Welcome to the Podcast - S1:E1

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

Saints. I'm Dylan Hamilton, and I'll let the other two hosts introduce themselves.

I'm Michael Durham. I'm pastor of Sunnyside Baptist Church and very glad to be here. I'm Andrew Hudson.

I'm a fellow member at the body here at Sunnyside. Before we dig into our topic today, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast on any social media platform you choose.

Today, we are introducing the podcast and going over a few questions as to how we are going to operate and how we are going to attack certain things, certain questions that come up in a pastor's life or a congregation's life from day to day.

And today we can start with a question, should we ask our pastor questions?

Well, obviously, yes. Well, you obviously want to ask your pastor questions, but if the only thing you do is go to your pastor and ask him questions about the

Bible or questions about your life, then you're missing out on a few aspects of the

Christian life. We are very blessed in the fact that we've been given the

Word of God in our own language, and we're told in 1 John chapter 2 that we ultimately do not need to have an official teacher, somebody to interpret the

Bible for us, but that if we are Christians, we have the Holy Spirit, we have an anointing, and we are able to humbly, prayerfully submit ourselves to the

Word of God and read and come away with real understanding of the text. God is a great communicator, the perfect communicator.

He didn't give us a obtuse, unclear, confusing, encoded word.

Not only did he give us a clear word, but he also gave us the Holy Spirit to point us to the light of Scripture, the light of the world, who is

Christ. And then as we read the Word, we can truly come away with understanding of the text.

It doesn't mean that we're gonna understand everything. And it's good to fellowship, it's good to talk with one another and discuss what's going on in our life in the light of the

Word of God. And if we find something that seems a little curious in the Word, as Peter mentioned about some of Paul's writings, some of them are a little hard to understand, we can talk with one another about those things and be benefited.

So sure, yeah, talk to your pastor, ask him questions, but we don't have only one person to go to, and we can study for ourselves and try to answer questions for ourselves.

And we'll talk about some of the dynamics about how you do that. But Andrew, what do you think about that? Are you saying that we do not need someone to interpret the

Scriptures for us? Yes, that's correct. A Roman Catholic would look to the magisterium, would look to church tradition, but as Protestants, the protest against this is sola scriptura,

Scripture alone, that we don't need some official body of experts, either by the merits of their religious credentials or by the merits of their experiences officially interpreting the

Bible for us. We have assurance in the Scripture that by the light of Christ and the gift of the

Holy Spirit, we're able to read the Word and understand it. And we have great examples of the church body not only asking questions to apostles, pastors, but of apostles and pastors with the

Bereans and how they were able to search out the Word themselves, test everything that Paul had said, and confirm it.

So we've got plenty of examples, both of direct commandment to do so, but also examples from history that we can pull out and and use as well for ourselves.

Now, as we're thinking about asking questions, we want to try and be as applicable to our time and place as we possibly can.

And I think we've had, we have a great list of questions that we've been sent in from another from another congregant, and we can go through as many of those as we want to, but asking proper questions of our pastor is important as well.

And when I mean proper questions, you know, you have, you do have stupid questions out there, but questions that are beneficial in a sense of they're going somewhere, and they're substantive, and they're going to either edify you, your pastor, or the rest of the congregation as well.

So you can be pretty flippant when you ask questions, and we want to, as best we can on this podcast, ask the right questions in the right time and be timely with it.

Right. You see people asking Jesus questions that are stupid questions.

Why do we say they're stupid? Because they're actually sometimes sinister. Mm -hmm. The idea is to ask questions that you believe are unanswerable, thereby denying that person's authority when they can't answer the question, or entrapping them somehow, and that really is the approach of a cynic.

That's not actually the approach of somebody who's humbly desiring to know and to grow.

So there's lots of examples in the Scriptures. Andrew, can you think of maybe one? I would just add that there must be snares, but woe to those who set them.

So those questions that you see were designed to be snares, and you also have the example of humble questions seeking the truth.

Now, we don't we don't get any examples of that today, right? That was just the Pharisees? There's a world of difference between, you know, what must

I do to be saved, and did Adam have a navel? Right. You know, there's not just two different types of questions.

There really are but there are myriad questions and styles of questions and so on, some of them very deeply rooted in someone's personal stories, their own personal understanding of where they are in their life.

Sometimes it's a curiosity, like, I didn't understand this word in the text, or I got a question today.

Someone called me up and was asking me about talents and denarii, and how did the money system work in the

Bible, and the goal was to try to understand some parables of Jesus. Right. You know, so there's all kinds of questions, but the attitude, of course, matters.

Right, and is a question like that applicable today? You know, if we're asking questions of the money system in the

Bible, some people might say, well, that's not really applicable today to our money system.

But you would argue, and I think everybody here would argue, that that is very, very applicable to money systems today, and how we're seeing things either ran well or abused in money systems as well.

Yeah, the Bible says a lot about money, and says a lot about what our approach should be before the face of God, how we think of money, and how we handle economics, and then how

God uses both abundance and scarcity sometimes to teach, to disciple, to chastise

His own people, and then how He judges the wicked accordingly, and how we're to view money.

