WWUTT 545 Q&A Transubstantiation Translation Trinitarian Transmission?

Does the Eastern Orthodox Church believe in transubstantiation like the Catholic Church.

Does?

Is the King James Only movement a lie? And how do we know when we hear from God? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is an online ministry devoted to sound doctrine. Find all of our free videos and other resources at our website, www .wutt .com.

Now here's your host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, my dear.

You're welcome.

Hey, getting started, I think you had a question that you wanted to present first of all today, didn't you? We're going to start with a question that you received on Twitter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I told him to email you, though.

Oh, I didn't get it.

Oh, drat.

Hold on.

So Millennial Puritan. I think I can remember it. You want me to give it a shot or are you going to try to actually look it up?

I'm going to look it up.

OK.

You keep going.

In the meantime, in the meantime, I'll plug our Twitters. Pastor underscore Gabe. That's my account. Becky's is Becky Hughes, but Becky is spelled B-E-K-I. Don't try to spell it the traditional way because Becky likes to be unique.

I do.

Becky Hughes and Pastor underscore Gabe. I liked the days when those were called handles. Now they're called usernames. It used to be called a handle.

It's not called a handle anymore?

No, nobody calls it a handle. You say handle, nobody knows what you're talking about. You have to say username.

Yep.

Handle is now an archaic word in the tech world. Nobody has a handle anymore.

I'm going to be left in the dust no matter what I try.

What I try to use or say, it's going to be something outdated. If you want to send a question to us, since we respond to questions from listeners on Friday, our email address is whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

I've got five questions. I think I'm going to get to all of these today. One of them is a criticism. I'm going to respond to this critic. Then there's two about King James only-ism and two about visions and voices from God.

Sorry, I'm still looking.

I'm still not finding it.

I'm getting closer.

I'm closer.

What else can I plug here? Did I say the email address? Whenweunderstandthetext.

Facebook.

Facebook .com slash whatvideos, W-W-U-T-T videos. Actually those videos get posted to Twitter first before they go anywhere else. If you really want to be up on the game, you got to follow the what Twitter account, which is whatcom, W-W-U-T-T-com.

Actually the best way is just to follow us on YouTube, youtube .com slash W-W-U-T-T. Then as soon as a YouTube video gets uploaded, you get a notice that a new what video is.

Available.

I am behind right now. I've had several I've wanted to get done in the month of October, and I've only done one this month so far. So another one is coming hopefully today or Saturday, but again, youtube .com slash what or the Facebook page or Twitter, they'll be posted on there as well.

I am eating up a lot of time here. Are you done yet?

I know.

No.

Okay.

I can remember Millennial Puritan's question.

Go for it.

Go for it. Right.

His question was.

Oh, I found it.

Okay. Oh goodness.

See, you wonder why there are outtakes at the conclusion of every Friday program. It's because we do stuff like this. But all of this is staying. You don't even have to wait for the outtake at the very end.

This is going to stay here.

Okay.

Becky, what is Millennial Puritan's question?

Oh goodness. He has two of them. He says, well, he technically has three. Does anyone know how to get salsa out from between the keys on your keyboard? So then.

Okay.

My answer to that one is no. Next question.

Okay.

So then I said, piano keyboard or computer keyboard. And then he was a little confused and said, computer, do you even call it a keyboard on a piano? And I said, electric keyboard piano.

It is. No.

So the question for Gabe related to that was, is it a keyboard or a piano? Isn't that right?

Do you even call it a keyboard on a piano?

Yes.

The keys on a piano are called a keyboard, but digital piano is called a keyboard. The real piano is called a piano, technically a forte piano. And I am a piano Puritan in that sense. So you don't call the keyboard a piano.

It is not a piano. It's a keyboard. Or you can call it a digital piano, but it is not a piano.

But on the keyboard, you have the keyboard.

Yes.

Keys on a board.

Right.

Okay. So that's what I was getting at, but I couldn't, I mean, I guess I could have posted a GIF to explain what I was talking about, but I was trying to be thorough. So then he says, do you, they even call that a piano?

Smiley face. So I said interchangeably, because then I looked up on a website.

Like musician's friend, it'll say digital piano.

Yes.

It says digital piano and then a controller keyboard on another one.

Yes.

Controller keyboard. That's not quite the same as a digital piano though. They will not make a controller keyboard the same way that they will make a hammer graded keyboard, hammer graded digital piano.

Okay.

Okay.

So those, those tend to be more expensive because they're higher quality. They will make the keys so that they have the hammer graded feel of a real piano.

Right.

Whereas a controller keyboard does not.

Oh, okay.

