Engaging Tim Keller on Hermeneutics

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, Jon Harris. We are gonna talk about another chapter from this book,

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Engaging with Keller. We've gone through four of them. We've talked about Tim Keller's view of sin and of hell and of the

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Trinity and of the church's mission. And in each case, what I've shown, I think, or what the authors,

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I should say, of this book have shown, is that Tim Keller crafts a, really, a version of God that is palatable to the world, softening attributes they don't like, like wrath, and then elevating attributes they really like, like love.

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And he's done that, and if you can go back and watch the episodes, in each of the cases that we've talked about, where he talks about these fundamental doctrines and he puts his own spin on them.

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Today, we're gonna do something a little different. We're gonna talk about his hermeneutics. So this is how he does that.

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In other words, let's take an intellectual step back and let's see, how does Tim Keller twist things so much?

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And one of the things that is not included in this chapter, I wanna read for you from this book,

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Social Justice Goes to Church, the first book I wrote on social justice, is someone who influenced

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Tim Keller named Harvey Kahn. And I thought immediately, when we were getting to the hermeneutics chapter in this book on Tim Keller, that it was gonna talk a lot about Harvey Kahn, and it didn't mention

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Harvey Kahn. Well, not like a lot, but at least it would talk a lot about Harvey Kahn's method and how

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Tim Keller takes that method and applies it, but it didn't. And so I wanna read for you a bit from this book.

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It's a good accompaniment. If you happen to get the book, Engaging with Keller, it's like over $300 now, it's out of print.

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It was, I think, over 100 a little bit before we started this, and now it's a lot more. I think the demand's gone up since we've started this process, but an accompanying book would be

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Social Justice Goes to Church, to help you understand where Keller's coming from. Let me just read for you a section here. In 1975,

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Tim Keller got married. After his graduation, he was ordained in the PCA, he moved to Virginia, he served as a regional director of church planning for the

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PCA, and Keller also managed to take courses from Westminster Theological Seminary, where he earned a doctorate in 1981.

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Three years later, he moved to Philadelphia to take a job teaching at Westminster. It was there he met Harvey Kahn, a professor of missions who helped

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Keller take the next step in marrying his social justice concern with his Christian faith. Some considered

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Kahn a bit of a radical for challenging the interpretations of white Presbyterian males based on their allegedly biased cultural presuppositions.

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Instead, he believed in a contextual approach he referred to as a hermeneutical spiral for interpreting the

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Bible. This approach combined interpretation and application by emphasizing the cultural contexts of the biblical text and the contemporary readers, which called for a dialogue between the two and a dynamic interplay between text and interpreters.

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Of course, this method of interpretation denied objectivism and the classic pattern of historical grammatical exegesis.

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Because sociologists and economic preconceptions, sociological I should say, and economic preconceptions influence one's interpretation of the

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Bible and the world, Harvey Kahn affirmed, along with liberation theologians, a need for new input from sociology, economics, and politics in doing of theology and of missions.

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In short, Kahn believed that the experience of social groups helped determine the meaning and application of a text.

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Not surprisingly, this opened the door for new ways of understanding the Bible. And it goes on.

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I'm not going to read the rest for you. I get specific here, how even

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Harvey Kahn thinks of Jesus as a refugee and an immigrant. We talked about this actually in the last podcast on Tim Keller, on his teaching on the church's mission, and he does something similar.

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Not with Jesus per se, but he does it with the Old Testament and the concept of sojourner and wants to translate that immigrant.

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He does little things like that. Sometimes people don't catch, and he's doing what

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Harvey Kahn talks about in Harvey Kahn's writings. And this was someone that highly influenced

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Keller. So anyway, Keller credits Kahn remarkably for his own formation and his theology.

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And I think that what you're about to see is probably the result of that more than anything else.

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Is this, if you want to call it hermeneutical spiral, that's what Kahn calls it, but it's a way of looking at the text of the scripture, and this could apply across the board really to any text, but specifically the scripture, and bringing your context into the context of the authors who wrote it.

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And in that interaction between those two contexts is where you find meaning.

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That's a postmodern way of reading. It's why, even at Southeastern, I remember they had a guest lecturer there.

