Jesus Christ’s Return, What We Believe, Part 9

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One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, I hope that you had a good Christmas. This is Andrew Rapoport, host of The Wrap Report, joined by my friend,

Jim Osmond, pastor of Kootenai Community Church. Pastor Jim, welcome again. Thank you.

It's good to be back in the saddle. So I do hear, let's just get this rumor out of the way, because I hear that you're welcoming in the new year with a seminar.

You wanna talk about some clouds that don't have any water in them is how I heard it.

But I hear that up in Idaho, if people wanna go up there January 14th and 15th, you're gonna have

Justin Peters come out and do his Clouds Without Water seminar. Yeah, we are.

And of course, there's a connection between Justin and our church, because he lived here for some years. And of course,

Justin and I are friends. Anybody who knows who I am knows that. Justin and I are friends. And so he wanted to know if he could come up and do a presentation and do some recording here.

So we're gonna facilitate that. We're gonna use our church and we're not gonna charge anybody to come to the conference.

We're gonna make that free. And then we're just gonna take up an offering to cover the cost of the refreshments.

So on Friday, we're gonna do two sessions, four on Saturday, and it's gonna involve a

Q &A. And we're gonna serve refreshments for that and make it a delight for everybody who was there.

And any offering that's taken up over and above the cost of the refreshments goes to support

Justin Peter's ministry. There you go. So folks, if you're in the Sandpoint, Idaho area, go check that out.

That'll be January 14th and 15th. So just a quick plug for Kootenai Community Church there.

So I hope that everybody had a good Christmas. Looking forward to New Year's. We are gonna be celebrating

New Year's as a church. I don't know, what do you guys, does your church do anything for New Year's? No, we don't, no.

We have a Christmas Eve service. So we had that, and then we don't do anything for New Year's or New Year's Eve.

It's just we let it pass and people hang with their families. Yeah. In the event that New Year's falls on a

Sunday, then we have a worship service on that morning. New Year's Day. Yeah, you know,

I knew of, this is totally off topic, but I knew of a church in New Jersey that used to cancel service on Super Bowl Sunday.

Now just take a step back and think about that first off, because I don't follow football, but Super Bowl Sunday, the

Super Bowl's usually at night. I at least know that much of it. Like why in the world do you need to cancel the morning service?

Like if you had an evening service maybe. In our time zone, the Super Bowl doesn't start until the middle of the afternoon, even where we're at.

So even when it would be, it would come closest to impinging upon ours, but there's no need to cancel it, unless you're giving people the opportunity to drive 10 hours to wherever they're gonna watch the

Super Bowl and they can't make it to church. And then you get over to Eastern time zones, and what's the start at?

I think it's like six o 'clock at night for you guys. Is it six or seven? Yeah. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah, to me,

I looked at that church and went, okay, you've made it clear what is your priority and it's not the Bible. Yeah, we're gonna bow to the idol of the culture, even when the idol isn't even threatened to impinge upon our normal worship of God.

Yeah, oh my. So, yeah, so let's get into, we're continuing our series here.

We're on our series number nine in this series, looking at what we believe.

This is from the doctrinal statement at Striving Fraternity. So we'll just remind you, it's in the show notes, but if you just go to strivingfraternity .org

and go to the About section, under the About, you will see what we believe.

We're specifically, if you open up the section on God, we're looking at God the

Son. And we're just finishing up on the last couple of paragraphs here to finish up on this section.

So, Jim, if you would, for us, would you mind reading the section we're gonna look at today? Absolutely, so this is about three paragraphs from the end of the section on Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ will return to receive the church, which has called his body unto himself at the rapture, and returning with his church in glory will establish his millennial kingdom on earth,

Acts 1, 9 through 11, 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18, and Revelation 20.

Jesus Christ is the one through whom God will judge all mankind, John 5, 22 to 23, including believers, 1

Corinthians 3, 10 to 15, and 2 Corinthians 5, 10, the living inhabitants of the earth at his glorious return,

Matthew 25, 31 to 46, and unbelieving dead at the great white throne, Revelation 20, 11 through 15.

As the mediator between God and man, 1 Timothy 2, 5, the head of his body, the church, Ephesians 1, 22, 5, 23, and Colossians 1, 18, and the coming universal king who will reign on the throne of David, Isaiah 9, 6, and Luke 1, 31 to 33, he is the final judge of all who fail to place their trust in him as Lord and Savior, Matthew 25, 14 through 46, and Acts 17, 30 to 31.

Now, this week is gonna be the first that we really get into some of the end times discussions that we've kind of touched on briefly in previous episodes.

This is gonna be the first where we're gonna have some of our amillennial brothers and post -millennial brothers that will disagree with some of the things in here.

