How to Not Be Deceived, Bamboozled or Snookered - Session 3

It's time for another edition of Fighting for the

Faith, Wednesday, April 24th, 2013.

We will be doing our light edition today and putting in our final installment on the

How to Not Be Deceived Bamboozled or Schnookered. This will be session three, if you would.

Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment.

The goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the

Word of God. Sadly, there is no shortage of crazy things being said out there. As a result of it, we do the discernment work and open up our

Bibles, apply sound biblical hermeneutics to test the teaching of people, popular pastors, teachers, authors, and folks like that, who are bringing us apparently

Christian and biblical teaching, and oddly enough doesn't sound biblical or Christian or anything like that, and it helps if you understand sound biblical hermeneutics.

In fact, that was the major topic of the lectures that I presented in Norfolk, Virginia, as well as Oslo, Minnesota, and in what we're going to be doing today, we will be listening to the third and final session.

Session two is broken up into two bits, session two A and two B, and what we will be doing today is we'll be listening to session three, and this will be from the

Norfolk, Virginia lectures, and what we're going to be doing is kind of putting the finishing touches on sound biblical hermeneutics and then applying those principles of sound biblical hermeneutics to real world examples.

We're going to first finish up with kind of how should we as Christians look at something like creeds, you know, like the

Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed or the Athanasian Creed, what role do creeds play in it, and then we're going to dive into our real world examples.

We take a look at three cases, and they're going to increase in difficulty. So, case number one is the, is it a sin to celebrate birthdays?

Are birthdays evil? That would be the first hermeneutical hurdle that we'll jump over, super easy to tackle, by the way, unless, of course, you're a

Jehovah's Witness. The second hurdle will be what I call the God is love hermeneutical fallacy that is employed by emergent church pastors,

Stephen Chalk and folks like that, and then to end up, we'll end up on a much more difficult, highly nuanced application and misuse of Scripture, and that would be the misuse of Scripture in the biblical hermeneutical pitfalls of the doctrine that is known as conditionalism or conditional immortality vis -a -vis

Dr. Glenn Peoples and folks like that. So, that's how we're going to spend today.

If you do not have the PowerPoint slides in front of you, it's probably a good idea to get them.

They will be part of the program with the download, so you can find them if you are looking at the website right below where you can listen to, you know, you click on the play button so that you can listen to the audio.

Below that, it'll say here's the link to the PowerPoint slides. Download it if you're using iTunes, and then you know that you can see the

PowerPoint slides as part of it. It's probably good to follow along due to the fact that this is, especially later in the lecture, some of this stuff gets technical and kind of complicated.

So, without any further ado, here is session three of how to not be deceived, bamboozled, or schnookered by religious hucksters, snake oil conmen, or your own idolatrous notions.

Here we go. The rule of faith or creeds, since we're talking about rightly understanding God's word, it's important that we talk about this.

There's a common misunderstanding in modernist Christianity, and it's this.

The creeds have no legitimate function. That's foolish. It's absolutely foolish, and let me give you the reason why.

I want to take you to one of my favorite church fathers, Irenaeus, okay?

Let me tell you about him. Irenaeus, he was a disciple of Polycarp.

Now, in the Lutheran Church, we just remembered Polycarp's martyrdom. Polycarp was martyred in Smyrna.

He was in his 80s when he was martyred for his Christian faith, but Polycarp learned

Christianity from the apostle John in Ephesus. So, the thing I like about Irenaeus is that his pedigree is tight.

Does that make sense? I mean, this is a guy who can have a conversation with one of the actual apostles.

That's how tight this is, and he wrote in the, I want to say, middle part of the second century, and he wrote this pretty ponderous tome called

Against Heresies, and the reason why it's ponderous is because the heresy that he was dealing with was what Heresy called

Gnosticism, and particularly he was dealing with the Valentinian Gnostics. And if you ever read, when you read his work, he tries to explain their theology.

This is like a script from the sci -fi channel. It's that weird, okay? But I want you to pay close attention to this particular portion from his book

Against Heresies and see if this sounds familiar to you. The church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith.

So the church has received this faith. She believes in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of the sea and all things that are in them.

Sound familiar? And in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation in the

Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God and the advents of the birth from a virgin and the passion and the resurrection of the dead and the ascension into heaven into the flesh and of the beloved

Christ Jesus our Lord. And the Holy Spirit proclaimed his future manifestation from heaven in the glory of the

Father to gather all things in one to raise up anew all flesh in the whole human race in order that to Christ, Jesus our

Lord and God and Savior, the King according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of the things in heaven and the things on the earth and under the earth, that every tongue should confess to him that he should execute just judgment toward all so that he may send spiritual wickedness and the angels who transgressed and became apostates together with the ungodly and unrighteous and wicked and profane among them into everlasting fire, but may in the exercise of his grace confer immortality to the righteous and the holy and those who have kept his commandments and have persevered in his love, some from the beginning of their

Christian course and others from the date of their repentance and may surround them with everlasting glory.

