Question & Answers 2

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All right, good morning. Welcome to the morning Q &A session. Welcome to the last day of G3 Conference.
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Thank you for your flexibility in coming a little early this morning. I'm telling you, it's a rare conference when people are willing to come this early, so we're really thankful that you're here.
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My name is Scott Anuel, and I have the privilege of joining just this last month the leadership team as Executive Vice President and Editor -in -Chief.
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So thrilled to be joining Virgil and Josh and others in G3 Ministries, and we're looking forward to a great
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Q &A discussion this morning. Let me introduce our panelists, and then they'll come out here, and we'll engage in conversation.
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This morning we have Phil Johnson, James White, Nathan Busnitz, Conrad Mbwiwe, Hensworth Jonas, Virgil Walker, and Daryl Harrison all here on the panel this morning.
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Let's welcome them as they come to the stage. Welcome, gentlemen.
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Thank you so much for your investment in the conference this week and your investment in this Q &A session.
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This is a conference focused on the doctrine of Christ, and so a lot of the questions that I'd like us to discuss are related to Christ and doctrines related to Him.
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I've got a few general questions I'd like to begin with, a couple of questions that have actually been submitted, but then
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I'd like to spend a lot of our time focused on some of the ways that the doctrine of Christ is under attack today.
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In his opening message, Josh said one of the main reasons that we chose this theme is because the doctrine of Christ is under attack, and so I want to explore some of those ways and some of the ways that as preachers, as pastors, and as church members, we can avoid those errors through biblical doctrine.
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But I want to begin really with each one of you kind of go down the line with a general question. We've talked a lot about Christ.
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We looked at several key passages of Scripture about Christ this week, and in some of the messages, some of you have recommended some books, but we thought it'd be good if each of you might recommend one book on the doctrine, the person and work of Jesus Christ, that has been helpful to you, that you think would be good to recommend to the folks that maybe they don't know a book that they might want to buy and read about the doctrine of Christ.
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Let's just go down the line. Let's start with you, brother, a book on the doctrine of Christ that you found helpful. Yeah, at the moment, my brain is still scanning on my bookshelf trying to see which one
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I could just pull out. So, I'll let it pass first, and hopefully by that time, the
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CPU will be alive. That was pretty easy.
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It's called The Lord of Glory by B .B. Warfield. It's not one of Warfield's better -known works, but I read it in college.
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Warfield on the Trinity as a whole was incredibly formational for me. But his little work,
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Lord of Glory, I highly recommend. I don't know if it's actually in print, but it still runs around out there someplace.
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Yeah, B .B. Warfield's work on the Trinity is a powerful piece as well. But I would, over the course of the last six to eight months or so, our church has,
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Praise Mill has been really focused on the men have been walking through Mark Jones' book on knowing
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Christ. And so, that would be one that I'd recommend. We took it in more of a devotional kind of setting where we walked through just aspects of the person work and just the doctrine of Christ.
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It's a really good book. Yeah, for me, it would be a small, lesser -known book written by Charles Spurgeon simply called
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Following Christ. It's a small book, like I said, not well -known by Spurgeon, but I would especially suggest
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Following Christ for anyone who you may know who is either a brand -new believer or who you may see signs of God working in their heart in terms of hearing the gospel and really want to know who
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Jesus is and how Jesus is central to the gospel, specifically as it relates to the atonement and why we need our sins forgiven.
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So, yeah, Following Christ by Charles Spurgeon is what I would recommend. As a young pastor, the classic
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John Murray book, Redemption, Accomplish and Apply, was foundational for me in this whole matter of the atonement of Christ, and I recommend that to everybody to feast on this whole matter, and even the fleshing out of it in the second half of the book in relation to, you know, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification.
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It's a wonderful classic. As someone who gets to teach church history,
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I was, when I saw this question, drawn to a text that's actually quite old, all the way back to the second century, the
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Epistle to Diognetus, an anonymous gospel tract that was written.
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And the reason I'm mentioning it is because in chapters 8, 9, and 10 of that work, it's one of the clearest statements of the substitutionary atoning work of Christ in all of pre -Reformation church history.
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And it's just so encouraging to go back 18 centuries and see that doctrine celebrated by those who held the same convictions that we hold.
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Yeah, let me echo the recommendations of B .B. Warfield. Actually, if you have the 10 -volume set of Warfield's complete works, volumes 2 and 3 are full of Christology.
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It includes the works that were named. And the good news is you can get those 10 volumes on Kindle for like $4 right now.
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So, anyone wants to order those on Kindle, you can do that from where you sit.
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My single favorite volume though on Christology is a little paperback book by Leon Morris called
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The Lord from Heaven. It's been out of print for several years, but it's really an excellent short treatment and introduction to the life and work of Christ, The Lord from Heaven by Leon Morris.