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This is where I graduated from seminary. I'm trying to remember his name now, but he was trying to make the case that there's a

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Latinamente, he called it, way of reading the text. And it was because the questions that immigrants ask of the text, and specifically immigrants from Latin America, because of the questions they ask, you can yield different meanings from scripture.

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So in other words, someone's in a context, and they have specific challenges, they have specific ways of looking at the world according to this view because of the context they live in.

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And so it's going to prompt them to ask certain questions. And in asking those questions, the text of scripture is going to render new, sometimes innovative answers to those questions.

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And it's going to render new now interpretations. And so there's this interaction.

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Now what you'll hear oftentimes, and I'm giving you a broad view of this before we jump in to what

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Tim Keller does, is just because you might hear these objections, they'll say that they're not changing their hermeneutic at all.

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They'll say, if they're more in the evangelical world, they'll say that what they're doing is they're just asking questions, new questions that haven't been asked before.

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And so they're not trying to give you a new way of interpreting. All they're doing is they're discovering things that were previously missed or something along those lines.

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That's how they'll present it. But what they actually are doing, what they're assuming, is that there are these different standpoints.

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There are these different horizons that people exist in because of their context.

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Usually it's a social group that they're part of. And that these horizons have different understandings of reality.

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And those different understandings of reality then are what change the posture of the interpreter as they approach a text.

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And that posture can be seen in questions. I remember reading, who was it?

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James Cone. I think it was James Cone. Yeah. James Cone talks about this quite a bit too. The black liberation theology way of reading the

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Bible is starting out in this context of oppression. And it's really not that different than Gutierrez.

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It's just liberation theology, but it's in a different context. And that there's a unique interpretation that comes from someone.

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You get a better rendering or a superior reading of scripture because of the context you come from.

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So it's not what the Bible teaches about being a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth, putting in work to understand, laboring in that.

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That's really not the key thing. You can put as much labor as you want, but if you're a white male, you're just not going to get the same interpretations.

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Because you're in a different world than the oppressed world that somehow closely parallels the world that people in scripture are inhabiting.

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So it's interesting. This goes off in all kinds of different directions, and I'm not here to give you a whole critique of that.

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We've talked about it before on the podcast, but this gets into readings of scripture from a,

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I think there's even a book on this, reading the scripture through Western eyes and how

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Western eyes are, you can't do that. You got to read it through these Eastern eyes, and then you get the right interpretation because their societies are closer or something along those lines.

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And it's interesting too, because they never take into account the fact that, well, Western civilization has been impacted by the

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Bible for an awful long time. Does that count for anything? Does that, doesn't that impacting from scripture mean that they're going to, that the world, that the

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West, historically at least, maybe not now, doesn't that mean that those who have created these great works of commentaries and dictionaries and all these tools that we use today that are primarily created within a

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Western context, you know, doesn't that mean because they've been bathed in biblical imagery for so long and in even laws that are formed from biblical principles, doesn't that mean that they also have somewhat of an advantage, but it never, they never assume that or talk about that or acknowledge that it's, it's a way of ripping down the

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West. That's, I think that's the whole point behind liberation theology. That's why there's a Marxist edge to it.

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It's, it's really a religious form of Marxism or Marxism with a religious veneer would be more accurate to say.

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It parallels post -colonialism. It's a way of approaching scripture that doesn't take into account objectivity or assume objectivity.

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It assumes that there's a subjectivity to approaching this book and that we're severely limited if we are

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Westerners. In this, and so obviously the answer isn't that we don't have any limits.

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Obviously there are limits. That's why we have study tools, but the goal should be always getting back to the authorial intent.

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What did the author mean in his context? What was the meaning, the singular meaning does multiple applications, but what's the singular meaning of the text?

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The author wanted to communicate. Well, he might've wanted to say more than one thing. Okay. More than one thing, but that's, that's still one meaning that the author had in mind.

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That's the point. The author wanted to say something to an audience. And so we have language barriers and we have tools to try to get over those language barriers.

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Sure. We have cultural barriers, which is why we have commentaries that examine the culture of that time, not the modern

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Middle East. There might be parallels, but of that time. So we want to read it as closely as we can taking into account the authorial intent.

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That's a grammatical historical approach. And that's what most of you are probably familiar with. Now, Harvey Kahn wasn't that.