So it does matter a great deal, and understanding what denarii, and talents, and those kinds of words mean when you read them gives you insight to what

Jesus was trying to teach, but also helps to clarify perhaps the difference between how we handle money today versus the way they did in the past, and why is that, and is that a good thing, and what does the

Bible have to say about that? Good. Yeah, I just wanted to nail down the fact that we can ask questions of the text, and get away from hey, this might have a modern -day application that we're sometimes missing, and we always appreciate that application to our own lives there with each question.

Do you have anything to add, Andrew? No, I do not. Well, we'll just name them. We'll get into David Kasson's questions here.

Oh, yes. He's a good question asker. He is a good question, and he's a thorough question asker. I'm gonna be doing a lot of reading, so thank you,

David, if you're listening. Well, so we'll start off with question number one here.

What Bible translation is best? What translation do you use, and why, and why not just use the

KJV since it is immune from modern liberalism and political correctness? I think something may be loaded in there.

So now we know what David Kasson thinks of the King James Version. That's an assertion that's not proven. Oh, there we go, there we go.

Yes. So what Bible translation is the best? Well, it's the one that accurately conveys the meaning of the original text to you faithfully in the language that you understand.

So what translation do I use, and why? I use the New King James Version, and I used to use the

New American Standard, the 1995, which was an update from, I believe, the 1977, and the reason

I used that was because I started using it in seminary when I was doing my translation work in Greek and in Hebrew, but mostly in Greek.

We were using the critical text, which means using some of the, using the text that has been more and more acclaimed for the

Academy in recent generations because of discoveries of ancient documents called

Codices, Alexandrias, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and so on, that these manuscripts have been laid aside and preserved, and when collated together, this

New Testament read anywhere from 1 to 2 percent different in variance from the majority text, which had been in use for almost all of church history that was, you know, what was available to some, you know, in various portions of the church in the world.

So when I began teaching on the nature of the Scriptures, it was a series that I was doing on Sunday nights here at Sunnyside, I began to review the approach taken with the critical text and why they would say these readings are reliable and these readings are not, and so on and so forth, and the decisions that they were making between the variants, and I found that I was in disagreement by conviction with the with the apparatus that they were using, the standards they were using to determine what would be a reliable reading, what would not.

I found myself in complete disagreement with their standards. So I know there's value in the critical text, but I found that I much preferred the majority text, which

I'm not aware of any translation that is overtly, hey, we're a majority text, but New King James, the way that I've seen

Thomas Nelson publish the New King James is that they make note of throughout the text where the readings are different and give you as the reader all the information you need, whereas some of the other translations obscure that, they don't give the reader any insight into that at all, and many readers are left wondering why is this verse gone or this half -verse gone, why does this verse sound different than this translation over here, and they're not given any ability to to have insight in that, to study it for themselves, and so on.

I use the New King James rather than the King James because I have trouble understanding the King James, and I've read the preface to the

King James and the translators there said the reason why, one of the reasons why they wanted to do a new translation was that it would be in the language of the common man, that they believe that it would be important to have a translation in the language that people could understand.

I'm in full agreement, which is why I use the New King James, because I can understand that better than I could the the

King James. And as to why not use the King James, because it's immune from modern liberalism and political correctness, well,

I don't think it was immune from the translation concerns of its time. It is incredibly apparent, for example, that the

Geneva Bible used the English word tyrants and tyranny a great deal, but the

King James Bible did not. Why might that be? Well, maybe

King James was a little bit dicey on the matter of tyranny and tyrants being called out so often, whereas the

Geneva Bible was more of, you know, a populist, you know, grassroots translation.

It was not as tied to the crown. So in every translation, you have to be aware of the time in which it was translated, the word choice, and so on.

God's Word is perfect. It is without error. It is eternally true, and we know that God works through translations to our good, and that He unfailingly brings

His Word to us, thankfully, in our own language that we can understand. But I would say that one of the arguments to use the

King James that I do like, I heard from Douglas Wilson, was that the King James is public domain, and no one owns it.

So it is not owned by any publishing house. It is not copyrighted. It is something that belongs to the church, and it is not something that belongs to a corporation, a publishing house.

And I like that. That's great. Yeah, private property matters. Yeah. It does. Andrew has thought a lot about translations, and what do you think?

I really have. It's been a point of, I guess, in -depth study and pondering.

The claim for the 1611 King James Version as being supreme overall for all

English translations doesn't really hold merit if you were to continue to use the same standard that they have.

You were just talking about how the Word of God has been perfectly preserved for us. Would you say that that is the

Word of God equaling the King James Version only, or would you say that's in the original autograph?

Yeah, that'd be the original autograph. Not one jot, nor one tittle, not the smallest letter, nor the smallest squiggle on a letter is going to pass away.

God's Word is eternal and perfect and preserved, and I'd say that in the original autographs. And that's really what

I've come to. I've come to understand English is not the original language of the

Bible. So therefore the original languages hold meaning, which can be captured through many different ways, either formally or dynamically, depending on the metaphors that could be in use, or just the strict reading of the text.

I use plenty of different versions. In fact, I use a version that allows me to just, what does the

Greek word say? The Greek word holds lots of meaning, and some of that's lost to me being a, what, 2021 existing person.

But Greek holds a lot of depth that I can research and learn from, that I come to a greater understanding of what the original was.

Well, now that we've kind of laid the groundwork that all translations are not created equal, are there translations to avoid?