What does that sound like? It sounds like,

I would argue it sounds not more like the Apostles' Creed but more like the Nicene. Exactly.

There's a reason for this. What we learned from Irenaeus is that the early

Christian church used creeds and these were summaries of the

Christian faith. The way he argues it is that this is the faith that we were taught by the Apostles. It's basically a broad sketch outline of Christian theology.

I like to think of it this way. What we have in here is the interpretive key of unlocking and understanding all of Scripture.

This then, because of the heresies that arose, the church had to battle through the centuries, gets refined and refined and tightened down and tightened down to where we get the tightest version of it which would be the

Nicene Creed. You can see elements of this also in the Athanasian Creed as well as the Apostles' Creed. The idea here is this gives us the grand meta -narrative of Scripture.

In other words, if your understanding of Scripture runs afoul of the summary of the

Christian faith, you're not teaching correctly. I would argue practically every single heresy is going after one of the different statements in the

Nicene Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Contradict that with evolution.

And as Jesus Christ is only Son, our Lord. Think of all the Christological heresies. Then you've got the entire fact that it's

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You've got the Trinitarian heresies. So the idea is that this thing is actually extremely helpful.

Not a hindrance. It's a helpful way. And if you've ever read Augustine, the way he would catechize people, rather than calling it the rule of faith, he'd call it the analogy of faith.

Same thing. And so when you look in the ancient church fathers, the way they would teach Christianity was using the outline of this rule of faith.

Now, this is exactly what Luther does in his small catechism and his large catechism. This is how the faith has been handed down and passed on to generation to generation.

We should not despise creeds. Embrace them. Learn from them. Memorize them.

In the Lutheran church, especially the one I go to, we go to the liturgical one, but we confess the

Nicene Creed right before the pastor gives a sermon. And the reason for that is because if he says anything contrary to that creed during a sermon, he's going to get it after church.

It helps protect us, right? So I think that helps a little bit because it's important for us to look in the past, not that they're authoritative in and of themselves.

They're authoritative because they say the same thing as Scripture. Does that make sense?

So they're very helpful in that sense. What we're going to do now, okay? So kind of talk about what we're going to do for the remaining portion of this.

We're now going to take this knowledge that you've applied, that I've given you, and I'm going to try to put it into scenarios so that you can see how this all works.

We've already done this with women's ordination. We're going to start simple and we're going to build up. Now, real world hermeneutical challenges.

Love this quote. Isaiah chapter 7 verse 9. If you are not firm in the faith, you will not be firm at all.

Great quote. That being said, we're going to ask the question, and remember I told you this earlier, are birthday parties evil?

Now, any of you have any friends that are Jehovah's Witnesses or co -workers? Now you know they don't celebrate Christmas, they don't celebrate

Easter, they don't celebrate birthday parties. And the reason why they don't is because of a bad hermeneutic.

And see if you can spot it. Let me give you their argument. Birthday parties are evil.

Now, I'm arguing as a JW. Birthday parties are evil. And the reason why they're evil is because we have two accounts in Scripture of birthday parties.

Let me read them to you. On the third day, this is from Genesis chapter 40, which was

Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants, lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants, and he restored the chief cupbearer to his position, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.

But he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. Now, we all know that killing people on your birthday is a bad thing.

Now, it's not a mistake or a coincidence, because God inspired all of Scripture, it's not a mistake or a coincidence that we have this story here about, well, a murder that took place on a birthday.

But this isn't the only place. But an opportunity, this is from Gospel of Mark, an opportunity came when

Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.

For when Herodias' daughter came in and danced, that's quite a dance, she pleased Herod and his guests.

And the king said to the girl, ask me whatever you wish and I'll give it to you. And he vowed to her, whatever you ask me,

I will give you up to half of my kingdom. And she went out and said to her mother, what should I ask for?

And she said, the head of John the Baptist. So let's take a look at this. In Genesis, we have an account of a birthday party.

Somebody lost their head. In the Gospel of Mark, we have another account of a birthday party. And you know what happened?

There was dirty dancing and somebody lost their head. Therefore, God, the

Holy Spirit, is telling us something. He's telling us that we should not be celebrating birthdays because there could be dirty dancing and people could lose their head.

So there. So if you celebrate a birthday, you're engaging in the same kind of evil and wickedness as Pharaoh did and as Herod and Herodias and his dirty dancing daughter did too.

That's the argument. Why doesn't this actually work?

Well, context. Well, bad things happened on birthdays. That's the context. That doesn't matter.

The birthday is the thing that matters. So we're. Right. Now that's the answer.