But I want you to note that there's, even within this, there's a lot that they would agree with. And so, this is something we wanna address, some of those differences.

Now, granted, this is the doctrinal statement of striving for eternity. This is not a doctrinal statement for Christianity.

I wanna make that point clear because a doctrinal statement says where we agree, where we disagree.

And we're saying here where striving for eternity is. We are premillennial, pre -tribulational.

That doesn't mean that we think those who are not are not brothers in Christ. That's an important distinction to be made because what we find is a lot of people tend to see that or think that somehow if we are having a position, we're calling everyone else a heretic, everyone else unsaved.

That's not the purpose of a doctrinal statement. As you heard, I'm referring to amillennialists and post -millennialists, they are brothers, at least some of them.

Some premillennialists are brothers too, not all, okay? And so it's not this doctrine that's going to define whether they're saved or unsaved.

But the issue here is that there are differences. We hold to a different position.

Now, what does this mean for a ministry? Well, this does not mean that I come into a church or Anthony comes into a church or any of our speakers would come into a church and be teaching on premillennialism unless that's what we're asked to speak on.

I was recently asked to come into a church for two Sundays and speak on dispensationalism.

Now, that's not something I would typically be focused on unless the church is asking for that.

However, as our ministry, when we're teaching through things, yeah, that would come up. That's gonna come up in our systematic theology.

That's gonna come up here with view of end times. Why? Because we're trying here to focus in on some specifics for our ministry.

If you're gonna be part of our ministry, if you're gonna speak on our ministry, you're gonna know our perspective. Doesn't mean this is what we focus on.

No, actually, I don't know how often I talk on end times. It's not very often.

It's an area where I think there's a lot of speculation that goes on in all camps because things are not as clear.

Hindsight is always 20 -20. And that's the thing. We can look at the first coming and man, it's crystal clear to us.

It wasn't so crystal clear to those that lived in the first century before. And so that's something we have to remember and recognize.

Some of the things we think are so clear are not gonna be as clear as we think they are. So let's get into this.

Because this is one thing that we all agree, Christ will return, right? All Christians would agree with that.

The difference is, and I mentioned some terms, let me define them. Premillennial, postmillennial, amillennial.

Because I don't want to take for granted that people understand those. So I'll start with amillennial. Am in Greek is negative.

So millennium is a thousand year period. This is out of Revelation chapter 20. Revelation chapter 26 times refers to a thousand year period.

And so the question is, is that a millennial period? A thousand year kingdom?

Does that refer to the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah ruling and reigning as king, literally and physically.

And so amillennial is the idea that there's no millennial kingdom, physical kingdom. Now, that is the idea that there is a period of a kingdom now that Jesus is reigning.

It's not a thousand years. It's this spiritual kingdom. The idea there is that we are not gonna see a physical reign of Christ.

At the end of the age, there's gonna be a judgment. Postmillennialism is the idea that there's a postmillennial, that Christ is gonna return postmillennium.

So after that millennium kingdom. Some, whether it's physical or not, there seems to be some,

I've met people that say they're postmillennial that believe in a literal kingdom and some that don't.

So I think in postmillennialism, there seems to be some give on that. But the idea is when does

Christ come? They would say after that kingdom. Premillennialism is the idea that Christ would return before this thousand year kingdom.

There'd be a physical and literal 1 ,000 year kingdom and Jesus will reign during those thousand years.

So the pre is premillennium he comes. So that's just to give you guys an overview of that.

And each of those have their own views within. Now I will state, many people make an argument against premillennialism because it's a new theology.

Well, it's about a little over 120 years, 130 years old, as far as a formal position.

It was something that came about in late 1800s, early 1900s, that it really got developed into a system.

And the common view was amillennialism. That's what was held by the

Catholic church. And it was carried over into the Reformation. Now I will say this just as a note, a lot of amillennialists will say that, you can see the writings of amillennialism detailed in a man like Augustus or Augustine, however you wanna say his name.

People have differences. So when you look at that, I remember doing a paper,

Jim, when I was in seminary on Augustine's view of the millennium and it's very interesting when you actually engage with his writings.

Yes, he does say a lot of things about us being in a kingdom now.

The problem is he actually thought it was a literal thousand year kingdom. And so both premillennialists -

He lived prior to 1000 AD, so he could think that. Exactly. See, both amillennialists and premillennialists can go back to Augustine because both of us can use what he said and view it because he thought it was a literal thousand year kingdom.

He just thought he was in it. And that actually was the position of the Roman Catholic church up until a little after 1000

AD. I think it was Pope Innocent II, I think is who it was at the time, who then spiritualized the thousand year kingdom because, well, thousand years passed.

