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The Fall, Scripture, and the Nature of Truth
All right, we're on live. Okay, it's a lot of work to get this going. I gotta be an expert at everything. And I'm very good at being obnoxious, my wife says. All right, let's pray. Lord, thank you for today.
And I ask, Lord, that you would bless this evening, that you would bless the time that we're gonna have here together, and that you would be glorified in our examination of the truth of your word. Please, Lord, open up our hearts and our minds to your truth, open up your word to us, that we might learn, be grounded in who you are, so that we might be able to answer unbelievers, as well as teach believers.
We thank you for this opportunity to study your word, Lord. We ask this in your precious name, amen. All right, so last week, we were discussing the issue of a little bit of truth, a little bit on the Trinity again, right?
Remember the last part we kind of were at? Because we've covered a lot of stuff. And so what I'm thinking about now is, because I wanna get into the issue of truth, and the fall of man, and scripture.
And so they're kind of interrelated, and hopefully what we'll do is we'll see, see how they're interrelated. So if you wanna turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter three, I'm gonna go through some stuff here, and I'm gonna be taking some tangents.
And I'll tell you that I've never taught this, this way before. So bear with me, if it doesn't come out exactly clear the first time. But Genesis chapter three, we're gonna go in a little bit. And by the way, Charlie, if something goes wrong, just phone me, okay?
So Genesis three, one. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed has God said, you shall not eat from the tree of the garden.
All right, now that statement right there, has God said, that means that what is happening is, that Satan is causing, or introducing the idea of the doubt of God's word and God's truth. Now this is gonna relate to scripture, tradition, and some other things.
And I'm gonna talk about how far and deep I wanna get into this. Now, Satan was in the presence of God. He was a created being, and some think he's the greatest created thing. Because if you go to Isaiah 14, 12 through 14, first, I mean, Ezekiel, I think it's 38 or 37.
Oh, it's been a while. 12 through 16, it talks about Satan being a beautiful and timbrels being part of his makeup. And Isaiah 14, excuse me, it talks about the five I wills of Satan. I will raise myself up, I will, I will, I will.
Now, the first thing that Satan does, in his evil deception, is to doubt the word of God. Now this is important, because you gotta understand something. God's word is true, because it's God's word. Now, some people might think that that's tautologous.
Well, it's just true because it's true? Yes. Since there's nothing greater than God, there is no ultimate authority besides God. This is an important thing. Because a lot of times, unbelievers want to act in a manner that's contrary to the word of God.
They wanna act in a manner of what we call autonomy. Now, what we talked about before in the past few weeks is the issue of God's existence and his society, his eternal existence from what he was, what he is, he will always be, Malachi 3, 6 talks about this.
And he knows all things actual as well as potential. All things that do exist and all things that potentially could exist. And out of it, let's just assume an infinite number of potentialities God brought into an existence, a set number of one actuality and potentials within that actuality, but he's ordained it, Ephesians 1, 11.
He works all things after the counsel of his will. So this means that God is a necessary precondition for everything, including truth. So God is a necessary foundation for all that exists, including evil.
Now explain what you mean here. But all morality, logic, truth, evidence, anything, our existence, the light, the cameras, me, us here sitting here, all of it ultimately relates back to God. Because every event has a cause.
Everything that comes into existence is caused to come into existence. So if every event has a cause, then what we understand is that our existence, the event that brought us here and that event that led to that, before that, before that, ultimately goes back to the final cause of who God is.
So all events and all things in existence ultimately prove God's existence. And the reason that they do, all events, all truths, all events, period. The thing I'm sitting in, driving a car, ultimately proves God exists because all events ultimately go back to the single uncaused cause, that foundation of existence, who is God.
So all things stand, except for God himself, all things stand in causal relationship to God. Okay? So an unbeliever, what they'll do is they'll come in and they want to act autonomously. They want to say, no, all things don't stand in causal relationship with God.
In fact, what they're going to say is that they can decide for themselves what is true. They can decide for themselves where we came from. The Big Bang, there's problems with the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, all this stuff, galaxy clusters, and anyway, there's problems with Big Bang, there's problems with evolution, there's problem with abiogenesis, there's problems, problems, problems.
But what they do is they seek autonomy from God. I'm focusing on this for a reason. They want autonomy from God so that they can be the ones who decide what is true. So autonomy from God is ultimately sinful.
We have to ask ourselves as Christians, how autonomous are we in relationship to God? How autonomously do we behave in relationship to God? Do we? It's just a serious question we've got to ask. All right, anyway.
So when Satan says to Eve, did God really say, what he is doing is saying that God, who is the necessary precondition for all intelligibility, for all truth, for all facts, all actualities, he's saying to Eve, I want you to think independently of God's truth and not rely on God's truth, but rely on your own understanding.
In other words, be autonomous to God, act in an autonomous manner. And you will be able to decide for truth on your own. This is the entrance of humanism. It's the entrance of atheism. Now, and I'll explain how.
In humanism, it's man-centeredness. Man is the one who determines what is true, what is ultimate. We can get back to the ultimacy. What is ultimate and what is the foundation. It's atheistic in the sense that they're here, even though they know God exists, did God really say, but they're atheistic in the sense that what they're doing is trying to act independently of God, which is what atheism is.
It's a desire and a practice of not having God as part of the explanatory equation. So they'll say God doesn't exist, or we don't acknowledge that he exists, because agnosticism is a subdivision of atheism.
And so we're gonna say that God does not occupy any place in our explanation of any phenomenon. Period. So the idea of atheism ultimately is autonomy. So it's similar to what happened to Genesis three, did God really say?
It's an atheistic humanistic kind of a mentality. And in this comes all kinds of philosophical opinions and derivations. So let's go on with the text a little bit further. Now, the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, verse three, but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.
Now, that is not true, because God did not say or touch it. So the first thing that happens in verse one is the word of God is doubted, and then Eve modifies the word of God. Now, there's no place in scripture that says that Eve heard the word of God, but God gave the word to Adam, presumably Adam told Eve.
And this is all consistent with biblical authority and things like that. So what she did was she modified it. Now, why she modified it, don't know. But he didn't say or touch it, God says, don't eat. So if the principle one is the doubting of God's word, oh, it's quit.
And principle two is, this is not gonna work, because, oh man, that's bad. Maybe one of you could just sit there and all you gotta do is turn it around, close it, open it. And where are you going? Gonna get something?
So yeah, apparently the camera now times out. So we're gonna have just someone periodically reopen it. So that's what's happening. We'll figure it out. Technology, I need some camera experts. So I'm having to teach myself everything.
So in Genesis chapter three, verse three, the modification of God's word. So the first thing that happens is God's word is doubted. And the next thing, God's word is altered. And this is serious, it's a problem.
The serpent said, you shall not die, verse four. So what happens here is the word of God now is contradicted. Well, I know how to do that. I know what to do. I just know what to do. One sec, I know how to make it so it won't come off.
I have to hit record and then I can delete it later. Okay, good, got it. All right. All right. And then we'll keep it going. Solve it. Well, there's something I said that Dave had to take off. It was, you know, he, yeah, probably was.
Usually is the case. All right. We got to solve, Dave. I figured out how to make it, I got to record. What'd you get your glasses? A pen? We got pens in the drawer. All right, okay. All right, so that was really good too.
Too bad you missed it. Yeah, it was one of the best things ever. All right, so verse four, you surely shall not die. So what happens is in verse one, the word of God is doubted. In verse three, the word of God is modified.
And verse three, verse four, the word of God is contradicted. Now, this may, you may say, okay, that's fine. We understand the principles, but you got to understand more than that. What is happening here is the very foundation of truth is being contradicted.
This ultimately is a very great sin because it's saying that God is not the ultimate truth. Now, everybody's going to have an ultimate. You can't have two ultimates. There's a single ultimate. And let me talk about this.
So my ultimate source of truth is God himself. God is the ultimate. What would be an ultimate for an atheist, for example? Himself. Himself, or society, or evolution, or as some like to say, I talk to a lot of atheists who are heavy into philosophy, and they want to argue with me on philosophical terms, epistemological issues, deontological issues.
What is, think of Hume's thing. What do you think of Spinoza's thing? What do you think of this? Like, oh man. And they're, I mean, just take a tree, turn it upside down, and you have all these subdivisions and all these classes.
They want me to know all of them, to argue with them who study these things. It's really tough, okay? But this is what is the fruit of the independence of God and the desire for people who desire to be independent of God.
This is what's happening. And it's an attack on the character of God. It's an attack on the truth of God. It's an attack on the word of God. Now, in Matthew 12, 34, Jesus says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
That means that out of what's in your heart, you speak. Now, we're made in the image of God, Genesis 1, 26. So when God spoke, we can relate to the speech because it's an attribute of God. The first thing God spoke was, let there be light, a creative thing of light.
It's out of the character of his essence of his heart to create light. Which, if we go to John 1, verses one through three, and following that area, Jesus is called the light of the world. And the light came into the world and the world loved darkness.
This is what's going on. If you were to go to Genesis 3, you see this. And if you go to John 1, let's go there really quickly, you're gonna see the parallel. Because in Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, God created.
In John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word. And in Genesis 1, 1 and 2, it says, let there be light. All right? But here, what it says is, in the beginning was, in John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into life, come into being. In him was life and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. So, notice what's going on here. John is relating to the issues out of Genesis 1, that God said, let there be light. And John is playing off of this beginning, this entrance thing.
But the idea here of light and Jesus is the light and Jesus says he's the truth. Jesus is a representation of God, right? Exact representation, Hebrews 1 .3. All right, so we go back to Genesis where we see this issue of what's going on with the word.
This is a serious issue. A lot of Christians don't get it. A lot of unbelievers are gonna get it. Christians don't get it. How seriously should we take the word of God? Now, when we open up, you know, I get that Bible right there and if I were to put, hold my hand here, you got a Bible, you got a Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible.
We all have Bibles and I like to say this, when I'm preaching sometimes and it comes up and I'll say, this is the infinite word of God. This word right here that you hold in your hands is the revelation of God that was ordained from the foundation of the universe.
Its depth, its truth, everything in it is magnificent and true and we need to study it. It is not something to consider. It is not something we weigh. It is something before which we submit because it is the word of God.
So when God speaks, you've got who knows all things because of his character. If he knows everything that does exist and he does, God knows all things, 1 John 3, 20. If he knows all things, then whatever he says is true.
Now, sometimes people will come to me and they'll say, well, how do you know God is good? The atheists, they're gonna doubt God's word, they're gonna doubt his character. And basically a response to that is give you guys a little bit of a hint is whatever God is, he also does not possess the opposite.
If he's good, he's not also not good. It doesn't make any sense. So whatever good quality, whatever quality God possesses, it's the negation of the contrary. So if God is good, he cannot also be not good or evil.
So God, he's gonna do one essence and one thing at a time, that's what he is. So they'll say, how do you know that God is true? How do you know he's not evil? Because it's logical impossibility that he would be.
