MSL: March 28, 2024

The following program is recorded content created by The Truth Network. It's Matt Slick Live!

Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at karm .org.

When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick Live for answers. Taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everyone, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick, and you're listening to Matt Slick Live.

I hope the Lord blesses you today, and by His grace, we'll have a good show. Now, just so you know, there's going to be no live radio show tomorrow, because it's

Good Friday. We're taking it off. And so, there you go. And if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276, and also if you want, you can email me at info at karm .org,

info at karm, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G, and you can put in the subject line, radio comment, radio question, and we can get to those.

And, okay, ooh, interesting stuff. So I'll just read through some of the questions and some of the comments and things like that already.

Now, we have nobody waiting right now, so I'll probably end up getting to those. Now, because we don't have a radio live show tomorrow,

I might do hate mail, wacko mail today, just depending on how it goes today. All right.

Now, let's see, let's see, let's see. Just want to, oh yeah, yes, my wife and I were talking about this, and she brought it up, so I thought

I would mention it again. We talked about it yesterday a little bit, but the ministry and people associated with this ministry have been under some spiritual attack.

And so, I was just saying to people, to let you guys know out there, radio land, that you could pray for us.

The Lord knows what's going on, but there has been a lot of stuff, a lot of things lately, and it's just what it is.

And so, please pray for our protection and guidance and the furthering of the

Kingdom of God that we hopefully will be able to use, that God will be able to use us the way

He wants to. We do not want to get in the way, so we're asking that you would bless us with your prayers, you consider praying for us, we would really like that if you would do that.

All right, having said that, I think what I'm going to do is get into the outlook here.

In fact, the new version is just now opening up on my computer, so hopefully everything will be the same.

And let me go with that, and okay, get, oh man, look at that. So let's go over here to, come on, oh my goodness.

You know, timing is not always that a great thing here, so, hmm, okay, well that's nice.

What I want to do is simply go to my favorites, I have a lot of favorites in my program, and as I get into stuff, now it doesn't let me find them for all of the hate mail and the wacko mail.

So what I'm going to do is, oh, I see, okay, good. All right, well, tell you what

I'm going to do, oh man, you know, of course it's going to happen right now.

Hey, if you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276,

I want to hear from you, give me a call. Now, as you know, Easter is coming up, and so Easter is the resurrection.

And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what the significance is of the resurrection of Christ, because without that resurrection, there is no

Christianity. If you want to say that Christianity is false, the way to do it, if you can find some logical internal inconsistency that just proves it can't be false, you can do that.

But the main thing, you can't do it, but you can try, the main thing to consider is that Christianity is verified or falsified based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If Jesus has not been risen from the dead, then Christianity is false.

It is that simple. If Christianity is found to be false, it's because Jesus did not rise from the dead, but he did rise from the dead.

And in 1 Corinthians 15, 14, Paul the apostle said, if Christ be not raised, our preaching is in vain, our faith is in vain.

So we have to have that faith and trust and knowledge and belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is useless.

So the resurrection of Jesus is the thing that proves that Christ is exactly who he said he was, and that he accomplished exactly what he prophesied he would do.

In John 2 .19 -21, Jesus says, destroy this temple in three days,

I will raise it up. And he was speaking of the temple of his body. So Jesus was the one who is telling us very clearly, very specifically, that he would be the one who would raise up his own body.

That's incredibly significant because what he's doing is he's showing us that he has the power to do that because that's who he is.

He's God in flesh. So if he's not physically risen from the dead, then that means a sacrifice on the cross was not accepted.

If it was not accepted, then that means that Jesus would have stayed in the ground. But he did not stay in the ground, he was resurrected.

This is the proof that Christianity is true. It's the proof that Jesus Christ is exactly who he said he was.

That's why the resurrection of Christ is so significant because without that resurrection, Christianity is false.

It's that simple. It's that simple. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then

Christianity is not true. So I just want to let you guys know that.

That is a really important doctrine. In fact, it's one of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Without it, there is no faith.

Have you ever thought about that? In fact, I was watching a show, actually watching

Shogun, it was pretty good, it's pretty interesting. It's on Hulu.

And so they were talking about the first two episodes and I was watching the second one.