So just so you have some history there and we shouldn't knock on any theology because it's new because guess what, folks?

There was a time that the reformed theology was new when they had the Catholic church in their teaching and people reformed it.

That was new. That didn't make it wrong. Well, they would say, well, it wasn't new. We got it from Augustine.

Well, just remember, we get our premillennialism from Augustine as well. Oops. So with that, let's just start with this.

And so I'm saying we're gonna take a premillennial view. Jesus Christ will return to receive his church.

Now, this is something that we'll talk about in a moment called the rapture, that he's going to the first step.

And we would argue, both Jim and I would be in agreement here. It would have been very different if Bud was here this week.

It would have been fun. We should have seen if Bud could come back just for this one to get the post -mill view. And notice that what

I just said there, Bud is post -mill and he's still a co -host here. We don't have, we can get along even though we have differences.

So these things should not divide us. But I would argue that the very next thing, what is the next thing in history, in God's plan of history, would be what we call the rapture, where he takes the church out of the world.

And it is an idea that God will, if you've seen any of the movies in the, what are they, 80s, or you watched the

Left Behind series or read the books where just everyone vanishes. Granted, that is speculation.

We don't know exactly what will happen. So all the youth groups where someone plays a joke and they all drop clothes on the ground and they all hide.

Will that actually happen? Don't know. Maybe you'll go with your clothes. But the idea is that God will come and take his church out.

And the reason we believe that is because it seems that God still has unfulfilled promises that he made to Israel.

And so Jesus will receive his church and the church will no longer be the organization he works through on earth, but he's gonna return to working with the nation of Israel.

And so he's gonna receive the church unto himself at the rapture.

Now, I skipped the part on purpose, but I wanna let Jim at least answer anything that he has about that part of it.

Anything you wanna add to that? No, I don't think I can add anything. I think that's clear. You are not dealing here with whether that rapture is pre -tribulational, mid -tribulational, or post -tribulational.

That's something you're gonna deal with later on in your eschatology. But we are recognizing that there is something as something called, that we call the rapture, though the word is not mentioned in scripture, the event is described for Thessalonians chapter four.

Correct. And you bring up a good point because within premillennialism, there's at least three, really a couple more, but they all fit kind of within the three different views.

Pre -tribulational, mid -tribulational, post -tribulational. What those have to deal with is when the rapture occurs.

Does the rapture occur before a seven -year period, which is before the thousand -year kingdom, midway through or at the end?

Three different views of that. And so the idea is that the first thing that we would say pre -tribulational, the first thing in history is the rapture's gonna come, that's gonna start a seven -year period where you'll have an antichrist rise, he'll make a covenant with Israel halfway through, he breaks it, he then, at the end of the seven -year period,

Christ returns, brings in the thousand -year kingdom. That would be the overview of the premillennial view. Mid -tribulational, they're gonna think that that rapture occurs somewhere in the middle.

There's a pre -wrath view, but that's kind of in the middle as well, so that fits into the pre -mid.

And then there's the post view, so the post is that the

Christian church would go through the seven -year period, the church would be raptured as Christ returns, and then the thousand -year kingdom.

Now, if that's a whole lot to understand, that is just kind of giving overviews.

We're gonna dig in more detail that later on, many episodes later when we get to the end times.

But we wanna just give that overview. Now, I skipped over this part where it says, he receives the church which is called his body, and I wanna focus in a little bit on that.

Why is the church called his body? If you go to 1 Corinthians 12, and many people know that passage because it speaks of spiritual gifts, and we're gonna get into those in a couple of episodes from now.

But when we look at this, you end up seeing that it's referred to as one body, but with many members.

And this is a description that you and I have one body, and how does our body work? Our body has to work together.

And when our body isn't working together, something is hurt or broken, the rest of the body has to make up for that.

And so I think the reason I felt it important to include, which is called his body, is the focus of what is the church.

Throughout this doctrinal statement, if you notice, I'm mentioning things that are to be emphasized later.

And there's reasons to emphasize things later. It's the repetition that I want all of us to really get and understand and review over and over, because the more we hear this, the more we understand it.

And so the church is referred to as the body, which is many parts but function together.

That's important when it comes to a church. Jim, you're a pastor, I'm a pastor.

I know we've had these experiences. Have you had times in church where one person is upset over something, and it starts to have an effect on the rest of the members?

Yeah, it certainly can. That's why the author of Hebrews says, "'Don't let any root of bitterness spring up among you "'by which many are defiled.'"

So that close -knit functioning of the body, the way the body is knit together and meets together for worship, service, fellowship, love, and communion, and et cetera, creates an environment in which it is possible for one person's discontentment, bitterness, anxiety, whatever it is, to spread to everybody.