We would say that God is a necessary precondition for all intelligibility, that God is the one who is a necessary precondition for truth and morality. And because whatever he says is true, because it's his nature that whatever he says is true.
Now, what is truth? Now, let's get into this. We're gonna get into some more in Genesis three here a little bit, but what is truth? There are different theories on what truth is. Let me get to some of my notes.
I got a lot of notes. I had to cut this down from about 50 pages of material. Yeah, and then I dropped it a little bit. And so I got to find out what the page is on the word truth here. So if you don't mind, I'm just going through this slowly and the issue of knowledge, we'll get in there, different kinds of knowledge and truth.
And then there's laws of truth. Okay, so I know what the truth is already. I'm just going to say, I want to get some lists because there are different kinds of truth that people go with. And it's called the correspondence theory of truth.
The correspondence theory of truth is that truth is whatever corresponds to reality. So you make a statement like I'm holding these papers. Well, it's a statement that is true because it corresponds with actuality.
So therefore that's the correspondence theory of truth. Okay, I'm trying to find it. I got a whole list of stuff. I don't know where it is. I've got so many pages and I dropped it. It's okay. We'll try here.
Okay, there we go. So I'm going to get to the Christian theory of truth last and you'll see why it makes so much sense. So the consensus theory of truth is that truth is what is dependent upon what's agreed upon by a group of people.
So the consensus, excuse me, the consensus theory is, well, we all agree it's true, therefore it's true. That's obviously faulty. Linguistic theory, the linguistic theory of truth states that truth is a product of language.
That and propositions are truth carriers or bearers of truth and it gets more complicated. But propositions are not necessarily abstractions. It gets weird. Then there's a pragmatic theory of truth, which states that truth is what can be tested and functionally validated as being true.
Now there's a problem with that. Because science, a lot of people think science is how you determine truth. So we'll talk about science a little bit. We're gonna get back to some other issues of truth because it rests in the mind of God.
So science is conditional. And what it does is it provides information, but you don't know if the information it's providing is absolutely true. Just because something works doesn't mean it's true. So an analogy I give is there's a path along a cliff.
I mean, it's 1 ,000 feet long. And to the left, it's a drop off, you're dead. And to the right, say 10 feet or so, is a forest. And it's just this 10 foot path for 1 ,000 feet. And this man is walking along and a tiger is in the forest and jumps out at the man to attack him.
The man ducks and the tiger goes over the cliff. The man has a theory of truth. All I have to do when a tiger jumps at me is duck and I'll be saved. Because it happened once. So he goes along 100 feet later and a second tiger jumps at him, he ducks.
Now he's testing his theory. Tiger goes over the cliff. It works. He does it a third time, it's verified. Now, of course, this is an obvious flaw. But you see, just because something works doesn't mean it's true.
Because what we do is we develop what's called facts and truth statements. And these things can only exist in the context of other things. For a Christian, it has to be that it exists in the context of God's existence and God's mind.
We have to understand that God who knows all things is the one who gave us this interesting concept, truth. The truth is found in here, in the Word of God. And because it's in the Word of God, we are obligated to believe what God says.
And the unbeliever is obligated to believe what the Word of God says too. Because it's the nature of God's truth, because it reflects God's character, and God is the ultimate standard of what is true and ultimate standard of what is good, then therefore, all unbelievers, as well as believers, are obligated to believe what God says.
Now, this is interesting because it's true. Isaiah 55, 11 says God's Word will not come back empty without accomplishing what God desires. So God's Word is powerful. And the gospel is the power of God to salvation, Romans 1, 16.
So when we speak the Word of God, we're speaking the truth of God, and the Word of God has power. If you listen to me on the radio, and I'm talking someplace, I'll quote the references. And I do this because I want people to check what I say.
Not to impress people, I want you to check, because this is the Word of God. Go look at God's Word. I want people to go look at the Word. Find out what I'm saying. Check what I'm saying against the Word of God.
In Acts 17, 11, Paul and Silas were preaching and teaching, and the Bereans checked even what they said against the Word of God. And that was the Old Testament at that time. The Word of God, the scriptures, when you hold this in your hand, you are holding the Word of God.
This is why when preachers get up, they should preach out of the Word of God, and not out of their experience, and not out of their whims, not out of their fanciful ideas, and not have a 20-minute illustration and two minutes of scripture.
They should go to the Word of God, let the power of the Word of God speak. But when people doubt the Word of God, they're doubting the power of the Word of God. Unbelievers do that, and believers do it as well.
And you can see this in the pulpit. You can see it in the pulpit when you go there, and it might be a five, 10, 15-minute illustration before they get to God's Word. They don't believe in the power of the Word of God, do they?
They don't believe it. I went to a church, we went to that church down about five, six months ago, and we went there, and the gym kind of a thing was cement floor and whatever. I don't know if you remember that.
But we had to go off the street, that little road inside. I remember it took seven minutes before the pastor there quoted scripture. Seven minutes, like, what's this? Why are you taking so long to get to the Word of God?
And then we went to another church the next week, which happened to be a Reformed church, which I like Reformed theology. And it took like two or three minutes to get to the Word of God. When I preach, what I do, you heard me preach, right?
I say, turn in your Bibles too. Let's go to the Word. Let's go to the Word. And then I say, this is what the Word says. Now, let's talk about the Word. Now, here we go. So the Word of God is the launching pad of truth.
Not my faith, not my explanations, not my feelings, not my story to prepare you to receive the Word of God, as though an illustration is gonna be the thing that opens your heart and your mind to understand the difficult Word of God's truth.
Well, screw that. The Word of God needs to be preeminent and prominent in all preaching and teaching. Furthermore, there needs to be Christocentric historical redemptive. It's Christ-centered because Jesus is the way, the truth, the life.
Nobody comes to the Father but by Him, John 14, six. And Acts 20, 28 says that we are bought with the blood of God or purchased with a great price. Jesus is the reason that we are even elected. In Ephesians one, four through five, before the foundation of the world, God chose us in Christ, in Him.
We went over this before last week, I think. But this is talking about the election of God is in Christ. So even before the foundation of the world, even before the universe was created, we were already chosen in Christ, the term of federal headship, which we've already gone over.
And so this is because of Christ. Our redemption is because of Christ. The fact of us sitting here is because of Christ. If we're in church and we're hearing a sermon preached, it needs to be Christocentric.
Ultimately, it needs to be Christocentric. Now, when I was in seminary, my professor, Dave Scheringa, I just, he and I are friends now. We talk every now and then. He's a great guy. He kept me in seminary.
It's a very difficult seminary. Oh, man. At any rate, I could not understand this preaching. And he gave me a text, 2 Chronicles 20. In 2 Chronicles 20, basically what it was, was the Jebusites, the Gesuntites, and a bunch of other ites are coming down, and they were going to destroy the people of Israel.
And there were only 300 Israelites, and these armies, they're gonna come. And God said, don't worry, the battle's not yours, the battle's mine. And then he caused them to fight each other, and they were routed, they were destroyed.
Now, why did God say, in the Old Testament, in Chronicles, in Israel, why did he say, the battle's not yours, it's mine? Because it was an act of the enemy through his people, to attempt to destroy the people of God, through whom the Messiah was to come.
Therefore, that attack was an attack on Christ, is the prophecy of him coming through the Messianic line, through Israel, and ultimately attack on us sitting here, because without a Redeemer, we're dead, we're damned.
So God says, not your battle is mine. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is because, this is the historical redemptive approach. History points us to the cross, and everything after, we look back to the cross.
Everything is about that cross, because the cross is the truth of God, and the power where the word of God became one of us, and bore our sins, which is breaking the word of God. So sin is breaking the law of God, which is a reflection of the character of God.
God says, thou shalt not lie. If you lie, you've broken his word. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. God said that there be light, and the word, Jesus, is the light among men. There's a lot of double plays on words here.
We have to understand, this word that you hold here is true. This word here is true, and so it needs to hold a place of truth in our hearts. It's not something we just study. It's something that becomes part of us, and guides us.
It's something that we should teach ourselves from and through and by, because it's the word of God. So let's get back to Genesis 3. So when we go back to Genesis 3, what we're seeing is the word of God is doubted, indeed.
Has God said? This is what people do outside the church. Has God really said it? And inside the church. And one of the ways they do it inside of the church is, last night I was talking to God, and he told me, blah, blah, blah.
Let me tell you about this. And for 1995, I'll send you a prayer cloth, because he told me to tell you about this, okay? False prophets and deceivers go out into the world. They're not trusting in God's word, but in their own word, and the sensationalism to try and get others to bow to them through the doubting of God's word, because if they really believe in the power of God's word, it would be the central thing that they would be preaching and teaching.
Not seed-faith money to get, you give it to me, I get a new car, I get a new plane, and you'll get blessed. The centrality is on themselves, not on the word of God. The serpent said, you shall not die, the contradiction of the word of God.
You know, we have Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, and other heretics teaching things that are just heretical, and I've gone over this before. Now, Genesis 3, 5, for God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.
Now, who's doing the teaching here? Satan, Satan's teaching Eve. Now, incidentally, in the Mormon temple ceremony, you go into the temple, after you've paid a full year's tithe income to the church, you get white garments, you go into the temple, you're given a green apron string, apron, it's like about like this, and it's in front of here, and so it has a little fabric comes out like this, it's about that big, comes out like this, and you put it here and you tie it around your back, but it's in a bag first, and you go into the temple and they see films, they see various things, and they go into a place where there's an actor, a film, an actor playing the devil, an actor playing Satan, an actor playing Jesus, an actor playing a preacher, and the devil makes a deal with the preacher to teach that God is Trinitarian and God's without parts and passions, and he'll get paid, okay, and the preacher says, okay, he agrees with the devil to do this, so it's a mockery of the truth, but at any rate, Adam says to Satan, what's that apron you have on?
It's an exact copy of the green one that they have, except his is, I think, black or very dark color, and he says, it's a symbol of my priesthood and authority, or priesthood and powers, and then the film stops and the Mormons are told to take their fig leaf aprons and put them on.
After Satan says it's a symbol of his priesthood, this fig leaf apron's a symbol of his priesthood and authority, they're instructed to put theirs on. What they're doing is joining themselves with Satan.
A lot of Mormons leave Mormonism at this point, and a lot of them stay, and incidentally, the reason I brought this up is because in the Mormon temple ceremony, when Adam is asking questions, Satan's the one that's constantly answering and teaching, just like here.
For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, go back to Genesis 2 .17, and God says to Adam, from the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die.
Did they die when he ate it? Yeah, he did dead, because he said he would. That's just spiritual death, right? All right. And so the serpent said, you will not die. Direct contradiction. The dying is due to not believing the word of God.
Now, verse six. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was desirable to make one walk, and that's why she took from its fruit and ate. She gave it to her husband with her, and he ate.
And the eyes of both of them were opened, for they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin covers. Now, verse six. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, she's seeing and she's desiring, or she's basing what is good on what her own inner desires are.