I've noticed that Dylan didn't answer what translation he uses. Oh, I have to come out with mine.

Well, I was just curious. Well, since I haven't bought a new Bible in a while, and the one that I do have is the

Reformation Bible from Ligonier, I got it in ESV rather than the New King James. I do like the

New King James version, but what I use most of the time is my phone, and I use

Literal Word, and they have the NASB95 rather than the newest version or the 77,

I believe you said. So I use Literal Word, and like Andrew, it has, like Andrew said, with the original languages,

I can flip the settings to where I can go to the original Greek or Hebrew, and it's going to give me the word.

And from there, it's going to give me possible different usages or definitions, and I actually enjoy doing that more often than I do just plain reading.

So when you have a text that you're teaching through, or when I come to a text that I read, and even though sometimes

I understand it, I'm like, you know, what's the Greek here? Or what's the Hebrew here, and where else can

I find this? What other context can I find this in? So it'll give me a list of where I can go find it, and you know, that's a rabbit hole in and of itself.

I'll be there for like an hour and a half, and it's 1 .30, and I should be in, I should be asleep, but you know, sometimes that's the way it goes.

But back to what I was going to say earlier, before you called me out. Since we understand that not all translations are created equal, are there translations to just completely avoid?

Well, I would say there are some to avoid if you want to study diligently to show yourself to be approved, a workman in the scripture.

There are some translations, and I'll use that word in scare quotes, that can move you away from the text so far that it's going to be difficult to study.

And like you were just pointing out, we live in a time, and with such opportunity, to be able to study the

Word with apps that are free. You know, and if you pay a little bit of money, then you have more than you can ever use.

I remember when my dad got his first Bible study software for Windows 3 .1.

Oh boy. Yeah, this, and it was kind of hefty, expensive, but the, oh, the stuff you could do with it, right?

But the free apps that we have now are way better than the computer programs my dad was buying when

I was a child. We have so many opportunities to dig deep and to get directly to what the

Word of God is saying, and we should make good stewardship of that.

Some translations, I would say, are meant to help people to read the

Bible in English when they have trouble reading English. For example,

I know that the New International Version has had a lot of its issues, some political leanings about gender neutrality and so on, a lot of problems there.

I would say in its most basic form, the NIV has some use. One of our missionaries that we support,

Mitch Tillman, who's a missionary to Mongolia, has noted that when his Mongolian congregants begin to learn

English, and they want to learn English, that the NIV is especially suitable to them to read in the

English. And he commented with his wry humor, you see, it's the International Version.

So I can see how that has some use for folks who have some difficulty reading in the

English. Perhaps some of our neighbors that have migrated up from Central America would find the

New International Version a version that they could read more easily than others.

So I totally get that. I would say that some translations are meant for reference only, so that the

J .B. Phillips translation, some paraphrases and so on can be helpful to give some context.

There is, of course, the paraphrase, Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the

Bible. The message. The message. I'll let Andrew comment on that in a moment. But it is useful to say, in this case, okay, here is what

Eugene Peterson, with all of his particular doctrinal convictions, how he reads the

Bible and how he deals with it in his own mind. So that could be helpful, perhaps.

I mean, also pick up commentaries and read, and these scholars as well will share their reading of the word.

So I would say that some translations are not as helpful as others. I would say that translations that get you as close as you can to the actual words being used is what you need to use to study.

And the more tailored it is to modern parlance, the less useful it is.

And that's one of the reasons why I moved away from the New American Standard. I understand that 95 is still available on all these apps and so on, but the

New American Standard 2020 moved away from its commitment to translating the word of God with directness, and they began to import a lot of modern parlance into the text.

And it actually moves you away from it, I would say. It's difficult.

Is that a theme of 2020? Moving away from one's convictions? Yeah, I don't know.

I feel bad because in some sense, they've got that moniker now tied to their translation.

I think it's gonna be hard sell. Yeah, that's a good point. When you were bringing up the message, my family, we call that the massage.

Really, I would like to say on the massage, it really extends to all translations that either just use one single person in the interpretive process.

And I say interpretive because Bible translation is interpretive as well. You see that with different the

Jehovah's Witnesses version of the Bible. It has an interpretive process overlaid on top of its translation.

So you really have to be aware of many different things when choosing that version.

Yeah, so study. And I think, Dylan, was your question about what translations don't use for study?

Or, you know— I left it open -ended. That's up to you. Well, I think we've already kind of covered it. Back in the day, you would buy a parallel New Testament or something with these various translations and the

Greek text, maybe keyed with the Strong's concordance numbers, and you would do your book work.

But when we have it in our apps and free programs and so on, you would want to try to use as many translations as would be effective.

But some of them are going to be more of a dynamic translation process.

Dynamic equivalence is the parlance used where we're going to try to translate thought for thought, and the interpretive process is very robust by the translation committee, whereas a formal equivalence translation, as Andrew has so rightly put, there is still some interpretation going on because you have to—how do we carry this ancient word in its context to the modern reader with accuracy?

You're still going to make some interpretive choices, but the interpretive process is a little bit more textual, more to the text than to the audience on a formal equivalence.

So in that case, officially, King James, New King James, New American Standard, ESV, and RSV are always listed as formal equivalence.