It's really well done. And what I found very interesting was how the idea of Christianity had gotten into the

Japanese culture. And they had this idea of who

Christ was from the Catholic perspective and then a Protestant one was coming in. It was really interesting because the

Protestant guy was saying that the Catholics were heretics and they were calling for their heretics. And the

Japanese didn't care either way, but I was watching this whole thing, I was watching this whole thing and I was thinking of who the

Japanese would worship, what their religious system was. And the reason I was thinking about this, of course, is because, well, they need

Jesus. Now, a lot of people don't know this, but Christianity was really taking over Japan about 400 years ago.

And then the Japanese rose up and killed hundreds of thousands of Christians, killed them.

That's a whole other topic. Okay, sorry about that, that cleared my throat.

And so I was thinking, if I was a missionary there, if I was a missionary there, what would

I be telling them? It comes down to the resurrection, that Jesus Christ walked on water, rose from the dead, he performed miracles, he raised other people from the dead.

This is the thing that I would be focusing on. This is what I would go for. I'd say the proof of Christianity lies in the fact that he died on that cross and rose from the dead.

This is the thing I think is so significant that we have over all of the religious systems, besides the

Doctrine of the Trinity, which is unique, and the God -man, which is not that unique depending on how you want to look at it, but the resurrection is something after three days, not just after a little bit of time, like 20 minutes, five minutes, but after three days.

This is the proof of Christianity. So we're going to be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ within Christianity, and it is a demonstration of the truth of who

Christ is and what Christianity stands for. Praise God for that. Let's get to John from Georgia.

John, welcome. You are on the air. Hi, Matt. How are you doing today?

Oh, hanging in there. Hanging in there, man. Just dealing with troubles and stuff like that. A little bit of an internet thing going on there.

But everything's good. So what do you got? First of all,

I'm a non -believer, but I appreciate your, I guess, ministry. I mean,

I always enjoy talking to believers, no matter if we disagree or not, respectfully.

What are you then? I'm just curious. What are you? Well, I'm a non -believer. Are you an atheist? Yeah. I guess, yeah.

You would classify me as an atheist. That's okay. I appreciate what you do.

I enjoy talking to people who believe, respectfully. But yeah, my question is about free will.

Now, I do understand that you're a Calvinist and you believe that free will is choosing what we do according to our nature and all that stuff.

But my specific question was, if God foreknows what we're going to do, as the

Bible says, and God can't be wrong, then wouldn't it follow that we can only do what

He knows? Therefore, we don't really have free will because we only can do one thing.

You understand what I mean? Yes. I would like to get you on top of that. It's a common criticism raised against the idea of God knowing everything.

Then there's a response that has been offered on two different levels, two main levels.

One is called Molinism and the other one is Open Theism. Molinism says that people have the free will in a libertarian sense.

What that means is that they're not restricted by their sinful nature and that they can freely choose

God and God knows under which circumstances they will choose

Him. So He then works the best scenarios for the greatest good. The Open Theist would say that God does not know the future exhaustively because He can't know our free will choices because if He does, then we can't make a different choice when we're going to make it.

And the problem there is that the logic of both is short -sighted. In the first one, it ignores biblical statements regarding the restrictions of freedom upon the unbeliever.

The Bible says that he cannot understand spiritual things, cannot receive them, and that God the

Father must grant that they come to Christ. I can go through all kinds of verses like this.

The Molinist disregards those. Not completely, but they really don't consider what they really mean.

They have to kind of dismiss them in order to solve what they think is a problem. The Open Theist will just assume libertarian free will in the sense that you can choose anything you want irrespective of your fallen nature so the unbeliever is freely able to choose

Christ. Just use the right information. And God doesn't know the future. The problem here is, see if I can make this logical as well as biblical.

The Christian God exists and He knows all things actual as well as potential. And before He made anything that exists,

He in His mind knew all things that could exist under all circumstances including all choices.

But the choices can only be manifested if God creates them. And then we have what's called approximate conditions.

Which means that He creates conditions in which people operate. And their choices cannot be independent of God.

It cannot be that He doesn't know. Because that's not the Christian definition of God. So the issue here then becomes, how does

God know what will occur? Then this gets to the issue of God's relationship to time and causation.

And so one of the, it gets complicated, but one of the illustrations I use is that God can bring about exactly what

He desires without violating, so to speak, your free will. So if you and I were standing at a restaurant, and to my right, your left, is a window.

