as a church whenever we gather and doing this in obedience and in submission to what the word of God prescribes for us.

Thank you again for your questions, Zach. Let's go on to this one from Iwa. I hope I'm pronouncing your name right,

Iwa. Hi, Pastor Gabe. I am very grateful for all of your videos available on YouTube.

I was myself freed by God from a charismatic environment. And now

I want to pass on biblical teaching to people back in my country where there is an overwhelming lack of sound doctrine.

I am originally from Poland, but currently live in England. Unfortunately, in Poland, most people are

Roman Catholic. There are very few evangelical churches with sound teaching. It can be said that Poland is still a difficult ground for the growth of true biblical

Christianity. We do have several hundred Protestant reformed evangelical churches with solid teaching, but they are often small, financially struggling congregations.

It is also difficult for them to break through the influence of larger Roman Catholic and Pentecostal churches, which tend to receive more public attention.

However, thanks to their God -given perseverance, they are not discouraged and continue their ministry faithfully.

Wanting to contribute even a small part to the spread of sound teaching in Poland, I created a

YouTube channel several years ago where I translate various sermons and podcasts.

Unfortunately, alongside Catholicism in Poland, charismatic and hyper charismatic teachings have also made their way in, which, as I mentioned earlier,

I was once part of. I can certainly sympathize with that. I was there too. So she goes on, would you grant me permission to translate some of your videos into Polish and upload them to my

YouTube channel with a voiceover as is common practice in Poland? Below is a link to my

YouTube channel so that you can see the kind of videos that I upload. I would really appreciate it as your videos offer valuable biblical insight, and I believe it could be very helpful for many people in Poland to hear.

Of course, under each translated video, I will include a link to your channel. I never claim someone else's content as my own.

I always credit the original source. I would also like to mention that I have permission to translate sermons from G3 Conferences for the

Gospel, Justin Peters Ministries, Danny Long, and more. I have also translated the film

The Essential Church. Wow, that's great. So here's a link below to my YouTube channel, and then she put something in another language that I cannot pronounce, but then saying, blessings your sister in Christ, Iwa.

I thank you so much for that, Iwa. I am honored that you are asking, and my answer to you would be yes, of course, absolutely.

You can take those videos, translate them however you want, and use them for your channel.

And I thank you for asking me that you could do that. I thank you for even informing me as to what's going on in your native

Poland, because that's a good word to hear of those Reformed churches that continue to thrive even in such an environment, but I'm also aware of the spiritual battle that still goes on there, and would certainly love to pray for you.

So that's something I can add to my prayer list. But you certainly have my permission to use my videos in any way.

And as a kind of a blanket permission, I have said, anybody can use my videos for whatever they want.

I don't care if you download them, you can upload them to your own channel, you can upload them to Facebook if you want, to Instagram, it doesn't bother me.

As long as you're not doing it to profit for yourself, as long as you keep the content free, then

I am just fine with you using it in whatever capacity you want. I'm glad that the videos get used in that way.

I never set out to start making them to gain attention for myself or to get money out of it.

It is great that people like them enough that they would want to share them with somebody else.

And I try to keep them ad free, because I've also heard stories from like evangelists out on the street who will say, somebody might ask me a question that I know, oh, well,

I got a guy who's done a video on that. And so they'll pull up my video. It's just a minute and a half and they could show it real quick so they can show it on their smartphone.

Well, I don't want to have ads on those videos. That's going to make a person have to stand there and wait 15 to 30 more seconds because they have to watch this ad first before they can watch the video.

YouTube is changing some of the stuff that they're doing right now with what can have ads on it. And they're sticking ads on some of my videos without my control.

So I'm attempting to monetize my channel so that I do have a little more control over that. But as much as I can help it,

I'm not going to put those ads on my videos, especially the shorter videos, I should say. But yeah, once again,

I appreciate you asking and God bless you. I will be praying for you and will say a prayer for you at the at the conclusion of this broadcast to as you continue that ministry to people in your native

Poland, solely day or Gloria to God alone be the glory. All right. Final question that I have here.