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Yeah, when Virgil mentioned knowing Christ by Mark Jones, I thought to myself, how did
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I forget that? Because that would be the number one that I would think about at the moment primarily to the fact that it's sort of based on the same approach and theme of Parker's knowing
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God, but centering primarily on the person of Christ.
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A very small devotional by John Piper, Seeing and Savoring Christ, I think is the title.
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That also is like a small starter, small sort of appetizer that I would also speak about, but knowing
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Christ. Excellent. Yeah, for me, Complete in Him by Michael Barrett has been really helpful.
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Published probably 25 years ago, but more recently republished through Reformation Heritage Books. And it's a book on the gospel, but its thesis is the gospel is
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Christ and being saved is having Christ, and just excellent. Really helped me in college settle in on the doctrines of grace and excellent book on Christ.
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So, thank you for all those excellent recommendations, many of which I'm sure are in the bookstore, and I encourage folks to go and get those.
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We had a question submitted from a young man in the conference that I'll just address to anyone who would like to answer this.
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How should a young man like myself prepare for gospel ministry? Any words of advice there?
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Anyone want to speak to that? Well, I'll be honest. I had a number of conversations along those lines, and those with whom
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I had those conversations will tell you, I was quick to throw cold water on them and basically say, unless it is a fire in your bones, given what we're going to be facing, you might want to make sure your elders are in agreement with you, that this is what you've been gifted to do and called to do.
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But if it's just, well, that looks interesting, or that looks like something that I would enjoy doing, needs to be much more than that.
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And my generation got away with that, sort of to the damage of the church.
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But this next generation, the cost is going to be so high that it literally has to be what you know
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God has said this is what you will give your life for. We've just got to get that serious about it, because that's where we are.
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I would first want the young man to make sure he has an adequate apprehension of the gospel.
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You don't want people preaching something that they do not understand. And once that is settled,
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I would want the primary preparation to be in the context of the local church on the qualified elders, even more than the brick and mortar seminary situation.
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Not knocking that at all. I had to go through that. But I am watching some models develop that I like, where the pastor, prospective pastor is kept in the local church, and is connected with the scholars by distance, and still get all the technical issues.
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But the oversight of his elders is crucial in the development and in giving opportunities for growth.
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Dr. Busenitz, you're training men for ministry at the Master's Seminary. Have any advice for young men thinking about this?
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Yeah, just to echo what has just been shared. The local church is primary, and the local church is essential.
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I think of Paul's words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, where he said, the things that you've heard from me entrust these things to faithful men who will teach others also.
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And so my advice to that young man is, if there is the fire in his bones, that he find a faithful mentor who can be that faithful person who entrusts to him the gospel.
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And then if you are thinking about seminary, I think the rest of 2 Timothy provides kind of the key things that you want to look for in a place that you would go to train.
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Chapter 1, you want a place that's not ashamed of the gospel, a place that's going to guard that which has been entrusted.
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Chapter 2, a place that will provide you with the education you need to be an approved workman who can rightly handle the word of truth.
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Chapter 3, a place where you're going to learn to avoid false teachers, and you're going to be grounded in the sufficiency and authority and inerrancy of Scripture.
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And Chapter 4, a place where you're going to learn to preach the word in season and out of season, and you're going to have the tools to run the race faithfully.
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I'm a bit biased. I know a place like that, but I'm not going to turn this into an advertisement.
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It's just, as you think about where to go to seminary, look for a place where there are people that you trust because they're the ones who will be entrusting to you that which you must guard and protect.
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So, Dr. Busenitz teaches at the Master's Seminary, just so you know. I'll go ahead and say it. So, part of preparing for ministry is preparing to be a shepherd, and part of being a shepherd is protecting the flock and guarding the truth.
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And I want to shift into some discussion now about ways in which the doctrine of Christ, the doctrines of the gospel are under attack in our day, and how we can avoid them and protect our people, shepherd our people.
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One of, you know, Christ is given many names in the New Testament. One of those is
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He is the last Adam. 1 Corinthians 15 says, for as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
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For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. So, there's a central connection between Adam and Christ.
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That connection has once again come under attack recently, and that debate has risen to the surface, particularly with a book that was published last month by William Lane Craig called
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In Quest of the Historical Adam, A Biblical and Scientific Exploration. And then he came out with kind of a summary piece in First Things.
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I want to just read a quote from that piece in First Things, because some people are saying he's being misrepresented.
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So, I want to use his own words and ask if this is an attack on the doctrine of Christ.
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So, Craig says this. He's talking about the historicity of Adam and the historicity of Genesis.