There was a delight to the eyes that was pleasing to what she was seeing. Another fleshly thing. The tree was, make one wise, and she took from its fruit, delight to the eyes and desire to make one wise.
So self-exaltation of knowledge, not depending on God's knowledge and God's wisdom, but your own wisdom and your own knowledge. This is what's going on when the word of God is doubted, when the word of God is contradicted.
We have to be very careful that we don't do that kind of a thing as well. Again, it's why I quote the references so many times, because I want people to go to the word of God. I want you to go to the scriptures.
The eyes of both of them were opened. They knew that they were naked. Why were they suddenly naked? One theory is that as Moses in Exodus 3 was in the presence of God when he came down, his face was shining and it had to dissipate.
Some people think that Adam and Eve were clothed in the presence of God's light, and that when they sinned, it disappeared, and they wanted to clothe themselves. Complete conjecture, but it's just fun to say, and maybe it's the case, but maybe not.
And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. So when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, Lord God among the trees of the garden, the Lord called to the man and said to him, where are you?
Didn't call, say to the woman. Didn't say to the man and woman, but to the man, because of federal headship, we've gone over this before. And I was naked. Who told you you were naked? And it says, what have you done?
A serpent deceived me. God said to the serpent, now he's gonna find a place, and I will multiply childbirth pain. You've eaten of this, thorns and thistles, sweat of your face. And so he covered him with animal skins.
Now, I'm trying to find that exact verse, but that's all right, it's there. So he covered him with animal skins. Now, you gotta understand something. They made with their own hands, their own works, fig leaves that covered them.
Incidentally, back to the Mormon temple ceremony, it's a fig leaf apron. It is so blatantly satanic, but they are so void of understanding, because they don't believe the word of God. We'll get into some stuff in Catholicism, too, about what its traditions, they elevate to the level of God's word.
But so the fig leaves are symbols of their own efforts and their own works, which are rejected by God, and the blood atoning work was given by God who provided animal skins, and the one who was in that garden was Jesus.
And we call this a protoangelium, the first mention of the gospel. This is what it was in the Bible, in the first place. All right, now, so we have this word. So let's talk about just facts and truth a little bit.
Every fact exists in a context. And this is something to think about. Every fact exists in a context. There is no fact that has no context. So let's do a mind exercise. Let's say there's nothing in the universe, just nothing.
What is nothing? Nothing is what rocks think of, nothing, except a carbon sphere. Is it true there's a carbon sphere there? Now, let me help you out a little. There's no one there to see it, and we're not allowed to say that's really there, because this is a thought exercise.
Is it really there? Well, we said it was, but is it true that there was? Well, if there's no minds, there could be no truths. And we say that there's a carbon sphere that exists. What we're saying is there's a thing called carbon and a sphere in a place called nothing.
And we could then say, like a word game here, well, what you're saying is true, that it's there. It's an exercise. Yes, it exists, in a sense, in the context of the facts that we're talking about. There's a place called nothing, a sphere, which you understand what it is, made of carbon, where nothing else is supposed to be.
Even the idea of trying to construct something where a fact is by itself is basically impossible. Make sense? It just doesn't, it's not coherent to do that, to say the fact can exist by itself. And a fact, some people call a fact a true state of affairs.
What's a fact? I'm holding this paper in my hand. Okay, it's a fact, right? Because it corresponds to actuality. Well, if it does, but why is the paper here and how do we know what paper is and everything and the ultimate source?
What people want to do is have themselves be the ultimate source of truth. They want themselves to be the ultimate source of truth. Now, as Christians, we gotta be careful that we don't become guilty of that very thing.
I'll tell you, it's easy to do. I know, I struggle with it, because I think, oh, I know this, I know that, I know this, I don't need to study the word of God. And of course, God has his way of doing the holy slap, and showing me, well, you blew that again, and et cetera.
I don't have all knowledge, I don't have all wisdom, and God has never considered my advice in anything. It just doesn't happen, because God is the ultimate source of all truth. Anything that exists, exists because God exists, and truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God.
Truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God, since he knows all things, whatever he states is ultimately true. The only way to know something's absolutely true is if an absolute being gives you a statement, says he knows all things.
Therefore, Jesus, who is the ultimate being, says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father but through me, John 14, six. Therefore, we have an absolute truth that we can know.
Another absolute truth we can know is that in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God. We can know an absolute truth that God said, in the beginning, God said, let there be light.
We just know that's the truth, because God said it, because it's the nature of his essence who is all places at all times, who does not grow in understanding. He's the ultimate source of everything, not the direct source, what we call the efficient cause of evil.
We've gone over this before, ultimate, proximate, and efficient cause. He is the one who is the necessary precondition for anything and everything that exists, including truth. Now, for some people, this might be too cerebral.
Well, why are you spending so much time on the nature of truth? We get it, because we need to know what truth is. We need to know that truth rests in the mind of God, that truth can be only understood in light of God's character, his essence, and his revelation.
We have three revelations that we deal with, the revelation of creation, the revelation of the word, and the revelation of Jesus. Jesus is the personification of the truth of God in human flesh, and so whatever he says is always true.
Whatever he says is always true. So when you read, for example, the red letters of the gospels, you can do that sometime. It's kind of interesting to do. Just read the red letters and see what he says.
And you say, okay, and you read it quickly. I've done this before. You just go through and just get the gist of what he's saying with the next red, next red, next red. Sometimes the context doesn't work.
You don't get the context, you can't quite understand. That's okay, keep going. And you start seeing that he makes authoritative statements. He speaks authoritatively. He just says, this is how it is.
Doesn't say the words, this is how it is, but this is how it is because he's God. He speaks exactly as though it were true that he is the truth. Muhammad doesn't do that. Other prophets don't do that.
People just don't do that kind of a thing. Only Jesus does that. He says, I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. Muhammad says all kinds of stuff. He contradicts himself, he says stupid things. The Quran is full of crap.
We can do a study sometime on Islam and teach you guys about that. We have prophets who want to support their own ministries, their own efforts, their own things, and they point to themselves. Now, this is something that's really important.
One of the ways to determine whether someone is true or false is how much they point to Christ. The more someone points to Christ and his work, the more true he most probably is. Now, some weasels can ultimately quote Jesus trying to be true, and there's fake people, we get that.
But there are those who will say things that are quite bad. So there's a church, a life church off of Eagle, okay? And years ago, someone asked me on the radio about him, and I went back, I had a station here.
And so what I did was I went and researched the preacher. And within four or five minutes, I heard him say this. Your words have more power in your life than the words of God, okay? Now, that is a flaming heresy, because God's speech and God's word is by nature truth.
To say your words have more power than God's words is to say that your word is equal, if not superior to the very word of God. That man is not qualified to be a pastor, flat out. Back on the today in the radio, I said, that a man called up or a woman called up and said, well, there's this woman who wants to preach, give them the message on Mother's Day, which is Sunday, but give a Mother's Day message.
And because it's Mother's Day and the pastor's gonna let her. And I said, well, he's wrong for doing that, because it's an authoritative preaching thing in a church context. I said, for the most part, I said, he's not qualified to be a pastor.
He doesn't know the truth. Now, it could be that he's ignorant, which is a serious problem. But once the word of God is presented to him what Paul says, and I went through the scriptures, then he should know that.
And if he's not willing to acknowledge that, then he's not qualified to be a pastor, period. He shouldn't be one. Now, people say, well, Matt, how can you be so condemning? Well, you know, I can be condemning because I'm gonna tell you something.
I don't think you've ever seen this, Joe. This thing right here, I'm gonna pull this out. I don't think you've ever seen this. See, Joe gave me this, okay? Whoa, hey, look at that. So, this, I love these little, okay, what's going on here?
Have you oiled it lately? No, I haven't oiled it. So this is a very sharp knife. I gotta be careful. And so it's a very sharp knife. And because it's very sharp, I can, it's got a very sharp point on it.
I can really do a lot of fine detail work in cutting something, all right? There we go. And so the sharper your knife, the sharper your sword, the more detail you can discern between truth and error. So some people think, you know, Matt, you're very arrogant.
True. I mean, what am I gonna say? No, I'm humble. What are you talking about? I'm humble. It doesn't work, you know? They say you're prideful, arrogant, stupid, covetous. Yeah, yeah, I'll claim them all, okay?
But one thing is, is what I'm saying the truth? Because a lot of times what people will do is they ignore the word of God by condemning someone else's character and actions. Whether or not I am a liar or not a liar or arrogant or not arrogant, has no bearing on whether or not the word of God is true.
People often don't want the truth of God's word because the truth of God's word is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. And I say to people, sometimes bring your toes and I'm gonna step on them. Not on purpose, but bring them because we're gonna be going over the word of truth.
If you don't like it, that's between you and God. I'm telling you what it says, not just your interpretation. But let's go over interpretations. Let's go over and look and see what it says. Let's do this.
People often don't want the word of God. They want what they feel, what they want, what they desire. It happens a lot in marriage. I should teach on the theology of marriage sometime, which I don't like doing because I always kick my own rear.
There's certain things about the theology of marriage I'm not real fond of. Loving my wife when she's not lovable, sacrificing for when I wanna be more catered to, you know, all those things that we men sometimes fail at.
But it's true. Whether I like it or not has no bearing on what is true. So because the truth of God's word was ignored in Genesis 3, the fall of man occurred. The fall of man. Now, Isaiah 59, two says your sins have caused a separation between you and God.
Romans 6, 23, the wages of sin is death. Ezekiel 18, four, the soul that sins shall die. Genesis 2, 17, God says, the day that you eat of the fruit, you will die. Death, the physical death is the manifestation of spiritual death, which occurs when you break the word of God.
So sin is breaking the word of God. First John 3, 20. I mean, excuse me, first John 3, four. Sin is breaking the word of God. So God in Exodus 20, one through 17, the 10 commandments said, don't lie, for example.
So if we lie, we're breaking the word of God. We have sinned, first John 3, four, and therefore the wages of sin is death. We are dead, Romans 6, 23, and separated from God, Isaiah 59, two. When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid themselves in the garden and covered themselves.
It's the nature of sin. So I say to people, are you close to God? If you, the closer you are to God, the more you wanna be with him. But if you're doing bad things, you wanna hide from him. You hide from him because it can become difficult.
I remember once I learned that forgiveness, God doesn't forget, but he forgives. He says, he'll remember your sins no more. Well, remembering is an action. Forgetting is something, is passive. You know, where'd my car keys go?
I forget where they, I didn't sit there and go, oh, there, I forgot them. It doesn't happen on purpose, happens on accident. God remembers our sins no more. That means he doesn't bring them up. He can't forget them because he's omniscient.
And the truth of God's word got in the way once when I was with my wife arguing years ago. I said, I remember this. And whatever, I don't remember what it was about, doesn't really make any difference.
But she came to me at one point and said, will you forgive me for such and such? I didn't wanna do that. Didn't wanna forgive her. Because if I did, then according to the word of God, I couldn't bring it up again.