This one actually comes from Justin Peters. I don't know that I've, uh, I've gotten a question from Justin Peters on this show before.

So he sent me, he sent me a video of a guy that I've replied to before.

I've done a video on this guy, or at least some sort of accusation that he was making. And I responded to it in a

YouTube video and Justin sent it to me and said, I'd love to see you do a video refuting Brian on this.

And the video is the SBC scam exposed the real reason that the

Southern Baptist convention wants to vote on women pastors at the SBC annual meeting.

It was like, Oh boy, well this guy again. So I went and watched the video and I don't want to give him any more real estate on my

YouTube channel. So I'm not going to reply to it there. But I do think that one of the things that he addresses here is helpful as we're looking toward the annual meeting of the

Southern Baptist convention, which is coming up. Is it next week? I think it's a, no, it's, it's the week after it's

June seven through 10th or something like that. So it's the second week in June, but this is a, this is the largest evangelical

Protestant denomination. I know it's a fellowship. They don't want to call themselves a denomination, but it's the, it's the largest denomination in the

United States. So what's happening at the annual meeting should be of interest to everybody, even if you're not a

Southern Baptist. I mean, I pay attention to stuff that happens in the PCA. We've talked about stuff that happens in the UMC on this program, among the

Anglicans, the Lutherans and otherwise, what is happening in these major denominations is worthy of our attention, especially as Christians.

Cause we see the direction that evangelicalism is going in this country. So what is happening with the

SBC, even though there's been people on social media that have said, I'm not Southern Baptist. So this really doesn't concern me.

I beg to differ. We, our church still is affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention.

Even though we don't play a large part, we have a small sum that we give per year.

So we could send two messengers to an annual meeting, though we don't really present ourselves as a

Southern Baptist church. There's another, you know, couple, two, three Southern Baptist churches in our town, but I was ordained in the

Southern Baptist church. A lot of what is going on among Southern Baptist still matters to me greatly.

And this church, when they hired me, when Providence called me to be a pastor here, it mattered to them that I was part of, uh, of the

Southern Baptist convention. And, uh, that was something that they looked at when considering me for this particular position.

And I would go if it was closer and cheaper, but it's not real easy to get to these annual meetings, especially when they're all the way out in Orlando.

It'd be a great place to go right now. I would love to be in Florida, but, uh, yeah, not going to make it this year.

Anyway, here is this guy named Brian, who I don't remember what his last name is, but he is, he is exposing the

SBC and the real reason why they are going to have this vote on women pastors is so that they can hide all the other sex scandals that are going on.

That's what Brian's claim is going to be. I'm not even going to address that because it's so ludicrously dumb.

So I'm going to avoid that aspect of it, but there's still something that he says here that is so far off the mark and I think is worthy of our consideration here.

So here we go. I'm going to share with you on the screen here, a comment, a short comment I got about the role of women in the church.

And it was a comment to the video I did about the downfall of the SBC and its leaders who are seemingly making the issue of women pastors, uh, front and center is the number one crisis in the

SBC apparently. Um, so I want to share that with you. And it was, um, now

Brian, as you would probably assume is egalitarian. So he believes that women can be pastors.

He's very charismatic. And that was the video that I responded to him before where he's defending charismaticism.

And it was a, it was a ridiculous argument and attacked Justin Peters in the midst of that argument as well. So he is, uh, he's talking about how the

SBC, this is their downfall now because they're limiting, they're restricting the role of pastor to only women.

And he's talking about this comment that he got on a previous video. I'm going to share my, my response to this person.

So without giving much more of an intro to it, let me just read what he said. Here it is. He wrote, when I was younger,

I never understood why women shouldn't be in ministerial positions. But now that I'm older, I do see that we have different roles to play.

And that in modern Protestant church, when a woman is in leadership, rainbow flags soon unfurled.