We always have to be careful that whatever we do and how we do it, that we are not adversely affecting everybody around us, just by virtue of the fact that we're connected so closely to them in the body.

I always remember, and granted, I don't follow team sports, so don't blame me. Someone out there, you will know who

I'm speaking about. I don't remember the guy's name, but I always remember my first pastor, when explaining this, always talked about a professional baseball player who was a pitcher.

Now he, my first pastor could have probably gone professional, playing professional ball, but he became a pastor, but he was very good, very into sports, and he would always use this illustration because there was some pitcher where someone hit a ball, and it came right at the pitcher, and it hit his toe.

I think it was big toe. It was big or little toe, I forget which, and it actually ended his career because his toe was hurting, he ended up shifting differently, throwing the ball differently.

His pitch was never good enough anymore, and it ended up ruining his career. So what it showed is that even though the toe may seem like a small body part, it affected the whole body where he couldn't do what he was paid to do.

The idea of that, and that's what, I'm spending a little bit of time on the emphasis of the church as a body so that we understand, because especially in our day and age right now, if there's ever been a time that the body of Christ, the universal body of Christ needs to come together, that would be it.

And so I think it's fitting in this section where we're talking about things that people do divide over, end times.

This is not a time for us to be dividing over end times. This of all times is a time we should be gathering as saints, those of us who know

Christ, to work together as best we can for the cause of the gospel.

Not saying we have to agree completely, but there's a lot we can agree with. And so I think that's important though, and that's why

I wanted to include the section of this being his body in a section where I'm mentioning where people disagree.

So we mentioned that he's going to come, that Jesus Christ will return to receive his church, which is called to his body, unto himself at the rapture, and we mentioned all that, and returning with his church to glory.

So this is the idea of, again, from a pre -millennial, pre -tribulational view, that we believe Jesus is gonna rapture the church to himself, and then after seven years, he's gonna take the church with him to glory, and then for seven years we'll be there, and then we would actually return, and this is what the rest of it says, we'll establish his millennial kingdom on earth, then we'll return with him as he reigns and rules, literally, during a thousand years on earth.

Now, this is the position that we would hold to. I've kind of given the overview of it, and I think that there's lots here we could get into, and we will, but I don't want to focus so much on where we, well, there's all the disagreements, but this is a doctoral statement to say this is a position we're taking.

We're saying this is where we make a stand. These things are important.

I think if you listened to the last episode in the series where Pastor Jim talked about the importance of the fulfillment of a physical kingdom being required for the divinic covenant, and so you see that's how these things would play out.

So, and anything that you would like to add on the section there on the end times before we move on to some other issues here?

I'll just throw out one thing real quick, Andrew, and I'm gonna do this only because I'm, Bud's gonna probably be back on here in order to spew his post -millennialism at the end of this doctoral statement for later episodes, so I'll just throw this out.

So he can clarify everything we say. Yeah, he can come back in and argue against this. I got a great friend in our church who makes this statement.

He said, if you read your Bible left to right, you have to be a pre -millennialist. If you read your Bible right to left, you'll be a post -millennialist.

And what he means by that is, if you start at the right -hand side of your Bible and you read back, you're gonna get to 1 ,000 years there, and only two chapters in, and you're gonna ask yourself, what can that possibly mean?

I wonder what the 1 ,000 years is supposed to refer to. Well, it must be allegorical. It must be figurative. It must not be a literal 1 ,000 years of the resurrection at the beginning of Revelation 20.

It must not be a literal physical resurrection. Therefore, this must be allegorical, and then you will take that and reinterpret all of the passages that precede that, prophetic, typological, all of that, in the previous 65 books of the

Bible. You'll interpret all of that in light of what you read into Revelation 20. But if you start at the beginning and you trace that kingdom narrative all the way through the

Old Testament, you see the promise to Abraham of a land to seed and a descendant, and you see the promise to David of a land and a king and a ruler, and you read the

Old Testament prophets, and then you see Jesus coming, fulfilling that, and then you see what the New Testament epistles expect in terms of that, and then you get to Revelation 20.

It all makes sense. Read your Bible left to right. You're premillennial. Read your Bible right to left. You are post -millennial.

But there's some, Jim, that are gonna say, I'm pan -millennial. It'll all pan out in the end. Yeah. I had one friend,

I liked what he said. He would say he is fully pro -millennial, meaning if there's a millennium, he's all for it.

Yeah. And so I think that when it comes to eschatology, study of end times, it's gonna be the area that I don't emphasize the most, because though it was so clear to those before the first century of how

Messiah was gonna come, many of them got it wrong, and we can look back and go, we got it right, because we got hindsight, and I think that we're gonna get some of those things wrong, myself included.