It doesn't, it doesn't have the weighted keys.

It's spring loaded.

Okay.

They don't, they don't invest as much into the, the weighted action of the keys as they do in an actual digital piano.

So you're paying for the name.

No, you're paying.

I'm just kidding.

You're, you're basically paying for all the science that went into trying to get those keys to feel like an actual weighted keyboard. It takes a lot. And it used to be that when they were selling those keyboards, when they first came out with the hammer graded keys, you could go into a music store and they would have a cross section of the key to show you how they made it so that when you're pushing down on it, it has the real weight feel to it and it's not spring loaded and popping back up cause there's a spring underneath it.

Right.

Anyway, this is not anywhere near theology questions of any kind.

But it was a formal inquest.

It was. And many churches use them. So there we go. This is very true. Bring that in, bring ecclesiology into it a little bit. We have both. We have the real piano, which I popped a string on last Sunday.

That was crazy.

I did.

It was Sunday night.

I was in nursery.

You weren't. No, you weren't there cause you were ill.

Yeah.

So you didn't come to the Sunday evening service. But I, it was, it was down on B flat. It was either B or B flat. I hit the note and it, you heard it go and, and then every time I was hitting it, the hammer was striking the loose string.

And so it was rattling real bad.

At least it didn't fly out like that one time.

Yeah.

That happened to me once.

That was crazy.

I still have that string.

It almost hit our guitarist.

It was hilarious.

I mean, like it was hilarious just because nobody was hurt, but it was hilarious.

The guitarist saw it fly across the stage and he was like, that can't possibly have been a piano string.

Watch out for those things.

Because, because it flew out of the piano, it did not make any, like it did not affect the sound. It didn't have the triple strike action anymore.

Right.

Cause I was only hitting two strings instead of three, but it wasn't rattling. This time the string didn't pop out. So it rattled.

Bet that sounded awful.

No, I had to cut the song short. So I made it through the remainder of the verse and chorus, and then we didn't go into the next verse and chorus.

Yeah.

Anyway. So that's the benefit of a keyboard is that doesn't happen, but we have the keyboard and the piano. The reason why we have the keyboard is because that's our organ. So we play organ out of the keyboard now.

But aren't those keys weighted?

Yeah, they are.

Okay.

They're hammer graded. No, it is a keyboard. It's just not the controller keyboard like you were talking about. And there are keyboards that are spring loaded. They're still called keyboards. They just don't have that real hammer effect to them.

Okay. So I guess I'm going to have to go to musician's friend and hook around.

It just depends. Yeah.

Depends on the kind of keyboard is really what it comes down to. All right. So let's actually get to our

Hopefully that answers your question.

I wasn't planning on spending eight minutes on that question, but

It took me forever to find it.

I'm so sorry.

I suppose we spent the first four minutes talking about where we are on Twitter.

And Facebook.

So this first question comes from Tony, and he's actually criticizing the what video on Eastern Orthodoxy. He says, and I get a lot of criticisms from that, no one who is Eastern Orthodox agrees with that video.

So anyway, Tony says, I don't know if this has been told to you, but Orthodox don't believe in transubstantiation. I make the connection in the video that the Eastern Orthodox Church practices transubstantiation just like the Roman Catholic Church does.

Okay.

And he says, you keep insisting that the Orthodox believe it, and something about re-sacrificing.

Jesus.

That's a different video, by the way. That's not the same video.

Okay.

You are like most internet Calvinists, unable to understand that Catholics are not Orthodox. No, I very much understand that Catholics are not Orthodox. So anyway, I responded to Tony, and I said that the Orthodox do believe in transubstantiation.

They believe that the bread or the Eucharist becomes the actual flesh of Christ, and the cup becomes his actual blood. It's just that you might define it differently than a Catholic does. For example, the Eastern Orthodox might say, and they're not all consistent, they're not all the same, but they might say it's not the crucified Christ that the Eucharist and the cup transforms into, it is the glorified Christ.

So it's after his resurrection, after his death and resurrection, that's what the Eucharist transforms into. So it's not the flesh body of Christ, it's the glorified body of Christ. And when I responded to him that way, he emailed me again and said that that has never been dogmatically accepted into Eastern Orthodox, to which I said, yeah, and that's the answer I get every time I have a conversation about this with somebody who is Eastern Orthodox.

The response is always, well, that's not our dogma. Of course it's not your dogma. There's no catechism. There's no counsel. There's nothing that their beliefs have been compiled into something that you can go to and point to and say, here, the Eastern Orthodox Church believes this.

