Apologetics Session 10 - Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics as a Tool for Understanding Scripture

Thank you so much for so many things you do in our lives every single day, Lord. You're an amazing, amazing God. Your holiness and your glory and your depth is so something we cannot fathom as brothers.

But we are here together to listen and to learn together, Lord. And we thank you, Lord, for each one of them, that each one of them can make a difference in someone else's life. And we thank you, Lord, for that honor and that privilege that we can do that.

So I pray tonight that as we learn together, that it really opens up their hearts and their minds to really become more involved in your word, because your word cuts through muscle, cuts through bone, cuts through everything.

So we pray for them. We pray for this class tonight. In your name we say, Amen. Okay, so hermeneutics, when I was in school, hermeneutics and Where's Jack at? He's there? Oh, yeah. So this is going to be a big thing for you.

And Jack, this is going to be big. I wrote a total of 38 papers when I was in seminary. And more than half of that was about hermeneutics, about interpreting the scripture and what the scripture meant.

And it's a tool that is used to break down what the Bible says and how you can interpret the Bible. And unfortunately, in this day and age and the way things are happening within the church, especially in the United States, they really screw up hermeneutics.

They're interpreting the Bible very, very wrong. So what I'm going to do today is A hermeneutics class takes a year. So we're doing it in an hour, a little over an hour kind of going through this.

But I'll talk to you about the methodology behind it, some of the tools that I have to use it, and then how you can go ahead and really explore what the Bible's really doing. It is a totally in-depth book that is beyond man's comprehension.

Even though it was God read through men, it is something that as you go in there, for the rest of your life, every time you look into the Bible, you will always get something new out of it. And I was told that when I was in school, and it's absolutely true.

There's so many nuances here, and so many layers on top of layers, that when you hear people to talk about the Bible and say, okay, this is what this is, you've got to kind of question yourself, like, no, because there's a lot of nuances there.

The Divine and Human Nature of the Bible

So with that being said, let's start Okay, come on, there we go, okay. Let me go back. All right, first of all, Miroslav Volf, he wrote this book called Free of Charge. I would recommend this book for everybody to read.

It is about forgiveness, and it's about, he makes the case in this book that humans, it's impossible for humans to actually forgive. It is a thing that happens with the Holy Spirit, and he makes the case very, very well about forgiveness being a spiritual thing that happens to one person to another, because it is the example of what Christ did on the cross.

Christ did the ultimate forgiveness, and that part of it, as a believer, we're not humanly capable of doing that without the Holy Spirit doing that. And he makes a brilliant case, but he says this one thing, he says, to worship God, rather than idols of our own making, we must allow God to break apart the idols we create through the Spirit's relentless and intimate work within our lives.

First, and this is very important, first we need to know where to look for knowledge of the true God. It would be a mistake to seek that knowledge primarily in the world around us. God is not an object in this world.

And it's absolutely true about that. And what happens is, because of the way the church is, is that people take God now and putting it in their lives when they should be the other way around, where we should be just having him in our lives.

And so I want to start off with that. So hermeneutics, it's an interpretation of the Bible. There's really two premises that ends up happening with this, and you'll be, I'm going to make sure that you have this presentation there.

But premise number one is the Bible was written by people to be understood by people. And that's usually the general gist of it, you know. The biblical writings were written by someone with a specific audience, with a specific historical geographical reference.

Each book was created within a cultural setting of its time. One of the things I will talk about later in this presentation is that I would recommend, and I would pass this around to everybody, getting a cultural background Bible.

And this is a really, really good tool to use to, when you're reading scripture and you want to get another point of view, it's very, very in-depth in terms of talking about what was happening at that time when the book was being written.

The biblical book writings were recorded in its native tongue, followed by grammatical or figurative language. This is commonalities that people have come to really adopt. And the biblical book was accepted and understood in light of its context, and the writings were understood in a historical setting, its basic principles of logic and communication.

That's the first premise. The second premise is this, which we really don't talk about that much. The book, the Bible is a divine book. Only the supernatural can understand or answer prophecy, parables, miracles, doctrine.