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Liberation theologians aren't that. And though Tim Keller doesn't say he's a liberation theologian,

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Tim Keller definitely has some sympathies in that direction, or he's been affected by it to some extent, either liberation theology or a horizons view, or as we just talked about, he was influenced by Harvey Kahn and Harvey Kahn's hermeneutical spiral,

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Gadamer, Heidegger, somewhere in there. There's some element of subjectivity or something that is prompting

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Tim Keller to step outside of grammatical historical hermeneutic and read the Bible in sometimes fairly new, innovative ways.

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And we're going to talk about that today. Tim Keller's hermeneutic. So what would be a proper hermeneutic?

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That's what we need to talk about. First, we need a standard. For Tim Keller, the Westminster standard should be what he's looking to.

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He's a Presbyterian. He's in the PCA, and they have a standard in their confession for this.

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And so we're going to look at that. Here is, let's see, the Westminster hermeneutic.

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The Westminster hermeneutic is this. Scripture interprets Scripture. Says this, the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the

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Scripture itself. Number two, clear passages interpret unclear. So all things in Scripture are not alike, plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all.

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Such things may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly. So you have a passage on a particular topic, and it doesn't seem clear.

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Inform yourself with passages that do speak clearly on that topic. Eisegesis is prohibited.

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In other words, starting out with your own assumptions and then imposing those on the text would be wrong.

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And that's basically what I just described to you as a sophisticated way of doing that through the hermeneutical spiral.

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But this is prohibited by the Westminster hermeneutic. They say the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith in life is either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.

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It says this in the Directory of Public Worship for the Presbyterian Church. It says, in raising doctrines from the text, his care, the pastor they're talking about, ought to be first that the matter be the truth of God.

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Secondly, that it be a truth contained in or grounded on that text, that the hearers may discern how

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God teacheth it from hence. Thirdly, that he chiefly insist upon those doctrines which are principally intended and make most for the edification of his hearers.

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So it's not overly complicated, but we have a standard here. And to review, Scripture interprets

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Scripture, clear passages interpret unclear passages, and eisegesis is prohibited. Now, the problem with Kim Keller's hermeneutic, according to the author of this particular section, and I should probably give that author credit since I'm using his work and I'm even quoting his work in places here.

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The author, let's see here. Okay, so the section that we're reading is called

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Timothy Keller's hermeneutic, an example for the church to follow, question mark, C. Richard H.

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Holst. So Richard Holst is the author here. And so Richard Holst says that Tim Keller has a problem with using parables.

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He does not follow the Westminster hermeneutic because he lets the unclear, in this case, inform the clear.

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And he also, we're going to talk about this actually a little bit later. Let's start one at a time here.

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So the use of parables, Luke 8, 10 is one of these places. Parables are purposely ambiguous.

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And it says this, to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables.

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So Luke 8, 10 gives us a little bit of an instruction about how we should interpret these, an insight into how we should look at these.

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Different genres of literature are going to be approached a little bit differently. And they have different goals, different assumptions behind them.

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And in this particular case, parables are purposely veiled. They're purposely ambiguous.

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And so you can't go build whole theologies on parables. And that's how a lot of cults, unfortunately, operate.

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The use of secondary aspects. So, you know, looking in the text and finding things that aren't the point, that aren't the focus, that are,

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I mean, they're in the text, so they do mean something. They are supposed to be there. But then taking these things and then making much more of them and reading into them things and, you know, these are not the primary driving force behind our interpretation, but there are details that become much more significant when you cram your own ideas, your eisegetical ideas into them.

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And that's what Tim Keller does sometimes. And then the third thing is the use of logical fallacies and exegesis.

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So these are the three things. Tim Keller tries to build theologies on parables when you shouldn't. He tries to use these secondary aspects in the text when he shouldn't.

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And then he tries to use logical fallacies when, of course, he shouldn't. So here's some examples of this.

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Keller on the Prodigal Son parable. He says this, I almost felt I discovered the secret heart of Christianity.

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Over the years, I have often returned to teaching and counsel from the parable. I've seen more people encouraged, enlightened, and helped by this passage when

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I explained the true meaning of it than by any other text. I am turning, he also says, to this familiar story found in the 15th chapter of the

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Gospel of St. Luke in order to get the heart, get to the heart, listen to this, of the Christian faith. I will demonstrate how the story helps us understand the

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Bible as a whole. So he's taking the Prodigal Son parable and he's saying, I'm going to help you understand the whole Bible here.

