52 - Illumination

Welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology.

We are glad to have you with us. We welcome all of the new students that are joining with us, those of you who have enrolled and received your syllabus.

We are in book number three. That means that there's book one and two that we've already completed.

We are in actually lesson number 52. So if you've been following, we basically have one full year's worth of training for you if you watch once a week.

Kind of neat. But you can pick up a copy of the syllabus at our website down there, strivingforeternity .org.

You can go to the store and purchase the book number three. Now, if you're watching this live,

I know that the website is still being changed and I think the store may still be down, but it will be up,

I know, after we get done with Ohio Fire. I think that's what we're looking to do, wrap that up.

But if you need to, if you want to pick up the syllabus and you don't feel like waiting, you can email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org

and we'll be happy to get that to you. The syllabuses are, I believe, $25 each plus shipping.

You can pick those up, they're there. So hope that you take advantage of those.

What do you get when you get the syllabus? Well, you get notes, you get some things that aren't always in. You'll get all the blanks that I go through and I say you got to fill in the blank.

You'll get those blanks. The real advantage to having a syllabus is so you, as you take your notes, you can take notes in some of the things that I say that are not in the syllabus.

You can fill in the blanks, but then you have a ready access guide for yourself.

When you need a quick reference, you want to look something up, you have something you can jump to to look it up really quick and get answers to some questions.

So with that, we are looking at the next lesson.

Lesson number three. Lesson number three is the lesson on illumination and authority.

Illumination and authority. As we go through this lesson,

I hope that you'll see that we are looking to go through the doctrines of the

Bible. These two lessons are sometimes overlooked and missed and I actually don't think there's actually enough information here that we may do this in two parts just so we don't go too quickly.

The reason I don't want to go too quickly is a lot of the information here is often either misunderstood or taken for granted and not really thought through very much.

That's really the doctrine of illumination is often misunderstood and the doctrine of authority is often just accepted in some cases without really thinking through it.

With that said, let us start with illumination.

As we look at illumination, the first thing we're going to want to do, as we've been doing throughout these classes, is we want to start with a definition of illumination.

What is the definition of illumination? That's going to be a good place to start. This is now preceding our study that we've already examined on the revelation of God's Word.

That was lesson one. Lesson two, last class, was the inspiration of God's Word.

Now, having examined the revelation and its source, we're now going to look at the effect of Scripture upon the mind of the reader, of the believer.

In other words, this is going to be looking at specifically, when we look at the definition, this is dealing with the present ministry of the

Holy Spirit, which He enables mankind to understand and embrace the truths recorded in Scripture.

Now, if you go back many, many lessons ago, in book number one, when we first started and we talked about the person of the

Holy Spirit and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, in that lesson we talked about this ministry that the

Holy Spirit does of illumination. I said back then that we'd get into this in more detail, and now we are.

So, let's take a look at some passages when we give this definition. So, again, the definition being that this is the present ministry of the

Holy Spirit. I say present ministry because, well, this would be different than the way the ministry of the

Holy Spirit was in the Old Testament. Now, some of you may go, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're one of those dispensationalists, so that's your problem.

Actually, no. Covenant theologians will often agree with this conclusion as well, is that the ministry of the

Holy Spirit was different in the Old Testament because in the Old Testament God used priests, you know, those

Levites, you know, my forefathers, to teach the people.

And so it was the role of the priest to do the explanation of God's Word and help with them understanding it.

And it was not that the Holy Spirit indwelled the believers like He does in the

New Testament. That's actually what the New Covenant promises. In Jeremiah 31, in Ezekiel 11, and also 36, you'll see that there's a talk of this

New Covenant. And what the New Covenant was, is that one of the promises of the New Covenant was that the

Holy Spirit would indwell us permanently. The other promise of the

New Covenant was that we would no longer need a man to teach us, but the Spirit of God Himself would indwell us and the

Spirit of God Himself would teach us His Word. And that is what we're talking about when we talk about the doctrine of illumination.

And so with that, as we look at this, we have to remember that this is something to the

New Testament that we aren't going to see in the Old. Now, did the Holy Spirit, in the Old Testament, could

He have a man to teach us His Word? Could He have illuminated the minds of believers back then? Yes, He certainly could. But He didn't promise to do it with all.

We don't see a record of that. Where in the New Testament, this is a ministry that He says for believers.