And I can look out the window when I choose and point and say, what the heck is that? And you turn your head and look.

I got you to do what I wanted you to do while you still had free will. Now it's a simple illustration, but we can expand on that a little bit after the break.

So hold on, John, I know it's going through a lot there. Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages. If you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Let's see, I don't know if we still have

John on or not. I think we lost him. And I like it when atheists call, and we have discussions.

Believe it or not, I think I have a pretty good reputation among most of the atheists.

A lot of Christians are very vituperous, let's just say.

Aren't very nice to a lot of atheists. I try and treat them well and with respect.

And I try and answer them according to the questions that they've asked. And so I try that, and I listen to them.

And I've used a lot of their complaints, a lot of their objections, to write articles, to generate articles.

And I've done that a great deal. So I can only hope that by God's grace that... Oh my goodness, there's a yawn!

Whoa! Sorry about that. I can only hope that by God's grace that they'll be saved.

That's all we can hope for. And that's a thing I've been wondering about a lot lately. You know, in Acts 9,

God just knocked Paul off his horse and saved him.

I mean, intervened. Paul was using his free will to go out and kill and destroy the Christians. And yet the

Lord Jesus just intervened in his life and saved him. He just did it. And he got saved.

And Paul said, well, who are you? When Jesus knocked him off his horse, you know, in Acts 9.

And he didn't even know who he was. What's really interesting is that Jesus saved him, interfered in his life, intervened in his choices, and overrode what

Paul was freely choosing to do. Got to kill. Knocked him off his horse. Stopped it.

Told him who Jesus was. Paul repented. Now, there's a verse in Acts 16, 14.

And I'm going to read it to you. Because it's another verse that's related to this kind of a topic.

A woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening.

And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.

All right, so we see these places where God knocked

Paul off his horse, saved him. Opened Lydia's heart to receive the things spoken by Paul the apostle.

In Philippians 1, 29, it says that God grants that people have faith. Well, here's my question.

Why isn't God doing it to more people? That's my question. And I don't have an answer.

It's something I've been wondering. Because when people talk to me about, you know, he wants all to be saved.

Well, you know, I kind of wince when I hear them say that. Now, I know what the Bible says, you know, in 1

Timothy 2, 4 and 2 Peter 3, 9. He wants all to be saved. I get that.

But when I'm told that, responded like that, then I have to ask the questions.

Well, then why doesn't he do this to everybody? Because he certainly can, and he certainly has. Why doesn't he do it to everybody?

That's a question. If God wants everybody to be equally saved, to everybody, and it's just up to our free will, well, then can't

God just open the heart to make them believe? Can't he knock us off of our high horses and just speak out of the air and cause us to become blinded like he did

Paul, and then get baptized by somebody else, and then you can regain your sight and your trust in the

Lord Jesus? Why doesn't he do that more? This is a question I ponder semi -regularly.

And I ask God when I'm praying sometimes, I'll say, Lord, would you please save more?

You know, and I don't know. Sorry about that. I don't know why. I don't know why

God doesn't save more. Now, the thing that makes me wonder is, is there something else going on that there's an interaction with God in our nature, in our wills, and somehow, whatever that is, that's the ultimate determining factor?

And that is such a kind of a vacuous thing for me to say, because it's so nondescript.

But I think a lot of people might say, well, yeah, of course there is. Well, if there is, then what is it? And if we can't identify it,

I don't like saying, well, this is what something might be. We don't have any idea if it's true. I'm just going to go with it.

And that's just not how we want to do theology. And so I'm really puzzled by this, and I really am.

You know, I have a daughter, two daughters, actually, that I pray for, for their salvation. And when

I'm praying sometimes, to me, it's so simple. God, all you have to do is just grant them faith, grant them repentance, like you do in the

Bible. Just speak out of the air to save them. Why don't you do that?

You did it to Paul. Why don't you open their hearts to respond to the things spoken of by the apostles and the prophets, as you did to Lydia in Acts 16 .14.

In Proverbs 21 .1, God moves the heart of the king where he wishes it to go. To you, it has been granted to believe,

Philippians 1 .29. And this is the work of God, that you believe in whom he has sent, John 6 .29.

So, I honestly am at a loss as to why God doesn't save more.

Now, I'm not complaining, because God's a sovereign king. He does what he wants with his creation.