I wasn't done bringing it up. And you know, we struggle with our stupidity. That's a pretty good example of stupidity. But I believe the word, and yet didn't wanna submit to the word. Because then it would mean I have to be nice.
I didn't wanna be nice. Oh, you know, oh man, we are so foolish. So the word, what it does is it brings us to a place of awareness of our own selves. And when we study the word, it talks about goodness and holiness, which reside in the character of God.
Then what we understand is that when we face that word, we're facing ourselves because the word is a light and the light shines in our hearts and teaches us what we're not doing. And I don't like it. That's why I prefer to teach it than rather live it.
It's easier to do that in my hypocrisy. It's a lot easier to be a hypocrite and tell you what to do than actually do it myself. Well, the problem is that God speaks to my heart and tap, tap, tap, tap, you know, that one side of your heart.
And you just go, okay, I give, I give, I give. And you go take care of whatever he's gonna take care of. Okay, that's happened to me so many times in my life that now, as soon as I feel the tap, I go take care of it because I am tired of that little tapping in the corner of my heart of conviction.
I give and I'm submitting myself to the word more and more in that way. And I got, if I'd lived another thousand years, I'd still be working on it after a thousand years. Probably just get a good start about that time, what it means to be right.
You're obviously pretty close there. You're pretty far ahead. You're far ahead. You're far ahead. You have one person here who's older than me, that's all. So he's an ex-cop. I'm asking for trouble. So, okay, so what Adam and Eve did was didn't believe God for who he said he was.
They just didn't believe his word. And because of it, we have the fall, sin, murder, rape, extortion, lying, treachery. Now we live in a world where that is commonplace. We live in a world of humanistic ideology, which is man-centered, not God-centered.
They can't submit themselves to the word of God because the word of God to them is foolishness. Romans, I mean, 1 Corinthians 1 talks about this. They can't submit themselves. 1 Corinthians 2 .14 says that the unbeliever cannot understand or receive the things of God.
But we can. Now we are children of the light, which is why they are called the opposite, the children of the darkness. So what do we do in a world that we live in where light is considered darkness and darkness is considered light?
Isaiah 5 .20 says, "'Beware of those who call good evil and evil good.'". We live in a world where the truth of God's word is laughed at. I go into chat rooms. I'm on a thing called Discord. And I go in there and I will hear people.
I heard it last night, say the most vile things about Jesus. Just, I won't even begin to even hint. I was in a room last night and having a conversation and one guy get in, goes, you're Jesus. And then went on and I just left the room.
It was so bad. You wanna be there. There are people like that who hate Christ. They hate Christ because they love themselves. They hate Christ because they want themselves to be exalted. They hate the truth because they hate the light and they love darkness.
Theirs is the deeds of the flesh. Their deeds are evil and murder and rape and pillaging and drunkenness and carousing. But who are fruit, incidentally, Galatians 5 .22, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera.
There's nine. No, the word fruit in Greek is karpos, which is singular. Not karpoi, which is plural. The fruit, the one fruit of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Because when we're indwelt by the Lord, John 14 .23, we have the fruit of the spirit.
He indwells us. First John 2 .27, the anointing you have received by Zinu. That anointing is the Holy Spirit. He lives in us. We have the truth of God's word living in our hearts. And because of this, we're then able to live that truth.
But in so doing, we're in opposition to the world. Now, maybe some of you have heard this thing called Facebook. Maybe you've heard of this thing called Twitter. So what's happening and what has happened and what's happening on the leftist media, CNN, MSNBC, what we see is the sacrifice of truth.
This is important because we live in a world where they hate truth. Truth resides in the heart and the mind of God. And if you're a Christian, you believe that there's an absolute truth and we're responsible for the truth.
If you're a reporter on TV, and you're a Christian who believes in the truth of God's word, and that truth comes from God, and you are supposed to present something to people, you're obligated to present the truth.
But if you are not a Christian, then you're gonna serve ultimately yourself because that's the ultimate. You can't have two ultimates, God and yourself. One or other is gonna be above. So what they do is they sacrifice truth for an agenda because to them, they exalt an agenda to the level of the ultimate.
They don't submit themselves to God. So Facebook allows, for example, hypocrisy is a type of lying. Lying is a distortion of the truth. Hypocrisy is a distortion of the truth. Facebook has been documented to allow people and different groups along with Twitter, both of them have allowed groups to foment violence and speak of evil of people and doing harm.
And yet when President Trump said on January 6th, just go to the Capitol and didn't say do violence, they silenced him. Now, this is a problem, not because we like Trump or maybe you do or don't, I don't know, or I do or don't, whatever.
It's not the issue. The issue is the media doesn't care about truth. Now, this is important. I'm gonna give you an analogy in a small company. Truth is paramount and truth is costly and truth is uncomfortable.
Like I don't like the idea that I'm gonna die one day, but it's true. I don't like the idea that I'm getting older and slower. It's just true. True is inconvenience. Okay. Let's say that there's a company of, let's say, it doesn't matter, let's say, I don't know, 100 people.
You have a president and you have five main categories and five sub-presidents and they each are in charge of like 20 people. All right, 100 people total. And everybody tells the truth. Everybody believes that what they do is before God and they're honored to give good quality because it's true to do that.
It's good to do that because they answer to God. So this company, whatever it produces, produces its product without deception, without lies, right? So things change in the company and they get a new president in and he turns out to be a liar.
And truth is a commodity. So he cuts corners here and there and a few people under him find out about this and they also start compromising the truth and what they do is the same thing. Oh, a question.
How is that company going to survive? People are gonna find out they're liars, not gonna trust them. The quality is gonna plummet. This real simple analogy we see that when people lie or not truthful, there are consequences.
They're deleterious or hidden harmful effects. Not that practicality is what makes something truthful but just the idea. There's a truth. Now, we don't use that analogy as the reason for truth but when we talk to unbelievers, you can see that truth does, if you don't understand that God is the one who's true and that his word is true and you gotta submit to it, you're obligated to do that and you're gonna serve yourselves and ultimately, that is self-serving and self-refuting.
Ultimately, it is. If that's the case, how are you gonna go through life? And so when people don't believe God's word, what happens is things get worse. But anyway, there's a lot more I could talk about but I wanna see if you guys, my wife actually said, can you give them an opportunity to ask more questions?
So I'm gonna do that right now. You guys have any questions? And Charlie, if you want, you can text me questions in this side of the room. If people want. You know, you can text me on my phone if you want.
Take a little breather, head breather here. Hey look, DG Smith, I was gonna text you right when you walked in. Any comments or questions? You guys following what I was saying? What? Reasonably well. Reasonably well, okay.
All right, let's try something else then. I'm gonna show you something. Because we're talking about truth, okay, which emanates out of God. But go to Romans chapter one, verse 18. Last one there is a property dualist.
Maybe Charlie or Laura, if you guys are still, if there's any particularly interesting questions, whatever you wanna put them in the text, you can do that. Or maybe I could go on, whatever we can find out, no big deal.
Now Romans 1, 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They're suppressing truth. And in order to suppress truth, they have to do it in unrighteousness.
Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. Months ago, I was in a chat room having a discussion with an unbeliever. And he was a polite unbeliever. Some of them are obstreperous, okay, which means voicelessly recalcitrant, okay.
And this guy was not. He was, nor was he obsequious or obtuse. He was just actually kind of nice. And so he said, Matt, and it never does before. It's just one of those things. He said, Matt, I've heard what you said about all kinds of stuff.
We were talking for a while. He goes, what's your best evidence that God exists? I'm interested. I said, you are. He said, what? I said, yeah, you are. Because that which is known about God is evident within them.
Romans 1 .19. I said, the Bible says that you already know that God exists. The Bible is true. It's what you have done is suppress the truth of God in your unrighteousness, Romans 1 .18. You already know that there is something called right and wrong.
You know that there is an ultimate truth and that without ultimate truth, nothing really can ultimately make sense. I said, you know in your heart that there is a right, a wrong, a good, a bad. You understand this, even though you can't articulate why, but this is exactly what the scripture says.
And I said it better. It was one of those times when you can't believe you said it right, you know? And he paused and he said, well, you know, I've never thought of that. It was right there in the word of God.
And so all I did was presuppose the truth of the word of God. So when you debate, when you argue, and I mean argue, not yelling, screaming, throwing things. When you argue with someone, point, counterpoint.
Always presuppose the truth of God's word. Always just argue from that. So people will say to me, well, how do you know the Bible is true? God says it's true. I just meant to say that. They go, well, that's circular reasoning.
Yes. No. Circular reasoning means it's not true. How do you, you can't trust it. And I said, do you presuppose the laws of logic when you argue about circularity? Yes. Then you're being circular yourself.
So if you're going to complain to me about circularity, then you have to abandon your own circularity by arguing about it. But to do that, you can't argue. Everybody has to presuppose certain beliefs and conditions by which they argue.
We presuppose God's existence. They presuppose he doesn't exist and that truth can exist apart from him. But their reasoning ultimately is circular, as is ours, but theirs has no terminus. Ours does. They have no ultimate.
We do. So as I said before, all events are causally related to the single event of God's active creative work. So all truths are also related to God that way. Everybody will have a set of circularity that they argue from because it's a necessary condition.
You can't prove everything logically and evidentially because in order to do that, you have to presuppose certain things by which you use to prove them. How do you prove the idea of proving? We've got a problem.
Everybody's circular. The advantage we have as Christians is if we presuppose the truth of God's word, because it's emanating out of the heart of God, then what we're doing is arguing the same way that they would when they presuppose he doesn't exist.
But both those worldviews cannot coexist and they can't blend. One or the other is true. But when we argue our terminus is God, theirs they haven't won. When I'm being terminus is he's the necessary initial beginning.
He's the ultimate cause. But what's the ultimate cause in an atheist worldview for truth? Well, you see, my Aunt Margaret said that lying was wrong. That's why I believe it. So Aunt Margaret said it, right?
Yeah, that's how you know? Yeah, because she, you know, but. Well, I know she was right. Well, because it feels right. Well, I know your feelings are right. Well, because I kind of like it because I lied to someone once I got punched.
So then that's what's a standard of not getting punched. It doesn't make sense. You know, it's just all these kinds of arguments, just they just don't hold any water. And they don't have any ultimate.
I said, well, where does this come from? Now, what they'll often do is say they're axioms. An axiom, A-X-I-O-M. An axiom is a truth that is true because it's true. It's just a self-evident truth.
It's just axiomatic. You don't have to prove it's truth. I love that when atheists tell me that because what it admits is they have no foundation for truth. Remember, no facts exist by themselves. Even the fact, so to speak, of an axiom, as they give me a statement of what an axiom is, I should give you an example of one.
I might say, well, the law of identity. Something is what it is. There's not what it is not. It's just self-evidently true. It's an axiom of truth. It just is true because it's true. And I'll say, how can it be true in your worldview if you're an atheist?
Because you're saying there's a universal abstraction, a universal truth statement. But how do you have that in a materialistic world? And we get into all these things, all these subdivisions. They don't have an ultimate source.
