52 - Illumination

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology.

We are glad to have you with us.

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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.

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of training for you if you watch once a week.

Kind of neat.

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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.

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.

And 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.

And 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.

So, with that said, let us start with illumination.

Illumination.

So, as we look at illumination, the first thing we're going to want to do, as we've been doing throughout this class,

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, right?

And 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.

And 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.

And 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 in 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 a 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 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 before,

sorry, this is I guess after the Ascension, or after resurrection before

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.

Now, I'm going to get to that and the importance of that when we look at the details.

Ephesians 118, 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 I should say not only.

One word makes a difference.

So, let me say again, 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 really 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?

Now, 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 or an

understanding of life that's contrary to Scripture, it's not from God.

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.

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.

I cringe when I hear people say that.

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

please.

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.

But let's move on to 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 the 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 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 a 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,

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.

It 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 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.

Alright?

And the reason is because number two, the Scriptures, that inspired Scripture that God

inspired through men and wrote down, that's infallible.

People are not.

Okay?

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.

Okay?

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 is saying, hey, love you, but I think you're wrong here.

They just may be right.

Alright, number three there.

So 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.

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

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.

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, 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, 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.

Um, got it.

First thing that comes into my head, um, 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, um, 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, something good for me, right?

You ever notice that?

It's, 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 if you'll do, okay, 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, alright?

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 use

things like my daily bread or our daily bread.

Our daily bread or the daily bread, is that?

Okay, you don't know.

Well, that's because you don't use it.

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, 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 sentences 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.

Alright, 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.

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 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.

We'll 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 is 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'll 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 as 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 co -worker because God

enlightened him to lie to his boss to protect his co -worker.

His co -worker 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 co -worker 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, you know, 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, a 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 email us at academy at striving

for eternity dot org.

Academy at striving for eternity dot org.

You want to pick up a syllabus, you can do so at our store at store dot striving for eternity,

store dot striving for eternity dot 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 dot Amazon dot com, and you can put in

the ministry you'd like to support 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 dot Amazon dot 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.

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 in 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.

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.

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.

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, two is, if you thought number one was

better, wait till you get to number two.

Two is he loves to give Marv Plementoff 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 fella.

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.

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, 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, 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 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.