It doesn't say, therefore, birthdays are evil. Thus sayeth the Lord. Remember the principles. You cannot make a doctrine without a clear didactic text.

If God really, truly doesn't want us celebrating birthdays, there would be a command in unambiguous, clear language that says,

I am the Lord, your God. I do not want you to celebrate birthdays.

Therefore, thus sayeth the Lord, thou shalt not celebrate birthdays.

Is there any text that says that? I assure you there isn't. I've read the book. Okay, I cheated.

I looked ahead and I went all the way from Genesis to maps. There ain't no prohibitions in there. And this is where this is important.

Romans 4 15. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. Where there is no law, there is no transgression.

Now, let me be controversial. Does the Bible forbid you from enjoying a glass of wine with your dinner?

There isn't a single prohibition against it. So, when somebody comes to you and they say, if you were truly a

Christian, you wouldn't X, Y, or Z.

What are they doing? They're bringing law. None of that. It's not

God's law. It's man's law taught as God's law. Man's law taught as God's law.

Now, I'm guilty of doing this. I bet you a lot of you are guilty of the same, too.

It's idolatry. It's wrong. We have no authority to bind men's consciences with laws that we've made up.

This is one of the reasons why Jesus rebukes the Pharisees. Okay, remember, a lot of times there's a confusion regarding the word traditions.

Oh, that church, they're a traditions church.

And what does that mean? They're pastor dresses in a dress, and they do the Lord's Supper, and they might actually have him chant something, or they recite passages.

That's not what Jesus is referring to. When Jesus rebukes the Pharisees regarding their tradition, he specifically judges them and chastises them.

He says, because you teach for doctrine the traditions of men. So, this birthdays thing, forbidding people from celebrating a birthday, that's a tradition of men being taught as God's doctrine.

When you say to a person, oh, if you were truly a Christian, you wouldn't do this or do that, and the this or that isn't actually in Scripture, you're not teaching true

Christian sanctification. You're teaching as doctrine the traditions of men, got it?

That's why that doesn't work. Now, things are going to get more difficult now. The God is love fallacy.

Somebody already know this fallacy? Here's the verse, God is love.

Now, if you were to look this up in context, you'll notice that this is not the only thing said here. Okay, yes, it is in the

Bible, God is love. But let me tell you how this is used. God is love, therefore,

I don't have to believe that homosexuality is a sin, because God would never judge somebody for having feelings of love towards another human being.

You've all heard variations of this argument. Huh? You can apply it to anything.

This is the ultimate Death Star passage, okay? This is the ultimate

Death Star passage. And the reason why is because usually the way this is used, it's used to knock out all sound biblical doctrine.

God is love, therefore, he understands that that woman that I'm seeing, even though she's not my wife, that I really love her and he would never condemn me for loving her because God is love, right?

No, that wasn't a confession. My family's gone, okay?

Let me give you a real world example of this. Familiar with the British evangelical Stephen Chalk?

Let me give you an example of this, okay? This is from his book, The Lost Message of Jesus. Listen to this.

The fact is that the cross isn't a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offense that he has not even committed.

Understandably, both people inside and outside the church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.

Deeper than that, however, is such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement, God is love.

If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetuated by God towards humankind, but born of his son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus' own teaching to love your enemies and refuse to repay evil with evil.

Do you want me to unpack all of that for you? Okay, so what's happened here?

This sounds like a biblical argument, right? I can deny that Jesus suffered on the cross for my sins because God is love.

Now, by the way, what does the term God is love mean? Huh? It's one of his attributes.

But notice I'm going to point this out here. As soon as these guys pull this verse out, what they're doing is they're turning it into an abstraction.

And the definition of love is no longer grounded in God's revelation defining what love is.

Because what does scripture say? Jesus demonstrates his love, or God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for our sins. Okay, well, if I'm going to define the word love,

I have to define it biblically. They're not doing it. They just throw it out there. God is love. And now they can pour whatever meaning they mean into the word love.

It becomes a philosophical abstraction and the ultimate death star. And the thing they're going after is the actual vicarious substitutionary death of Christ on the cross.

God is love. Get rid of Jesus on the cross, right? Yeah, exactly.

So what happened now? Does God is love, does that verse have anything to do with, in the context, is it discussing

Christ's death on the cross? No, it's talking about Christian unity. There's a song about it.

Beloved, let us love one another, love one another. For love is of God, and everyone who loveth, loveth

God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, loveth not God. For God is love, right?

1 John 4, 7 and 8. That's the song. So that's the verse. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knoweth

God. He that loveth not, loveth not God. For God is love. Put it back into its context, and all of a sudden, this passage is about Christian unity.

This isn't a passage about the atonement, right? So it's off topic.

Is it a clear passage regarding the atonement? No, zero.