So Psalm 119, Psalm 119, the longest

Psalm in the Bible, but I also find it interesting that Psalm 119 being the longest

Psalm in the Bible is all about the Word of God. So, it says there, My eyes, open my eyes, sorry about that, open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

I am a sojourner on the earth, hide not your commandment from me.

So the psalmist is asking that God would teach him the

Word. Now this would be an argument that I would make to say this is an example where he is looking toward the

Holy Spirit doing an illuminating work. In the Old Testament, I'm saying this is an example where we see

He's asking for it, it's not expected. Where, when we look at say Luke 24, verse 45, then

He opened the minds to the understanding. Now, we stop here and just say this is again, this is before the resurrection, before, sorry, this is

I guess after the ascension, or after the resurrection, before the ascension, but this is before the

Pentecost. And so the Holy Spirit hasn't come down and started His ministry, but you're still seeing that God opened their minds to the

Scriptures. And I'm going to get to that and the importance of that when we look at the details. Ephesians 1 .18,

Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, and that's where we get the idea of the illumination, that enlightened.

Having the eyes of your heart enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which

He has called you. What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints?

So, you see in this one that He's saying that it is the Spirit of God who opens our minds, enlightens us to the understanding of God's Word.

Now, illumination is not the idea of understanding facts of Scripture, but it includes being, or should

I say not only. One word makes a difference. Illumination is not only the idea of understanding the facts of Scripture, but it includes being influenced by the significance of the understanding of those truths.

So, it's not only understanding the facts of Scripture, but it also includes the application of the

Scriptures to our lives. Now, this is not, as some try to argue, some mystical type of thing.

You will often see that people will talk of the being illuminated to meaning that they got some enlightenment, they got some special communication from God, and often when they have that, it's something that's just not in the

Scriptures. When someone tells you, the Lord enlightened me to a new meaning of the text of Scripture, that's a problem.

Often, when people say, you know, I never saw that meaning in that text, it's probably because that meaning never was in that text, and someone is, well, making it up.

So, illumination is not this idea that God gives us a meaning apart from the harmoneutics, apart from the meaning of the text.

And so, this is in conjunction with the study of God's Word. This is not us just sitting back and getting, you know, into a state where God's going to, where we empty ourselves of us and open our minds to anything that comes in, and then we believe that that's from God and say that is the meaning of the

Scriptures, especially when it contradicts the Scriptures. You will hear people speak this way.

Unfortunately, a common thing that's happening in the churches now is what's called, there's a couple different names, it's a type of prayer where people try to empty their minds and just focus on maybe one word or one object, and it's this idea of just trying to, really in new age thinking of the way they would do the meditations on, you know, chanting and trying to get into a meditative state where you are not thinking of anything is the goal of it.

And what they do is they'll go through in these complimentary prayers, just go around and be like, okay, let's think of yellow or something, you know, and then you just sit there and try to not think of anything else, and try to get yourself in this super spiritual supposed state where you suddenly are being communicated directly from God and He's supposedly illuminating or enlightening you to His truths.

And the real issue is you hear people that get involved in these type of prayer meetings and they say things that are contradictory to Scripture.

And the real dilemma that you see with people is that they're trusting their experience now over the

Scripture. And so when you point the Scriptures to them and say, yes, I understand you say that God illuminated you to this thinking, but look at what the

Scriptures say and they say, well, no, no, no, are you questioning God? And what have they just done when they did that?

They have just said that what their thoughts are, are God's thoughts.

God does not think contrary to His Word. And so if someone tells you that God has illuminated their mind or enlightened their mind to an understanding of Scripture or an understanding of life that's contrary to Scripture, it's not from God.

Okay? And this is an issue that we see prevalent in the church where people say, well,

God spoke to me. God does, shall we say, speak to us through the ministry of the

Holy Spirit of illumination. That is what we're discussing here, is this illumination ministry of the

Holy Spirit. But this does not happen apart from His Word.

Okay? And you must keep that in mind when you are looking at this and when you'll hear people speak like this all the time.

God told me. God gave me a verse. God spoke to me. Cringe when I hear people say that.

Often, depending on how well I know them, if it's someone I know well, I'll be like, book, chapter, verse, please.

Right? Because if God spoke to you and it's not from His Word, it's not

God, it's you. We often, you'll see people who often want to have

God's acceptance for their thinking. And so, to give it spiritual sounding language, we say,

God spoke to me. God gave me a word. God gave me a verse.