Now, in some religious systems, there's another ultimate source besides God's word, and it is tradition. So Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy both have this idea that tradition is equal in inspiration and value with scripture.
Now, give me some comments about that. Come on, I wanna teach you guys everything. Is that good or bad, or what do you think? Says Matt to himself because no one's listening. You don't care. It's both?
Both what? Tradition can be good or it can be bad. Oh, now you're correct.
Tradition can be good or it can be bad. How would you know if tradition was good or bad? There you go, for the lines of the scripture. So we go into a Protestant church, and what they've always done for 120 years in this particular church is they always have announcements first, then they have one song, then they have a scripture reading, then they have one song, then they have the preaching.
Is that how it's supposed to be done? But when they put tradition above what scripture would say, then it becomes an idol, it becomes problematic. The Roman Catholic Church says that scripture and tradition are equal.
What is, okay, let's do it this way. What is the ultimate source of scripture? God. What's the ultimate source of tradition? Now, I don't want you to go back to God because that ultimately is what it is.
So let's go one step further, the proximate cause of tradition, which means man. So scripture is God-authored, tradition is man-authored. The reason tradition is man-authored is because it's man's tradition.
They go into the church, you have to genuflect three times facing north. They've always done that for 200 years. Is it sacred tradition? Yeah, it's sacred. In Catholicism, tradition, man's tradition is elevated to the level of being equal to God.
That is dangerous for obvious reasons. Because what it's saying is that we will decide in our history what happens in our church with our tradition, we will determine what the ultimate truth of God's word is because the word of tradition and the word of scripture are equally inspired.
When that happens, you have two ultimates, the word of God and the word of tradition. Who decides which one is to be the ultimate ultimate in any particular instance? The church, which is validated by its own tradition.
And so you can see the avenue of corruption here. So the Roman Catholic Church, because of this problem, because they have not recognized and adhered to the supremacy of scripture and the ultimate authority of God's word, has adopted damnable heresies so that all who would believe in its official doctrines are going to go to hell forever because it violates the scripture of God's word.
So we have scriptures regarding salvation, idolatry, and other issues, and essentials as well as some not so essentials, but pretty close. Whenever we elevate man's tradition to a level equal with God's word or truth, it always means that God's word will be subjected to man's preferences.
It's a self-exaltation thing, and it goes back to Genesis 3. When Eve, Genesis 3, 6, saw that the fruit was good, the light of the eyes, she desired to make one wise, their own wisdom, their own idea, their own self, in an autonomous sense from God.
And that's what's happening ultimately when man decides what truth will be. And tradition is an excuse used by false religions to interpret God's word and declare what is true. And they always end up, one way or another, in error.
Think of the Bible as an anchor that is not to be drug around on the bottom of the ocean when the ship is blown away, blown around by strong winds. But think of it as something that's anchored in stone there, and the ship can only go so far in different directions.
It can only drift so far. That is what the word of God is. And it can drift a little bit, because we don't interpret it properly. But when you don't have that anchor, and it can drag through the winds of doctrine of men, it can go anywhere, and that's what happens.
If we don't have the high understanding of God's word, the truth of God's word as the final authority, then we're gonna end up in error. This is important, it's important, it's important. That's why you should memorize scripture, memorize addresses, speak the word of God, listen for the word of God in sermons.
Illustrations are fine, as long as they're subservient to the word, so that it's not a tradition of man's wisdom that is elevated in a sermon to an equal level with God. That's the problem. This is, you know, that's why I go verse by verse the best we can and trust the power of God's word, okay?
All right, any questions? We've been at it now for almost an hour and 20 minutes, so questions, comments? Anybody online got any questions or comments? Not that I care. Yeah, I do, I do, I do care a little bit.
Let me go onto Karma website, I think it's on the, I can actually see. I think I've got some feedback here, let's see. Yeah, there I am. Okay, let's see if the video, if the chat comes back, it works.
Come on, you can do it. There I am teaching. Hey, I see myself looking on the phone. I don't see the chat though. Oh, that's okay. Well, no comments, questions, anything?
You learned anything? Glad you're not Catholic. Glad you're not Catholic, that means, you know. I was an Episcopalian once, that was a whoops, but. Episcopalianism is bad. Yeah, I didn't know it at the time.
I was, I hadn't found Christ yet, so I'm wandering around. My wife is Catholic and I had been Protestant of some type, and so I thought I was becoming Episcopalian, it's kind of in the middle. Yeah. Neither of us were happy.
Neither of you were happy. Good for you, I'm glad it was bad, because here you are. At least you love the Lord, I know you do. So why don't you guys give me some feedback here? I gotta start generating some stuff.
Was it too philosophical, too different, too whatever, you're too tired, or what?
I'm gonna see if I can get into the chat room. There's a question on there. Okay. Bill asks, Matt, does the Holy Spirit convict the whole world or only the elect?
It convicts everybody. The whole world means all the nations and all the groups that are elect in all of the groups, the nation groups, because Jesus was not sent to the whole world, but sent only to the people of Israel.
And Matthew 15, 24 says that. So does he convict every individual? I would say, I don't know if he does or does not. The Bible doesn't say that he does or does not convict every individual. But I would say that he certainly convicts a lot of unbelievers, because even the unbelievers are aware,.
I'm gonna get this, I think I'm messing this up, let's see. Okay, they're not getting the text. I hope I'm not messing myself up in there. Hey, Charlie, you wanna make one of the rooms a big one? And if I'm getting feedback.
Which one? If you have questions and we'll pass them to Matt. I can actually see it now. Joe just said that. Thank you. So yeah, feel free to ask some questions.
Matt, I put a question in the private chat for you. On my phone also. If anyone has questions, they can do that. Matt, there's one in your private chat.
Okay, Matt, X2, whatever that means. Let's see. Sorry, getting on late. So we're new Israel, or how does, so are we the new Israel, or how does that work with parts of the Bible that's specified in the Bible as well?
Audio is echoing. Oh, because, there. Now I should take care of the echoing thing. I just turned off my mic on the phone. Laura has a question in private chat. I don't know if I can get to it from here.
Private chat, there it is. I can't see it. Yeah, this thing's pretty cool, though. Get back into it. Messing up, I'll just say one thing. So anyway, there we go, back in. All right, does God desire Adam to sin or not?
There are different ways we can understand what God's desires are. God can have an ultimate decree, an ultimate desire. What we would say is His decree of will, His prescriptive will, His permissive will.
So in His decree of will, He says, let there be light, that means He decreed certain things to exist, and His actions are involved, and His effort's involved. His prescriptive will is thou shalt not lie.
So He prescribes a certain moral behavior that says He doesn't want you to lie, but His permissive will is to let you lie. So it is His desire to allow you to lie, and your freedom. So when we say that it is His will for you to lie or sin, it depends on what sense you're looking at that.
Is that what that means? Echoing again? Okay, got the echo thing off, because I went out and came back in, just turned it off, okay. Never think of a cue once again, cog fog. Okay, Tony. How many people are in the room?
Just curious. Huh? 1 ,200. That'd be nice, 1 ,200. Okay, question from the chat, Matt. Does the Holy Spirit convict the whole world or only the elect? We know the elect and the whole world, yes, because the whole world in context of how it means whole world deals with, 62 people, good, deals with all the nation groups.
So that's what the whole world means. It doesn't mean every individual. A lot of people think that, but it's not what it means. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever would believe.
So the word world there doesn't mean every individual, because God hates all who do iniquity, Psalm 5 -5, Psalm 11 -5, things like that. Okay. Yeah, inside, see Melissa and Matt, we see, from in here, we see the total number of all of the rooms combined.
So when you say 26, we're seeing 62. We'll have to, Charlie, show me. Okay, okay. Words mean what they mean in context, great. No other comments or questions or anything? People know. Oh, look at that.
Hey, look at that. Hey, I can do that from here. Interesting. Control it on the phone. Pretty cool. I just made myself the solo thing. All right. Matt X2 meant you're on screen twice. Okay. Thank you, Matt.
All right. Dave Place is still in Albania. You guys can say hi to Dave. That was good. He really appreciates that. Okay. Give me some feedback, guys. Is this too much for you? Give me some feedback in the chat also.
Too much for you guys? Interesting. Did you learn anything? No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Let me say something here. What I'm teaching you is different than what you'll get in almost any Bible study. What I'm teaching are principles and ideas that if you get them, when we go through Scripture, so many other things in the Scriptures will just open up and make sense.
You will start seeing things like you've never seen before. And this is what's necessary. So it's like reformed theology. When you become reformed in your theology, oh, my goodness, look at that verse.
Look at that. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. Well, this kind of stuff helps that too in another way, another direction. So that's why it's worth studying this. There is a problem with this.
What's the problem? It sure makes it hard to find a good church. It makes it hard to find a good church. You having trouble with that? Yeah. How about you, Dave?
Yeah, Dave. I know he is. When you go back, are you going to? He just hasn't studied with us long enough to know. When are you going back to Ohio, Iowa? Minnesota. Minnesota. Minnesota. I'm sorry. Yeah, this is a good part of Minnesota.
Is there a good part? Is there a good part? Campbell Bonaquat on the west side. That's good. I'm grateful for this Bible study. Thanks, Ben. Bobby B, you're welcome. Okay, Randall Dobbins, ask now. Charlie would like to make the syllabus he put together during the lesson tonight.
Make the syllabus. I'm not sure what that means. I'm grateful for the Bible study. Good. At the conclusion of the lesson, I will have a list of some articles that go to... Oh, that's what... So that...
Yeah, that's Charlie putting in as me. Okay. Charlie says... Yeah, at the conclusion. Okay. Bill cannot... I can't type it in. I'll call tomorrow. Okay. All right. Anything else? Trying to teach you that God is a foundation for all things, the ultimate.
And when we get into Christology, Christology builds on the essence of God's nature. And you'll see how he is the word of truth, represents the truth of God, and why it's so important. And why he says, follow me, nobody else, because he is the way, the truth.
Good. These things are important. I spend hundreds of hours a year debating and teaching unbelievers, being challenged by unbelievers. Don't make the mistake of assuming that I think I'm right. I don't believe that.
But... Just because I'm doing it. But I'll tell you, I've learned a great deal. And I have learned that, I've learned that truth is absolute. And there are areas of truth that can be defined. So let me bring up a little topic here.
It's called the one and the many. So, this is a chair, and that's a chair, and that's a chair, and that's a chair. We have chairs in the kitchen there. So we have many instances of the one thing. There's one concept called chair, with many particular instances of its manifestation.
The one and the many. If actuality, if reality is one substance, how can we have particular instances of one substance? How can there be different manifestations, different forms of the one thing? If everything is one thing, how come we don't perceive it as one?
But if the universe is multifaceted in its nature and its essence, then how is it that we can recognize particulars, different chairs and different things, but how would we then recognize the singularity of one concept of, say, a chair?