Okay. Well, now that we got one of the big fights and christened them out of the way, let's move on to another one, shall we?

Okay. So the second question from David is, you have said that there is no pre -tribulation rapture.

Does that mean there is no rapture? Why is it so important to argue about this timing? Won't it all just pan out in the end?

We call those panmillennialists, right? Right, exactly. Okay. All Bible -believing Orthodox Christians believe that Christ will actually come back and the dead in Christ will rise and those alive will be changed.

What difference does it make to argue about this? Yeah. So I'll start with the last question first.

What difference does it make to argue about this? And since it'll pan out in the end, there is not a lot of appetite for a doctrinal conflict.

And I think part of that is we don't know how to have a kind brotherly, or sisterly, if it goes that way, a kind brotherly argument where iron sharpening iron.

I think for a lot of people in our culture, an argument is the very same thing as a quarrel, but those are different.

A quarrel involves a lot of pride and involves, if not animosity, then hate and is reduced very quickly to ad hominem attacks and questioning your motives and so on.

And for some people, this is all they can think of when it comes to disagreement, that disagreement is the same thing as a quarrel, that disagreement is the same thing as hostility.

And I remember one of my professors whom I disagree with a lot back in seminary talking about how much he appreciated having what he called

Irenic discussions, peaceful discussions, where we definitely disagree, but we're not trying to demonize one another.

And I think that that's one of the reasons why the panmillennialist approach is so popular, because there is not the appetite for disagreement.

And I can understand why. I mean, nobody wants a church fight and so on and so forth. But I think it's part of the discipleship process that we learn as Christians how to disagree, but do so in the spirit of Christ.

So I think that's trying to answer that first of all, but then what difference does it make to argue about this?

Well, it makes a big difference about your expectations.

For example, when my wife and I were, before we got married, of course, we're planning our wedding and so on, and some friends of the family, not part of our church or anything, but some friends of the family counseled my wife's parents and advised them and said, look, you don't want to spend a lot of money on their first wedding, on their first marriage.

Boo. Boo. Yeah. That's terrible. So the expectation was, of course, that your first marriage is going to fail.

You always spend more money on the second wedding was their mindset. If you expect your first marriage to fail and you live that way, it has an impact.

Your expectations, your hopes, your direction, and so on, it has an impact.

Now no believing Christian truly believes that Christ is going to fail.

Everyone says, yeah, Revelation, the two word summary of Revelation, Christ wins, or they'll say we win because we're in Christ.

So ultimately we all agree about that. And in fact, every major heading of doctrine, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of creation, all the way down in considering its ultimate end, all

Christians agree about. So there is this argument, well, then why does it matter?

Well, it does matter in the here and now because of our expectations. How are we viewing our stewardship?

How are we viewing our responsibilities? What are we expecting? How do we, it changes the way we pray.

It changes the way we work. It changes the way we raise children. It changes the way we build buildings.

If we think, for example, that, well, it's 1983,

Israel became a nation in 1948. So 1988 is looking real likely.

We don't need to build a building that's going to last 50 years. I mean, that's not living by faith. It, from some perspectives, right?

But so there is, it does matter. It does matter. And it does matter for expectations and approach of how we live.

There is a lot of focus on the rapture, I think, because it's such a fantastic thing to think about.

And it has been greatly popularized in a previous generation by a great deal of Christian literature that sold very, very well.

And I don't think any of the movies really worked out well, but the literature sure did. And it captures the imagination.

So many Christians have lived entire lives and churches have thrived under the preaching of the

Word of God, and they had no concept of a pre -tribulational rapture.

A pre -tribulational rapture, according to Martin Lloyd -Jones, originated in 1830 at the

Prophecy Conference at Irving Court, in which renowned New Testament scholars were present, and a concept was introduced that they had never heard of before.

And we have not in the record of church history of an idea of a pre -tribulational rapture prior to 1830.

And the story goes that there was a woman who spoke in tongues, and then the interpretation was given, and it was said that before the

Great Tribulation hit, the church was going to be raptured out. And present at that conference were notables such as John Darby.

And Darby was a scholar in his own right, and he taught

C .I. Schofield. And we all, a lot of us have heard of Schofield's study

Bible. And Schofield went to Moody, and it was popularized under the preaching of Moody.

And the rest is history. There was just a wave of... And I understand tied to the preaching of a pre -tribulational rapture was a very good theme, which was the defense of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, that there is no error in the

Bible. It is infallible. Everything in the Bible is absolutely true. Every promise of God will be brought to pass.

And it was very much a swinging away of the liberalism which was arising out of the continent and various liberal scholars and the ways that their teaching was penetrating the church and the beforehand conservative academy.

So there was a great concern for the truth of Scripture and defense of Scripture, which was absolutely right. But what happened was it got tied together, that if you believe that the word of God was true, and if you believe that the promises of God were true, then that necessarily meant that you believed in a pre -tribulational rapture.

The pre -tribulational rapture is by necessity a doctrine that is essential for certain presuppositions about the way in which

God works out His plan of salvation. The promises of the

Old Testament dealing with Israel about an eternal land, an eternal day of atonement observed, an eternal circumcision, all of these things that are eternally to be observed,

God didn't give any caveats to them at all. Passover is going to continue. It must continue.