Do you believe that's true? Do you believe that in any instance, when women are allowed to become in roles of leadership or pastor, that sure enough, what will follow them, that's their secret agenda.

They're going to bring in the whole pride thing and the wokeness and social agenda and you know, equity and all that other stuff.

Um, that's important to the world and leftist. Right. Okay. So let me stop there.

I think you can identify the leap that he's making. So he thinks that the argument is if we let women into these institutions and we put them in the pulpit and they become pastors in churches, their secret agenda is to really bring in the

LGBTQ stuff. So all these women are going to bring in that, like, like he thinks that that's what our argument is against this, which is an absurd leap, but I'm going to get to that here in a moment.

That's it. I'm going to read you. I got so much I could say, but let me just read you my response and then we'll call it a day.

So here it is. My response is a little longer, but it's not terribly long, but it's a little longer than his short comment.

He started off by saying, um, when he was younger, he never understood why women shouldn't be in ministerial positions, but now he's older, he's wiser and smarter, right?

I wrote, you still don't understand what you said is very false. You have a very cynical and derogatory view towards Christian women.

You just promoted an idea that all women condone sinful lifestyles, but men do not. How silly.

No, that's not it. That's not it at all. I think that there are a lot of very well -meaning women who think that women should be able to preach in church.

I don't think that they have LGBTQ agenda. Some of them do, but I don't think that this whole thing is about, let's get the

LGBTQ stuff in there, but it is what it will lead to. Even if that's not their agenda, that is what it eventually leads to.

So I'll come back to that. Once again, let me, let me finish up his comment, at least to a certain point here. Most of the social agenda woke pride nonsense in churches today is coming from weak men who are not real

Christians who run those compromised churches. And naturally they attract like -minded people, men and women alike.

Well, let me stop there for a moment. So if a church allows women pastors, who is it that allowed that?

The men, it's always the men because you don't have women that are functioning in the, in the position of pastor who lets them in to do that.

The men do. So it's absurd. And, and it's just, it's so block headed.

I I'm like rubbing my face here because I don't, I don't understand how you get this thick headed to get to this point.

The argument is never, well, when women come in, they're going to implement their liberal agendas. The men did that to then put women in positions that the

Bible does not permit women to be able to do again, first Timothy two 11 and 12.

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man rather she is to remain quiet.

And then Paul goes back to the created order to establish that what is said in the law, Adam was formed first, then

Eve and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor. So this is the reason why women are not permitted to be pastors in the church.

And it begins with Adam was made first. It is upon biblically qualified men to fill those roles and where biblically qualified men are not standing.

Then that church is in biblical disobedience. Even if you have an unqualified man standing in the pulpit, that church is still in biblical disobedience.

It's not that as long as you have a man there, then the church is okay. No, you can, you can see the direction of a church based on who's standing in the pulpit as, as I've said many times before, as goes the pulpit, so goes the church.

I believe it was Charles Spurgeon who said that in fact, so as goes the pulpit, so goes the church. What direction do you see the preaching in the church going from the pulpit?

That's what's going to steer the rest of the church. That's like the, the captain's post right there, who's steering the ship and whoever's standing there, it's going to affect the rest of that particular body.

So if the man there steps out of the way and lets a woman there, it's not that the women came in and infiltrated the church, the men let them in.

So it's absurd for him to like be drawing this conclusion that we, we are making this argument that women are going to come in and ruin everything.

I mean, there are going to be some liberal and feminist women that are going to come in and ruin a lot.

That is definitely going to happen and you have let them in the door, but it's men that do that. They are weak, compromised men that let women into those positions.

So finishing up his comment here, has it ever occurred to you that there are solid

Bible believing women that actually exist? Or do you think they are like a unicorn? Of course we believe there are solid

Bible believing women that exist. And so does the Southern Baptist convention believe that many

Bible believing women are going to be there voting for this amendment. That would restrict the office of pastor to only qualified men.

Brian is, is like, he is in his own little world here, setting up straw men and kicking them over.