I don't know where, but there's reasons I hold to what I hold. We'll get into them when we look at end times.

So let's look at this next section, Jim. Jesus Christ is the only, is the one through whom

God will judge all mankind. Now, this is really important to understand for folks.

John 5, 21 to 23 says, for not even the Father judges anyone, but he has given all judgment to the

Son, so that all will honor the Son, and as they honor the

Father, he who does not honor the Son does not honor the

Father who sent him. And so this is clear that the Father gives judgment to the

Son. That's important, because one of the things that people like Jehovah Witnesses or others who deny the deity of Christ ignore is the fact that Jesus is the judge.

For Jesus to be the judge, he has to be in a right place of being a judge. Means he has to be innocent.

Now, a judge cannot sit on the bench and be also one who's accused.

So in this case, for Jesus to be the judge of morality, of sin, he can't have sinned.

He has to be in a place that only God can be. He sits in the place that only

God can sit in. So it's one of the elements. And what makes him, as Psalm 7, 11 says, a just judge, well, it's because he's

God. He's a just judge who's, I don't think, Jim, some of the people that do evangelism always read the rest of that, who's angry with the wicked every day.

Wait, God can't be angry. I recently did the debate on Apologetics Live on Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

And the whole thing this guy was trying to say is God loves everyone. I said, what do you do with Psalm 5, 5 and Psalm 7, 11, where it says he's angry with those who commit iniquity.

He's angry with the wicked. Is that his love? Yeah. Oops.

So Jesus Christ alone is the judge who's gonna judge all of mankind.

That's what we put there, but he actually already judged the angels. They've already been judged.

There's gonna be a consequence, a final consequence coming for them. But we're saying that all of mankind will be judged by Christ, the importance of that.

That means that we are all accountable to Jesus. We are all gonna stand before him one day as the scripture says, we're gonna bow our knee and confess him as Lord.

That is the reality. He is the judge. This is something that is essential for us to understand and communicate, especially when we share the gospel.

Because people think, oh, Jesus is just another way. No, because there's no other man -made religion that sets themselves up with someone other than God being the judge.

Muhammad isn't going to judge you. He's gonna be judged by God in Islam. Same with Joseph Smith.

Although, well, yeah, Joseph Smith, some of his followers did claim that he'll be like the fourth person of the Trinity and he'll be up there judging with Jesus.

But ultimately, they would not claim that he is the judge. But the

Bible says that Jesus is the judge. And we have three areas in which, three groups of people that we're gonna see judged.

Believers, living inhabitants on the earth at his glorious return, and unbelievers dead at the

Great White Throne Judgment. Now, two of these all Christians would agree with, believers and unbelievers.

We've added a third one in that brings us back to the discussion that we were looking at. And so let me address that one first and then come back to the believers, unbelievers.

So we said that the judgment will, Christ will return on the earth and then there will be a judgment.

Now, the way in premillennialism is that there'll be a couple of judgments that end up being seen before the final

Great White Throne Judgment. But the idea is that there will be a judgment of the inhabitants of the earth at the time of his return.

So those who are alive when he returns before the thousand -year kingdom, there is the idea that there would be a judgment he does then, and that only those that are redeemed would enter into that thousand -year kingdom.

Now, that doesn't mean they stay redeemed everybody. What do I mean by that? Those who are redeemed will have children and those children, some will believe and some will not.

And so at the end of the thousand -year kingdom when there is a revolt of unbelievers, those unbelievers are the children of the inhabitants that first came into the kingdom.

And so just to be consistent with our end times view, I had to include a third view in here.

Everybody would hold to believers that God is at the Great White Throne Judgment, he's gonna judge the believers and unbelievers known as sheep and goats.

And so you're gonna have those two groups, those that have eternal life will be in the new earth and new heavens, those that have eternal death will be thrown into the lake of fire, okay?

So those are the two that everyone agrees. We've added the third to be consistent because it does seem to be within premillennialism the view of another judgment.

So Jim, anything with God coming or Jesus coming as the judge that he will be the one to judge the world or specifically mankind?

No, I would just add a clarification that when we say that he's going to judge believers, we don't have in mind the same kind of judgment or the same standard of judgment as what we see when he judges unbelievers either at the beginning of his kingdom or at the end of his kingdom.

And we do have a judgment at the beginning of that kingdom, but it is not believers who are judged on the basis of their sin or as a payment for their sin because believers' sins have already been paid for at that point.

That judgment that takes place at the beginning of his kingdom is for the purpose of establishing a kingdom of only righteousness.

Only the sheep get to enter into that kingdom at that point. Some glorified saints and others non -glorified saints who have endured through the tribulation.