Day of atonement must continue. Circumcision must continue. This land is forever and ever. The reading of those texts was such that God would keep all of these promises to Israel, only

Israel, ethnic Israel, at some time in the far off future, which gave rise to, well, what about, what is this church thing then?

Well, it was seen sort of as a parenthesis in the plan of God.

The church would come. God would do His work in the lives of the church, and then the church would be moved out of the way and vacated so that God could go ahead and finish up all of His promises to Israel.

And in Schofield and Darby's original scheme, the church and Israel were forever separate in eternity.

They would never be joined together. They were always to be kept separate in order for the promises of God to be true.

So I think that they, in some sense, were really trying to push this as far as they could go to say, we believe what it says.

We will not be dissuaded from the truth of God's word, which I greatly appreciate that approach.

But when we read the Bible, Christ Himself gives us the way to read the Bible, and He tells the scholars of His day that when they search the scriptures, they think that in them they will find eternal life, the plan, the process to gain eternal life.

He says, but it is these that testify of Me. And the entirety of the New Testament demonstrates how everything in the

Old Testament is about Christ. And He is the interpretive center to it all.

He is the hermeneutical lens for all of it. And the rapture itself is, of course, not a word that we find in the scripture, but we do have the idea of this rapture in Thessalonians.

So if we go over to 1 Thessalonians, I think it's going to be chapter 4 and verse 13.

Paul writes, but I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, which of course was

Jesus' euphemism for death, which I love, and it's a comfort to us. Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.

So the hope of the resurrection is anchored in the resurrection of Christ. So again, that's a great comfort.

As He rose from the dead, so we will rise from the dead as well. And then verse 15, for this we say to you by the word of the

Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

So there's not going to be some particular advantage for those who are alive when Christ returns.

Those folks are not going to be somehow greatly advantaged, and the dead will be greatly disadvantaged.

So this is a comfort to those who have loved ones who have died in Christ.

No, they're not missing out on something. There's not going to be something that they're going to be deprived of here.

Verse 16, for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

So, as he's pointed out, those who are coming with Jesus, those who have died in Christ and are asleep in Christ, they're going to rise first, and then what will happen second, verse 17, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them.

So we're all caught up together, and that's where you have the idea of the rapture, caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort one another with these words. Now, it might seem a little odd that there's clouds and Jesus is in the air and we're all meeting up with Him, but the angels promised this to the disciples that in the same way that Christ went up into heaven so He would return, and of course

He's going to return to the earth. And that's what the promise is, very simply in Matthew 25, that when

Christ returns He's coming down to earth and He will sit on His throne and then judge everyone, goats and sheep, right and left.

It's a very simple picture that we have. The background to this kind of passage for Thessalonica was that Thessalonica enjoyed the status of an imperial city, and in order to be an imperial city you had to be selected as a stop, you would get a visit from the emperor.

Now, Thessalonica had to work hard. It's kind of like, you know, getting the Olympics. You had to work hard and make a lot of preparations, and so they did.

They made vast improvements to their city, vast improvements to their road that led out towards the direction that the emperor would come, and it was customary in that time when the ruler came that everybody in the city who were loyal citizens would go out and meet him on the road, and they would gather around him, obviously giving him honor, and some of them indeed worshiping him as would be appropriate in the cult to worship the emperor, and they all would attend him as he continued his journey into the city where he would be given the place of honor.

So this is the same image that Paul is using here. The ruler is coming.

The king of kings is on approach, royally announced, and all who are his loyal citizens, either dead or alive, the dead will be raised, will be gathered together with him and attend him in honor as he comes to his position of honor, very much like Christ's triumphal entry to Jerusalem.

All the people came out and rejoiced around him and attended him as he entered into Jerusalem.

So yeah, there's a rapture. There is a gathering of the saints in the air in around Christ. I don't see anything in the text that says this is going to happen prior to a great tribulation.

So that's my reading of that text. I do believe in a rapture, but not the way that is used in common parlance today.

Right. What are your thoughts? Would you say there are any parallel passages that could give you an understanding of the timing of what is spoken of in Thessalonians?

Yeah, Thessalonians. I would say that one of the most helpful texts to give us a timeline is in 1

Corinthians 15, where Paul is also giving some comfort to those who are concerned about death.

And what he says in 1 Corinthians 15 is he deals with the hope of the resurrection in verse 20.

And you'll hear some similar themes between this and 1 Thessalonians. He says, but now

Christ is risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

The firstfruits, of course, is a term that envisions the agrarian society.

The particular impetus upon the Jews in the Old Covenant was to give their firstfruits to God as a tithe.

The first crop of wheat, the very first part of that wheat harvest, the very first part of that fig harvest, whatever it was, that was to be given to the

Lord. Well, Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep because he has risen from the dead, absolute confidence that all who are in him will also be raised from the dead.

Verse 21, for since by man came death, by man, capital M, man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

So everyone in Adam dies. Of course, we are all born in Adam. But not everybody in the world has been born again into Christ.

But those who have, and it's an innumerable multitude according to Revelation 7, they will be made alive.

So all who are born again in the second Adam or in Christ will be made alive. Verse 23, but each one in his own order,

Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ at his coming.