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And he says, we may imagine an initial population of homonyms, animals that were like human beings in many respect, but lacked the capacity for rational thought.
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So, kind of the evolutionary theory. But out of that population then, Craig says,
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God selected two and furnished them with intellects by renovating their brains and endowing them with rational souls.
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So, he's trying to defend a historical Adam, but not in the sense of Genesis 1 and 2 that Adam was directly created by God.
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He wants to see it in the context of evolution. So, my question is this, is this an attack on the doctrine of Christ?
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Does this harm the New Testament teaching about the relationship between Adam and Christ?
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Bill. Well, the short answer to that question is yes. Just a comment about that quotation you read, and then probably
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James White is going to give us the best answer to this whole question.
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I feel the heat over here coming. Where he goes astray in that quotation you read was the first three words.
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We can imagine, he says. And then he spins this whole tale that doesn't come from Scripture, it comes from his imagination.
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That's a dangerous thing to do. And as James is going to share with us, once you attack the historicity of Adam, you have knocked the slats out from under the doctrine of original sin.
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And that makes you headed at least in the direction of Pelagianism, which is one of the earliest and most sinister heresies that ever assaulted the gospel.
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Dr. White, would you like to say something? Oh, the pressure. Everyone needs to understand, with all due respect to Bill Craig, that years and years ago,
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I played a clip when Bill Craig was debating a man I've debated seven, eight times,
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Shabir Ali, a Muslim. And what you just said, Phil, he dismissed original sin as mere speculation at that point.
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So, you've got to remember, Bill Craig's ultimate authority is Bill Craig's understanding of a philosophical worldview.
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It is not the consistency of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, anything like that at all.
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It never has been. And I have taken heat for decades for being a constant critic and saying, well, okay, here's an apologetic issue.
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And the answer that was given was fundamentally not derived from Scripture. And so, it ends up being a compromise.
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So, what most people don't know is not only is Bill Craig a Molinist, hence a promoter of the concept of middle knowledge, doesn't believe in original sin, won't defend inerrancy in any way, shape, or form, but he's a
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Neo -Apollinarian. Now, most everybody that ate something in the morning on a Saturday isn't really sure what a
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Neo -Apollinarian is. And honestly, most people in the pew don't know what a Neo -Apollinarian is.
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But it is a Christological error from the early church where he does not hold to a traditional or even
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Nicene doctrine of the Trinity and the person of Christ. So, why is it then that he is looked upon as an evangelical voice is just because of the institutions of higher learning that he's been associated with.
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It's not been because of the actual content of his theology. And the biggest danger that I see is because of his name, you end up with a...
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I mean, the big danger is he's writing theology now. If he was just writing philosophy, okay, let him go do his thing.
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But he's bringing that completely flawed foundation into the theological realm.
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And so many people are like, but I saw him debating an atheist, and it sounded great. Well, but did it really sound great?
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I know the debates, and I know the minimal facts, argumentation, things he's used.
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It has been sub -biblical for decades. And so, this should not surprise anyone that because of the fact that he is completely sold out to Darwinism.
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I mean, from his perspective, if you do not accept the absolute truthfulness of the theory of evolution, you are a blight upon any kind of meaningful
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Christian apologetics. I mean, he has no respect for someone like a Jason Lyle or something like that, though I'd love to see
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Jason Lyle and Dr. Craig go at it on those subjects. So, this is what happens when you have an apologetic that does not stand with Paul on Mars Hill, that does not stand upon the foundation that God has spoken.
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What he has given to us is theanoustos, it's God breathed, and that is the final word. That's what ends up happening.
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So, I think one of the reasons that this might, you know, Craig's argument and these sort of things might be attractive to just the average
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Pew person is because of the problems with science, right? Science says that the world is billions and billions of years old.
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Science says we evolved, you know, follow the science, right? So, address this issue of how we relate the biblical doctrines, the sufficiency of Scripture with science.
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What's the relationship between science and Scripture, and how can we just on a practical level for the people in the pews, how can we help
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Christians understand how they should think about science in relation to all that the
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Bible teaches? I'm not a scientist, but I did stay at a
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Holiday Inn Express last night. Let me just... I don't mean to sound simplistic here at all, but I think, you know, as it relates to,
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Scott, as I understand your question, there is no science without Scripture. There's no science without creation.
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To not start there with that fixed belief system that there is science because there is creation just leaves you in an ideological and theological black hole.
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Without Genesis 1, there is no science. So, I think the two are just tied together like an umbilical cord.
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They're just not separate issues or topics at all.
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So, I think, as it relates to your question, Scott, I think it behooves us as professing believers to be so rooted in Genesis 1 through 11 and be so convicted that that's the truth so as to not only view science through the lens of God's Word and the fixed principles that are established in the
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Genesis account of creation, but we also have to be so rooted in the
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Genesis account that we can effectively argue as an apologetic defense for what we believe through the lens of Genesis.