It gets zero clarity on the atonement. So you can say, this guy is engaging in really bad hermeneutics, taking an off topic verse, pulling it out of context, redefining the word love as an abstraction that he can make it mean whatever he wants, and then using that to obliterate the clear passages about what

Jesus was doing on the cross. It's the Death Star, right?

It's actually self -contradictory, too, because the statement of God is love. Then he goes to God.

Yeah. Right. And then notice the kind of backhanded thing about the cross not being cosmic child abuse.

Did Jesus unwillingly go to the cross, or did he willingly go? Unwillingly. He says, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

So religious hucksters and people who are schnookering you, OK, they are trying to make biblical arguments.

The Bible says God is love. Yeah, but let's look at that in context.

And the only passages that can tell us what Jesus was doing on the cross are the passages that address the topic directly.

Let me read a little bit more from Shock. In reality, penal substitution, in contrast to other substitutionary theories, doesn't cohere well with either biblical or early church thought.

Although penal substitution isn't as old as many people assume, it's not even as old as the pews in many of our church buildings.

It's actually built on pre -Christian thought. This is ridiculous, OK? On my blog,

I literally, this week, I put up a blog post. Penal substitution is taught in the early church fathers.

The latest church father I quote is like from the 300s. You know, this is absurd.

Not only that, the Bible teaches it, you know? The theological problem with penal substitution is that it presents us with a

God who is first and foremost concerned with retribution, flowing from his wrath against sinners.

The only way for his anger to be placated is receiving recompense from those who have wronged him.

And although his great love motivates him to send his son, his wrath remains the driving force behind the need for the cross, the redemption of the cross from Shock's chapter on the atonement debate.

That's where that's taken from. That's not a biblical argument.

He took the phrase God is love, abstracted it, and then that's a philosophical argument.

Only the clear passages pertaining to Christ's death on the cross and what it theologically accomplished are the ones that tell us what

Christ was doing on the cross. You can't take God is love and turn it into the Death Star and obliterate, but that's exactly what he's doing.

These are not hypothetical ideas I'm teaching. This is real world arguments. And then this kid, this is his final shot.

Wouldn't it be inconsistent for God to warn us not to be angry with each other and yet burn with wrath himself?

I, for one, believe God practices what he preaches. Again, this is a philosophical argument.

This is not a biblical argument based on sound hermeneutics. The reason why this is so important that you know this is that Shock is actually extremely popular in seeker -driven megachurches, extremely popular in the emergent church.

And Tony Jones, Doug Padgett, and others are all teaching this exact same idea using the same methods.

And it's not built on sound biblical doctrine. And so as a result of it, if you know friends who are attending a church and they're reading

Shock's book or his articles or think that he's really a great Bible teacher, are they being taught the

Christian faith or is their Christian faith being destroyed? It's being destroyed.

And it's being destroyed using an out -of -context, off -topic, biblical half -verse with a bunch of philosophical arguments that are supposed to flow logically from his misuse of that passage.

That's how deception works, by the way. The biblical text becomes the bait on the hook that Satan uses to fish you out of the kingdom of God.

Now, this is going to be a little bit more difficult and will require me to go into a more controversial topic.

Remember two years ago, Love Wins came out by Rob Bell. And that book doesn't engage in hermeneutics at all.

And Rob Bell uses the same techniques. Love Wins, that's a slogan. That's not a Bible verse.

It's some weird, liberal, postmodern emergent slogan. I don't even know what that means.

What verse did you get that from? And that should be your... When you start hearing people teaching false doctrine and they start putting out these assertions that you know are not found in the

Bible, screw up your face and look really puzzled and go, where'd you get that? Hopefully, they'll get the idea and make them, drive them back into the scripture.

That being the case, Rob Bell's book, Love Wins, teaches kind of a tacit form of universalism.

The idea that eventually everybody's going to be saved. Well, I mean, after all, God is love, right? See, God is love.

So if God is love, then how can you say that he's loving if he sends people to hell for eternity?

That's inconsistent with love. Well, no, that's inconsistent with your abstraction. But here's the deal.

In evangelicalism, the bigger threat is not actually Rob Bell because I think there's enough people out there within evangelicalism who at least have some modicum of biblical knowledge to know that Rob Bell's argument really isn't all that compelling because he doesn't actually build a positive case.

It's all about shooting down the biblical case. The more, I think the more pressing challenge is actually coming from a group of people who call themselves conditional immortality.

That's their, they're into conditional immortality. Again, I want to walk through their arguments and try to do a fair treatment of it.

Historically, it's also known as annihilationism. And here's the idea is that immortality itself, the ability to live eternally forever and ever and ever and ever is not actually something that is granted to human beings.

It's only contingently granted to those who have faith in Christ. That being the case, everybody who is damned spends a finite amount of time in the lake of fire or hell during which they're consumed, annihilated, and cease to exist.