Whatever it is. When we see people that speak like that and they're not consistent with Scripture, it's a real problem.

And so, we have to understand, this is why I say this is, the doctrine of illumination is not well understood.

It's confused by many. And we need to be clear on this because if you're going to say God gave you an understanding of something, it's not you that you're saying.

You're saying God did this. So, if God gave it to you and He's contradicting Scripture, then

He's not God. You see? That's a dilemma. Not for me because I wouldn't speak that way.

So, but let's move on to the distinctions, the distinctions of illumination, revelation, inspiration.

So, what are the distinctions? We looked at, in lesson one in this book, revelation.

We looked in lesson two, inspiration. In this lesson, we're looking at illumination. And with those three, there are some things that people sometimes get confused.

So, let's look at the distinction of revelation. How do these three, how are they distinct from one another?

Let's start with revelation. So, revelation is the disclosure of truth by God.

Disclosure, that's your blank there. The distinction of revelation is that revelation is the disclosure of truth by God.

Second is the distinction of inspiration. Inspiration is the production, that's your blank there, the production of truth by God through man.

So, revelation is God revealing, God disclosing His truth to men.

Inspiration is the product, how that came about, how God spoke through men.

He revealed, He disclosed His truth through men so that they would write it down. Or general revelation, we notice that.

So, we have His disclosure in what we see in creation. We have this specifically when we talked last week, if you remember, about the specifically the inspiration which is dealing with the special revelation.

So, this is the writing of it down through men. So, this is not, I'm inspired by a song or something like that.

I was inspired to say something. This is God's disclosure, the product of that, the production of that through men.

Now, the distinction of illumination. Illumination is the understanding, that's your blank there, the understanding and acceptance by mankind of God's already revealed truths.

Oh, did you catch that? I kind of gave some specific words. That's right. It's the understanding and acceptance by you and I, mankind, but of what?

Of God's already revealed truths. That meaning that which was inspired.

So, we have God disclosing Himself through natural means and supernatural means. Looking at the skies, we can see the natural means.

We look at the Bible, His Word, that is the special supernatural means. And we looked at inspiration of how

He went about disclosing that through men so that we have this product that we call the

Bible. Well, illumination is the understanding and acceptance of that, what has already been revealed.

In other words, the Bible. So, you see how these three are related. One is the revelation, it's the disclosure.

One is part of a specific one of those disclosures, which is special revelation, and it's how that came about.

This is now how this applies. But why am I saying God's already revealed truth?

Because this gets back to what I've been saying over and over. And I know for some of you may say, dude, you're repeating yourself.

I understand that. And maybe you pick it up quick, but not everyone does. And for some of us, it may be the first time you're hearing talk like this and you're going, wait,

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding. So, I'm kind of repeating it for that purpose. But what this is, is this is a doctrine where the

Holy Spirit reveals His word, not some new word, but that which has already been revealed to us.

So, this is clearly would be saying this is not new revelation. And so, we're going to break this down, explain this more as we go into what we're going to call the details, the details of illumination.

So, let's look at that. Let's look at the details. We already saw earlier when we looked at Luke 24, that, well, let me give you the thing here, the

Spirit does not illuminate the scriptures. Okay, now let me break that down.

That means that if you think about it, the idea of inspiration is the idea that the

Holy Spirit did a supernatural work through men to write

His word. Okay, that's the inspiration. But illumination doesn't deal with the scriptures, but the mind of the believer.

Okay, so the Spirit does not illuminate the scriptures, He illuminates the believer.

And that's your blank there, believer. The Spirit does not illuminate the scriptures, but the believer.

So, let's look at two verses. I gave you earlier, but let's put it up again. Luke 24, He opened their minds.

Do you see that? He opened their minds to understanding. It's the minds of the believer. But why do

I say the believer? Well, 2 Corinthians 4 .4 says,

In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is in the image of God.

So, only believers can have this illumination. That's one of the things with the

Holy Spirit indwelling us. He's taking His word. He's helping us to understand it as we study.

Doesn't mean we don't do the study. We study to rightly divide the scriptures, to be ready in season, out of season, to have a knowledge of what

God's word says. But the Holy Spirit doesn't leave us alone in that process. Now, that doesn't mean that just because you think that's a meaning.

I've heard so many people argue this way, especially on Facebook, that God has given them this meaning and therefore it's the right meaning.