It's called the one and many problem. If the substance of actuality is one thing, how can we perceive and recognize particulars or subdivisions of that? This is overly simplified, but if everything is multifaceted, there's multiple aspects of reality's existence, how then can we see one particular manifestation or one actuality of something?
And I'm not articulating it very well, but this is a major issue. In the Trinity, God is one and yet three. He's one and many. At the same time, the Trinity provides the philosophical foundation for solving the one and many issue.
It's a concept that people are not familiar with. The average Joe doesn't know about this. I actually used to get in rooms and talk to people about this in chat rooms. What about the one and many thing?
Well, the Trinitarian thing, look at that. And we'll talk about it. For me, it's okay. God is a necessary foundation for everything. So it's why when I sit in a church, I'm like, I wanna hear a sermon that gets down into who God is, why this scripture's important, that ultimately points to the cross of Christ as a truth of our redemptive work.
The basics is what I'm hoping for. That's what I wanna see. It's what I wanna hear. And I don't hear it too much anymore. Different churches I go to, not to knock Pastor Mike, he's a great guy, but I'm concerned that the word of God as the truth of God is not being elevated to where it needs to be because in my opinion, the evidence that it's not elevated to where it needs to be is the fact that Christians are so divided and so ignorant.
And they want to be entertained. They want to have their ears tickled. And when I go to a church, I wanna hear the word. I want the word. And you better give me something about Jesus in there. I don't care where you are in the Bible because Jesus says in John 5, 39, you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these that bear witness of me.
That means all of the scriptures are about Jesus. Okay, that's what I wanna hear. And ultimately, even within the church, people aren't believing the word as strongly as they need to. They do, but it doesn't seem like they really believe in its power.
And like an idiot preacher who said, your words have more power in your life than the words of God, or the words of Christ, I think he said. That's stupidity. It's just stupidity. And people will sit there and clap and go, oh, that's right, because I'm the ultimate authority in my own life.
Humanistic idolatry, which is being taught from pulpits because they don't understand that God is a necessary precondition for all intelligibility. He's a necessary precondition for morality and the very basis of truth must be judged out of his character.
And the only way to know that is to study his word, which is why all preachers and teachers, myself especially, with my last name Slick, should be compared with the word of God, always. So when someone comes to me and says, and I'm serious, someone says, man, I heard you, but I don't know if I agree with you.
Okay, why? Because what I'm hoping they do is say, well, I was reading the word and you said something, but I wanna check with the word of God. I rejoice inside. Dead serious. I do. Praise God. Because that person might be right and I could be wrong.
I need to find out. And I honestly believe that. Let's see. It's my idea. Why? Because it's the word that's the truth. Not my ego. Not my needs. Not my anything.
That's how it has to be. Oh, I'm sorry.
A new age conference being better than Disneyland. A new age conference being better than Disneyland. Yes. I was wondering if you could elaborate on what was your point of that? So why is a new age conference better than Disneyland?
Well. I realized it was sarcastic. But what? Like it was being comedic, I guess. Oh, I'm serious. It's better. So is that because you like to argue? No.
It's because of things like this. So. See. So. So you walk along in a new age convention and there's a man sitting in a chair like this. There's a woman on her knees. Right there. And she's doing this.
Oh, that's strange. And you're sitting there. I'm sitting there going. I'm with Dave Scheringa, actually. I went to a couple of these. He went with me with one of them. He was excited. He goes, this was awesome.
And so, you know, I'm sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting. And, you know, finally I got a break and he was done. I said to her, can I ask, what are you doing? She said, oh, I'm blowing away his negative energy.
Maybe you're right. His negative energy. You know, all kinds of questions. So how do you know that only negative energy gets blown away by your breath? How does that work? And what's with this? And, you know, and so, you know, you can't ask it.
It was so ambiguous, you know. Oh, something good will happen to you in the next few days. I can tell something good's coming to you. Do you know anyone named Susan? My distant cousin's second relative three years ago was named Susan.
See? You know, and it was just this weird stuff. And so this person left. Would you like a reading? I said, no. No, it's okay. I have a question. How does this work? Are you a Christian? Because I asked a question how it worked.
Are you a Christian? And I said, what makes you think I'd be a Christian for asking a question? I didn't say yes, I didn't say no. She goes, well, they come in here and they ask these difficult questions.
That's a difficult question? How does it work? How do you know it works? You're not allowed to do that, okay? So we walk around another area and there's a guy. Let's see. As to how to make my flying up the seat of my pants chronological syllabus.
So another guy. For real. He's got his head. He's in a chair. There's a table. He's got his head on the table. And there's this big, long cone-ish kind of a thing sticking out of his ear. And it's lit.
And I mean, you just get, you walk around and you just go. And you don't say anything because, yeah, yes, I am seeing this. Yeah, I'm not dreaming. And he's going, can I ask what's going on here? Oh, just clearing out his consciousness.
Gee. Okay, good. That's helpful. And so I went over to this barrel of, this big barrel, about this high, of crystals, little crystals, right? So pretend this is a crystal. And this woman is, she's standing next to this barrel and it's like $5 per crystal or $15, whatever it was.
And she picked up a crystal out of this barrel and go like this. Pick another one up. She go, another one. Then she's going to buy that one. Ma 'am. Yes. Can I ask you what it is you're doing there? What's the, what's the reason you're doing that?
I'm finding out which crystals are in tune with my divine consciousness. Divine consciousness. Oh yeah. And I mean, you're seeing this. This is, you can go to teacup. You can have more fun that way if you want.
Or, you can go to New Age convention and you can walk around the booth and you can see a gold pyramid, gold pyramid structure. Just, you know, just nothing inside. It's hollow. Just got the edge, you know.
Okay. Gold pyramid, four sides. And there's a guy sitting inside in a chair for 15 minutes. And he asks the worker, what's, well, the pyramid, it focuses the, the Gaia Mother Earth frequencies. And if you get in there, you can get in tune with these frequencies with your soul.
That's good. I didn't know that. That's good stuff. We're on another place. There's a man sitting in a chair and he's got a pair of earphones on and a pair of dark glasses. And the dark glasses, you can see lights behind him going off and on, off and on, off and on.
Like this. And you could hear that there were tones. So like this, you sit in there and, you know, you pay, like, 15 minutes of this. And I was talking to the lady, go, what are you doing? You know, I said, well, you see, it's this device, blah, blah, blah.
And what it does is it helps you tune your left and right brain hemispheres. I said, really? She says, yeah. You want to try it? I just, you know, I'm out of tune, but I'm just curious. I would make a joke, you know, my wife says I'm definitely out of tune, but, you know, make them smile.
So, so these are lights and sounds? Yes. And what we tell them is after, you know, several minutes, you get this kind of, this kind of a sensation in your head. And that's when your, your brain hemispheres are, are, are balancing.
So in other words, you get overloaded with sensory stuff. You kind of have a vertigo experience. Oh, man, that's my brain hemispheres going. All right. So go to another room. This is why, you know, ask me, I'm telling you, this is great stuff.
I'd rather go to a new age convention than Disneyland. No lines either. And so go into a room and the medium so-and-so will be here shortly, you know, medium so-and-so to channel the Aztec warrior, whatever it is.
I'm like, oh, I got to see this. So I'm in there. I'm praying against the demonic spirits. I am. I'm praying. You know, I wanted to see people who started going, I don't feel good. But wait, wait. So I'm sitting here.
This woman comes in and there she is. That's her. She's the channel. Oh, my goodness. She's kind of walks up and join the limelight and go to the front. And people are said, oh, okay, okay. And this room gets quiet and she goes, well, thank you for coming, everybody.
You know, I've been channeling the Aztec warrior, blah, blah, blah, for many years. And he comes in and so I'm going to do this now. You know, so I'm going, oh, my goodness. I look around the room and people are like this.
This is buying into this, right? And so she goes, okay, you ready? And then she sits and she goes, okay, now this starts talking. Oh, she's channeling the Aztec warrior. People are stupid. There were some times you'd walk around and you just go, am I seeing this?
Is this really happening? And you just stare. And it lingers with you longer than Disneyland does. I mean, this, I've been, I used to live near Disneyland. I went to Disneyland. What do I remember? I don't remember anything about Disneyland, but this, oh, I remember this.
Plus, you know, like heresies come a little off. So for me, it's a good time. And then there was this guy walking around in white. Just all dressed in white. I think I've told you guys before this, a little serpent drawn right there.
And it's right here. That's where the third eye kind of location was. Chakra balancing energy is what some people, okay. So, you know, I stopped him. Hey, how are you doing? Oh, doing great, doing great, doing great.
They did have good pizza there. The good had natural pizza. It was good. That I will give it. I'll grant it. It was good. I remember that. I had some of this really good natural new age pizza. So anyway, so this guy with the serpent right there, I said, I said, so can I ask you what the, what this is?
He goes, oh, it's just an energy balancing thing and a symbol of power. In Christianity, that's a symbol of the devil and sin, damnation. I'm just curious. He goes, and I just walk off. About an hour later, I see him walking up.
He doesn't recognize back there. I mean, I walked by him, the big red spot there and it's gone. So anyway, that's why I said new age, uh, new age conventions are better than a Disneyland. Makes sense.
It is. It's better. And so I went to the world's religions thing a few years ago in Seattle, the council of world religion. You're not supposed to evangelize there. Okay. I'm evangelizing. I loved it.
You know, the Baha 'i booth, the, uh, the, yeah, unimaginable cults, cults that I, I've heard of before. They're so esoteric and so rare that had been around for decades. Oh, I remember that one. I forget.
I remember some of the names and, uh, this is for real. And so I'm in this big area between these doors, uh, at one area. It's a big, big area. And this guy comes walking up. This is a true story because he was walking up.
This is in Salt Lake city. And, uh, as he, he's coming near me. I just started a conversation. Hey, how you doing? You know, I said, uh, so what are you going to the, what you call it? I forgot what it was.
He goes, oh yeah. Well, I wanted to witness to him. So I started talking to him about stuff. He started asking questions a whole bit and no lie. He actually said to me, he actually said, he said, uh, look, I think I know where you're coming from.
He goes, I'm going to give you a website that you would probably like. That'd be good for you to go check out this kind of stuff. I go, really? He goes, yeah. I go, what is it? He goes, this website is called calm .org.
And I'm looking at the guy and go, really? I said, I know about that site. He goes, it's really good. I don't agree with everything on there. He said, but it's a really good site for this kind of information.
And I think you'd be very helpful to you. And I said, I really appreciate that because I'm the guy who wrote that site. I'm the guy who did, you know, he goes, what? And I said, yeah, I'm Matt. He goes, you're the, I go, yeah.
And so that was an interesting little kind of a fun thing. Two years later, when we were supposed to move to Arizona, we're checking it out. I went down there, have a connection down there and, uh, we're in the Phoenix area.
And, um, so this guy said, Hey, this professor of philosophy wants you to come over to his house on a, on a certain night and, uh, just answer questions with people. I go, fine. So they stayed, we stayed there till midnight because they've never stayed that long.