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This is such an important, profound story. When I explain the true meaning, more people are encouraged and enlightened than any other text.

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This is making a really big deal about the Prodigal Son. And it's not like you shouldn't make a big deal about it.

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It's in the Scripture. It's a very important passage. But you don't use the parable of the

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Prodigal Son to then help interpret the rest of the Bible. That's the problem.

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Using that as the key to interpret these other passages, these other places that do have, where there are theological passages that talk about some of these things.

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And in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we've actually already talked about that in the book.

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I think, which one was that? That was, I think, on the understanding of sin. It was the first one we did in this book, the first chapter.

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And Tim Keller tries to use this passage, the parable of the Prodigal Son, in order to prove that law -keeping will get you to hell just as much as law -breaking.

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And so he's, and he's used this as a key to run roughshod over other passages that talk about the same subject, because he found it in the

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Prodigal Son. Is there a gnostic element to this? Yeah, kind of, actually. Like, I have the meaning. You need to come and get the meaning from me.

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You wouldn't find it just in a plain reading of the text. But when you look at it the way I look at it, then it's going to open up to you.

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And then you can use it to interpret the rest of the Bible. Keller, on the rich man and the

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Lazarus parable, he says the same thing. Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 supports the view of hell we are presenting.

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Lazarus is a poor man who begs at the gate of a cruel rich man. They both die, and Lazarus goes to heaven, while the rich man goes to hell.

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There he looks up and sees Lazarus in heaven in Abraham's bosom. What is astonishing is that though their statuses have now been reversed, the rich man seems to be blind to what has happened.

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He still expects Lazarus to be his servant and treats him as his water boy. He does not ask to go out of hell, yet strongly implies that God never gave him and his family enough information about the afterlife.

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Commentators have noted the astonishing amount of detail, blame -shifting, and spiritual blindness in this stolen hell.

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They have also noted that the rich man, unlike Lazarus, has never given a personal name. He is only called a rich man, strongly hinting that since he had built his identity on his rather than on God, once he has lost his wealth, he lost any sense of self.

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That's reading a lot into it. And the author here says Keller argues the rich man has lost a sense of self and does not ask to leave hell.

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Keller, however, passes over the statements and being in torments in Hades.

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And for I am tormented in this flame. That would seem to be good candidates to explain the nature, traditional hellfire, and source imposed by God of the rich man's suffering in hell.

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Second, the great goal fixed would seem a better explanation for why the rich man cannot leave rather than the suggestion that he does not want to.

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So what Keller does is he reads into little bitty things in this parable, like an argument from silence that, well, the rich man never said in the parable that he wanted to leave, so he must have wanted to stay in hell.

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That's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. But it's he builds a whole theology of that you send yourself to hell and the hell is locked from the inside based on this.

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And it's some C .S. Lewis quotes, but it's based on a parable. It's not where you want to go to get your get your theology when you have clear passages that talk about hell.

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And so anyway, that's one of these are two examples of how Keller can use parables to be the central foundations for some of his theology.

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Keller appeals to secondary aspects on Aaron Miriam and Moses's Ethiopian wife. So here we have in Generous Justice, he says,

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Between the promise of Genesis 12 and its fulfillment in Revelation, the Bible strikes numerous blows against racism.

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Moses's sister Miriam was punished by God because she rejected Moses's African wife on account of her race.

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But is that what Numbers 12 says? Taken in complete isolation, it is theoretically possible that Aaron and Miriam were motivated by racism.

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However, read in the light of the larger context, it is far more likely that they were accusing Moses of violating the divine prohibition against intermarriage with pagans.

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Numbers 12 says this. He said, Hear my words. If there is a prophet among you, I am the Lord shall make myself known to him in a vision.

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I shall speak to him with the dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my household.

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With him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings. And he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?

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So the anger of the Lord burned against them, and he departed. So this is the reason stated in Numbers 12 for why the

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Lord was angry with Aaron and Miriam. Nothing to do. Nothing. It doesn't say anything about their racism.

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And yet Tim Keller builds a whole idea that they're racists. And that's the problem.

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Here's Keller on another aspect of this, where he appeals to secondary aspects, on deacons.