It also contains unity. It does not contradict itself, even though people try to make a case between various different verses, and we'll talk about this later on, but for now, because there's certain verses there that, when you look at them just alone, can mean one thing, but when you look at the context as a whole, it can mean something totally different.

And it often interprets itself. So the obscure and secondary passages are interpreted in light of the clear primary passages. And that's really true when we're digging into some of the things. And you know, I don't know if you're like me, but I avoided Revelations for the longest time because it was like, you know, you're going down this rabbit hole of all these different things, and the allegories within it was tough for me to take because my mind goes, oh, well, just tell me exactly what the Bible is saying, and then I can go ahead and use that in my life.

And Revelations was tough for me to really do that. Of course, in eschatology, it's really the underpinnings of what God's plan is at the end. And the Bible contains progression. So through the Bible itself, when you're looking at hermeneutics, you're taking bits and pieces of it, you're pulling out slices out of it, but when you look at the Bible or the canon as a whole, it really should be thought of from 30 ,000 foot that there is a general story that's starting in Genesis and it's working all the way through Revelations.

The Bible shows all the humanity of its total progression towards heaven and hell, and it's the good and bad, the story of the good and bad and the ugly. So the word hermeneutics is obviously a Greek word, hermeneuo or hermeneia, and it comes from Hermes, the Greek god, as its source.

Brought messages to the mortals, communicated to the mortals, anything that was beyond their human understanding. And Hermes was the god of science, writing, literature, eloquence. He was also the interpreter to the mortals and the gods, and he was the son of Zeus.

So they've taken that whole concept from Greek mythology and made it into this metaphor that or this science or this art, whatever you want to call it, of interpreting the scripture. But in our lives, hermeneutics should be a discipline, should be part of what we do in wanting to learn about what God's truth is.

So there's a supportive discipline on it, there's a reflective discipline on it, there's a clarifying discipline on it. It comes, in general, you want to set a premise of what you're trying to find out about, and then exegesis, or the explanation, and exposition, which is what Jeff does, and what we should be doing is what it's purposed for.

But before you even get there, you've got to figure out what you're trying to find. In your mind, like, okay, Lord, just give it to me. This is the question I have, how can I get to that? Most sermons have all three disciplines in it, simultaneously.

You don't know it, you've gotten used to it. Jeff is brilliant with it, and so is John, and Jack and Jacob, you guys, this is what you're going to be taught. I mean, usually all three are in it. And unfortunately, because of that, congregants, to no fault of anybody, they kind of get lazy, and they do not know how to study the Bible.

They wait until Sunday to get fed this, when you can be doing this on a daily basis. So the habit is to leave it to the pastor to elevate your knowledge. Really it's God's mandate that we always elevate our knowledge there.

So studying the Bible is not the pastor's job. The pastor's job is to share insights that he's going to have, that God has given him, and since he does an expository on the Bible verse by verse, that's the style that he's doing there.

But there's so many different ways to go ahead and study the Bible. But as believers, and, you know, 2 Timothy talks about this, and Paul talks about specifically, all believers are called to deliver on the biblical text and deliver it accurately.

So we must know its meaning, we must show its relevance in everyday life, and it has to give us purpose in what we want to try to do. And it cements our way of providing for the mission that Christ has for each one of us, and our mission is not, it's not the same.

Although we're a collective of brothers there, each one of us has a separate mission that God has for us, depending on our spiritual gifts, depending on the crossroads we come in life. And God uses all those different pieces to do that, but the starting point and the cementing point is this part here.

And we do not have to be a ministry to be a minister for Christ. Quartz out of Jeremiah. Okay. So, we'll go through this process of interpretation, there's major phases, there's a definitive phase. The first aspect of interpretation is discovering the basic meaning of particulars, like words, phrases, structures, and later on I will show you the different types of books you can have that will complement you as you're diving deeper there.

But you want to get an idea of just the basic premise of what you're looking at. Hebrew, Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, Assyrians, you know, like looking at things like that. I mean, they're kind of like big picture things, but they kind of cement what we're trying to connect the dots to.

And you want to get from that point and then start drilling down from there. So that's the definitive phase that we do, and we kind of do that already unconsciously. If you're doing a Bible study, like a devotional type of Bible study, we'll have thematic pieces within that, and, you know, it could be forgiveness, or redemption, or justification, or something like that.