Now, people might say, well, Matt, he does it because people don't want it. Well, Paul the apostle didn't want it.

Paul the apostle was out going out there killing Christians and persecuting the Lord Jesus.

He didn't want to do that. But Paul got saved because God intervened. Well, so what?

This idea of, well, they don't want to, so? That's going to stop God? Let's just say you have a hardcore atheist.

This guy, let's just say that there's a particular atheist that is really a mean, horrible person.

And he hates everything about Christianity. And he works on destroying the

Christian faith. Let's just say that's the case with this one individual, whoever he might be. And does he want

Christianity? Of course not. Does he believe it? Of course not. Does he reject it? Yeah, he rejects it. And his free will is to do all that, right?

Okay. So all God's got to do is just appear in front of him in his glory.

And the guy will instantly realize that he's a sinner in the presence of holiness.

And he will want Jesus. Why doesn't God do that? And the only answer

I've been able to come up with is that God chooses not to. Why does he choose not to?

Now, that's another question I don't have an answer to. Because when he saved me, not that my experience means anything, but it was kind of a

Paul experience. It was a very profound, very profound presence.

Not just, ooh, I feel something. No, no, no. It was just on the floor, wailing and weeping in the realization of the horror of my own sin in the presence of incredible purity and holiness.

Well, why doesn't he do that to more? And I don't have an answer for that. Oh, well, there's a break.

Hey, look, if you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

Be right back. We'll get with Paul from North Carolina. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Let's get on with Paul from North Carolina.

Paul, welcome. You're on the air, man. Hi, Matt. My name is

Patrick. I've talked to you before. Thank you for taking my call.

Okay. My question is, John 17, 5, when it says,

Jesus says, Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you from the beginning.

In your opinion, what does that mean? Okay. So according to John 1, 1 in verse 14,

Jesus is the word which was God made flesh. And we see from the incarnation that Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.

We call this the hypostatic union. And so we see from varying verses like John 1, 1 in verse 14, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was

God. Verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us so that God became flesh.

So we see Jesus walking and talking and eating and sleeping, things like that, demonstrating his human nature.

But we also see aspects of him in his relationship as God, where he walks on water by a miraculous force, by prophesying his own resurrection, by raising people from the dead and things like this.

So we see in him the attributes of both natures, the divine nature as well as the human nature.

All right. So the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the single person.

So he has a divine set of attributes and a human set of attributes. So the one person said, I am thirsty. I will be with you always, even to the end of the earth.

So the one person claimed the attributes of both natures. The divine nature, which is the second person of the

Trinity, became flesh. Therefore, the attributes of the divine nature belong to the person of Jesus.

And the second person of the Trinity existed eternally in the past. So therefore, since God shares his glory with no one,

Isaiah 42 .8, then what Jesus says is, Father, that's not the

Son, that's part of the Trinity, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the foundation, or before the world was.

So the I is the person speaking, but what he's doing is claiming the attributes of his divine nature for himself and claiming the attribute of glory from the pre -existence for himself, and that's what that is.

Makes sense? My question would be then, if you believe

Jesus is God, how could he glorify anything better than God?

So when we say that he's God, we have to understand that God, in the Christian sense, is by nature triune.

We have a doctrine called divine simplicity, which means that God is one simple thing.

Picture a glass sphere, you can see through it, you know, a glass sphere, you can hold it in your two hands.

It's one thing, it's a glass sphere, it's simple. Well, God is like that in his nature.

He is not glass, of course, but his divine nature is one thing, it's simple. It means one thing, divine simplicity, he's just simply one thing.

But that one thing is triune in nature. So within that aspect of that glass sphere, all of what it is in every place of that glass sphere is the same in its nature as any other place in the glass sphere.

That's how the Trinity is. That any aspect of it belongs with all the other aspects.

Yet, at the same time, there's distinction within the persons of the Trinitarian essence and nature.

Now, how that works, I can't tell you. It just does. It's just what's revealed in Scripture.

So, when Jesus, then, is... Can I ask a question? Go ahead.

Um... Go ahead. Okay, it says the Word was God, the Word was with God, John 1.

But then when it said the Word became flesh, you know, Jesus born of a woman, when he was a human being.