So when he comes, when he returns, and that vision that we see there in 1 Thessalonians 4, when he comes with trumpet sound and we're all gathering together with him in the air in victory formation, attending him as loyal loyal sons and daughters, celebrating his victorious descent and enthronement here upon the earth, that's what's being envisioned here.

Then comes the end. Verse 24, when he delivers the kingdom to God, the kingdom to God the

Father, when he puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.

So we see this consolidation of all authority systems into Christ and unto

God. Verse 25, for he must reign, and this is where we have the time frame.

For he must reign, and where is Christ reigning right now? We've already been told he's at the right hand of God.

He must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet.

A lot of enemies. A lot of enemies. Well, the last enemy, verse 26, says the last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. So we see that in 1

Thessalonians, when even the dead in Christ shall be raised from the dead to die no more.

See, in Romans 6, it says that the death that Christ died, he died unto sin, but he was risen from the dead to die no more.

And this is the promise of the resurrection. Others were raised from the dead, but they died again.

Lazarus died again. The man they threw into Elisha's cave and sprung back to life, he died again.

The widow's son at Nain, he died again. Christ was raised from the dead to die no more.

And when we're raised with Christ, we will die no more. And so death is the enemy that will be destroyed last.

Verse 27, for he has put all things under his feet, but when he says all things are put under him, it is evident that he who put all things under him is accepted.

Referring to the hierarchy in the Trinity, where the son submits to the father in all things.

So we see that there is this pattern, this order of things.

Here in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ has been given a name which is above every name. He is king of kings and he is lord of lords, and he is at the right hand of the father.

He is reigning. He told his disciples all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth. So he's going to reign until all of his enemies are put under his feet and the last one is death.

And this is going to be made manifest when he returns and we are gathered together in victory.

I think that's a passage, and not the only passage, but I think it's a passage that kind of helps us see the timeframe or the timeline of the great hope that we all have as Christians.

Praise the Lord. Amen. Good news. So what we're looking at, though, when we come to the argument of the two sides, it's a timing issue and it's also a storyline issue.

Where you believe you're at in the story, in the history that Christ reigns over, flavors how you read the rest of the story.

When you're looking back or when you're looking forward in the story, it's always going to be flavored by that.

In a sense, it's timing, but is there, to a certain degree, a confusion or a disagreement on the main character, though?

When we're looking at the differences between eschatological views, are we just talking about simply a timing disagreement or are we talking about some disagreement about the main character himself?

Well, I think there's going to be some disagreements that go way deeper than timing.

You're talking about reading the story differently. Well, that goes to hermeneutics. How are you interpreting the text?

How are you interpreting the characters and the events of this story?

How are you seeing that and how do you see it playing out? So that goes back to hermeneutics. And there are very deep -seated divergences,

I think, in some of these eschatological frameworks. So if you have somebody who is post -millennial or amillennial, they're going to have more agreement with one another than disagreement.

If you have somebody who is premillennial or dispensational premillennial, the historical premillennialist and the dispensational premillennialist are going to have a lot more agreement than disagreement.

And then between those two different camps that I just mentioned, there's going to be a lot of disagreement, but not so much that it's not overcome by, again, unity about the overall truth of the scripture.

Now, these positions could be pushed so far that you could end up in dangerous areas pushing beyond the pale of orthodoxy and so on.

And people have. People have. People in the name of dispensationalism have pushed so hard that they have advocated for more than one way to be saved, more than one

Savior, and have made a mockery of passages like Ephesians 2 and many other great hope -filled passages.

And that is inappropriate. And on the other side, people who are amillennial have sometimes abandoned a great deal of actual historical promises of God and actions of God done in history because they have such an idealist reading of certain passages.

And that can put you into some dangerous waters. The postmillennial can push so far that they see the fulfillment of all prophecies already in the text, and there's nothing left in the

Bible to be fulfilled, and put the onus of, or perhaps put the onus of the fulfillment of these prophecies into the hands of basically a well -organized, well -funded church, and discount really that it's

Christ who wins, and make it more of a secular approach. And these things have been done.

But I would say in the main, especially when nobody knows there's a debate going on, there's a lot of agreement about our hope is in Christ, He's going to win, and He won't let

His church fail. And there's a lot of agreement among Christians when we don't know that there's an official debate going on.

But as far as the main characters, yes, sometimes there is an overemphasis in certain eschatological positions on the characters.

And so a dispensationalist will perhaps focus way too much on the Antichrist and give a great deal of honor and power and fear to the

Antichrist that is very much misplaced and unfortunate. And also,

I would say on the other side, someone like a postmillennial might put too much focus on the structures of the church or the efforts of the church.

Like, oh, we can organize our way into the beatific vision.

Right. Which, as I was kind of saying, are two misconstrued views of the main character himself.

Right. Right, yeah. So we have gone pretty long, and that question that I asked was kind of a derivative of question seven, and I was trying to tie the hermeneutic question in with this discussion.

So we're hitting on about an hour now, so we can go into some of our segments here, unless you have something you want to wrap up with or some thoughts that kind of sprung to mind for you,

Andrew. No, really, just on this last discussion point, I think we can agree with the timing of the resurrection not to have already occurred.