And they're kind of thematic, and you kind of drill down into it. But you can expand it even further with better grounding and looking at history and the context and what have you. So that's the definitive phase.

And then we have the rational phase, and this is the big part of what we try to figure out. And again, I'll go back to Jacob and Jack. This part, the rational phase, is what pastors are hammered home to figure out.

So, but it's not, it shouldn't be just the pastors themselves. To anyone who wants to study the Bible, they should be doing this. And it's really an aspect of interpretation, attempts to find reasons underlying the particulars, and the general reasons why biblical statements are made, wherein they are true and necessary, and what is the immediate reason or purpose for the expressions, their relevance to the literary contents, specific historical situations.

A perfect example of this was yesterday, when Jeff was talking in 2 Thessalonians 2, I mean 3 and 4, and he was taking what Paul was talking about, and he was making relative to what was happening here.

So he was bridging that there, and he was making it to really hear, to today's ears, what is actually being said. And it was that foreknowledge that he was bringing across. That rational phase is extremely important into putting it into today's context, and understanding that, what's happening there.

Now, one of the pushbacks on the rational phase is that you'll have a group of people, and I had run across them years ago, that just believe in the King James Version. That's it. You know, they're almost like a cult.

King James Version, that's it. Anything outside of that, you're not supposed to go outside of that. Just the King James Version, that's it. They worship it, they do everything around it, and they follow it, literally, to what the Word is saying.

And there's good things about that, and there's things that are not so good about it, that you have to be very, very careful for. And then, of course, at the end, and Jeff always talks about that, you know, here's the takeaway, here's what I want you to walk away with, the implication phase.

And that's what you want to try to do every day when you're reading Scripture. Like, what are you trying to get out of it? Like, what is God telling you to do, even if it's something reflective or anything?

So it's a statement that implicates more than says it explicitly. It is the outgrowth of presuppositions that you may have, and it turns into presuppositions for other ideas. And when you take all these phases, all of a sudden you start to connect dots throughout Scripture, and they become deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

Everybody knows that person that, like, you know, you say a phrase and they go, oh, that was, you know, Sextivity 215, or we did that, oh, that was this, and they pop out verses like it's a machine gun, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And that's good if you have that gift to go ahead and do that, but we have to go deeper than that. It can't just be like you're just laying out verses like as if, you know, there's some sort of bullets there.

They're good for certain situations, not for everything. Context. So the process of the interpretive questioning is, you know, the meaning of the terms, which I had mentioned before, the meaning of the structure of what we're trying to figure out, the allegories, how Psalms is different than Ecclesiastes, that's different than Matthew, that's different than Revelations.

You want to figure out the structure of that and what the form was meant to do during that time and the meaning of its atmosphere that was taking place during that time. And that Bible that I'm sitting around there really helps in developing that whole atmosphere of understanding what was going on during that time that this was happening.

And so you prepare yourself with questions, the phases of interpretation, primary questions, what does it mean, you know, why is it said, why is it said here, what does it imply? And again, it doesn't have to be a drawn out thing, but it's something that I think that once you start to practice this, it becomes second nature.

And myself personally, when, after I, I didn't do some, it's weird, I didn't do it so much in school because that was more like just kind of getting the work done, but afterwards I started to get more and more into the Bible only because I saw the antithesis of what was happening culturally and I'm saying, what does the Bible say about this?

What does the Bible say about that? And it started a progression of me going deeper and deeper and deeper trying to figure out what was really being said because so many people, and like I always say, the enemy that we have is, you know, obviously the unregenerate, but a real big enemy is the church itself, that they don't, they don't really know how to understand the Bible, so they say things as if it's an edict and it's not true.

The subordinate questions, though, you want to say, if Susan Ball was the accomplishment, where is this being accomplished? Again, it goes back to the historical perspective. Again, all of this is part of the process that you want to do, that you want to practice.

And then, from that, you're getting interpretive answers, they're subjective, some in a spiritual state. I can tell you this, that when you go down a certain rabbit hole that the Holy Spirit is taking you there, he starts to provide different types of nuances within your heart about what you're reading.