He does not even remotely understand the argument or, or what's being said. Now, I'm not going to continue on with his argument from this point on, because he, uh, he now just starts going into no, what's really going on is that there's all these sex scandals that they're trying to cover up.

So they're providing this voting for women pastors thing as a distraction. Well, those churches where a compromised man is standing in that position, having been guilty for some sort of, uh, of sexual immorality, if he is not removed by that church, the

Southern Baptist convention will likely remove that church from the fellowship. So there is sexual immorality that happens among Southern Baptist churches.

I mean, you know, that we're still in a sinful world and even Christians can fall into sin, but those churches they're autonomous.

They are in it's upon each church to handle those matters on their own.

This whole thing in the Southern Baptist convention is in order to be a part of this fellowship, there's certain things that you have to agree to, and you need to agree that the office of pastor is limited to only men as qualified by scripture.

A woman can't stand in that position. It has to be a biblically qualified man. And if you don't agree with that, that's fine.

You can go off as a church and do whatever you want to do, but you can't be part of this fellowship. That's all that this amendment is attempting to do in the

Southern Baptist convention. It's not covering up anything. It's not trying to sweep something under the rug. Even if there were massive sex scandals that were going on in the

SBC, this would still be a needed amendment in order to preserve who can be a like -minded church and who cannot, because once a church starts allowing women to be in the pulpit and stand where the

Bible has said, women are not permitted to have teaching authority over men.

Once that happens, that church is going liberal because that is a liberal interpretation of those texts.

They're taking liberal interpretations to permit women to stand in places where the Bible has said a woman is not to be a pastor.

And we don't want that liberalism coming in, however, incrementally into a fellowship that remains as conservative as the

Southern Baptist convention. And you can see in history, in the history of the evangelical church in the

United States, you can see that whenever a denomination has gone liberal and eventually waving the pride flag and endorsed all sorts of LGBTQ abominations, that church became egalitarian before they ever got there.

And is there a case in which that hasn't happened? I believe every single one of them that eventually becomes pride flag waving started egalitarian before they got there, ordaining women to the pastorate and blurring the lines of what

God has established are for men and for women. Once you start blurring those lines, then anything starts to go and they start endorsing all kinds of cultural evils that have been embraced by the world.

So this was a question that I presented before. This was in an article that I wrote five years ago,

June of 2021, before the annual meeting, the Southern Baptist convention, annual meeting that met in Nashville.

I asked this question, can you name one church or denomination that has accepted the ordination of women as pastors and flourished in doctrinal faithfulness?

And then I said, consider the trajectory of the evangelical Lutheran church of America, the

ELCA in 2020, they celebrated 50 years of ordaining women, which began in 1970, then 40 years later.

So after the ordination of women that started in 1970, 40 years later in 2010, the

ELCA decided to ordain practicing homosexuals that were in sodomite and lesbian relationships to the ministry.

Then in 2021, as reported by the religion news service, the

ELCA appointed as bishop, the Reverend Megan Rohr, a man who claimed to be a woman.

And by the way, he preferred the pronouns they and them, which RNS, the religion news service was happy to accommodate in their article.

So in five decades, the denomination went from the ordination of women to the ordination of men committing sexual acts with men to the ordination of a man who thinks he's a woman.

We don't even see that kind of sin detailed in Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet this is happening in practicing evangelical denominations.

And don't think that the same thing can't happen to the Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is now in Louisville, Kentucky, first began at First Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

That was where the seminary started. So it's in Louisville, Kentucky now. And the president is Albert Moeller.

He's the one that's presenting this amendment to the constitution at the annual meeting that's coming up in 10 days or so.

The original campus for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was First Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

And according to First Baptist website, they hired ordained women onto their pastoral staff starting in 1989, and then began ordaining their own women to the pastorate in 1991.

They disaffiliated themselves from the SPC in 1999 over exactly this issue.