But according to the tradition, since they're real big on tradition, Eastern Orthodox believes that the tradition of the church is just as authoritative as the Bible. And again, they'll disagree with that because it's not accepted into dogma.

Right.

But anyway, according to their tradition, this is from the Orthodox Confession of Faith, Peter Mogila in 1633 to 1647. He wrote the following, fourthly, attention must be paid that the priest have at the time of consecration, the intention that the real substance of the bread and the substance of wine be transubstantiated into the real body and blood of Christ through the operation of the Holy Spirit.

He makes this invocation when he confects this mystery by praying and saying, send your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here offered and make this bread the precious body of your Christ and that which is in the chalice, the precious blood of your Christ, changing them by your Holy Spirit.

Transubstantiation occurs immediately with these words and the bread is transubstantiated into the real body of Christ and the wine into the real blood of Christ with the visible appearances alone remaining.

That's from somebody who's Orthodox, who's writing that. So that's the Orthodox Church. Here's another one. Orthodox Confession of Dostoevsky in 1672. He is not present typically nor figuratively, nor by superabundant grace, as in other mysteries, nor by bare presence, as some of the fathers have said concerning baptism or by impenation, so that the divinity of the word is united to set forth bread of the Eucharist hypostatically as the followers of Luther most ignorantly and wretchedly suppose.

But truly and really so that after the consecration of the bread and the wine, the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true body itself of the Lord, which was born in Bethlehem of the ever virgin, was baptized in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, rose again, was received up, sits at the right hand of God, the father, and is to come again in the clouds of heaven.

And the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the true blood itself of the Lord, which, as he hung upon the cross, was poured out for the life of the world.

So what you're saying is they need to go to their pastor and like really get to the bottom of this, of what their church believes. Oh, priest.

Yes.

Sorry.

Priest or bishop. But anyway, so you heard it here from two different Orthodox theologians, one saying that it is transformed into the body and blood of Christ the same way that Roman Catholic would believe.

And the other saying that the Eucharist transforms into the body of the glorified Christ and the cup transforms into the blood that was spilled as he hung on the cross. That's Eastern Orthodoxy. And you present that to somebody who is Orthodox and they say, no, no, no, because that's not dogmatically accepted.

And that's that's always their deferment. They don't ever have to admit to believing anything because they can always say that isn't our dogma, but it is the same doctrine. It is transubstantiation. It is even you.

That very word is even used. What's more concerning to me than whether or not the Orthodox Church practices transubstantiation, same way that the Catholic Church does, which is a problem, but even bigger than that is the Orthodox Church's denial of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

That is the gospel. Denying justification by faith alone is denying something essential to the faith. This is why I say to anyone who is in the Eastern Orthodox Church, they should leave those who believe the doctrines that they believe and teach them according to Greek Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, even Roman Catholicism, because both churches deny justification by faith alone.

They are teaching something that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I made that comment to Tony, who sent that email as well. I said, Tony, it's interesting to me that I I mentioned that the Orthodox Church denies justification by faith.

That's not the problem that you had. The problem is with the fact that I equated transubstantiation of the Eastern Orthodox Church with the way that it's practiced in Roman Catholicism. So Eastern Orthodoxy is it teaches false doctrine.

It is a denial of the gospel. So next couple of questions have to do with King James only ism. Jason wrote in and said his King James is the King James only movement, a false movement. Why are they so harsh against other translations?

Quick answer to this one. Yes, it is a false movement because they are claiming that the King James Bible is the only divinely authorized English translation of the Bible. So I'm going as far as saying it's the only divinely authorized translation of the Bible.

So every other translation that comes about in the world must be translated from the King James Bible. So that English Bible is the only translation that God has authorized. That's a lie. So therefore, that entire movement, that entire doctrine in theology is false.

And I've told people, stay away from King James only churches. Do not go to a church and become a member of a church that says KJV 1611 on their sign because they're a King James only church. There's your alarm again.

Did you do that last week? Two weeks in a row, young lady, that's two weeks.

So sorry.

So anyway, but that cuts me off and keeps my answer short. Yes, it is a false movement. So the next question, it's my beeper. See, we're going to change this show. We'll change this show into like, pardon the interruption on ESPN.

Everybody has two minutes to respond and then there's an alarm that goes off and then you got to go to the next topic. So then Jeff Gibson follows that one up. Hello, Pastor Gabe. Salutations to you and yours.

I seem to remember that you had a what video on King James only ism. But for the life of me, I can't find it. What hath you done with it? That's a great way to word the question.

It is.

I would like to I would like to view it again. Thank you. And thank you for your ministry. I has been a blessing to my wife and I. Is that King James language? Oh, it has been.