Two interesting things happen. This guy comes in, but you people came in, this guy comes in and it was that guy from Salt Lake city. Okay. And the other thing was interesting was a walking quad, walking quadriplegic came in.
There, there's like 12 in the United States for real. Walking quadriplegic comes in because he comes in and I go, I'm looking and he goes, I go, so what's up? You know, I just, before we started talking, he goes, yeah, cause I'm a walking quadriplegic.
I said, no way. Really? He says, yeah. I said, I've got to, I know another walking quad. He goes, what? I actually met two, Charlie Spine in here. His son broke his neck. He's a walking quad. And so, um, he's like, his joke is during an earthquake, he's the only one who walks straight.
So anyway, it was an unusual thing to happen down there. Take it off. All right. We'll see ya. God bless. Okay. She is so beautiful. She is so pregnant. So we went to the baby shower a few days ago. All right.
When you leave out sin, it's no longer the, that slit, Charlie says, I don't want is, I don't know what that is. All right. Okay. Well, anyway, that's, that's new age and, um, new age conventions. In fact, the new age is making a comeback.
It's really, yes. It's, it's, it's under the radar though, but more and more people are starting to believe in the Christ consciousness, our divine essence. And, um, this year they did not have the goddess conference.
Excuse me, the goddess festival that they have, um, in Boise was the Julia Davis park. I think it is. And, uh, I go there each year because I like heresy, like heresy and, and, um, so they, because of COVID, they didn't have it, but you can go there.
It's like a mini new age convention. And, uh, instead of thousands of booths, it's just a couple of hundred and you can see all kinds of, excuse me, all kinds of stuff, you know, duct, dyed, dyed, tie dyed t-shirts, crystals, mirrors, um, candles, uh, new age gurus.
You just see it's a belly dancing. Some of them shouldn't be belly dancers and, uh, and stuff like that. And it's seriously something they shouldn't. It's like me getting their belly dancing. Not, you know, you can't unsee it.
Oh, you just saw that. Oh, that hurt him. And he'll be losing sleep tonight. When you hit the sack, don't think of me like that. Okay. Oh God, don't do that. That's like, that's bad. Don't think of that pink elephant belly dancing.
Yeah, that'd be bad. So, uh, okay. We've got some people getting depressed now because they know they can't sleep tonight. That's good. So, uh, that's, that's the, uh, new age stuff. So anyway, any bills, how many comments or questions match?
Look, can we start a discussion on eschatology? Yeah, you want, if you want, sure. Go ask me a question. Remember, I teach depressed catology. You'd like that, huh? Yeah. I don't know what that means, but it sounds funny.
Well, eschatology, the study of end times and depressed, depressed catology. I teach what the Bible actually says. It's going to get bad. Okay. Let's see. If you did a belly dance with your ab of, yeah, with my, he said it right here.
With my ab, right now saying I will not be here for the next few weeks. That was a joke. All right. Well, ask a question, an eschatological question and go through. Do you have audio now, Matt? Oh, Melissa says the Christian university that my daughter's attending has allowed new age garbage in.
I remember what a second Thessalonians two, three says the apostasy has to come first and the apostasy is coming.
Yep. That's why I can't find a good church. Yeah.
Yeah. I guess we're not going to ask any question. Nice ab says chicken. We went on for an hour and 46 minutes. How many people are in the room now? So let me ask, is this working? Okay. The setup here, the lighting, the, and you can hear me.
Okay. Everybody in the room. Um, you know, I just want to check how it works. If it sounds good. Okay. And I thought you're going to ask me an eschatology question. If you're not no big deal, but, uh, so this is working.
Well, I think it's great. Matt says, Melissa. All right, Matt, my bro said he'd like to touch base with you. I think he gave contact info to you. Yeah. How come he hasn't shown up, Dave? Yeah. I got a column, but I don't know where the number is now.
I thought he's going to show up. Okay. I guess we're not going to ask any eschatology questions. What's your eschatology? What's my eschatology?
Pre-trib rapture, pre-millennial, or many dispensational? I would say probably leaning towards pre-trib, I guess, but. Okay. I don't know. You don't know? The more I know, the more I don't know. It seems like.
Go to Matthew 1330.
I see that one verse, what it says, Matthew 1330. You know what it is, right? I can't remember. Oh, it's going to be, the two are taken. No, that's, uh, Matthew 1330. Matthew 24. Oh, I am. Okay. Your voice is trailing your mouth.
What time is it where you are? It is 901 PM. That's right. Eschatology. Matthew 1330, the parable, the wheat and the tares. Jesus says in Matthew 1330, allow both to grow together till the time of the harvest.
I'll say the reapers first gathered the tares. Okay. So who are the first ones gathered? The tares. Now go to verse 40 and 41. Dave says it's 5 AM there. Wow. You're still up 5 AM there. Sheesh. Still up.
Or you got up early. So, so yeah, you had mentioned that, that, um, that it's the, um, the wicked are taken and not the, the righteous. Yeah. Matthew, Matthew 24, 20, uh, 37. And Luke says, Luke 17, 26.
It both says that's where it starts. Yeah. And you go there, you'll see, it says, you know, as it wasn't days of Noah, so shall it be the days of the coming of the son of man, for they were eating, they were drinking.
They were giving in marriage of the day that Noah and the, the ark and the flood came in, took them all away. And Matthew 20 and Luke 17, it says the flood came in, destroyed them all. So the ones who were, who were, who were being given in marriage and marrying are the ones are the wicked people, right?
And then it says two men will be taken. One is left, right? So who's taken? The good or the wicked, the wicked, the wicked are taken. So those verses are not about rapture. Rapture occurs. That's in first Thessalonians four, 16 through chapter five, verse two.
But that's, those aren't about the rapture. Those are about the wicked being taken. And Jesus says, allow both to go together until the end of the age. I'll see you at the end of the age. I'll see the reapers first gather the tears and read 1340, Matthew 1340.
Yeah. I don't have a lot on karma and Eastern orthodoxy, which I had more. It's difficult to know what they teach, but they don't have any universal system of, of, of a declaration of truth of what they believe.
The mosque bird, the call to prayer right here at 3am works well because it wakes me up for your study. 3am.
I'd hate that. So then what? Then what, what? So the tears are the wickets taken out of the world. So that when the, the millennial rain is done,.
That's the last thing. That'd be the last day. But then people say the millennial rain is going to start at that point. Yeah. No, Jesus said, if you go to Matthew 1340 or 41,. Yeah. Wasn't there.
What does it say there? It says, as the tears are gathered and burned in the fire, so we'll be at the end of this, this age, the son of man will send out his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom.
Okay. Out of his kingdom. So that would be at the end of the,.
If it's at the end of the thousand years, then how could that be? Since the first one's taken out of the wicked, if the rapture occurs before the millennia, the literal thousand year reign of Christ, then how could it be at the end of it?
The first one's taken out of the wicked before the good. They'd have to say then that there's a rapture at the beginning of the tribulation and a rapture. I mean, at the beginning of the millennium and a rapture at the end of the millennium.
And now they have to say there's two raptures, but the Bible never teaches two raptures, only teaches one. So Jesus says that Satan's bound Matthew 12, 22 through 32. And he talks about casting out demons.
And he says that the Satan has to be bound Matthew 22, 32, Matthew 12, 22 through 32. Talks about blasphemy of the Holy spirit. Hey Trevor, how you doing buddy? Trevor's awesome. Trevor, I'm thinking about doing a podcast system for interviews.
You're going to be one of the guys I'm going to interview about, about Judaism. Melissa Owens has a question. Okay. So it says there to cast the demons out. He's the strong man has to first be bound, right?
Right. About verse 30, 31,.
32, Matthew 12. 30 is he who is not with me is against me. And he who does not gather with me scatters abroad. Are we before that then?
Cause he says he has to be bound. Matthew 12, 12,.
22 through 32. Let me see if I can get it on here. Yeah, that would be 29 or else. How can one man enter a strong man's house under his goods? Unless he first finds a strong man. See verse 29.
So the strong man who is Satan has to be bound. And in order for Jesus to cast out demons, Jesus is casting out demons. So therefore Satan's bound, but he's supposed to be bound during a thousand year future, thousand year reign.
Then why does Jesus say he's bound there? And if there's a future literal 1000 year reign and turn to Revelation 20 at the same time, if there's a literal 1000 year reign, then there's a rapture has to occur before the thousand years, but yet the wicked are the ones first ones taken.
So how's that possible? Because aren't the wicked supposed to be taken at the end of the thousand years? That's what one of the major views is. Bill, can I try to get my attention? So when one is taken, one is left, is that before the rapture?
I believe it is before the rapture awake. I believe that's what, that's concomitant with Matthew 13, 30. Top question, what are the two radios beside you used for? These are for a, when the zombie apocalypse happens so that we can have communication between, cause the leftist wacko morons who are in control.
That's literally what they're for. It's for real. For communication ham radio, we're going to be getting into some antennas and some other stuff and preparing and stuff. And that's what we're doing. Cause I believe what the Bible says that we're going to have to flee to the hills, be persecuted and things like that.
So anyway. Okay. So revelation 20, right? The thousand years, right? Verse one. So if you were to go to revelation 20 verse one, and I will read it, take a look at it here really quickly. This is what it says.
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven. Would you say it's literal or figurative? An angel coming down from heaven, literal or figurative? I'd say it's literal. Holding the key of the abyss. Literal or figurative key?
Figurative. And a great chain in his hand, literal or figurative? Figurative. Verse two. And they'd hold the dragon, literal or figurative? Figurative. The serpent of old, literal or figurative? Literal.
It was a serpent in the garden. I'd say that, yeah. Who is the devil and Satan? Literal? Literal. And bounded for a thousand years, literal or figurative? So what gets me is people say, well, that's a thousand year millennial reign because it's a literal thousand years.
How do you know?
There's no other thousand in the whole Bible. When he refers to it, one is for a thousand years is referred to. It's not a thousand years. It's a large number. It's one day, but a thousand years,.
A thousand years, but a day. It's figurative usage. So when people say, well, it means a literal thousand year reign. My question is, how do you know? I mean, maybe it is. I don't know, but how do you know?
Just show me. Because it says so. Well, it says the angel had a key and a chain laid hold of the dragon. Those are all figurative. I've actually had some people say, Matt, you don't get it. The key is a literal representation of the figurative thing.
Just grow up, you know? So, and it's a, the chain is literal. No, it's not a literal chain, It's a figurative usage of a literal thing. So it's literal. So they really go to strong, to long lengths to get their position to be held.
What I ask is, is a thousand years literal or figurative? They say, it's literal. How do you know? And I asked the question, I make people uncomfortable. And it says in verse three, and he threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him so that he would not deceive the nations any longer till a thousand years were completed.
After these things, he must be released for a short time. Well, then Matt, if he's been bound when Jesus was there, then how come people are still deceived? Right? Couldn't there be a, what's bound? What's bound mean?