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So, again, not to sound simplistic at all, but I think it starts there. There is no science apart from Genesis.
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I think we have to be careful that sometimes what we're dealing with is not science at all, where you're going into theories of origins that cannot be subjected to the scientific method.
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So, what you have sometimes is scientists pretending to be philosophers and theologians, and you don't really have real science going on.
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So, it's really not a threat. Scripture warns about science falsely so -called.
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It's talking about knowledge in general, but it's true of science as well. And as he just said, one of the key misunderstandings today is about what is science.
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The idea that all of life and everything spontaneously came out of inanimate matter is not a scientific idea.
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Science deals with things that are observable and repeatable and all of that. And we're beginning to see,
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I think, more clearly the distinction between actual science and the popular notion of science, because everybody today says, trust the science, trust the science.
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And yet, the people who are making policy clearly don't trust the science, or they wouldn't make us wear masks on airplanes.
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So… Everyone needs to remember that the Lord Jesus said, the
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Creator made them male and female from the beginning. Now, as a Christian, you don't have any basis for ever questioning the authority of Jesus.
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But what that also means is we have the final word on these issues. If He is the Creator, if He made all things, and that's the issue, they don't have a
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Creator, they don't believe He's revealed Himself. But if He's the Creator and He made all things, then we have a consistent epistemology, we have a consistent way of knowing truth.
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That was the foundation of modern science in the Western world. That's what gave rise to the experimental method and everything else was a
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Christian worldview. Once you deny that Christian worldview, science simply becomes a political weapon.
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And what could happen? I mean, what could go wrong? Well, we're watching what can go wrong when that happens.
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And so, going back to the original issue here, we do not have anything to fear from true science.
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What we have to learn is to be able to recognize what true science is over against the popularized version that's being shoved down our throat by the media, a media that is very quickly becoming controlled by only one narrative.
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Something Dr. White just mentioned, recalled to my mind just then, an address that, a commencement address that Frederick Douglass gave back in 1837.
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And he titled the address, The Case of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered.
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And what he did, what Douglass did in that address was argue the humanity of the
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Negro as being equal to that of the white man. But in making that case,
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Douglass didn't point to science. He didn't point to biology. He didn't point to physiology.
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He pointed to Acts 17, 26, which says that God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth.
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So, I would encourage you to just go and do a search for that message by Frederick Douglass.
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Again, it's titled The Case of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered. And notice that Douglass, in titling that message as he did, he used the correct biblical term, ethnologically.
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He didn't say The Case of the Negro, Racially Considered. It's ethnic, not racial.
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But I just find it interesting that Douglass, in order to prove what, from a secular standpoint, would be a scientific or a biological reality, he pointed to none of that.
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He pointed to Acts 17, 26 to make his point. So again, Scripture is sufficient in that regard.
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– So, what would you say then if somebody said, well, this is just circular reasoning.
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You're trusting Scripture to argue for Scripture. This is circular reasoning. If someone is pressed with that sort of question, what would you say to that?
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– Well, are they not doing the same thing? They're trusting in science to prove science. They're doing the exact same thing.
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I think it takes more faith, and yes, I know I say this with a bias.
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I am a Christian. But I think it takes more faith to believe in a theory than it does for me to be a theist.
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So again, we could square dance all around that, Scott. But I think, again, when all is said and done, the person who would accuse me of that is actually guilty of the very same thing.
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They're the one reaching for this ex nihilo logic, whereby their presupposition is it starts with the
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Big Bang. And I think it takes more faith to believe that than what I believe occurred in Genesis 1.
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– We have to press the people in our society to recognize that they are functioning on certain presuppositions.
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And given the secular worldview, the secular worldview is incoherent. You literally have people telling us that we are ugly bags of mostly water, we're fizzing chemicals.
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As soon as we die, all that ends, everything we've ever thought becomes irrelevant. And what happens in your fizzing chemicals doesn't have any impact upon my fizzing chemicals.
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And we arose out of absolute chaos. And there's no future. And yet, that's the system upon which you can now tell me that I am somehow reasoning in a circle.
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There is no reason, there's no foundation in that system for reasoning in the first place. But because they are raised now in the educational system, to think that that is the way that we are to think, we have to be very quick to, in listening to someone speaking to us, find when they contradict their own irrational worldview, and then remember one thing.
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You might say, well, then where's the common ground? There is no neutral ground. There is no neutrality.
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We have got to flush the myth of neutrality out of our minds. If Christ made all things, then every fact that is a fact, he made it that fact.