Okay.

Well, he says, thank you for your ministry.

Oh, it's a typo.

I has been a blessing to my wife and I. So I was trying to read it like, what hath thou done with?

Yeah.

Anyway, that was too much.

Sorry, that was a dumb moment. Anyway, yes, I did take that video down. The reason was because I was going to replace it. One of the things I did not like about that video, everything in it was true. Did not change my mind about any of that.

What I what I didn't like about it, though, was I made the comment about the King James Bible, that it was a decent translation. And I don't agree with that. It is a good translation. It's just that we actually have better translations now.

New American Standard Bible and the ESV in particular, better than the King James. I have been told, though I haven't investigated it closely enough to be able to know, but the Christian Standard Bible also would be in that in that vein, along with the NASB and the ESV.

I knew the Holman Christian Standard Bible. It was an OK translation. I wasn't real crazy about it, so it's not really one of the ones that I recommend. But we do have better translations now and access to more manuscripts than those who translated the King James Bible had.

Furthermore, the the English of the King James Bible is dated and it's difficult to understand. And every once in a while in our church, we'll have somebody that comes in who was raised King James and they have never really been exposed to studying out of another translation until they come to our church.

And once they begin reading from either the ESV or the NASB, which is the two translations we use the most in our church, once they start reading from those translations, they realize I can understand this a lot better than I can than I can understand my King James Bible.

It's not until you get away from that and you read some of the more updated translations that you begin to notice the difference.

Right. It's quite a difference. You should not shy away from the people who do enjoy KJV.

If somebody who's a pastor decides that he wants to preach from the King James Bible, that's fine. And that's another reason why I took that video down, because I don't want anybody to think that you can't be preaching from the King James Bible.

That's OK. But if they say that it is the only Bible that God has authorized, that's wrong. It's a lie. Right. And it causes division. That is a divisive comment. It elevates to a fundamental level something that is not a fundamental doctrine.

The translation of the Bible that you use is not a fundamental issue. Right. You can even use NIV. I know it gets kind of a bad rap. It's still a good translation. There are certain translations I try to tell people not to use.

The New Living Translation being one of them. The Message Bible. Becky was kind of mouthing it to me. She wasn't. You weren't positive on the title.

I wasn't positive.

Which, yeah, because it's not actually a translation. It's Eugene Peterson's version of the Bible. Oh, right. That's. I don't even think the message should be considered a translation.

So, yeah, but it is like it is. People in public do.

Right. OK. And a lot of preachers use it. Really? Ridiculously number of preachers use it. Yeah. All basically, if if a pastor is seeker sensitive, if that church has that seeker sensitive approach, they're going to use the Message Bible.

I see that. I was critiquing a sermon from Rick Warren just recently. It's actually for the book that I'm working on. But I man, half the references that he used were from the message. And the other half were from like four or five other translations.

That's what Warren does. But the translation he was using the most was the message. Heard a sermon from Bill Hybels just recently. I want to say with the exception of the of the main reading that he did, which was like the Good News Bible, the rest of his references were to the message.

Somebody told me that Chuck Swindoll had moved to referencing the message. Now, I don't know that that is true. So because I haven't done that investigation myself, but it was somebody who listened to Chuck Swindoll said, no, even Swindoll is is using the Message Bible and on and on it goes.

Furtick, Stanley being Andy Stanley.

So what other translations are there that you try to avoid?

Trying to see what other ones I have over here. I don't know. It looks like most of those on my shelf are good. So I don't know what I did with the one. I mean, maybe they're over at the church.

Jesus Calling.

Jesus Calling by Sarah Young is not a good Bible translation. Anyway, the so I hope that helps you out, Jason and Jeff. If you prefer the King James, I would recommend using the New King James just because the language is a little bit easier.

Whenever John at our church, he likes to use the New King James Bible and and I do occasionally as well. This Bible that you moved out of your chair over here, that's a New King James Bible.

That's a big Bible.

Well, it's my Reformation Study Bible.

Oh, OK.

That was a gift. Somebody gave it to me in the New King James, although I would like a version in the ESV as well. But any time he reads from the New King James, whenever we're doing Bible study together, I'm amazed at how close it is, honestly, with the ESV.

So New King James Bible, that's a good one to use. All right. Let's let's move on here. And the next question, this is from Daryl, and this is a different Daryl than last week. So the Daryl last week was D-A-R-Y-L.

This is D-A-R-L-R-E-L-L.

How was that again?

I don't know. I might have I might have put three R's in there. Hello, Pastor Gabe and Becky, I'm emailing you a question in regards to your podcast on Tuesday. You were referencing Matthew 28 when it comes to talking to someone who is anti-Trinitarian.