And they're saying that because they don't want to be questioned and they want to believe that this is from God and they can't be wrong.

And yet the reality is, is that yes, you and I can be wrong. God cannot. And so, we have to be careful when we are trusting what we think

God is saying to us. And the reason is, is because number two, the scriptures, that inspired scripture that God inspired through men and wrote down, that's infallible.

People are not. The scriptures are infallible. But you and I are not.

So, it is the reader and not the scriptures with whom there is fault if there's a lack of understanding.

So, if we have something where you and I are not agreeing on a meaning of the text, it is not the fault of the text, it is one of the two of us, could be both of us, that is not using the right rules of interpretation.

And that is our fault. Now, if you are a prideful individual, then you know what ends up happening?

You come to the scriptures, and you look at the scriptures, and you decide you are the one who knows what's right.

And even if someone points out that you're wrong, you're not going to listen to them because you've convinced yourself that you are the authority on the scriptures.

And you'll argue that this is what God has taught you. And that is a dangerous place to be.

The Holy Spirit does enable us. He does illuminate us to an understanding and an application of His Word.

But we should not think that we've got it all figured out and not question ourselves in our interpretation.

Especially if someone's saying, hey, love you, but I think you're wrong here. They just may be right.

All right, number three there. First, the Spirit does not illuminate the scriptures, but the believer.

It's the believer that He illuminates. The scriptures are infallible. People are not. Number three, the

Spirit does not illuminate unsaved people. That's your blank there, unsaved.

The Spirit does not illuminate unsaved people. Since it is a ministry of the

Holy Spirit in the life of a person, it must be true that the

Spirit is in the person's life. This comes by means of regeneration.

This is what we talk about when we talk about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Let's look at some passages here. 1

Corinthians 2 .14, the natural person does not accept the things of the

Spirit for they are folly to them. Do you notice that?

I use this verse all the time when I'm on the streets. Because people say, well, this doesn't make sense to me. Well, it shouldn't.

Because that's what Scripture says. The natural person, yourself, someone that doesn't know God, hasn't been born again, does not accept the things of the

Spirit of God for they are folly to him. And he does not understand them because they are, is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

So, you see, the things of the Scripture are spiritually discerned. It doesn't mean you can't understand the Scriptures. Meaning that there are unsaved people who can understand the facts of the

Scriptures, who can apply hermeneutics to know what the Scriptures are saying, but they don't understand the spiritual importance of that.

Okay? Let's look at Romans, we'll look at Romans 8 -9.

You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If, in fact, the

Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

So, you have to have the Spirit of Christ. One more, 2 Thessalonians 2 .10

-12. And with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refuse to love the truth, and so be saved.

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who do not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

So, what you see here is in these passages, you're seeing that the unbeliever cannot discern the things of God, because they are spiritually discerning.

They need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to understand these things. So, when someone says, it's an unbeliever, well, this doesn't make sense to me.

I understand that. That's exactly what God says. Let's look at number four here.

And let me pause actually and say, when we look at that, we're just talking, when we say that unbelievers cannot be discerning of the spiritual things, this means that you will hear people that study the

Scriptures and do not believe. Maybe they've grown up in church. They understand the details, the facts, not the significance often.

And those are the people that twist the Scriptures. You want a great example of people that like this, just if you go to the atheist blogs, you will see people that get,

I mean, because all the atheists do is attack Christianity. I mean, that's it. They really don't support atheism and give, it's like, oh, let's all talk about the merits of not knowing anything, because really they're not atheists.

They try to claim that they're agnostic. They claim that they do not know. Because to say there is no

God, which is what atheism is, means you have to know everything there is to know in the universe. That would make you

God. So therefore, there is no such thing as a true atheist, but there are agnostics.

And, or those that profess to be agnostic, I should say, because they're not really agnostic either, because Romans 1 says they know

God. Okay, but you'll see on those atheist blogs that they are trying to twist the

Scriptures, and they try to make an argument from the Scriptures without understanding the spiritual significance of the argument.

And when you point it out, they can't comprehend that, because they don't understand the things of the

Spirit. So, number four, illumination is a potential ministry.

That's your blank there, potential. Why do I say it's potential? It is made available to all believers and is dependent upon their efforts to interpret, that's your first blank, interpret, as well as apply, your second blank is apply, revelation.

So I'll read that again. It is made available to all believers and is dependent on their effort to interpret as well as apply revelation.