But that judgment is intended to purge the entire earth of all the wicked and that would be a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

There are Old Testament prophecies that anticipated the purging of all of the wicked from all of the nations prior to the establishment of the messianic kingdom.

And then of course you have unbelievers who have not yet been raised in their unglorified but eternal immortal bodies at any point in this.

There's never been a resurrection of the damned, of the unbelieving, and that happens at the end of that kingdom.

So that they spend all of eternity in unglorified but eternal imperishable bodies that spend all of eternity suffering in damnation.

So you have to split up, I think, those two judgments to make sense of the way in which they are described in each case.

And the thing there is believers being judged, we will be judged, right?

Judgment isn't always, we're gonna be judged as being righteous because of what Christ did.

But we're also gonna be judged because we're gonna have crowns given in the final. And so our rewards, our service that is being judged.

And that's a judgment. And people don't think about that, but the reality is we're gonna also, I think, maybe not so much for you,

Jim, maybe just more for me, are gonna be judged and realize, oh, I should have gotten a lot more crowns than a lot of things

I could have done better in life. And so that judgment that we as believers look forward to is also a motivation.

It's a motivation for us to realize that we're gonna stand before God and He's gonna evaluate everything we did.

He's gonna go, you know, all that time you were sitting and watching TV or maybe reading secular books or watching the news, you could have been doing something that would have a more eternal impact.

Now, I might've hit on some people's hobby horses, especially with the last one, but the reality is that we're all gonna stand before God and we're gonna find out that maybe, you know, someone we look down on in a third world country because they don't have a

Bible, they don't have the education we have, and yet they use their time because they didn't have things distracting them from doing the service of God.

And they may be judged more than us in a rightful way. And we're gonna have a lot less crowns than maybe that person with all that we had.

You know, I always go back to a book by Christopher Love called Grace. I forget the subtitle, but the degrees of grace or something like that.

But what he did is he has a very interesting way of explaining the grace of God. And what he says is that God gives each of us a certain amount of grace.

And it doesn't matter how much grace he gives you, it matters what you do with it.

In other words, God gives me one foot of grace.

I'm using an illustration so we can understand it, but he gives me one foot of grace and gives

Jim six inches of grace. But I use that grace to eight inches of height where Jim uses it to six inches of height.

Guess what? He used 100%. He's 100 % filled with grace where I let a lot go.

The illustration he uses is that way is trying to point out that there's degrees we have with it.

God gives us grace in our life. We're just not really that faithful to it. The question is how faithful we are to what

God gives us. And that includes our resources like time. Now, some of you spend your time doing a thing like eight hours a day called sleeping.

I tend not to because I figure I could sleep when I'm dead and I wanna use that time. People come in my office, they look at my books,

Jim, and they're like, did you read all of these? And my answer usually is yes, when you were sleeping.

Right? Because I wanna use that time. But if you choose to sleep, let me give some good advice for you.

And that is to get yourself a MyPillow. You figured that was the segue, I'm sure, Jim. Oh, there we go, there we go.

But if you need to get a good night of sleep, get yourself a MyPillow. They're American -made product, very well -made.

I love MyPillow, love all their products I've tried. Their mattress topper, their slippers, which

I'm wearing right now. I'm planning, we're just waiting for it to get a little bit colder, and I'm gonna be trying out their new, their down comforter that we just got.

So we're looking forward to trying that for the winter, see how that is. But I love all their products. If you wanna get yourself a good

MyPillow, they're running a sale right now. The lowest price I've ever seen them, $40 off with coupon code. You can use our coupon code

SFE. It stands for Striving For Eternity. S -F -E. You can also call if you wanna call.

Their 800 number they set up for us is 1 -800 -873 -0176. That's 800 -873 -0176.

Remember to use promo code SFE. And we also wanna let you know that as the new year is coming to a close, it is your last chance to get yourself a 50 % off on the books,

What Do We Believe? If you wanna get copies of What Do We Believe? We are giving unlimited copies.

However many you want to buy, 50 % off with the coupon code CHRISTMAS21.

CHRISTMAS21 is the coupon code. You can use that to get yourself 50 % off on as many copies as you want of the book,

What Do We Believe? It might be a good thing to get for your church. Order them, hand them out to your church so your church understands some good theology without getting something that's so intimidating.

If you're not familiar with the book, it's only about 200 pages, very easy to read, but gets into some of what we're talking about in these episodes.

So please check that out as well. That ends with the end of 2021. I guess all good things have to come to an end.

So end of the year, that ends. So we looked at the early part of this episode on what

Christ will do in the future. But what is he doing right now? And the last part of this section on Jesus Christ in our doctrinal statement, we'll cover that.

It says, as the mediator between God and man, okay, let's stop there. What are we saying here?