And that's the kind of illumination that begins to take place. And when it happens like that, it's really, I almost want to say, cemented to your soul. It's something that is like, I'm going to keep that forever until I meet the Lord face to face.

So in some ways it should be methodical, in some ways it should be self-conscious, but overall it should be thorough, and it should be for yourself and your intimate time with the Lord to do that. Does anybody have any questions about this?

This is kind of like, for me it's kind of basic, but the process itself, does anybody have any questions regarding that?

Are you talking mainly about the literal interpretation as opposed to the allegorical method of interpretation?

No, well actually, and we'll talk about that. There is the allegorical, there is the literal, there is the rhetoric, there is the mandated. There's kind of different categories within that that you see.

And as you start to do that, you'll see that you'll begin to expand what you're actually looking at. The easiest one that people have a tendency to fall to is say, oh, I just want the literal interpretation.

What it says is what it is. But without having enough of a background, that can be very, very tricky. Some things are straightforward, of course, you know, the Ten Commandments are straightforward. Other things are not that straightforward, and in fact, and we'll talk about this later on here, about what's going on there.

But there's different types, you know, that would end up happening there. This gives you an example of some of the study guides that I have read through, and I would recommend doing this, again, it would be part of this.

You know, John Calvin, his writings, when he went against the Church, and, you know, the Reformed theology, or systematic theology, really goes back to John Calvin when he made that break from the Roman Catholic Church and wrote his 95 Theses in there to really defend what justification was, and what grace was, and all that.

So it's a book that you want to go and access to, and it complements what you're reading in terms of his confirmation on there. Mind you, this is John Calvin that was in the 1500s, and the Bible was, you know, much earlier, and during that whole time that was happening, and again, this is part of the hermeneutics part, is, like, you say to yourself, okay, what happened then, and why did it happen now?

What happened during that time, that there was this whole dark age of biblical theory? Next one is St. Augustine's, the, I Can't Recommend It Enough, in school, that's when we had a study, his apologetics there was so spot on.

And when you read his life story of how much of a pagan he was, and then what he turned into, it's absolutely just mind-blowing. John MacArthur's Strange Fire is really an expose about what's happening in the churches today, prosperity, gospel, and what's happening, and how it moved away, but there were similarities that was happening in the New Testament during that time.

Tinsdale, who converted the Bible from Latin into English, and was martyred for it, an excellent expose of what he had to go through during that time to go ahead and change what we have now. I mean, actually, what he did, we can go into our Bible and look at it, and do that because of his work back then.

These are thematic, John, to your point, thematic, John MacArthur's slave, John MacArthur does a deep dive into what Paul was talking about when he starts off most of his books, epistles, and he says, I'm a slave to Jesus, I'm a servant to Jesus, I'm this and that, and the actual point of it, and he took a lot of criticism for this, but I would recommend this book very highly for people to read, is that our relationship with Jesus Christ, he bought us with a price, that means that we are his, literally, slave, into that, and it takes the whole context outside of ourselves into what Jesus is expecting from us, and it's a very, very important book, very timely, again, like I said, John MacArthur was really critical about what's happening in churches today, and he was criticized for this.

Polycarp's letters to the Philippians, and his martyrdom, now, Polycarp, if you know anything about Polycarp, he followed John, and he was the one that was really the understudy of what was happening with John.

A .W. Tozer, if you haven't heard of A .W. Tozer, he was a polygenic, an evangelist, a pastor, he wrote this tremendous book on how, in the Old Testament, when the Jews were wandering in the wilderness, how the Lord guided them at night with a cloud, I mean, day with a cloud and night with a fire, and what were the implications behind that, and he makes the case that that hasn't changed, that hasn't changed today, you know?

And then, the last one here is Know the Heretics, and this is, again, expose from beginning to now of all the different types of heretical teachings that are happening right now, from the Gnostics, to the Pantheists, to Universalists, and so forth and so on, until today's age.

Q. Who's the author? A .W. The author of this one is Justin Holcomb. Q. Holcomb? A .W. Yeah. Q. Justin Holcomb. A .W. Again, a study about theology, systematic theology, the Handbook of Christian Apologetics, again, these are complementary books that you want to try to do here.