So let's look at 2 Timothy 2 .15. Do your best to present yourselves as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of God, the word of truth.

Sorry, I'm going from memory. But you see there, we cannot say, and I've been saying this over and over, and I'm telling you,

I'm saying it over and over, but I'm doing that for a purpose. Some of you are going, yeah, Andrew, we get it.

Good. Now explain it to your friends, because you probably know people that don't get it.

You cannot sit back and say, oh, Lord, just teach me your word. Got it.

First thing that comes into my head. I mean, literally, I've seen people that say they get words from the

Lord, and you know that it's from themselves. It's always amazing that when they get these words from the

Lord, it's always what they desire. You know, there's no one that says, I got a word from the

Lord. He wants me dead. He's going to send someone to kill me. I'm going to be a martyr.

You know, it's like, no, it's got a word from the Lord. Something good for me. Right. You ever notice that?

You see these people that will not study the scriptures.

And part of when we went through the class on biblical hermeneutics, toward the end,

I talked about the importance of prayer when interpreting. And the reason we talked about that is for this very lesson now.

Because as we pray through the scriptures, as we pray, we're studying the scriptures, we should be praying through the scriptures, our interpretation of scriptures, our understanding of the scriptures.

As we're interpreting it, we go through it. We talk to the Lord about it. We're asking Him, is this right?

Is this the meaning? Help me to understand this. That is how the Holy Spirit is going to make this available.

But if we're just sitting back, opening the Bible to any text, and just opening up the

Bible, just randomly as people do, boom, right here, they read one verse.

Isaiah 5, 13, Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge.

Their honored men go hungry, and their multitude are perched with thirst.

That means that I'm going to be hungry and thirsting for righteousness. God gave that to me.

That has nothing to do with it. I mean, I just happened to randomly open to that verse.

But that's, I mean, people would read that way. They'd open this up and just put their finger, read that, and say, well, and then they think of a passage in the

New Testament and go, oh, see, this is talking about, no, this is talking, he says right there, therefore people going into exile.

He's talking about the nation of Israel, right? You can't sit there and say, well, I'm just going to take this and give it a new meaning.

And say it's of the Holy Spirit. It's God has illuminated this to my mind.

No, you cannot say that. That's not appropriate. Why? Because that's not what God does.

So he does it through the study. We spent 20 weeks or so going through the lessons on how to interpret.

We go through all this. I mean, you look at all the steps involved in interpretation. It's not an easy process.

It's hard. And so to do that, you rely on the

Holy Spirit to give you the understanding, but it is not apart from the study. And you first have to interpret the

Word of God before you can apply the Word of God. You don't just read it. And this is a problem

I have with people that that use things like my daily bread or our daily bread.

What is it? Our daily bread? Or the daily bread? Is that? Okay. You don't know. Well, that's because you don't use it.

I don't clearly. I don't either. Right. So when we do that, we have to realize that people read it and it gives one verse and then jumps into an application.

And the people that are doing it, if that is the totality of your devotional time, you're not going to have this potential ministry available to you.

Why? Because you're not really doing the interpretation. How do you know that person's applying it right?

They're just taking a verse and jumping into an application. And those things aren't bad per se, depending on how the individual that is giving that application, how much study they put into it.

But you want to do your own study of God's Word. Do you love God enough that His Word is worth it to you to spend the time to study?

Just something to think about. If not, you really might want to question, do you really love

God? Hey God, I love you. But don't talk to me. All right, try that with your spouse.

Hey honey, I love you, but do me a favor. I don't want to hear you. I mean, if you're going to talk, just give me quick one sentence a day so that I can be busy about the things

I want to do. Yeah, how soon before you feel that frying pan upside your head?

Or you're going to find out that your spouse does not appreciate that, right? Neither does

God. All right, so let's look at the fifth one. Let's look at two passages first.

Let's look at 1 John 14 and then we'll look at 1 John. Sorry, did I say 1

John? John 14 and then John 16. John 14, 21 says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my Father. And I will love him and manifest myself to him.

And in John 16, 7 to 11, it says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth.

It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you.

But if I do go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the

Father. And you will see me no longer.

Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. So, in those two passages are promises of unique illumination for the apostles.

That's some specific stuff to the apostles. Now, these verses are not to be considered normal understanding of illumination unless there's someone who's been alive to hear

Jesus say the things he said on earth. I do not believe in apostolic succession.