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In Acts 6, after the ministry of the diakonia is more firmly established, Luke adds,

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So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly. The word sow indicates a cause -effect relationship.

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He says this. This sharing of resources across class lines, between the needy and those wealthy enough to have property to sell, was extremely rare in the

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Greco -Roman world. The practical actions of Christians for people in need was therefore striking to observers and made them open to the gospel message.

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Now, here's what the author says of engaging with Keller. Nothing at all is said about the church's sharing being observed by the outside world, nor that they found it striking, nor that this made them open to the gospel.

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It's just not there. It's just not there. So is Keller just making stuff up?

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Well, I mean, Keller wants it to be there. You could imagine it being there, but the text doesn't say it was. And Keller just acts like it is, and that this becomes now such a fundamental thing that must happen for the gospel message.

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It changes the reason that deacons were appointed in the first place.

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Keller also appeals to secondary aspects on the relationship of the long gospel, and this one's more serious. He says,

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First, there is the question of the necessity of mercy to our very existence as Christians. And he's talking about the parable of the

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Good Samaritan here. We must not miss the fact that this parable of the Good Samaritan is an answer to the question, what must

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I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus responds by pointing the law expert to the example of the

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Good Samaritan, who cared for the physical and economic needs of the man on the road. Bear in mind that Jesus was posed the same question in Mark 10, 17 by the rich young ruler.

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So the same question, what must I do to inherit eternal life, was asked again. And there, Jesus concludes by saying,

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Go sell everything you have and give to the poor. It appears that Jesus sees care for the poor as part of the essence of being a

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Christian. Now, this is kind of big because the author rightly points out of engaging with Keller, care for the poor unquestionably comes under the heading of law rather than gospel, and no element of our law keeping could possibly be defined as part of the essence of being a

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Christian. If you go to the passage, in fact, I just went there,

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Luke 10, Jesus is asked, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus asks him, what does the law say?

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He says, love the Lord your God, love your neighbor. Jesus says, that's correct. And then he wants to justify himself and asks, who is my neighbor?

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Then Jesus gives him the parable of a Good Samaritan, which shows that this man was not actually keeping the law.

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He thought he did. And if you define neighbor really narrowly, then maybe you might think you have a shot.

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And Jesus showed that actually neighbor is linked to proximity. So if you are on the road and you come across someone, it may not even be someone who is like you in every way, but you're the one that's there.

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You have the ability to do something. That's your neighbor. And this man had likely failed in this.

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And so that's the whole point is that the law is he's using the law to convict this man. Well, and so it was a valid question.

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Who is my neighbor? And Jesus answers it. And Tim Keller then wants to make this a normative for Christians that this is care for the poor as part of the essence of being a

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Christian. And ignoring the fact that in the passage, Jesus is using the law to bring about the knowledge of sin.

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That was the whole point. Not as a directive for or as a prerequisite or as a contribution to what having the gospel is or being a

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Christian. And that's why the author says this can't be part of the essence of being a Christian. Part of the essence of being a

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Christian would be things like being forgiven, having the righteousness of Christ applied to you.

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It can be part of, I guess, the actions Christians take when they are saved.

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But the language here is what Tim Keller wants to do is really emphasize how important it is to take care of the poor.

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And that's really part of Christianity. But he goes overboard with it. And the point of this whole thing is not to critique that.

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It's to show that the way he does it is by taking passages that don't support his claim to try to make them support his claim.

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So he appeals to the secondary aspects in the text. He appeals to things that really like, you know, the prodigal son isn't really about that particular topic about what the essence of a

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Christian is. And he makes it, he takes that to then apply it to the question of what is the essence of being a true

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Christian. So there's another example. Keller uses, and then we're going to get into logical fallacies.

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Now, logical fallacies in the story of the prodigal son. He says, do you realize then what Jesus is teaching? Neither son loved the father for himself.

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They both were using the father for their own self -centered ends. Father then loving, enjoying and serving him for his own sake.

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This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently.

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It's a shocking message. Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.

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Which is funny because we just read Keller saying that the essence of being a Christian is helping the poor. But I guess now if you obey

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God in helping the poor, then you're condemning. It really depends,

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I guess, on what section of scripture Keller is reading and what goal he has and what he's trying to communicate.