I don't know if anybody's heard of Dr. John Barnett, I would recommend you just go to YouTube, talk about, his main thrust is eschatology, but he wrote some terrific books about David, Job, other deep-dive studies of what was really happening there, and I would recommend John Barnett for anybody who really wants to get involved in that.

And then we have the historical things that you should just, you should automatically have anyway, as I was passing around the Bible there, the ESV Bible Atlas, Bible History, this set of books over here is very, very good to really kind of give you, not just the topical stories, but the in-depth stories of biblical history, and then of course the cultural background.

When I tell you I drive my wife Joyce crazy, when she sees me studying the Bible, I have three Bibles in front of me, plus this, and she's like, why are you so weird, you know? So I'm looking, as I'm reading, I'm like, oh yeah, and this is my, I was teasing because I got a, I left this behind, and I challenged Jack to kind of take a look at this, but I write random notes from learning, and I just put them in a book, and I have a bunch of these books, and I would really challenge every one of you just to do that, just get a book and write the thoughts you get from Scripture, they don't have to be in any order, just write them, and then visit them a month later, two months later, and see how the Lord has revealed things that you could not even imagine with just writing things down.

You'll be happy to know that Jack and Jacob are both back here writing in books.

Right. And then this is a rhetorical, Han Hanegraaff, I don't know if anybody's heard of him, he was an apologist, also a Bible teacher, he now is, he is a, I think a Greek Orthodox now, I think he switched over to Greek Orthodox.

Yeah, he had some problems there. Yeah, there was some problems. But this book itself is very, very good, this is before he switched over, Sinclair Ferguson's The Holy Spirit, excellent expose on the Holy Spirit's presence, and about how God's grace allows to have the Holy Spirit dwell in us.

Exploring the Old Testament in the New, so Peter Rogers really talks about the New Testament, and how it, almost in every single book in the New Testament, it refers back to the Old Testament. So there's a fluid part of connecting all the dots from the Old Testament to the New.

And then this is from Ligonier Ministries, which is The Guide to False Teaching. And it kind of gives you an update about what are some of the things that are happening that you need to look out for. Okay.

And then we have the study guide, Themes, which is free of charge, which I said earlier is about forgiveness. And then R .C. Sprouls, he has a number of these small little books, but they're gems. And I just put one up here, which is How Can I Be Right With God?

And very simple questions, and he goes from an apologetic point of view, and he explains this, you know, how do I know I'm saved? You know, in short, what is systematic theology? So for kind of the big questions, and he has these little tidy books, and they're really easy to get.

I would go to Ligonier Ministries, I think you can download some of these books there. Okay. Again, all these things complement to try to help you understand more of what Scripture is talking about, and they really cement a good foundation there.

Again, you don't have to be a seminary student. These are things you can do on your own. Last but not least, Strong's Greek Dictionary and Hebrew Dictionary. They're just excellent. If you ever get caught on a word, and you're understanding, mind you, when you're looking in the New Testament, and you look at a certain word, there could be up to like ten different meanings of that word.

And so, how do you take that word literally in the verse, and it's very helpful to learn that word on the various different things that are happening in the Greek. And the Naves topical Bible, you know about this, Rich.

This is, you must have this. It really is something that you want to keep in your toolkit when you're reading Scripture and understanding Scripture. And that's the grammatical part. These are basically the grammatical part, and it gives you better context of what you're studying.

Hermeneutics in Action: The Origin of Evil

So, now that I got the class, that part of it done, we're going to get into some fun there. So, hermeneutics in action. So, we want to know what is evil, right? So, what is evil? And so, there's some big questions about it.

Okay? And it says, like, who created evil? You know, did Adam and Eve know what evil is? Think about that for a minute. Did they even know what evil was? You know, because they were in the Garden of Eden, they didn't know anything.

You know? So, did they know? Was evil contained? How did evil turn so great? Okay? And was evil taught? These are big, big questions. Like, big questions there. And you can take it, you know, you can study forever on each one of them.