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So, that can never be neutral about the claims of Christ. And we have absorbed so much of that from our society that it's terrible.
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But we have to challenge people. And remember, the point of contact is not neutral ground.
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It's that they are made in the image of God. And right now, it takes, what, 14, 16, 18 years of public indoctrination to suppress that reality in their lives, and even that can't do it.
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So, that's why you never give up hope because that person is made in the image of God. That's your contact point.
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And if you're made in the image of God, then God has made you to think his thoughts after him. You compress the inconsistency and then trust the
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Holy Spirit from there. So, let's bring this back then to why it's so important for the doctrine of Christ.
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Flesh out a little bit this connection between Adam and Christ, Christ being the last
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Adam, 1 Corinthians, Romans, Paul makes this argument. How is it that Christ is the last
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Adam? Why is that significant for our redemption? Let's bring this back to something positive and rejoice in this doctrine of Christ as the last
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Adam. May I just at least comment once on the last question?
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My background is that of engineering, and when
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I was being trained, every so often, there would be an atheistic lecturer who would be coming from a background of evolution in teaching.
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And after the lectures, I would often, being young and enthusiastic, follow the lecturer and ask very questioned questions about that lecture.
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And inevitably, the lecturer would hide behind the fact that you must be a
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Christian. You know, we obviously can't continue this discussion. And that's really when you talk about secular and faith, it becomes a hiding place.
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Bottom line is that engineering itself taught us systems, and systems don't just happen.
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They're not produced by a bank. Inevitably, there is a thinker, a creator behind that.
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So, please, wherever you go, trust the fact that what you have in this book about a creator bringing the many systems that are even in your body is the truth.
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So, I just wanted to underscore that. But coming quickly to the last
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Adam, covenant theology is fairly clear.
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God entered into a covenant with the first Adam. There was an absolute disaster there, which has resulted not just in the sin in us, but in the wrath of God upon us.
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The last Adam was in a covenant. He succeeded.
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It's squarely on the basis of that that we are saved.
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Undermine the first, you've undermined the last. That's what
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I wanted to say. Yeah, I would say it like this. Both Adam and Christ are the heads of their representative races.
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Adam is the head of the human race. He was the first human. And therefore, what he did was significant for all of us.
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He is the one who plunged the entire race into sin. Christ is the head of the redeemed race.
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And what he did is what gives us that covering of righteousness that gives us a standing before God.
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And Paul describes all this in very few verses in Romans chapter 5. It's about six or eight verses in a row where he says the same thing in several different ways.
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And this is what he's saying, is that in the same way that Adam plunged us into sin,
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Christ gets us out of that and redeems us. And what is that way? Well, he's our representative.
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And therefore, what he does, he's the head of the race. And so, therefore, what he does, it was what
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Adam, this is actually interesting, that it's what Adam did that Scripture says caused the whole race to fall.
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Although Eve was the first one who took a bite of the forbidden fruit, right? So, why was
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Adam's act so significant? Because he was in that position as the representative of the entire race.
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And you might say, well, it's not fair. By the way, that is the doctrine of original sin, that because of what
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Adam did, we all inherit his guilt and his corruption, the guilt of that act and the corruption that arises from it.
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And you might say, well, that's not fair because I had no choice in that. But the problem is, everything you've done all your life proves that you are in complicity with what he did.
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You've done the same thing. And you would have done it if he were in his place. So, it isn't unfair, the doctrine of original sin.
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It may seem that way, but we're not innocent. What really challenges the idea of fairness is the truth that those who trust
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Christ get credit for what he did that was righteous. And so, his righteousness is imputed to us in the same way that Adam's guilt is imputed to us.
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And if you deny one, you undermine the other. That's why the doctrine of original sin is so important.
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I think I totally agree. In fact, the reason why… I'd add to that reason why it's so important is that we state a biblical categories about who man is and that we have a biblical anthropology.
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That's something that Daryl and I talk about often. When you step away from that, you find yourself into the pseudoscience of Samuel Morton, who gives us now races of people.
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And people push into that and begin to be educated in that way. They step away from biblical context.
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It's easy to then adopt ideas of evolutionary biology and the like. And so, it's important to stick to biblical categories, biblical principles, and Romans Chapter 5 is an important text for that.
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You know, Scott, what I like about what both Phil and what Virgil just said, I think one of the reasons the doctrine of Christ, especially as it relates to the first Adam and the last
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Adam, is under attack is because as Phil just laid out with respect to the doctrine of original sin,
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I think we live in a secular culture and increasingly in an evangelical culture where nobody sins anymore.
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There's no such thing as sinners. So, when there's no such thing as sin, you don't need a savior.
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And who are you, Christians, to tell us exclusively that Christ is the only way to have your sins forgiven?