So at some point, hell itself is, there's no fuel for the fire, if you would.

That's kind of a way of putting it, all right? And the way in J .I. Packer years ago, in fact, in the 70s wrote a brilliant article basically pointing out the major flaw of the entire conditional immortality position is that it's based upon a flawed hermeneutic.

And I couldn't agree more. And I'll walk you through it because remember our sound principles. Context, context, context, grammar, clear passages govern unclear.

And in order for there to be a doctrine, it has to be clearly taught in the didactic sections of scripture, not in ambiguous language.

Does that make sense? And scripture doesn't contradict scripture. So let me kind of lay out their claim a little bit.

And this is kind of the claim of a gentleman by the name of Glenn Peoples. Here's how he argues.

That in the Genesis account, in Genesis chapter three, verses 22 through 24, this is after Adam and Eve sinned, ate the fruit, and fell.

We read this. Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden. Now this is important. You see that dash mark after forever?

I'm glad that ESV puts that in because in the Hebrew, this is actually kind of important. God doesn't finish his sentence.

It's an incomplete sentence. It's like God kind of tails off. He never tells us the, therefore and live forever.

It doesn't ever say, okay? Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

He drove out the man. At the east of the garden in Eden, he placed the cherubim and the flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

So the conditionless argument basically has this, and I would argue this is their sedes doctrinae. This is their basic, major premise.

That if God will not permit sinful humans to have immortality, then it's necessarily follows that the doctrine of eternal torment is false.

Now this is a great argument, and here's the reason why. Because if you grant the premise, the conclusion follows automatically.

Does that make sense? It necessarily follows. Here's the problem. We have to apply all sound biblical hermeneutical principles to this argument to see if they're rightly handling this text.

And remember, we got to find a sedes doctrinae, and we don't want no death stars.

Okay, because we all know what they do. Yeah, sorry, I just like that graphic.

Okay, so let's go back to review our principles. Scripture interprets scripture, and the less clear passages or plain passages of scripture must be interpreted in light of the clear passages.

Okay, that's one of the primary rules. And the Old Testament is to be interpreted by the new, the incidental must be interpreted by the systematic.

Okay, now it's important to note something here. Genesis 3, 22 through 24 is not a didactic text.

It's a narrative text. What is the topic of the text? Is it damnation?

Huh? It's expulsion from the garden. So it's consequence of sin. But is it talking about the eternal fate of the damned?

No, it's not. So that's not the topic. There may be some allusion to it.

That being the case, is this a clear text or an unclear text? It's unclear.

No, it's not zero. It's absolutely not zero. So let's give it a, let's weight it.

When it comes to eternal damnation, it's not exactly on topic. So let's give it what, a five maybe, four?

Okay, we'll give it a four. We'll give it a four. Now we'll come back to it. Glenn Peoples also argues that therefore, since he believes that this text teaches that immortality is conditional.

He then uses to support this passage, Proverbs 12, 28.

Now I'm going to read this to you in the NIV because that's what he does. And here's what it says. In the way of righteousness, there is life.

Along that path is immortality. Along that path is immortality.

So the way he argues is that since Genesis 3 is teaching that immortality is conditional,

I can find a supporting passage for that same concept right here in Proverbs 12, 28. That along the path of righteousness, there is immortality.

See, the two work together. They're mutually reinforcing each other. But are they?

Let's go back to our rules here. What's the topic of this text? Is it damnation? Not really.

It's talking about eternal life in some respect, right? Is it a clear passage or unclear?

It's unclear. Now before we put a number on it, let's apply some of our grammatical rules.

Grammatical principle. Since the books of the Bible were written by men in certain ordinary human languages, no interpretation of scripture is to be accepted which does not agree with established rules of grammar.

Let me help you out here. The NIV reads, in the way of righteousness, there is life along that path is immortality.

It's not what it says here in the Hebrew. In the Hebrew, it says, that does not say immortality.

It says, in the path of righteousness, along that path, there is no death.

There's no death. That's what it says. It doesn't say that there's immortality.

That's an English interpretation. The literal phrase is there is no death.

Now, let's go back. Clear passage or unclear? Huh? Yes, it's clear but not clearly used correctly.

Okay, this passage doesn't support the idea of conditional immortality because the NIV is not getting at what it says in the original language.

It doesn't say that along the path of righteousness, there is immortality. It says there's no death. And this is important because there is a theology revealed in Scripture regarding the first death and the second death.

This actually plays in well because remember, Scripture doesn't contradict itself, right? Okay, let me give you another one of his passages and you'll kind of see where we're going with this.

He then argues from 2 Timothy 1, verses 8 through 11. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our

Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our

Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel for which

I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher. Now, quick question.