We don't have apostles in the same way today. Now, the word apostle just means sent out. A person who's sent out.

We do have people who are sent out into the world to share God's word. Missionaries and evangelists.

But we don't have Apostles, capital A Apostles, who are the special ones that were given a special ministry by God.

And so, there was a special, unique illumination for the apostles that I would say is not carried on for us today.

Okay? And so, as we look at that, we see now, and we'll wrap up this week on just this.

Next class, we'll pick up on authority because it'd be a good breaking point to break those two because there is a lot on authority.

We won't be able to get through it. Actually, even, you know, I'm almost tempted to want to start some of it now, but I'm going to hold off.

But the reason I do want to really emphasize this with the illumination is because there is much confusion when we talk about the details of illumination.

I said illusion? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, it's not an illusion. The Bible's real.

Evolution is an illusion. But when we talk about the illumination, this is the ministry of the

Holy Spirit where He reveals to us, gives us an understanding, an application of God's already revealed truth, that which

God has already revealed to man in His written word. You know, you will see this in many other religions,

Judaism, for example, where there will be a written law, the written word, and then the oral law.

And then really where they focus much of the discussion in that religion is on really the interpretation of those two laws and specifically the oral law.

And that's what's called the Talmud. That is the commentary on the oral law.

And what you see there is people trying to give meaning to, well,

I would say what God didn't say, truthfully, but they're trying to give meaning to what they're going to claim is

God's word. And you will see that many people, even within Christianity, will talk like that.

They will talk about God giving them a meaning that is not from the text, and they're going to say it's of God.

You know why so many people do this? Let me give you the little secret. See, if they can say that this interpretation they have is from God, then who are you, oh man, to question

God? You see how that works? You can't question them. So when a person tells you that God told them, illuminated their mind,

I actually had this in a prayer meeting. Someone said that they wanted prayer for their coworker because God enlightened him to lie to his boss to protect his coworker.

His coworker did something wrong. And God illuminated, supposedly, this man's mind to lie to the boss so that he would have a better testimony to the coworker he wants to evangelize.

Let's think about that. What's the testimony to his boss? You just lied to the guy. You lost your testimony there.

What about the testimony to this guy that you're saying God enlightened your mind to lie for his sake?

You think he's going to believe you? You just lied for him. He's not thinking, hey, this guy's protecting me.

He's saying, hey, I'm really glad that this guy's not a real Christian. Because if he was a real

Christian, he wouldn't be lying. I'm glad he's lying for me so I don't get in trouble.

He's just like me. Right? Scripture says you should not lie.

God's not going to illuminate your mind to lie to your boss to protect someone.

And when you look at that, this is where you can go to the Scriptures. But when I did that with this gentleman, he got really offended because this was

God's word. God told him that. God revealed this to him.

See how that ends up being a real problem? So as we look through illumination,

I hope this helps you to understand a little bit better the ministry of the

Holy Spirit in the illumination. And we've actually dealt with this a couple times.

We dealt with it in the ministry of the Holy Spirit and now we even dealt with it in our class on hermeneutics because it is important to clarify this.

Make sure that you're tying your trusting of that illumination to the study of God's word.

Now can two people study God's word honestly and come to different conclusions?

Well, we're going to bring different presuppositions. A covenant theologian and dispensational theologian are going to come to God's word differently.

I'm going to define those terms in a few weeks in the last lesson of this book.

We're going to deal with dispensationalism. But you can have people, they're going to interpret something differently.

I just did one of our Striving for Eternity theological discussions, the Google Hangouts that we do, dealing with different theologies.

We did the one with theonomy. Now clearly as we were discussing that, we're looking at God's law and how it applies to the church and we're interpreting it different.

Why? The presuppositions that we have. As a dispensationalist, I see a discontinuity between Israel and the church.

I see a distinction between Israel and the church. As a covenant theologian, which theonomy would fall under, they do not see that distinction.

They see a continuity between Israel and the church. So they see Israel and the church as one. So they're going to see

God's law. If they have that conclusion, they are going to say, well God's law applies to the church. I'm going to say no,

God's law to Israel applies to Israel and God's law to the church applies to the church. And you're going to have those different interpretations.

Now, I would say that you're going to look at the scriptures and God's going to illuminate the meaning to you, but we have to always be questioning our presuppositions that we bring to the

Bible and not thinking that just because I think it's right, that it is right.

There's a big difference there. All right, so next lesson we're going to pick up on the authority.