Yes. Yes, yeah. Yes, that is clearly outside of orthodoxy. Yes, if somebody is saying that the resurrection has already occurred,

I think Paul pretty much said that such a person should not be trusted, so... Run. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Run far. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So take that as a warning. Yes, exactly, exactly.

All right, well, for our first ending segment of today, we're gonna do This Week in Witchcraft, where the elements have been conquered with intense heat and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

Can you spot it out in the wild? And it's my responsibility to come up with the witchcraft, but I've dropped the ball on episode one, so Michael, Pastor Michael, do you have an example recently of this cosmopolitan witchcraft that we see so prevalent today?

Yeah, just to define witchcraft, my definition for witchcraft is the demonic appropriation of alternate authority.

And I'm deriving that definition especially from Samuel's rebuke of Saul in his defense of his rebellion against God.

And Samuel says rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft because in the process of changing terms to make sin sound less sinful or the changing definitions to try to use the same words we've always used, but to change the of them so that they sound better or different than what they were.

All of this is a demonic attempt to appropriate alternate authority, wherein someone's trying to define evil as good or good as evil, the bitter is sweet, or the sweet is bitter, and so on.

And this is not sourced in Christ, it is sourced in the father of lies.

And thus we have witchcraft. So an example of I was having a conversation with some folks who came over to the house and we were just noting how our culture likes to use words that mean they're opposite.

And this is, again, if you're calling good evil and evil good and sweet bitter and bitter sweet, this is a classic example of witchcraft wherein you're trying to change reality simply by speaking words.

And we live in a culture that would be self -described or self -identified as free, as even libertine, that you can do what you want with your body, do what you want with your resources, do what you want with your life, and nobody should say anything otherwise.

And get out there, have parades about how you can just live whichever way you want.

So in fact, we live in a very legalistic society under the heading of libertine, under the heading of freedom.

We actually live in an incredibly legalistic, fundamentalist, puritanical, with emphasis on tyrannical kind of living where everybody is watching everybody else to see whether or not you slipped up on that pronoun.

If you haven't, if you don't use the right pronouns, if you fail to put the right slogans on your, or promote the right kind of ideas on your social media, if you fail to wear a mask, if you do not keep six feet away from someone, if you don't have a vaccine passport, if you fail to hire according to people's skin color and gender identifications, if you don't do all of these things, then you are absolutely condemned.

Now you think back in the Old Testament wherein there were many reasons why you would get put outside the camp, but there was a way through that if you were unclean for various reasons, there was a way to get clean and to visit with a

Levite and be declared clean again and offer sacrifices and be welcomed back into the camp.

But we live in a society today with all these banners of freedom and do your own thing and you be you.

But in fact, we live in a very legalistic, fundamentalist society where the slightest missteps could end you.

And this is, I think, an example of witchcraft. Who discipled them to do that?

Well, it wasn't Jesus. Right. But yes, so who discipled them to do that?

Well, in the church, this culture is downstream from the cult because the church has failed to disciple their own ranks that where the

Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And by this, all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another because the church herself has become so divisive.

And the examples of this are unfortunately myriad because we don't know how to have disagreements without quarreling.

We see this alive and well in the culture in which we live today, I think.

Right. If the church was modeling, hey, of course, we disagree about this or that, but we do really love one another and we are supporting one another and we're not actively going for each other's throats on the biggest stage where the world is watching and the world is watching factions in the largest denominations go after each other and the love of Christ is fairly absent.

Is this a symptom of tying or conflating one's identity to one's convictions?

When we come to an argument and we see someone really get flustered over the fact that a specific conviction is challenged and they react very emotively or they react very hostilely to somebody, are they conflating identity and conviction?

And now in the culture, we see the same thing, right? But it's more tied to preference.

My preference is my identity here. Whereas in arguments when we get into biblical arguments with brethren and sometimes their identity as a

Christian is so wrapped up in a specific conviction, like I'm a Christian because I'm a dispensationalist or I'm a

Christian because I'm a postmillennialist, and that seems to be what they center around. Is this not just a downstream discipleship issue where our kids have taken it to its secular formation?

Well, I think it's a good observation. I think this comes back to our presuppositions of who are we, right, and what makes us who we are.

Is it my particulars, right, or is it

God who has made me? I think that in a pagan culture it's easy for us to subsume everything into one, which is paganism, where I become my convictions and my convictions are me, rather than remembering that there's a creator and then there's creation, and He gives the objective perspective and does so clearly through His word about what things are.

And so I can hold my convictions in such a situation somewhat open -handedly and lightly, yet I can say, yes, they are mine.

I believe that they are correct and right, but these convictions are always being held upright, palm up, hand open, before the face of God.

And if He's got something different for me to value, if He wants to reorder my affections, that is entirely

His business, and I need to submit all my convictions to the word of God. Now, if I don't have that ongoing clear understanding of God being over me and evaluating me, as Hebrews 4 talks about the word of God being living and active and sharper than a two -edged sword, cutting right to the heart of who we are, but it's in tandem with the verse that says that we are laid open before the one with whom we had to do.

So, in this case, my convictions aren't me. My convictions are part of my stewardship of living before the face of God, and if He needs to reorder those things, then

I need to be open for that, take up my cross, die to myself, say, okay,

God has a better way for me to follow Jesus than I at first understood, because He's in the process of sanctifying me and paring some things away.