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So, what we'll do is just get rid of the idea of sin altogether. So, I think it's important to connect the dots between what
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Phil just articulated and then with respect to what Virgil just added, sort of to bookend what
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Phil said, is that one of the significances of the first Adam and Christ being the last
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Adam is that, yeah, we're still sinners. We're still sinners and we still need our sins forgiven because we're not just in this world to just pastor.
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There's going to be an accounting one day for how we live our lives. So, I think that's important to remember.
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Amen. Amen. Well, I'm going to break away just for a moment from the doctrine of Christ since Phil brought up mask mandates.
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We're going to address some of the issues we're facing. It's always easy to blame Phil. Yeah. I've got to blame someone else.
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Yeah. John does it all the time. That's right. It's risky to have me on a Q &A panel, frankly. This is going pretty well.
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We're going pretty well. I congratulate you on your courage. So, Nathan, you've got a book coming out with James Coates in the spring,
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God versus Government. Talk a moment about the role of government.
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Sometimes I think we think we've got Christ and God and the church over here and then we've got government over here.
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And so, whatever the government says that's not spiritual, we just simply need to obey it. If the government says stand on one leg and hop down the sidewalk, we stand on one leg and hop down the sidewalk because it has nothing to do with Christ.
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What is the role of government? What is the connection between government and Scripture, God's commands?
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And what is the jurisdiction that God has given to government? What are those limits as to what
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God has given to government? Yeah. Great question.
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And it was really just a privilege for me to get to partner with James Coates on that project because James really is the one who exhibited the courage.
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And for those of you who don't know James' story, he was imprisoned simply for holding church in a place you wouldn't expect, the communist country of Canada.
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I say that obviously tongue -in -cheek, but it was just shocking and surprising to see someone in our own day in a
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Western nation where freedom of religion is supposedly championed and protected, put in prison for over a month simply for holding church.
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The Protestant conviction, the evangelical conviction that Christ is the head of the church,
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I would argue was the reason for the Reformation going back to Huss, that because Christ is the head of the church, that there is no other authority that ought to dictate for the church how to worship or what to believe or the polity of the church.
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Those things belong to the church and to the elders of each local congregation who are under the direct authority of Christ Himself.
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Christ is the head of the church, not the government. And that Protestant conviction is seen throughout the
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Reformation. It's seen with the Puritans when they resisted the book of common prayer, with the Scottish Covenanters and with others.
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And really all we're saying is that in our own day and age, we must be the church.
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And so when the Word of Christ tells us that we must gather, Hebrews 10 .25, when it tells us that we must sing in corporate worship,
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Colossians 3 .16, Ephesians 5 .18 and following, when it says that we must fellowship with one another in ways that require physical proximity, if the government says you can't meet and you can't sing and you can't be within six feet of each other, we believe that we must respectfully say, we're sorry, but when
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Christ and compliance collide, we must obey God rather than men. I think one of the things that goes along with that is that we must also be willing to face the consequences of that and to be happy to be partakers in the sufferings of Christ.
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I would just add to what Hemsworth just said, and that's because I think in the current culture and the current climate that we're in, you addressed it early on, more and more of us are having to make decisions about where we stand on particular issues and be willing to face whatever consequences come.
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We're outside of the cultural environment where we can, you know, enjoy this kind of casual
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Christianity where it's good to wake up and go to church on Sunday morning, leave the church, and maybe get a promotion at work because, you know, you attended church service on Sunday morning.
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Culture is so shifted and has done so at warp speed over the last five years.
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People are having to make a stand for what they believe at work to the degree that they're saying, you know,
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I'm going to say no to a mandate that tells me I have to inject something into my arm.
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I'm going to say no. And the cost of that conviction is people are losing their jobs and having to walk away from those positions.
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So the current cultural climate is such that we're going to need to witness more and more people who are willing to stand on the convictions that they claim they hold and be willing to face the consequences and really find true joy in some of the works that we've talked about.
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We're talking about books that encourage us about Christ and of the doctrines of Christ. It's more than just, hey,
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I read this cool book and I could put it on a bookshelf for someone to read. But now I'm living that out because I'm having to face persecution and Christ is more beautiful to me than any persecution that I would therefore face.
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And Virgil, if I could just add to what you just said.
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I think you mentioned a very important word there, a little three -letter word that we overlook, the word joy.
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You know, this brings me back to what I like to call one of our favorite bumper sticker phrases in the church, you know, we take out of James, right?
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Count it all joy, la, la, la, la, la. Well, a silver lining to all this that I see is
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God is testing us whether we believe that or not. Count it all joy whenever you face various trials.
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I'm reading here in 1 Peter 4, 12, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you.