What's the topic of the text? Does it have to do with damnation?

Okay, when immortality is used in this text, is immortality being used as something that's conditional?

No. What's the clarity of this text as it pertains to the idea of damnation and things like that?

It's not clear at all. It may even be off topic, right?

So here's what he does, and this is what conditional immortality folks do. They'll argue first and foremost from Genesis that immortality is conditional.

It's not something that's absolute, and they're using that phrase.

It isn't exactly sure what's going on there. They oftentimes will bring Proverbs 12, 28 into play, but it only works if you're using the

NIV, not the Hebrew or the ESV, and then they'll bring you to a passage like this and say that, look, all these passages are reinforcing the same idea, but when you push on the passages regarding their topic and clarity and context, they don't actually teach the doctrine, do they?

I'm gonna point something else also out here. We must assume that a speaker or writer, remember our principle, would use his words in that sense in which those to whom he speaks or writes are accustomed to use them, and interpreter's primary and chief aim should be to ascertain the meaning of words according to the meaning of its actual popular usage, so let's go back to that passage in Timothy talking about, and Jesus brought life and immortality to light.

Let's take a look at what's going on here. The Greek word aphtharsia, a state of not being subject to decay, dissolution, interruption, incorruptibility, or immortality, so the

Greek word behind the word immortality in the English translation is, it doesn't exactly support their idea, though, does it?

And that's the thing. You have to understand the original languages because the Greek language is not a code that you translate a word for word or anything like that.

The idea is that you have to learn their vocabulary and what those words mean, so even when we push on that word immortality in 2

Timothy 1 .10, it really doesn't definitionally fit the definition that the conditional immortality folks are using.

I'll take you to another passage. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 50 through 55.

I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed for this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on the immortality.

So when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? So here we have another passage that's talking about immortality and the perishable and all that kind of stuff.

When it comes to the concept of the damned and their fate, is this what this passage is referring to?

It seems to be describing the righteous for sure, but it's still not giving us any clear understanding of what happens to the fate of the damned.

So it's not very clear. I would say it's kind of on topic halfway. Okay, it's got one foot on the topic, not two.

But then as far as clarity is concerned, five, six, maybe? I'm not seeing a governing passage yet.

And yet these are the major proof texts. Now, the other thing that they argue then is that there's a lot of passages in the

New Testament that describe the fate of the wicked as destruction and God's going to destroy them.

Now this is most certainly true. Absolutely, this is absolutely the case. There's a ton of verses in the

New Testament that describe the fate of the damned as destruction. And it's important for us to look and see what those terms mean.

Matthew 10, verse 28. Let me give you, this is one of their key passages. Do not fear those who kill the body, this is

Jesus, but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

So in the Greek text, there's three different words that are used that are translated for destroy.

This is one of them, by the way. And the Greek word here is apalumi. Let me read to you from the lexicon what it means.

To cause or experience destruction. Act, ruin, destroy. Perish or be ruined.

Okay, by the way, in the active voice, it means to ruin or destroy. Middle or passive means to perish or to be ruined.

To fail to obtain what one expects or anticipates, lose out on or lose. To lose something that one already has or to be separated from a normal connection, to lose or be lost.

Okay, this is important. The Greek word apalumi here, there is no room for it to actually mean cease to exist.

Now, let me give you some examples, okay, that you can kind of get. We have a similar use of this word, and that is this, is that I remember an incident where my daughter,

Christina, was playing my son, Joshua, in a game called Mario Kart.

Okay, a little Nintendo action here. And it's a game where you race around and you blow each other up, and it's supposedly a lot of fun, you know.

And they were playing this for hours and hours and hours, and my son was mad.

Okay, and when Joshua's mad, it means he's losing. Okay. And so they came out of the living room, and Christina had this cheesy ear -to -ear grin on her face.

And I looked at her and I said, so how'd it go? And she says, I destroyed him.

Okay, now, I didn't go, oh no, Joshua has ceased to exist.

We've lost him, it will never, no. Okay, so the idea is this, is that the word destroy doesn't have automatically a concept of annihilating the thing that's been destroyed.

Okay, for instance, you can destroy your car by crashing it into a tree. It doesn't mean that as soon as it hits the tree that it ceases to exist.

It's been ruined. It's no longer functional. And at this point, you could say that it's been destroyed.

That's what Apollumi here is getting at. Does that make sense? So when

Jesus here, let me back this up now. When Jesus here in Matthew 10, 28 says, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body, this particular verb,

Apollumi, doesn't ever have as its understanding annihilation. This has to do with destructive ruin.

That's what's going on. So this is why the Greek language helps. Let me give you another one where the verb actually can mean annihilate.

Just because it can mean it, though, doesn't mean that it does. Does that make sense? This one, Matthew 7, 13 through 14.

Enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.