But my question would be, in John 17, 5, when he asked the Father to glorify him with the glory he had with him from the beginning, wouldn't that mean that Jesus wanted to go back to being the

Word of God? Nope. So, you have to understand, also, that Jesus was made under the law,

Galatians 4, 4, and for a while, a little lower than the angels. That's Hebrews 2, 9.

So, what he's saying here is, when he's talking out loud, he's actually claiming to be

God. Because he's showing distinction. Father. That means

God the Father, the Jews understood that. Glorify me together with yourself. If he just stopped there, what do you mean by that?

Were you there with him, and there's a glory that belongs to you? And he says, with the glory which I had before the world was.

Now, wait a minute. That's talking about the created effort of God himself, who brought all things into existence, and Jesus is claiming to have been there.

Now, this is a definite claim of his deity right here. But what he's doing is showing the distinction between himself and the

Father. And since he's under the law, made lower than the angels, then because of his humble status, as the

Carmen Christi of Philippians 2, 5 -8 says, that he humbled himself and emptied himself.

We don't know exactly what that means, but this is what the Scriptures teach. So then he would say, glorify me with the glory I had with you.

So he's claiming to have that, and he's saying from the Father, glorify me with what I had with you.

So he's showing out loud how great he is, and who he is to the disciples.

As they would hear him say this, that would take them back. Whoa, he's claiming to be equal with the

Father. Because Isaiah 42 -8 says, God shares his glory with no one. And then he says, glorify me with what

I had with you, God. He's claiming to be God right there, very profoundly.

But you believe he is God, right? Yes, he is God, always has been

God, and he always will be, from his incarnation on, the God -man. He will always have two natures, that's correct.

Okay, because my point of view is that Jesus is a human being, but called the

Son of God. At his baptism, God said, you are my Son. And on the resurrection, or on the cross when he died, before that he asked the

Father, glorify me with the glory I had when I was with you before the beginning. I think

Jesus is asking him, let me go back to being the Word of God. Because Revelation 19 -13 actually says, his destiny will be dipped in blood, and his name is the

Word of God. So Jesus, today, is the Word of God. Do you believe that?

Well, yes and no. You see, when you say that he went back to being the

Word of God, that's not correct. He always was the Word of God, because it says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

So he was the Word of God as a man, with two natures. And he ascended into heaven, and he still is in a physical body.

He still has his body. Well, no, because that's why when it said the

Word became flesh, it changed. It was born of a woman, and it was a human being,

Jesus, but God said, you are my Son. So I think that,

I don't believe Jesus is God on earth for 30 years. I believe he was the

Word of God before he was born by Mary. But today, he's been resurrected back to being the

Word of God. Yes, but when the

Word became flesh, it changed. It was born of a woman. Because it said, the

Word became flesh. Well, then why do you call it the hypostatic human?

Okay, it's not changing. It's not changing.

The Word never changed the nature. The Word is always divine, and it was in union with another nature, the human nature.

So the one person of Christ has two natures, the Word, which was

God, and the human. So the Word of God never changed. You can't have it.

It's impossible for the Word to change. It's not possible. You have to stop that.

It just doesn't work. It's a legal statement.

Now look, God by his nature does not change. Hold on.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

Hold on. I've talked to you many times. I know who you are. I've talked to you so many times in different contexts. Now look, I'm going to ask you some questions here.

You've got to focus. Do you agree or do you not agree that God's nature does not change? Does it change or not change?

No, no, you're not. Hold on. Hold on. We've got to break. Hold on. You're not answering the question. This is a non -sequitur city.

Okay, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live.

Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. All right, let's get back on with Paul. Are you still there, Paul? Yes, I'm here.

Okay, now I'm going to ask you a very specific question. Okay, you and I have had so many conversations in the past, and I mean this politely, but you have a habit of not answering questions.

You have a habit of answering something else, going off a different topic. When the question doesn't suit you, you tend to ignore it.

That's what you tend to do. All right? So I'm going to ask you a very specific question. Can the divine nature of God ever change?

Yes or no? Can it change? I mean,

I guess, yeah, God can do anything, yes. So God's nature can change, so He can stop being God?

Like I said, God, He's the creator of everything, so He can do anything. Okay, here's a good example of you not thinking clearly.