15 years later, after they left the SPC in 1999, then in 2014, they issued a statement allowing for the ordination of anyone identifying as LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

So in less than 25 years, a historic Southern Baptist Church went from ordaining women to ordaining sodomites, lesbians, and transvestites.

This was a historic Southern Baptist Church where the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary began.

And the same thing will happen to the SPC. And it'll begin with blurring these gender distinction lines that God has established in his word.

Qualified men are to be pastors. A husband is to be the head of his wife.

A wife is to be in submission. All women in the church are to be in submission to that order that God has established regarding men and women in the church.

And the women therefore become a picture of submission of the whole church and how we are to submit to Christ.

A wife submitting to her husband, according to Ephesians 5, already is a picture of that for the rest of the church.

A wife in submission to her husband is how the church, the bride of Christ, is to submit to Christ. And Christ is the head of his church, having given himself up for her and washing her by the water of the word.

And the Southern Baptist Convention, your individual church, we all need to be washed by the water of the word.

And when we have that washing and that cleansing and we see the instructions that God has given for his church and how we are to function and operate in the world in which we live, then we understand as a matter of obedience, the office of pastor is limited to only biblically qualified men.

And that's just simply it. And everything else that Brian is going on about is in rebellion to that word.

He doesn't have a desire to uphold that word, but to go against what it obviously says and lead other people in that direction as well.

So as I've said before, I'm in favor of this amendment that is being presented at the Southern Baptist Convention. I hope it passes, although the attempts at amending the constitution in the past have been narrowly defeated.

The majority still want it, but it needs a two -thirds majority in order to pass. So be praying about that as we get closer to that annual meeting that is coming up.

Well, that's my program for today. I think I've answered all the questions that I've received, at least what

I pulled off and had in front of me here. So if you have a question that you would like to submit, send it to when we understand the text at gmail .com,

or you can go to speakpipe .com slash WWUTT, record a voicemail using your phone or using your computer, you know, just talking to your laptop or something like that.

And we'd love to hear from you. If you would like to give a donation to our church,

Providence Reform Baptist Church of Casa Grande, we've got a building project that we're working on. I'll give you an update on that sometime, because I know in the past I'd said that we were partnering with a local

Christian school to have land and we're going to build on that land. That isn't going to work out now. So we're still looking for land and we're still going to have a building project so that we can get into a larger building.

Right now we're meeting at a middle school, a middle school auditorium, and that's a big enough thing that we could find so that all of us could gather together on a

Sunday morning. If you go to providencecasagrande .com, and grand is spelled G -R -A -N -D -E, so providencecasagrande .com

and click on giving, which is right there along the top of the page, then you will have something that comes up where you can donate online and give to our building project as we're going forward and looking for ways that we can have our own facility and be able to continue the ministry that we do here in Casa Grande, which includes when we understand the text.

Even the online ministry has become a ministry of our church and it is a privilege for me to be able to do this.

Let me pray. I especially want to pray here for Iwa as we close out and I thank you again for listening to the broadcast.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness that you show to us and I pray that we would continue to be in submission to your greatness, your holiness, your kindness to us, your love, and especially to your word.

I thank you for Iwa and the passion that she has for the people that she came from in Poland.

As she wants to share the gospel and good solid biblical teaching in a way that is more understandable, she desires to want to translate videos and sermons, which she's from a lot of different people.

I pray that you would bless that ministry for her and that you would also lift up those churches, those faithful biblically sound churches in a place that is heavily

Roman Catholic and Pentecostal and you would hold on to those churches that they would endure even in the midst of all the hostilities that they are facing with all the stuff that is going on around them.

A lot of doctrinal and spiritual confusion and may they be a light that is shining in the darkness so that people will hear the gospel, they will be relieved of their burdens to know the gospel of Jesus Christ, be forgiven their sins, and so be saved.

And I pray that Iwa's video ministry would be as much a part of that as well.

You are a good God who gives us many good things and may we use those good things that you have given to us to bless you, your people, and advance your kingdom.