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But careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God. Right. The prodigal son really says that.

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Keller's reasoning is that the oldest brother claims to have obeyed his father, yet he is alienated from the father.

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Therefore, careful obedience to the law may serve as a strategy for rebellion. And there's a parallel here.

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The author gives us, a man cuts the lawn every week, yet the lawn is brown and dead. Therefore, conscientious mowing may serve as a strategy for killing the lawn.

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It's a logical fallacy. It's forming a connection that actually doesn't exist between the two things.

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You can have someone who is carefully trying to obey the law of God and that's not a strategy for rebelling against God.

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I mean, it is a shocking message if careful obedience means that you're rebelling somehow, that that's just as bad or equivalent morally to law breaking, law keeping.

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That would be shocking, right? Because they're not equivalent. Christians respond to the gospel once they're saved by keeping the law of God.

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That's part of what they do. Um, those who are unsaved and try to keep the law of God will fail, but it doesn't mean that it's necessarily a strategy for rebelling against God, keeping his law.

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It says that strategy, uh, in fact, if they are fooling themselves into thinking they've kept the law when they haven't, they're actually breaking the law.

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That's the point. That's the, that's the problem. So, uh, logical fallacy.

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Here's another one. Keller uses logical fallacies and believe it or not, this isn't even scripture. It's his interpretation of joy to the world.

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No more let sin and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

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The kingdom of God is the means for the renewal of the entire world and of all dimensions of life from the throne of Jesus Christ flows new life and power such that no disease, decay, poverty, blemish, or pain can stand before it.

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If this is the ministry of the kingdom to heal all the results of sin in all areas of life, then the church must intentionally use its resources to minister to, to, uh, in every circle.

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We are not to do so just in evangelism, but must be full service body. The kingdom of God is power.

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God's ruling power present to heal all the curse of sin. This is a ministry is a mercy. He says this. Now, the main problem, however, is with his logic and this is it.

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Um, his, if then transition between the future state and his conclusion regarding the church's mission, the last day to make a new heavens and a new earth in which no trace of the curse remains.

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Yet it is hardly obvious that this future eschatological reality entails that the present church militant must therefore intentionally use its resources to minister in every circle and be a full service body.

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What he's trying to take joy to the world and saying that because it says that, that, um, there's going to be these blessings in the millennial kingdom or at the consummation of the age, that this then becomes the duty that if this is going to happen, then the church must, it's taking a, uh, something that is not an imperative and making it an imperative that the church is responsible for making this reality take place.

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And it's just, uh, the author at least says, this is, this is logically incoherent.

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This is a fallacy to do this, to, to read into this particular song, a duty that doesn't exist in the song.

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And then to say it's the duty of the church to minister in every circle, in every circle. Well, we probably shouldn't be getting our, we really shouldn't be going to hymns.

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Hymns could be good illustrations, but they're not going to be the, uh, our theology where we want to get it from.

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So, uh, at least our primary authority when it comes to our theology.

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So these are just some examples. I thought it was helpful, uh, that someone went through some of these examples and pointed out where Tim Keller goes off the rails.

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I think since 2014, there's probably a lot of other examples where Tim Keller has done this kind of thing.

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And I don't know where those all would be, but, um, but it seems like there is a problem with his reading of the passage that there is a overall, an eisegetical approach here where he wants, he set out to prove something, to convince you of something, to teach something.

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And then he doesn't mind twisting things in the text, taking things that aren't there, reading into things that he shouldn't read into, using logical fallacies, uh, all to, for the end of giving you something that at the end of the day,

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I think is palatable. It's just stuff that honestly makes God more palatable to the world, someone that they'll accept more.

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And it's not with the intention of trying to accurately depict what the text is actually revealing.

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And we have to reject that. And so on that alone, even if you don't think Tim Keller is a false teacher, even if you think he just errs a little bit here or there, someone with a broken hermeneutic is not someone you want to be following because you can't really trust what they're going to give you when they teach on any passage, if they're willing to do this consistently with passages that suit their needs to communicate things that they want communicated instead of what the

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Bible clearly teaches in those passages. So hopefully that was helpful for many of you. I'm sure it is from the messages

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I've been getting. God bless as we continue towards December 25th. I hope that you and your family are doing well and enjoying this season.