Now, I'm not trying to be disrespectful to you, but I want you to understand that I ask a very specific question, and when

Malachi 3 .6, God says He doesn't change, now you're saying that He can change. So the

Bible says God does not change. Do you think God can change? Well, you know,

God appeared 10 times in 40 days after the resurrection. Okay, I just moved on, because we know who this guy is, and he is a consistent anti -Christian, and I've had many conversations with him that go just like this.

I'll ask a very specific question, and he does not answer it, he refuses to answer it, and he goes off in a different direction.

He does this all the time, and I just don't want to get into it with him. I've done it so many times before, just used the time to fill the air a little bit, so that people can hear the kind of discussions that sometimes arise when doing the defense of the

Christian faith, when you find people who just can't answer questions directly, and they refuse to. That's their own choice, it's on them.

Let's get to Derek from Virginia. Derek, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt, good to talk to you again.

All right. Yeah, thanks. I'm so thankful that God doesn't change. Yes. That's true, because if He would get any smarter,

He'd kick me out, you know? That's what I think. What's that?

Hey, I'm on a road trip with my family. I have you on the speakerphone. My young man had a question he wanted to ask, and we were just listening to your show, and he has a question about death and about people who are sick, and his question was, you know, the

Bible where God healed people and created miracles so that people would be drawn closer to Him, why doesn't

God do more of that today so that people will be drawn closer to Him?

Is that your question, buddy? That's a good question. Yeah. What's your son's name?

Keith. Keith? Okay. Hey, Keith. Heath, with an H, H -E -A -T -H.

Oh, Heath. Heath, okay. Hey, Heath, I'm waving at you. All right, so there he goes.

I'm waving at him. All right. Hello. Hello.

Okay, so the answer is, I don't know. That's it.

I wish God would heal more, you know? My wife is in desperate need of healing, and if He were to always heal whenever we ask, then the world would be overpopulated.

We'd have people that 2, 3, 4 ,000 years old, and so it wouldn't look too good.

I mean, I look bad now at 67 when I look in the mirror. Just think what I'd look like at 2 ,000 years old. I'd be like, you know, that old 60s movie,

The Blob, you know? So that's one thing, but no, I don't know why

God doesn't heal more, and I don't know why He doesn't do this more. Maybe, maybe, it has to do with something like, there's two things.

Sin came into the world through Adam, Romans 5 .12. He represented everybody, and he was our federal head, the male representation.

And so when he sinned, sin fell upon him and upon his descendants, that's us, and upon the physical world.

So now in the physical world, we have sickness, we have famine, we have plagues, we have earthquakes, we have dangerous storms, we have all kinds of things that are bad that kill people, hurt people.

And so God uses that kind of a problem in different ways.

For one, He allowed Jesus, God in flesh, to be crucified, and that badness that's overall in the world, and He didn't heal

Jesus from it, okay? Let Him die, and in it, the resurrection occurred, and we can be safe from our sins.

And this is one of the ways that God uses to bring glory to Himself and to help others, by letting the sicknesses and the problems, because not just sickness, but there's sicknesses, there's people with deformed issues, there are birth defects.

My wife and I lost a son to a birth defect. We have different things that happen. So it's all one big package.

The other aspect of this is, my wife, for example, is one of the rarest connective tissue disorders in the entire world, and she is in a lot of pain.

Most of the time, she's in pain. Sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much, but she's always in pain, as an example of something.

This is true. And yet she has never gotten angry with God. She has never just complained and whined about it to God.

And so possibly, possibly this is a blessing to her in that she is glorifying

God through her suffering, and she will get a greater reward in heaven for forever.

So that's another possibility why He may not heal, because if He does heal, well, everybody's fine.

And then who's going to praise Him when things aren't so good? It's easy to praise Him when things are good, but not when things are bad.

Stuff like that. Amen. That's right. He's nodding his head, so I think he's taking it all in.

Good, good, good, good, good. So how old are you, Heath? Let me ask him.

How old is he? I'm 13. 13? 13. Oh, you're a teenager now.

Oh, boy. All right. Well, Heath, you can read that Bible, listen to your dad.

We've talked before on the radio and stuff. Listen to him and read your Bible, you know, and study.

You know, study the Word. Okay. Okay. Good. Well, God bless you, brother, and we'll be praying for the battle, the spiritual battle you're going through, and we'll continue to remember your life.

And we appreciate that. We really do need that. All of us here do. All right. Well, God bless.

Okay. God bless you. All right. See you. Bye. Okay. Bye, Heath.