And those who enter it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.

Now, quick question. Topic of the text, this is right on topic. No doubt about it.

This one is right in the sweet spot. Clarity. It's clear, but what is meant by destruction?

Is that clear or not? Not exactly. It's clear that the damned are going to face destruction.

The question is, what does that mean? Now, in this particular case, Apolleia is the

Greek word. And here's the definitions, the possibility. Destruction that one causes, destruction or waste.

For instance, let me give you another example where this verb is used. When the woman anoints

Jesus' feet with perfume and wipes it with her hair and stuff like that, the disciples say, why this

Apolleia? This waste, destruction, right? It's not, it wasn't the annihilation of the perfume.

It was the waste. That being said, it's important to note that it can also mean destruction that one experiences.

It can be annihilation, both complete and in the process, or ruin. Now, the question is, since it's possible for it to mean annihilation, where can

I go to get clarity as to whether or not this means annihilation and ceasing to exist or not?

Okay, because just because it's within the range of valid interpretation doesn't mean that it's valid.

So this, I told you this is a harder case. Well, this comes back to one of our principles. Every doctrine of Holy Scripture is set forth at some place very clearly in non -figurative terms as the main theme of a discourse.

Such a passage may be referred to as the Sedes Doctrinae, as the seat or source of a doctrine.

All passages dealing with a certain doctrine are to be understood and expanded according to the Sedes Doctrinae. Now, is there a passage that says in clear didactic language that when the evil are judged, that they will be destroyed and cease to exist?

Huh? Matthew 25, 46, which says eternal punishment.

That's different. Now, we're dealing with the Sedes Doctrinae the other way. Okay, and this is where grammar comes into play.

In fact, you're ahead of me. Let me go there. Let's look for clear passages that we can find that will explain in unambiguous terms what's going to happen to the damned.

Matthew 25, verses 41 through 46. Then he will say to those on his left, apart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire.

I'm going to point this out here. This is the modifier. That's the noun.

Adjective, noun. Grammar matters, right? Why do we have this adjective modifying this noun?

Yeah, this tells me something about this fire. How long is that fire going to last? That's a long fire, okay?

So grammar, that's the adjective, that's the noun. So that's important. So Jesus describes it as the eternal fire.

For the devil and his angels, for I was hungry, you gave me no food. I was thirsty, you gave me no drink. I was a stranger, you did not welcome me.

Naked, you did not clothe me. Sick and in prison, you did not visit me. And they also will answer saying, Lord, when do we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you?

Then he will say to them, truly I say to you, you did not do it to one of the least of these. You did not do it to me.

And these will go away into, okay, eternal punishment.

But the righteous into eternal life. We have an unbreakable parallel bond, okay?

Do you believe that you're gonna spend eternity with Christ and eternal life in his heavenly kingdom and he'll bring it to earth someday?

Yeah, no one has a problem believing in eternal life, none whatsoever, but here's the deal.

These two are inextricably linked together and the grammar is eternal punishment.

The punishment itself is eternal. That's a clear passage.

Does that hint at annihilation or ongoing existence? Absolutely, let's continue to see.

Now let's see if we can bring some other passages to bear, see if they all are in agreement. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth.

This is Revelation chapter 20. Surrounding the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Actually, the Greek is from the ages into the ages. Okay, now this is the fate of the devil, right?

Is the devil going to be annihilated or is this text saying that he's going to exist forever? Exist forever in the lake of fire.

Now where does Jesus in Matthew 25 cast those he doesn't know? Into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and all his angels.

Same fate awaits everyone who is not saved, right? So the devil, he's being tormented in the lake of fire day and night forever and ever.

Doesn't stop. Clear or unclear? Clear is a bell.

Here's another passage. No, not Rob Bell. He's not clear. Anything but.

Okay, Revelation 14, 9 through 11. And another angel, a third followed them saying a loud voice, if anyone worshiped the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hands, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day or night.

These worshipers of the beast and its image, whoever received the mark, its mark or its name.

Ceasing to exist or continuing to exist? Does the punishment ever end?

Okay, now if we were to put Matthew 25 as the CD's doctrinaire, the center, is it obliterating these texts or adding light to it and they're all working together?

It's adding light and they're all working together and it's working together with destruction too because it doesn't eliminate the concept of destruction.

All it does is it throws destruction into a different definition which was within its valid range of understanding.

Does that make sense? We're not denying destruction. What we're saying here is that the scriptural evidence, when you look at all of the data, is that the destruction is that ongoing ruin in torment in hell of the damned, right?

There's no death star here. Now all of them are working together. Let's see if they continue to work together.

Revelation chapter 20 verses 10 through 15. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it from his presence, earth and sky fled away and no place was found for them.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne and the books were opened. This is the day, right?