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And again, with all due respect to the real tangible deep challenges that mass mandates and now these vaccine mandates, as you look at what's happening with these mandates, they start up here.
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But now with each mandate, they get closer and closer and closer to infringing even on the four walls of your own home.
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And what you can or can't do with your own nucleus within what was ultimately the ultimate place of independence, privacy is the four walls of your own home.
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But that notwithstanding, I think God is using this situation really to remind His people of what being a follower of Christ really means.
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We're reminded that Christianity is a cross -centered worldview.
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Christ was nailed to a cross. He did not die in His sleep sitting in a lazy boy.
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And we're being reminded of that. And for that, I thank God. I think that's so good and helpful.
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And it's reminding us that we are pilgrims and strangers in this world. And that actually is a silver lining.
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Phil, I want to ask you a follow -up question from your message yesterday. Why is it so important to reject the idea that Christ went to hell after His death?
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Why is that really important for us to hold to? Well, I don't know how important it is. I wouldn't necessarily count someone as a heretic who, like I said,
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I think in my message, that's part of the Apostles' Creed. It's been believed for a long time. To me, it's important in this sense that it's not what
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Scripture says. And what Jesus Himself said was that He would be in paradise that day.
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And that's the only thing Scripture says about where Christ went between the crucifixion and the resurrection.
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So I think the idea that He went to hell is just too speculative for my tastes.
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And I wouldn't want to build a doctrine on that. There is, I think, the Catholic name for that doctrine because Catholics believe that Christ went to hell, and they call that the harrowing of hell.
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Yeah, I don't believe that just because I don't see it in Scripture. But is it something important enough that I would challenge
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James White to a debate on it if he didn't believe it? If he believed, you know, differently from me,
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I wouldn't debate him on anything, but certainly not that.
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So I've got to ask a question. How do you understand Peter's description of Christ making proclamation to the spirits in Tartarus?
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Yeah, that's what my message was about. You should have been here. It was really good. It was really good.
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How would you differentiate specifically the Catholic concept because it has church history behind it and so on and so forth?
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Yeah, no, I get that. That's why I said I wouldn't regard that as heresy. I just don't see that in Scripture.
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It simply says He went and made proclamation. It doesn't say where He went. And one of the things
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I said in my message was we know from the story Jesus told about Lazarus and the rich man that those in hell could hear
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Christ speaking from heaven. They could hear Abraham speaking from heaven. So, you know,
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I think it's essential to say Jesus went to hell because we know He went to paradise. And the danger of that view,
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I think, is when you see what certain prosperity gospel charismatics have done with the idea that Jesus went to hell, that that was part of His suffering.
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And the point of my message from that 1 Peter 3 chapter was I think
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Peter is expressly saying that when Christ died, when
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He said it is finished, it was finished. The suffering was over, and that was the moment when
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He entered into triumph. And He's declaring His triumph. So if you want to believe
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He actually went to hell and declared triumph there, I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with the idea that Christ went to hell in order to suffer there.
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So... Man, I almost thought we'd have some controversy among the panelists, and I was kind of looking forward to that. That would be cool because I avoid every debate from him.
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I know he thrashes everybody he debates. We would have a great time. Come on. Yes, you would.
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Yes. So let's cover just a couple more issues of Christ that are under attack.
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Even the doctrine of substitutionary atonement seems to be under attack today. I mean, even to the point of changing lyrics, of hymns, being afraid of the wrath of God being satisfied, these sorts of things.
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How important is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement? How is it being attacked? And how biblically can we defend against those attacks?
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I'd say that's vitally important. And one of the points that Spurgeon made in the downgrade controversy, one of the things that started that controversy was the article that he published, it was written by a man named
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Schindler, and he pointed out that this was the common approach that pretty much signified every period of downgrade.
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People began to attack the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. And that's been true not only prior to Spurgeon's time, but ever since.
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We saw a major attack on substitutionary atonement at the height of the emerging church movement 15 years ago.
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That movement failed, but the idea is still there. And so we're still fighting against this notion that it's somehow cruel, or inhumane, or even ungodly for God to send
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His Son to pay the price of sin. And yet, Scripture says that repeatedly, and that the cross is an offense.
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And if you try to make the gospel message non -offensive, you've taken the heart out of it.
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And generally, when heretics decide to do that, the point on which they focus their attack is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.
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I don't think there's any more important doctrine. There are others that are equally important, but I would say that is one of the fundamentals of authentic biblical
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Christianity and a true understanding of the gospel. One of the areas,
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I think, that attacks the sufficiency of Christ is the therapeutic culture where pagan psychology is being looked to to fill the gaps that they imagine there might be in the gospel.