We're being very clear. We're quoting in here 1 Timothy 2, 5. For there is one

God and one mediator also between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. There's only one mediator. We're making that really clear.

As the mediator. Now, why do that? What does this speak against? Well, this speaks against the

Roman Catholic Church, which would teach that Mary is the mediator between us and Jesus.

And then Jesus is the mediator between Mary and the Father. So the idea that they would have is that Jesus, since he was a human, has to keep the 10 commandments, must always honor his father and mother, and therefore he must always listen to Mary.

Now, Jim, you know that my brain works a little different. This is the question I like to ask Roman Catholics when we talk about this.

And I'll ask them, does Jesus have to honor his father and mother? And they'll say yes.

So that's why he has to listen to Mary. Yes. Why doesn't he listen to Joseph? Yeah.

Right? And their answer is going to say, well, he was virgin born, so he's not really Joseph yet, but he was adopted by Joseph.

Doesn't adopt a son. So if you're adopted, you don't have to honor your father and mother? Exactly. You see the dilemma they have?

Because they don't put that same reverence for Joseph that they put for Mary. But yet, if you look at the verse they use to justify that,

Joseph would have to be in the same boat. Why don't we go to Joseph? Because he would have to listen to Joseph just as much as he listens to Mary.

Causes an interesting dilemma for them. But that's the argument they have in scripture, as I read in 1 Timothy 2 .5

says, there's only one mediator, that is Jesus Christ. So he is the mediator between God and man.

In other words, this answers the question of why do we not need priests today?

The priest served a role. The priest in the Old Testament was someone that spoke and acted as a mediator between God and man.

Even though they were men, they were to be that mediation to show that there is a distance. We can't just go to God.

We had to go to a priest. But if you look at Jeremiah 31, 31 and following and Ezekiel 36, 25 and following, we see the promise of the new covenant, which says that the

Holy Spirit himself will indwell us and we no longer need someone to teach us what God says. And so this is really important to understand.

We have a mediator. We don't need a priest. We don't need anyone else. We have

Jesus. So let me ask you, Jim, with this idea, some people throw out the argument then, well, then

I don't need to go to church. I don't need some pastor to teach me. Is the role of a pastor to be a mediator?

And if not, what is the role of a pastor and why would we still need to go to church and sit under one?

Well, if somebody doesn't need a pastor to teach them, then they should probably tell that to the Holy Spirit who gave the gift of pastors to the church for equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

So obviously if that gift is still being employed and used and if the Holy Spirit is still giving gifted teachers to the church, then there is a purpose in that.

So a pastor is different than a mediator because I don't intercede for people in the way that a priest used to intercede for God because now today we are all priests.

That's what 1 Peter 2 says. We all have a priesthood. We believe in the priesthood of all believers, but not in a priesthood where we serve as mediators in the sense in the way that Jesus Christ is the priest according to the order of Melchizedek and serves as a mediator because we are priests in the sense that we do intercede for people in that we pray for them and we communicate to them what

God says in God's word. So we are acting in a mediation in that way as we beg with men to be reconciled to God on behalf of his son.

We're calling men to repentance. We're speaking for God's word for God to men. We are praying for men.

We're acting as a mediator in that sense, but Jesus' mediation goes beyond that as he mediates the saving effects of his death and his resurrection to those who have believed upon him.

And as he stands between God and men, as be one that brings men to God.

And we're not able to do that in the way that Jesus does that. He does that in the sense that he actually affects reconciliation between sinners and an offended

God. That's how he serves as mediator and a priest. That's at least one aspect of it, there are more. And even though pastors serve a role in the church, the pastor is not the head of the church, which is what the next part says, right?

As mediator between God and man, the head of his body, the church. Jesus is the head.

Jesus is the one who rules the church. And so anyone who says, well, I don't need to go to church.

Well, if you're part of the universal church, then Jesus says you need to attend church because he's commanded that.

And so there's people that will use these things to try to wiggle out that they don't need to be in church.

They don't need a pastor. And yet what we see is it's Jesus who's our mediator. It's not a pastor who's the mediator.

The pastor serves a role in helping. The big part of what a pastor's role is, is for the preaching pastor, it's to spend hours and hours and hours studying the scriptures, going back 2 ,000, 3 ,500 years into the culture of the time the

Bible was written to bring that to the church. A great example, if you want, is if you go to the

Christian Podcast Community, we have Kootenai Community Church's worship service. Listen to Pastor Jim Osman every

Sunday, and you can hear excellent exposition of scripture. Granted, he does speak a little bit quickly.

And so I like to listen to podcasts at triple speed. You may want to actually kick him down to half speed and he'll sound like a normal person.

But I think what he's trying to do is most of us pastors, we do a lot of study and there's no way we could bring everything that we've studied into the pulpit in one hour.