By the way, can I say this? Every one of you who are in Christ, your name is in the

Lamb's book of life. And here's the deal because Christ took every sin that you've ever committed upon himself and he propitiated the wrath of God.

There will not be a single negative mark in the books chronicling your life.

All that's left are your good works. That's how good this is.

Then another book was opened in which was the book of life. The dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done.

The sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged each one of them according to what they had done.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death. This is the important part.

First death is when your body dies, right? That's the first death.

Do you cease to exist when your body dies? No, okay, no. Instead, you continue on living.

There's been a separation of body and soul. And then there's a general resurrection where everybody comes to life again.

This is what the second death is. And remember that passage from the Proverbs, you know, that the conditional immortality folks quote that says that, you know, that in the path of righteousness, there is immortality.

It says in the path of righteousness, there is no death. Here's the reason why. Because we don't suffer death.

The second death is this. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And the lake of fire, if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

And we know from Revelation 14, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, day and night without end.

Are any of these passages ambiguous? They're all clear. So those who are pitching annihilationism or conditional immortality, they're suffering from a bad hermeneutic.

Although they're trying to make a biblical argument, it's an argument that fails precisely because of its imprecision regarding sound biblical hermeneutical principles.

Does that make sense? Clear passages always govern unclear. And when they take their unclear passages and try to make them the ruling passages, what they end up doing is having to argue against all these clear passages now eternal punishment doesn't mean they're punished eternally.

It just means that when they're annihilated, it's the eternal finality of their punishment. They have to start playing word games.

And that's not how you do it. Not only that, they also fail historically. There's a good reason why the church has always taught this doctrine.

And it's because the Bible teaches it so clearly. If annihilationism or conditional immortality were what the

Bible teaches and what the apostles really intended to convey, they failed. They failed and they failed miserably.

Here's the reason why. They can't explain then why it is that all of the ancient church fathers almost unanimously teach this so clearly.

It's ridiculous. Let me give you some of my favorites. Ignatius of Antioch, here's what he says, corruptors, this is written by the way, 110

AD, corruptors of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. If they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupted by evil teaching the faith of God for the sake of which

Jesus Christ was crucified, a man became so foul will depart into unquenchable fire and so will anyone who listens to him.

Second Clement, if we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest.

But if not, and we neglect his commands, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment.

But when these see how those who have sinned and who have denied

Christ by their words or their deeds are punished with terrible torture in unquenchable fire, the righteous who have done good and who have endured tortures and have hated the luxuries of life will give glory to their

God saying there shall be hope for him that has served God with all of his heart. Justin Martyr from AD 51 from his first apology letter, no more is it possible for the evildoer, the avaricious and the treacherous to hide from God than it is for the virtuous.

Every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve. Indeed, if all men recognize this, no one would choose evil even for a short time knowing that he would incur the eternal sentence of fire.

On the contrary, he would take every means to control himself and to adorn himself in virtue so that he might obtain the good gifts of God and escape the punishments.

Also from the same work, we have been taught that only they may attain, may aim at immortality who have lived a holy and virtuous life near to God.

We believe that they who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in everlasting fire.

Now, let me fast forward a little bit more. There's two more. This is from AD 160.

When you know that it is true life, this is Mothetis from his letter to Diogenes. He says, when you know what is true life, that of heaven, when you despise the merely apparent death which is temporal, when you fear the death which is real and which is reserved for those who will be condemned to everlasting fire, the fire which will punish even to the end those who are delivered to it, you will condemn the deceit and the error of the world.

And then this is my favorite one, specifically because it contradicts annihilationism straight up from AD 177.

Athenagoras, he writes, we Christians are persuaded that when we are removed from this present life, we shall live another life better than the present one.

Then we shall abide near God and with God, changeless and free from suffering in the soul, or if we fall with the rest of humankind, a worse one and in fire, for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere incidental work that we should perish and be annihilated.

And it just goes on and on and on like this in the writings of the church fathers. So here's the idea.

Not only do all the clear passages claim and teach unambiguously of eternal conscious punishment in the eternal fire, and there's other passages we can bring to bear.

The claim of the conditionalists just falls flat because they're trying to put unclear passages, and off -topic passages, over the clear passages that govern on topic.

Does that make sense? And they can't explain then, if this is really the biblical case, why do all of the ancient and earliest of the church fathers over and over and over again, continually warn about the eternal punishment and eternal fire?

The reason for that is simple, because the clear passages say it. So, you know, that's kind of, so we've worked through our hermeneutical challenges, easy, middle, and the hardest.

And as you can see, all of this stuff is relevant today. So what'd you think? I'd love to get your feedback if you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the

Faith. You could do so, my email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com or you can subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com

forward slash piratechristian, or you can follow me on Twitter, my name there, at piratechristian. Till tomorrow, may

God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.