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And many pastors, I don't know if it's a credentialing matter or looking for the approbation of academia, are trying to integrate this psychology with the gospel as if Christ isn't sufficient.
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I believe that they are traitors, and we need to look to Christ and Christ alone for our salvation.
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A fully substitutionary understanding of the atonement is a reformed concept.
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It is rejected in classical Arminian theology. It has to be.
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Because if you have a general atonement, you cannot have it to be personal because then it's for a specific people.
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And so, the concept of substitutionary atonement is reformed. And so, as you have more and more people coming out of the
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Reformation but denying the fundamentals of the Reformation. And let's just be honest, the first written debate of the
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Reformation was between Luther and Erasmus, and it was on the freedom and bondage of the will. And if you took a poll of all, quote -unquote,
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Protestant denominations today, what percentage would agree with Erasmus against Luther?
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I'd say about 98%. And so, if you have that happening on the doctrine of man, then it becomes obvious that when you start talking about substitutionary atonement, the divine decree of election is behind that language.
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Once you get rid of the divine decree of election, then you really can't have the concept of substitutionary atonement.
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It's in our hymns because it's in Scripture, but it's overridden by these other considerations to try to save the gospel from that nasty reformed stuff.
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So, when we say attacks upon it, that's every generation because the movement will always be away from a consistent biblical theology that holds all of the divine revelation together toward breaking that up into constituent parts.
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We've just got a couple minutes here. Let me open it up. Other ways that the doctrine of Christ is currently under attack today?
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Are there other aspects of Christ and His person and works that are under attack within broader evangelicalism today?
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May I throw in something from the vast African continent, and it's with the man of God concept that's become fairly the accepted thing.
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Instead of preachers and pastors pointing people to Christ, they are constantly pointing people to themselves and their deliverance activities.
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That's been a major shift, and they still call themselves evangelicals and would often be part of evangelical fellowships in their countries, but really they have removed the foundation that the apostle
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Paul himself mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 11, that there is no other foundation than that which is already laid, which is
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Jesus Christ. Yes, God.
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I think another way that the doctrine of Christ is coming under attack is through what Virgil and I addressed yesterday in our live
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Just Thinking podcast episode when we talked about Black Liberation Theology, but Black Liberation Theology isn't unique in that attack on the doctrine of Christ.
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It's also happening within critical race theory and intersectionality as well. You're hearing increasingly through the lens of intersectionality that Jesus is queer.
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Jesus was a woman, and Black Liberation Theology is what I call identity Christology, where Christ is viewed through the lens of ethnicity.
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Christ's masculinity, even in his human nature, is being derided as patriarchal.
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So even within the church, the church is not immune to attacks on the doctrine of Christ.
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It's happening within the church as well. But I think this identity Christology through the lens of Black Liberation Theology, critical race theory, and intersectionality is one of the more contemporary ways that we see that doctrine being attacked.
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I'll just add to that. One of the reasons in this space we elected to address Black Liberation Theology is because that primarily in the black church context has been what's been kind of at the fore.
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We've experienced that more times than not, not knowing the names of the thought leaders, not understanding particularly who the scholars' works were in those areas, but that the ideas that surround that liberating theology with doctrines of suffrage and the idea that we are the children of Israel escaping, and that we're looking for Moses, and that the white man is
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Pharaoh, and all those kinds of concepts have been a part of many, not all, but many black church contexts.
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And so, it's with that as a backdrop that I believe it made it easier to witness what we see currently culturally, critical race theory, intersectionality, and then with what's happening in the overarching culture with the issue of social justice.
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It was easy. All of those categories, if you will, all of those ingredients were what were necessary to see this advance.
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So, when Darrell and I talked about coming into this space and addressing doctrines of Christ, we wanted to talk about the antichrist of Black Liberation Theology and how it's had an impact in culture and in our churches.
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Amen. Well, hopefully, this time has reconfirmed in all of our hearts and minds how important Christ is, how important the doctrines of Christ is, and recommit ourselves to resting in the sufficiency of Christ and resting in the sufficiency of what
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Scripture teaches about Christ. Let's thank these men for their time this morning. I'm going to ask
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Virgil to close us in prayer here in a moment. After Virgil prays, we'd like to ask if you would just remain seated.
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There's going to be a really quick stage reset up here, and we'll move directly into our next session. So, please be seated after Virgil prays.
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Virgil, would you close us? Father God, we thank you for your glorious work through the person of Jesus Christ.
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We're grateful for the sacrifice of your Son that redeems us, ransoms us.
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We're grateful for this opportunity to share the message of hope, the only hope of the world, which is
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Christ Jesus. Grateful for these men, I pray for those who've traveled far and wide that you use this time to penetrate their hearts with a message that's more dear and clearer than ever before as we go back into our local churches.