But I'm going to make a case, a hermeneutical case on what's going on here. So, I'm going to ask people to read certain parts of Scripture. Okay? Starting with Genesis 3, 115. Phil, can you just read that real quick?

Maybe. 115. Okay. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. She shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So, 1 through 15. 3, 1 through 15.

Ah. Okay. That's more. That's just 15. Okay. Okay. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast in the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil. So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and there was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she gave also some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

And the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate it. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed you will be above all livestock and above all the beasts in the field, and on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Okay. Thank you. So, let's go back to what's said. So, who created evil?

Eve. Eve created evil. Lucifer disobeyed God. Satan. Satan created evil? Eve created evil?

Did Eve, did they know that it was evil? Did they know it's evil? No, they didn't know. Okay. They disobeyed God's command. That was evil. Ron, could you read Genesis 6, 1 -7?

I can. Okay, you can. You got it? Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait. So, everybody. Breathe, everybody can hear it. Go ahead. Powder? Powder. Okay. It says,. And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent for the thoughts of his heart was only evil and continually.

The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. The Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals, to creeping things, and to birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I have made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Is that it?

Yeah, that's it. That's it. Okay, so we're having two different positions now that are starting to happen. Okay, so we have sin. We have evil. And now we're trying to figure out the driver of evil. Okay?

And we're starting to connect a few dots that's happening over here. Who can read Genesis 6, 12, and 13? Kevin, you got it?

This is King James Version. Everything else is Spring Waters. It's King James. Okay. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Okay. So the question now becomes is, okay, so we have evil. We have sin, fallen man. We have Nephilim that came about. And now we have corruptness, and the earth is now almost like a virus. Evil has taken over the earth beyond anything that we could imagine.

Right? And so, in hermeneutic world, we're starting to see a pattern of why God was starting to do it. We're there. Now, the old thinking was, is that, oh, well, it's fallen man. You know, Eve ate the apple.

Fallen man. Sin just happens. Everything else. But taking a few steps back, they were in the presence of the Lord. They didn't know any evil. They didn't even know what to do that was evil. They were absolutely innocent.

Not to say that they're not innocent after they sinned. That's not the thing. But how could something that happened to Ab and Eve end up happening what happened in Genesis 6, 12 -13? How can evil get so bad in that short of a period of time, which is there?

How did that happen?

Okay. After the apple or before the apple? Well, that's... Because, I mean, I guess because, obviously, he must have given Adam and Eve, as with us, free will. You know, even at that time, when Adam was created and the rib and then her.

But they were given free will. But Satan had already fallen. So, he was within the garden because he was tossed out. So, he was amongst the ground slithering and then tempting her, which was her free will.

Like you said, she didn't even know what evil was. She never experienced it. She was pure, just like he was pure. I'm having trouble hearing you. I'm sorry. I'll speak up. But, I mean, you know what I'm saying?

It was free will. And then, like you said, cancer just kept coming with each birth from that. Like I said, they were all born innocent. Okay.

There was no option until Christ. Okay. So, go ahead.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil, right? God knew what that was. He knew what good and evil was because he created that tree. So, he's probably already seen evil at this point, I would think, and kept it from Adam and Eve.

Well, Satan had already fallen, so... Yes. There already were beings that had free will that had chosen evil, right?

It's just a thought I had. No, no, no. There's nothing wrong with that. These are actually excellent points. They're questions. So, the question from that is, and this is a question, is that was man taught more evil?

Or man was just evil and they just morphed into more evil? Are they taught more evil or do they morph into evil?

I'm curious about Matt's comment because Satan was there. But Matt's saying there was other evil persons. Right. I didn't know that. Beings, not humans. Right. Beings? Beings, yeah. So, we know that...

Supernatural beings. Yes, supernatural beings. And we know that Satan fell. The angels that followed Satan. Right. Okay. Let's look at Genesis 7, 11, 23. We don't have to read the whole thing. I just want to read the beginning part of it.

Bill, can you do that? In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened.

Rain fell upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights. Do you want to keep reading here?

That's fine right there. Okay. Now, why would God destroy the earth, save just a few people and all these animals? Like, literally, in disgust. God was in disgust. Why would He do that? Like, why does He destroy everything except for these few?