My boss is very anti-Trinitarian, and we have friendly debates pretty often. When I asked him the question, who gave Jesus the authority in heaven and on earth? He responded with God. But it implies that at one point Jesus did not have authority.

Therefore, he is not God. I did not have a response to his answer and was hoping that you could help me. Thank you. And God bless. Well, that sounds like a completely different problem than a person who is simply Unitarian, who believes that God is one person.

Oh, right. Who or and they perhaps might be modalist, that he manifests himself as a father or a son or a Holy Spirit. That doesn't sound like to be your boss's problem. It sounds like that he rejects the divinity of Christ.

And so that's a completely different problem. First, John two twenty two says who is the liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ and Christ is reference to the Messiah, who is God. So calling Jesus Christ is not I mean, it's calling him God.

He is no less than God when you refer to to Jesus as Christ. So who is the liar? But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist. He who denies the father and the son. And I'm going to articulate that again, just in case I said it wrong.

So to call Jesus Christ is the same as calling him God, to call him the son of God. You are calling him no less than God. Jesus reference to himself as the son of man is also a reference to his divinity.

Son of God, son of man is is basically to say that Jesus was very God and very man. He is God incarnate. That is the reference to son of man. So you have the passage in Philippians chapter two, the hymn of Christ, in which Paul says Christ was in the form of God, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God is highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.

The father, John says the following first John chapter five, we know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true in his son, Jesus Christ.

He is the true God and eternal life. And one more John chapter one, verse 18, no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father's side, which would be the son he has made him known. So Jesus is God, but he has submitted to the will of his father is talked about there in Philippians chapter two, uh, and has willingly submitted to the will of his father.

So the authority that he has has been granted to him by the father. And this is why we have a reference to Christ as being the firstborn in Colossians chapter one, all things have been given to him by the father.

So the authority that he has is by God, the father whom Christ is willingly submitted to. So he is no less than God, but he has willfully submitted to the father's will, uh, just as we, as the church are supposed to submit to Christ because Christ has submitted to the father and has done all things to the glory of the father.

It was, was stated there in Philippians two 11. So we likewise as imitators of Christ should do all things to the glory of God. So, uh, anyway, I hope that that helps you out a little bit, Daryl. It sounds like the problem is less that he denies Trinity, although that definitely is the situation, but it's not the same thing as when you would respond to somebody as Unitarian sounds like he just straight up denies the divinity of Christ.

So those are some of the passages to help you out. First John five 20, first John two 22.

What else?

I read John one 18 and especially Philippians chapter two, verses five.

Through 11.

Uh, Daryl, I'm going to be sending you the book divinity of Christ. It is one of the essential doctrines books that I have put together. There's nine in that series. I haven't gotten them all done yet, but divinity of Christ is the first in that series.

You can find it at our website, www .utt .com click on bookstore. And those books are available for $3 and 25 cents. I'm going to email Daryl, get his name and address. And I'll be sending that one to you for free.

Everybody else, you got to go to the bookstore.

All right.

Last question here. This one comes from Micah, dear pastor Gabe and Becky. My name is Micah. I'm emailing from the great state of Texas, specifically from Texas A &M university in parentheses. I know you hear it often, but your podcast ministry is such a blessing.

And the foundation that you have in the word is a breath of fresh air in modern times. Uh, we do receive it a lot, but I still appreciate it. Micah, we get hate mail too. So it's always good to hear. It's so nice to, it's good to hear the positive stuff.

Thank you.

Uh, my question, I am 20 years. I'm a 20 year old Christian reformed Baptist. And ever since arriving at college in fall, 2016, I have been increasingly exposed to and troubled by the beliefs of certain friends and individuals that I know who profess Christianity.

One common thread that I find in talking with these individuals is the practice of listening for God to respond in prayer. Every time I try to dig deeper and ask them to expound, they respond with anything from, Oh, it just takes practice to just beating around the bush once and for all.

Could you explain what people who hold these beliefs are looking for in a response from God and what their criteria are during prayer for validating a response? I have included a helpful picture example below taken from the teaching documents of a disciple now weekend that I attended.

So basically, uh, if we're supposed to be praying and waiting for God to listen, or I'm sorry, if we're, if we're praying and listening for God to respond to us in prayer, what is it that these individuals who believe that are looking for?

It's the very exact same thing that Sarah young does with Jesus calling. She, and she details that how she would pray and wait for God to respond. And she wrote down what she would hear. And so those are the words of Jesus calling, which have been revised.