We'll stay in the same lesson number three. Pick up on the authority and finish this up. If you have any questions about this or any of the other classes, feel free to put them in the chat.

Feel free to email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org, academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

You want to pick up a syllabus, you can do so at our store, at store .strivingforeternity .org.

You can also, another way you can support us, if you happen to shop on Amazon, you can go to Amazon Smile, that's smile .amazon

.com, and you can put in the ministry you'd like to support as your charity being

Striving for Eternity Ministries. And with that, and actually down there should be the actual link, but you can just go to smile .amazon

.com, choose Striving for Eternity, and they will give a half a percent of everything you spend to us to support the ministry.

So it doesn't cost you anything extra, just as you go shopping, you're helping to spread the gospel, helping to disciple others.

All right, in way of announcements before we get to the Brother of Encouragement this week,

Ohio Fire. We have the Ohio Fire coming up. I want to encourage you to, if you're anywhere in the

Columbus area, it's going to be, let's see, Matt Slick, Ken Cook, myself, and also we're adding

Michael Coghlan. We also have a special pre -conference with Mike Stockwell, Robert Gray.

So Ohio Fire is going to be April 10th and 11th.

The pre -conference is the 9th and 10th, and that's going to be in 2015.

So I encourage you to do that. We're going to always try to do that the second weekend in April.

That's kind of the plan. Also, a new seminar that we have is Bible Interpretation Made Easy.

I want to encourage you, if you want to have us come to your church and do a harmonetics weekend, training you how to interpret the

Bible in one weekend, that's what those classes are for. It's six sessions, eight hours, and we're going to teach you through, give you different tools on how to interpret the

Bible. We'll come into your church and do that. And lastly, before we end, we want to always give you a brother or sister to encourage.

Why do we do this? Because we all need encouragement. And so if you have someone you think needs encouragement, you contact us at the ministry, email us, and let us know why that person could use some encouragement.

Or you just say, hey, it's just someone that's an encouragement to me and I want to encourage them. But we try to encourage people before they're dead.

Yeah, just saying. We say the nicest things about people when they're already gone. Try saying it while they're still alive.

And some of the people that I give you to encourage, some of you don't know how to encourage because, well, you just don't know them.

That's fine. We understand that. And this is a brother who many in the

Striving for Eternity Academy probably don't know. It's someone I've gotten to meet, and it's

Brother Paul Kaiser. His Facebook should be down there. But Paul, we talked about all this work that goes into interpreting.

Brother Paul is also Pastor Paul, which means he gets up every week to proclaim

God's Word to God's people. He's got to spend the time on his knees praying before God, opening the books and studying

God's Word to deliver the understanding of God's Word to his people. Now, there's two things that tells me that if I knew nothing else of Paul, I know he's a good brother.

One, well, he's a dispensationalist. Two, two is, if you thought number one was better, wait until you get to number two.

Two is he loves to give Marv Plementoth a hard time, which means he must be a good brother.

No, but that's, it's actually, he does have a lot of fun, as I like to do with Marv, but he's a creative fellow.

I've gotten to meet him, actually, at the NorCal Fire. He's out that way. He came with folks from his church to NorCal Fire, and he was just a real blessing that I've been able to watch him on Facebook, watch him online.

He really is a man who not only is a preacher behind the pulpit, but he's one of the few pastors

I know who regularly also go out on the streets to share the gospel and preach in the open air as well.

There's not many men who stand behind the pulpits on a weekly basis who also do the preaching on a regular basis on the street.

So, lift him up. I don't know any reason, don't have any reason to say there's some need, he needs encouragement this week.

But I always find it amazing that we ask you guys to encourage people, and you just say, hey, just want to encourage you for all you do for the

Lord. And, you know, someone will get like, because some of these people contact me, and man, man, you don't know what

I've been going through. I got like 15 emails this week or messages or Facebook posts just encouraging me because you mentioned it.

I was just such an encourager. You don't know what I've been going through. I don't know. Maybe Paul's going through something this week, and he needs the encouragement.

Maybe you're watching live a year, or not watching live, but you're watching a year later, and you go to encourage him, and he needed it that week.

I don't know, but just, we all need the encouragement. So, why don't you try to get to know Brother Paul? Find out what he's about so you can encourage him more.

But just thank him for all he does for Christ this week, if you would.

And until next week when we look up on the authority, the doctrine of authority, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.