Now, granted, in some countries, they go longer than an hour, but in America, they seem to think like if you go longer than an hour, they start tapping their watch or something.

But Jim wants to make sure he gets all of his study in, so he just doubles the speed naturally so that he gets it all in there.

I don't think I speak that quickly. People say that I do. You do when you preach.

You may not be aware of it, but you do when you preach. Yeah. I actually, this is a side note, but I had a young man, he wanted to, he felt he was called to be a pastor.

And so I said to him, he would preach at, let him preach at the church and we worked. I said, listen, when you get ready, you have your sermon ready.

Here's what I want you to do. You tell me when your sermon is ready. And I want three weekends,

Friday to Sunday, you're going to stay at my house and we're going to work on the sermon. And then the third

Sunday you're going to preach. And he's like, but why would I need to do that if it's done by the time I start? This is the rule.

He's like, okay, whatever. So we come that first Friday night, he's all ready. I said, preach your sermon.

He's like, what? Preach it to me. As you would in Sunday. So he preaches, he is done in like 20 minutes.

Okay. And I went, okay, are you ready to get to work? Because we've got a lot more to add. I said, you're going to be done with that sermon in 10 minutes.

If you did that, he's like, no, no, no. I preach it much slower. I said, oh no, no, you'll be nervous and you'll preach even quicker.

So we then spent all Friday night, all day Saturday into Saturday night. And you know me,

I'm up late. So I worked with him on, you know, we got up at like eight in the morning and worked straight through till about 11.

It was about all he could handle. And then I started working on my own sermon and we'd do that.

And then Sunday for three weeks. And then when we were done, it was like, okay, now he learned everything that it takes to go into preparing a sermon.

So I had him preach for me Saturday night before he preached on Sunday. And it was about a 45 minute message when he preached it to me.

Before the church, it was a 35 minute message. Said the same thing. And everyone was like,

David, that was a good message, but slow down. You didn't have to be in such a rush. And he realized, like he didn't realize how fast he preached.

But he preached that way because he was nervous. You just preached that way. I think because you're trying to fit everything in. I'm not that nervous.

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So the point here though, is that Christ is the head of the church.

And this next part gets us back to what we spoke about earlier. And the coming universal King who will reign on the throne of David.

Okay, this gets us back to what we were talking about in the beginning of this episode. And what we've mentioned earlier with what

Jim's position is, that the only way to really fulfill the divinic covenant is to have a physical reigning

King. That was the promise to David, that he would have a King, that from his loins would come a

King that would reign literally. And so we believe that Jesus will do a thousand year reign kingdom.

And then finally it says, and he is the final judge of all who fail to take their place, to place their trust in him as Lord and savior.

So in the end, we're all accountable to him. It is to he who we basically get judged as sheep or goats.

It is he who's going to make the judgment of heaven or hell. Now that becomes important, as I stated a little bit earlier, but I want to emphasize now, the fact is that Jesus being the judge places him not only in the place of God, but he's also, as we see through scripture, the standard of judgment.

It is what you do with Christ that determines how you'll be judged, whether those who believe in him or not.

You know, I've mentioned the bait I did on Calvinism, and one of the things the guy brought up was

John 3 .16, a passage many people go to. Many people know that verse and memorize that verse.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have an everlasting life.

Now, they don't read on in verses 17 and 18, which clarify that, but let me read that.

For God did not send his son into the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him.

He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe is judged already because he does not believe in the name of the only begotten son of God.

So what it's saying here is that what is the standard of judgment? It's Jesus Christ. What you do, those who believe in him versus those who don't believe in him.

He's not only the judge, but he is the very standard of judgment.

By the way, that passage I just read makes it pretty clear that there's two groups, that the world's already condemned.

And so it's those who believe in him because it says, just read verse 17, world is mentioned several times in verse 17, three times, and it's the world might be saved through him.

That's what clarifies what the world is in there. And so the fact is, is that when we see what is the standard, the standard is what is done with Christ.

Do you believe in him or do you not? So he's not just the judge. He's actually the very standard by which we will be judged.

So that wraps up our view with Christ, with God, the son. Jim, I wanna give you a chance, anything else, anything else you wanna add to this as far as our section here on God, the son?

No, I would just say to conclude, we've talked about how he is the savior of those who believe and the judge of those who do not believe.

So one thing that I say to people when I present the gospel to them is I say, you will either embrace him as savior or you will face him as judge.

Those are your only two options. There's no third option. There's no middle ground. If you do not receive him as savior, you will stand before him as your judge.

And so if you reject him in this life, you will face him and be rejected by him in the next. Because we all will give an answer to God, to Jesus Christ.

And folks, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

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