He's 100 bound. Yep. To what extent is he bound? Bound to he can't do anything? Where'd you get that? Could I be bound to this chair? Yes. Could I still move in the chair? Yes. Could I be bound with a chain to this chair?
I can move six feet or 10 feet. Yes. I still have a reign to have a movement and still be bound. Are people bound into jails?
Like in Maryland right now, they're, they're trying to come up with a new law. Take all their cell phones away. Cause you got all these dopers in there, drug dealers, and they're in the jail for a long time.
Prison. Yeah. With his cell phones, they're doing all their work with everybody outside. Yeah. They're still doing what they did when they were not in jail.
All they got to do is go through with transmitter receivers and find the signals and then go in and just have them on all the time. When they come on, they go get them. Oh, I know. And that's what they got to do.
Yeah. Of course the liberals, oh no, we got to have that open up for them so they can contact their family. Yeah. It's the liberals are, they're, they're mental. So, okay. So here it says, Bannon for a thousand years,.
Could not deceive the nations any longer. People say, well, he's deceiving people. It says here, the nations, does that important? Because it's ethne or ethnos, a body of persons united in kinship, culture, and common tradition about a nation.
Does it say just individuals, people often mistake things. They just say, well, you know, John three 16, God's love the world. That means every individual. How do you know? Like, how can you be that stupid, Matt, to ask the question?
I'm just asking the question. How could you be so stupid not to ask the question? How do you know? I don't say that to them, but that's what I'm thinking. You're just assuming that that's how it has to be.
Who told you that? Just like two men in the field. One is taken. That's the rapture, right? Of course it is. Who told you that? Have you checked it out? A lot of this happens in the church. They just believe what they're told.
They don't check things out. And it's bad. And so, and then he'd be let loose towards the end of that. Until the thousand years were completed. After these things, he must be released for a short time.
Now, here's a problem for the millennial view. If it's a literal 1 ,000 year reign, right? If that's the case, and Satan is let loose at the end of the thousand years, right? But it says here, until the thousand years were completed, it's supposed to be 1 ,000 years exactly, that he can't be let loose until after the thousand years is completed.
But they even teach that he'll deceive people towards the end of the, that's not what it says. It says at the, when it's all completed, not when it towards the end of it, if they want to go literal, see the problem.
So, you know, people, they don't really think things through. They just, well, that's what it says. It's what it means. I'm not going to think about it. I'm going to believe whatever my pastor tells me.
Yeah. That's what happened to me. It was a pretty good church for,.
I don't know about that, churches I went to. They all taught that. They all taught I could lose my salvation too. Yeah. And it just, and I, it gets really confusing because they start going every which way.
And I, and I learned about all millennialism. Well, I still can't spell it, but that's what I did. I can spell it. It's it's,.
It's, it's, it makes more sense. It makes sense. It doesn't make sense. Post-tribulation rapture makes more sense. The two age model makes more sense.
It just does. So if you're saying that he's bound now,.
I suspect he's been let loose because what it says until the thousand years completed, what it probably means is towards that end. Logistically, it would have to be something like that. So they wouldn't deceive the nations anymore.
Some all millennialists think he was let loose a hundred or so years ago because world wars started occurring for the first time ever. Nations were deceived. Nations were at war with nations, which is what Jesus says does the end of the time nations will be at war with one another.
So we don't know for sure. It just, and just to tell you, no eschatological position is perfect.
So when was it that in your thought, when was he, um, unbound and then he became bound? Well,.
According to Jesus, it certainly looks like Jesus was bound 2000 years ago. And the millennium is just a thousand years. It's just a figurative use. Like we say a kabillion, it's just a long term. That's just, that's it.
That's how it's used in the Bible. So if that's what's going on and towards the end of that millennia, that thousand years, that expression of thousand that, uh, the, the, the evil ones let loose to, then he would be able to deceive the nations.
We don't need his help to be deceived. We can be self deceived on our own. And it just means Satan's bound. It doesn't mean that all his dominions are, are bound. So I asked lots of questions and I don't have a lot of answers for a lot of this.
Yeah. When Jesus was cast out demons to you, he said there was some of them, some of the demons that said, you know, it isn't the appointed time now.
Right. Right. He said the appointed time, the judgment is not yet because they know it's not. It's coming that it is coming. So it makes my opinion. This is my opinion, which I could be wrong, but I'd lean towards the idea that what's happening is the, um, the consummation of the ages.
There's only two ages. This age needs to come at the end of this age is when everything's going to happen. We're going to go through the tribulation period. We are going to suffer. And, um, uh, then it'll get so bad.
My position is this. And in Genesis two 17, when God said to Adam, the day that you eat of the fruit, you will die. Since in Adam, I'll die. First Corinthians 15 22. I believe that Adam represented all people except for Christ, of course, because Christ has gotten flesh, different thing.
But, uh, he represented all the people that were in him in a sense of federal, the federal sense. And so, uh, when it says, you know, when you eat, you will die. I believe that he was talking, or I suspect, I know he was talking to Adam right there, but I suspect he was talking to all of us saying you're going to die.
Now, Matthew 22, 11, 24, 11, trying to remember 22, 24, 20. Someone can put it into the text. At any rate, it says, if those days be not cut short, no flesh would be left. What does that mean? Those days are the days of all this trial and tribulation.
No flesh would be left. That's consistent with the day that you do this, you're going to die. And so what I suspect is going to happen is that the world is going to get so bad that it's going to bring itself to destruction and it's going to kill itself.
Nuclear war, plague, whatever you want to call it. You know, a plague of a war of plagues. Look what COVID has done. I happen to know they've got stuff. I've talked to some people who specialize and study this stuff.
They got chemicals. They got stuff. There's one chemical called botulinus toxidus. Two ounces can kill 200 million people and you put it in water. 200 million. They got microbes that they can create and if it gets out, it's an apocalypse.
It is going to be bad. We got nuclear proliferation. We got all kinds of stuff. So I suspect because the Bible says the plague lit down out of heaven with their, their eyes dry and their tongues dry up in their mouths.
This is the neutron bomb can do that. You've heard of the neutron bomb exploded in the atmosphere and it doesn't destroy anything. It just biological material just starts to dissolve. It takes three to four days to die.
Yeah. Oh yeah. All the powerful. Yeah. And so it's a plague lit out of heaven where it says where their eyes dry up and their tongue dries up. That's the neutron bomb does that. Now is that what does it mean?
We don't know, but the technology is in place for the destruction of mankind. I've been to Israel and if you guys could ever go, you got to go. We're going next year. We're going in March, but I've been to, to Israel and we overlooked Megiddo.
We went and looked at Megiddo and so I've seen it with my own eyes. Megiddo, the Valley of Armageddon, the Valley of Megiddo. And I'm going to estimate because I, I don't know how big it was, but it's like a flat area, just flat.
And then there's like Hills, you know, a thousand feet high or whatever. I don't know around like, like a bowl except the inside is flat and it's like 40 miles by, by 20, 30 miles. It's big. And I'm probably way off in my measurements, but that's, that's what it looks like.
Okay. And so we're up 1200 feet, a thousand feet, 800 feet. I don't know, looking down at this and I'm going, this is where the battle of Armageddon is going to occur. I go, that makes sense. You could have armies in there, multiple armies that don't even touch each other until they go in and fight someplace in the middle.
You could have 50 ,000 people over there, 50 ,000 over there, 50 ,000. I mean, it was all possible. So who knows what's going to happen? You won't be good. I don't want to be there and I don't want to go through it.
I'm a chicken. I don't like pain. It hurts too much. I don't like, that's why I don't like pain. It hurts. But yet this is what the Bible prophesies. And it says there's gonna be a 200 million man army that comes out from the east and marches along there.
You dried up Euphrates river to take a spoil out of Israel. And Magog, I think Magog is Moscow. Magog, Moscow comes down from the north with the 200 million man army to take a spoil out of, out of Israel.
What is in Israel that they'd want to take a spoil? What is it?
You guys have any idea? The only thing it would to do with it's always represented. God took that down. Sorry about that guys.
Hello. Test. I'll get out of this. Okay. So there is something in Israel. There's something in Israel worth trillions of dollars for real. The minerals in the dead sea. I remember reading an article about this a while back and just trillions of dollars.
It's just not cost effective right now to extract all the stuff. So if Israel starts figuring this out, they can become the richest nation on the, on the planet and then the enemy will want to spoil. There's a dam on the Euphrates river that that if I've read various things on how accurate it all is, you just remember these things, a dam that they can turn off or whatever, and it'll defer the Euphrates river to another route and then it'll dry up.
And so they can march along this up as they head in towards Israel. What's the only nation that has a 200 million man army or can do that? China and Israel is supposed to destroy the battlers. Okay. Can you guys still hear me in the room?
Yeah. Okay. Cause I see the three window thing. Sorry. I put my phone back on it wigged out. So I turned it off. Are people still there listening? Cause I can get back in, turn everything off. If you go on and do questions or something like that, they have questions.
This is interesting when we keep talking about eschatology.
They do. What's that? I don't know if you can hear that. He's still being live.
I haven't shut the live stream off. I don't fear death.
I do. I don't like dying. I don't want the idea. I'm a chicken. And it's true. You're closer. Well, you never know. I'll try again. Let's see. I was going to do one thing. I was going to,. Oh yes. Signs of the end times.
All right. Yeah. Yeah. You guys going to stay with me to keep going or you're done? Thank you, Matt. See you, man. God bless buddy. You're fried. You're tired.
Pretty exhausted lately. Get up early.
Well, anyway, this is, so I'm trying to lay the foundation down of God and all that truth and stuff like that. We're going to build on it more as we go later. We're going to have to get into the redemptive work probably next week, but not a whole bunch of cover.
It's just only there a couple of three weeks of this. We kind of did do something else. We spent two hours talking about it. What's that? Good. I love these. Oh, I got to oil it. Can you guys hear him when he talks?
What? Oh, there's a question. Okay. Let me, let me see, Matt. How long do you want the live stream to continue? I guess we can, we're done. I can stop it now. Okay. Okay. I want to stop it. All right, everybody.
God bless. Let's have questions. I'll stay and answer questions if they want. Okay. Yes, you can hear him. Good. Okay. Ray Comfort just brushed off my question. What Ray Comfort? Okay. Yeah. All right.
Good night, everybody. We'll just bail. It was nice.
We'll see you guys later. All right. See you in the morning.
Go ahead and end it, Charlie. Okay. All right. We'll just hang here and talk a little bit longer if you guys want. Turn this off. Oh, that's much better. The glare. Have you got our audio yet?
Interesting how so many of these information.
Now I lost Matt's audio. I, yeah, I don't hear him either.
Let's see. Maybe he's muted. No, maybe it's,.
He might've turned it off. Yeah.
He's got one set for streaming and one set for something else. And his little microphone in a cigar box.
Well, that's why we had to work on it for quite a while today.
I'll tell you what. Rubber bands and chewing gum. He makes it work somehow.
I think, are we, are we still on there live?
Let's see. I thought he said he was.