All right. We have nobody waiting. If you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276.

So now I think what I'm going to do is get to some of the radio questions that I've gotten here. And here's a question in case

I can't call it today. Okay. I think we got this last week.

I'm scanning through it. Oh, that's right. It was about the Holy Spirit. Why there wasn't a focus on the Holy Spirit, and I went through that already.

So let's try. Are either of the following views acceptable within the understanding of the Christian faith? Full preterism, partial preterism.

Partial preterism is acceptable. Full preterism is not. Full preterism says that Jesus returned in the armies of Rome, and his return was symbolic when he destroyed

Jerusalem. That's full preterism, and a lot of other things associated with it.

And no, it's not biblical. So it's to be rejected. Partial preterism says that there was a destruction and things prophesied by Jesus which did occur in 70

A .D. But Jesus is going to return fully and completely later on.

And that's an oversimplification, but there you go. So full preterism is not biblical. And I've talked to so many full preterists over the years, and I'll just refute them with Acts 1, 9 -11.

I just go there where it says Jesus will return the same way he saw him go up in heaven. And they spiritualize everything in it.

When it's just the two guys are talking to the disciples. Remember, you saw him go up in the air?

Yes. Into the clouds? Yes. Well, that's how he's going to come back. Okay, that's how he's going to come back.

And so what they do, it's a great cloud of witnesses. They just go in and change the words, meanings.

They transfer meanings from other places in there and just butcher it. And I mean butcher.

I wonder if there's a stronger word for butcher. It could be like an exegetical catastrophe.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. All right, let's see what else we got here. Okay, let's see.

I'm trying to find some quick and slick stuff here. We've only got about three minutes here.

Let's see if I can find one or two more. Does God love equally? I don't know.

Who's equally? What's his last name? Or is that his first name? Does God love equally?

I don't know. I don't know who he is. Or she. But if, maybe you mean, does

God love all people the same? Yes, in one sense. No, in another. Yes, he lets the rain shine on the good and the bad, et cetera.

Fall on the good and the bad, and the sun to shine on the good and the bad. And that's Matthew 5, 43 through 48, where it says God loves everyone equally.

But according to Psalm 5, 5 and Psalm 11, 5, God hates those who do iniquity. So, yes and no, depending on how you want to emphasize it.

Generically, he's loving to everybody. But specifically, no, he's not.

Psalm 5, 5 and Psalm 11, 5. There you go. All right, so, I think that's a good question for me to answer for the website.

All right, we've got about two minutes left on the show. I just want to let you know that we're not going to be on the air tomorrow, because it's

Good Friday, and we'll be back on the air on Monday. And I hope you all have a great

Resurrection Day and a good celebration of the mighty work of the

Lord Jesus Christ, who died on that cross and rose from the dead. And just remember that he died on that cross, and he bore our sin in his body on that cross, 1

Peter 2, 24. And all who put their faith or trust in him, in Jesus, not the

God of Mormonism, not the false gospel of Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, not in any of the false teachings of the

Jehovah's Witnesses, it has to be the one true God who's a Trinity. There's only one being in all existence in all places who's

God. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, not one of three gods. He's the second person of the

Trinity. He bore our sin in his body on the cross, he died on that cross, and he rose from the dead three days later, hence the resurrection, hence

Easter. And all who put their faith and their trust in what Jesus did, and what Jesus did alone, alone, by faith alone in what

Christ did alone on that cross, not in your baptism and Jesus, not in your sacraments and Jesus, not in your goodness and Jesus, but Jesus, what he did alone.

You put your faith and your trust in him, and you ask Jesus to forgive you of all of your sins, he will and you'll be forgiven.

That is the message of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as exemplified in scripture.

So praise God for all of that. Please remember to pray for us, we do need this, at the

CARM Intergalactic Headquarters, because there's been some spiritual attack and there's some more stuff going on, and we would just appreciate your prayers.

And also remember, we do need your support. If that's so okay as well, please consider supporting us, five or ten dollars a month is what we ask.

Just go to carm .org forward slash donate, c -a -r -m dot o -r -g forward slash donate.

Anything is appreciated. May the Lord bless you, have a great Easter everybody, and by his grace, we'll be back on the air next week, on Monday, on Monday.

Have a great, great weekend. God bless everybody, bye. Another program powered by the