Andrew, what do you think about that? I think what you—I might describe something similar as a theonomic understanding or a correct anthropology being that you view yourself in the light of Scripture as a creature under the

Creator. That's right. As opposed to an autonomous idea of where authority is derived from, and that ultimately leading to rule by the self and self -identity becoming circular.

Yeah. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is denied

Adam and Eve, because the definition of what good is and what evil is belongs to God alone.

And this is why expressly it says in Genesis 3 why God cast them out of the garden, because man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

And it wasn't that, well, now Adam and Eve have sinned, so they've experienced evil just like God has experienced evil.

No, God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all. He has not done evil and sinned.

What happened was He's the one who's Adam and Eve. You're not allowed to define good and evil.

You are creature. I am Creator. And once they begin to define good and evil for themselves, they are cut off from the tree of life.

They are exiled from the Garden of Eden. They can't have fellowship with God if they're not confessing

God. If they're not confessing—if they're not in agreement with God saying, God, you tell us the way things are.

This is what is good. This is what is evil. We are in agreement with you. Well, there's no fellowship with God unless we're confessing what

God says. And that's what John says in 1 John 1, that if we want fellowship with God, we have to be in the light as He is in the light.

And this entails our cleansing by the blood of Christ and our confessing of our sins, our agreement with God about who we are.

And if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and His truth is not in us. And if we say that we have not sinned, we make

God a liar, and His word is not in us. So we have got to be in agreement with God if we're going to have fellowship with God.

And He brings us all to the throne, His authority. He brings us all to the throne.

The street—singular in Revelation, Street of Gold—goes straight to the throne.

And it is also called a river, crystal clear, goes to the throne. And everything is going straight at the throne.

And this is where we're all headed, is to the throne. And what's at the throne?

The tree of life. And the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.

And the nations are at war. The nations are at each other. The cultures, some cultures want to kill other cultures.

Everyone's at each other's throats because they are all autonomous. They're defining their own law, their own right and wrong, and so on and so forth.

And then when these things just agree, you know, well, in the language of Islam, well, there's only the land of peace and the land of war, the land of Islam and the land of war.

A common assertion for others as well. It's like, you know, either you agree with me, or I'm at war with you.

And this is a signal of autonomy. I'm getting my information, or I'm identifying myself or total authority with my own conceptions of right and wrong.

And so there's a zero -sum game, and everyone's at each other's throats if we're not submitted to Christ, if we're not submitted to the

Word of God, His authority. Well, that's it for that segment. We will move on to what are we thankful for, and I'll let

Michael go first. Well, I am thankful for God bringing healing for my wife.

She had COVID and was in the hospital for 10 days and the

ICU during various parts of that. And the doctors, more than once, are simply throwing up their hands and saying, we don't know what to do.

We'll try this, and we'll try that. And I'm thankful for God healing her and sustaining us as a family while she was in the hospital, and she's 28 weeks expecting.

So thankful for the baby doing well, and thankful that God even brought an

ICU doctor into our lives, I think, five or six years ago.

And he visited our church one Sunday morning. We had him over for lunch, and this was the doctor that was with her in the

ICU. And he took time out of his very busy schedule to sit beside my wife and pray with her in an environment that I was not allowed to be.

And so I greatly appreciate that. And God has been healing my wife, and she's getting better and better, and we're just very thankful for his work in that regard.

Andrew? Oh, yeah, me too. I would say, most specifically,

I'm very thankful for the recent birth of my third child, my daughter.

You know, being a father is a very interesting thing. It's a grace that we've been given, which

I can be very thankful for. There's also recollection of the first child given as a blessing and thinking, man, this is amazing.

Thank the Lord. How could this get any better? Then my second comes along, and I think, how could life have been any different?

Sure. Praise the Lord for yet another, an increase to my love, another grace upon grace.

And then the third comes, and yet again, the same thing happens.

That's what I'm thankful for. All right. Well, first of all, I'd like to say

I'm thankful for everybody in the background running the ones and twos for us. Edgar, Joel, and Ryan back here that you don't hear, but they are working diligently to make any and all of this possible.

But since we've talked about loads of disagreement today, I'm thankful for healthy disagreement within the church, and I'm actually thankful for all the people that I disagree with from the time that I have become a

Christian until now. They've sharpened me. They have loved me. They have rebuked me when

I needed rebuking, and they've given me so much more than I feel like I've ever given them. So this type of disagreement over eschatology, the disagreement over Bible translations, over even the more minuscule things that we have in Christendom to argue about,

I'm thankful for all of them and them bringing their objections and their questions to me whenever we do have disagreements.

And I think that's a part of this podcast that we're trying to explore, is asking not just easy questions, softballs, but stuff that is common, difficult to parse out, and a lot of times objections.

So I'm thankful for all those Christians that came before me that I disagree with, and I don't want to see them die out to not have a disagreement anymore.

I know I've seen a with certain people online, they'll say, why can't they just, why can't this just go away, or why can't people that think this way just go away?

And I do think that is that zero -sum thinking we're talking about, where we want to be the autonomous rulers of theology, and I don't think that's healthy at all within the church.

So I'm extremely thankful for the disagreement that has been brought my way and for all those who brought it.

And that'll wrap it up for us today. We hope you'll join us again when we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?