September 1, 2016 Show with Dr. Russell T. Fuller on “The Centrality of Christ Throughout Redemptive History”

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who

are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on

this first day of September 2016.

And obviously, you are not hearing the typical theme music and announcer that

we have opening up our program every day because there was a technical difficulty that we are unaware of,

why that has occurred today, but we don't need that.

It's not required to conduct a good interview.

So I am looking forward today to discussing the centrality of Christ throughout redemptive

history again.

Last time we discussed this program with my dear friend, Pastor Josh Fryman, who is

one of the speakers at the upcoming Christ Our Redeemer conference at the Pittsburgh Baptist Church

in Indiana.

But today, we're going to be following up on that same theme with Dr. Russell T.

Fuller, who is the plenary speaker at that conference.

He is also a professor of Old Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in

Louisville, Kentucky.

He is the co -author of An Invitation to Biblical Hebrew.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Russell T.

Fuller.

Hey, well, thanks for having me.

It's a real pleasure to be with you today.

And this conference is coming up very soon that Dr. Fuller will be speaking at, along with several

other speakers.

This will be September 9th and the 10th.

That's a Friday and Saturday.

And we'll be giving you more details about that during the course of the program.

That's going to be held at Pittsburgh Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, Indiana.

We've already had at least two of our listeners from Indiana who say that they're going to

try to attend.

So we hope that you and many more of you listening can attend this conference.

Before I even go into our discussion today, Dr. Fuller, I would like to know something

more about you, your upbringing, the religious upbringing that you had,

if any, and how you came to Christ, and how you were eventually

led to be on the staff at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

When I was real young, my parents took me to church.

But then later on, I had a scandal.

And I think it affected my parents.

And they just didn't go back, really.

But when I was 15 years old,

I simply said, hey, I'm going to church tonight.

You want to go with me?

And I don't know what came over me.

And I said, yeah.

You know, I'd heard the gospel preached when I was young.

But it just bounced off of me.

But that night, when I heard the gospel preached, it was completely different.

It was like, wow.

I saw myself as a sinner like I have never seen myself as a sinner.

And it was just the Spirit of God drawing me to Himself.

You know, for the first time, because

of Jesus was, He died in my

place.

And so I received Him that night.

I believed life at that time, even

though I was only 15.

The Lord got a hold of me.

And it just completely changed me.

And I became a very different person.

I went to a rather large school.

And I just felt like when people asked me questions about my conversion, that I had to give them the answers.

And so I started studying scripture, because I knew people had all kinds of questions for me.

And that's what got me started.

But I noticed these guys walking around with these Greek New Testaments.

And I thought, that's what I want to read.

I want to read a Greek New Testament.

And so I started taking Greek.

You know, Greek is neat.

Let's try that Hebrew stuff.

And when I took that, I

attended two Jewish schools.

And so I went to a Jewish school in Philadelphia, which no longer exists.

It's called Dropsy College.

Today, it's part of the University of Pira,

many years in Philadelphia,

in Cincinnati, called Hebrew Union College.

And that was the other Jewish institution.

And that's the one I graduated from.

And Hebrew and languages, the

Hebrew, the Greek, that's the stuff.

But again, language is not an end all, second.

I went to what drove me.

And so the Lord just put something in me, where you can ask my parents.

Before I was saved, they couldn't get me to study anything.

The only thing I would study when I was a kid was the sports pages.

And when I got saved, I just felt like I wanted to

answer questions.

And what got me to Southern Seminary is 43,

not just Theological Seminary.

And I'm like, hey, he's got the same theological vision.

After two years, Dr. Mohler invited me to come to Louisville and to teach here.

And I've been at Southern for the last 18 years.

Now, what happens with all these schools that you're a part of?

They all disappear.

That's right.

Certain professors that say that to me, they say, where do you go?

You destroy everything.

And that's right.

That one, it was very easy to be doing, money

-wise, or maybe

10 years, really.

It was pretty recently when they shut down.

Now, what is a more difficult language to study, Koine Greek or Hebrew?

Probably most people would say Hebrew, but here's what I would tell you.

I think if you really get into advanced Greek and do some classical Greek and stuff like that, I believe

when you get on that level, Greek becomes more difficult than Hebrew.

But when you just begin, Hebrew is much more intimidating because the letters don't look like

English letters.

Some of the Greek letters look like our letters.

So I think when you first start off, Greek is the easier language.

But if you read Greek, it becomes harder at that point.

And there are people who perhaps have

a certain level of anxiety that they really will never know what the

scriptures are teaching us because they don't know the

original languages of the scriptures and they have to rely on other people like you

to teach us what the passages in our English translations

really mean.

I mean, because obviously on occasion there are differences of opinion with biblical

scholars as to how these English translations have been interpreted.

So you have corrections desired to be made in some

of the modern translations and even the King James and so on.

How do you respond to people who would have that kind of a mindset?

Yeah, if you look at the old Baptist confession, the old London confession, it talks about the

importance of Greek and Hebrew as sort of the ultimate that we need to use

to solve, let's say, theological controversies.

But then it goes on to talk about English translations and how it's very important that we translate the

Bible into as many languages as we can to get the gospel out.

And let me say for our English translations, if you go back to the King James and even

to the other ones like the Geneva Bible, all these other translations back in those days, they were very good.

And then when you look at not all of our translations today, when you look at most of

our evangelical translations like a New American Standard Bible, the English Standard

Version, the ESV, when you look at these, they're very accurate to the Greek and Hebrew.

Well, I'm very glad that you listed the New American Standard first because they happen to sponsor this program, the publisher.

That's the one I go to first.

That's the one I read every day is the New American Standard.

And now let me say this, and I don't want to get in trouble now.

I like the first edition of it better than the second edition.

But anyway, don't let them get me for that.

But really, both of them are excellent.

And really, for the Bibles that you have

out there, like the New American Standard, these are fabulous.

Sometimes, the advantage of the Greek and the Hebrew, like a passage like 1

John, it talks about a Christian does not sin.

And what it's saying is, it's kind of like what we would say is, he's

not living in sin.

The translation's a good translation, but in Greek, the idea is, he's not continuing in sin.

He's not constantly in sin.

In other words, sin is not ruling his life like it was before his salvation.

So that's an example where understanding Greek can help you a little bit what it means not to sin

because even as a Christian,

so when you read that, it looks like it's teaching maybe some type of,

he's not going to dominate it by sin like he

was before salvation.

That's exactly what that is.

But again, if you've got a New American Standard Bible, you've got a,

maybe I'll say one more thing.

If you can read the Greek and Hebrew, it is kind of like watching,

but still, I can see, put it this way.

In the Hebrew, I can see emphasis that you just can't see in English Bibles.

So, for instance, in Genesis chapter 20, when

God comes to Abimelech and says, you're a dead man, okay?

When Abimelech starts talking, the Hebrew just goes off the charts.

You can tell he is begging for his life.

He uses very emphatic statements, but there's no way you can put that into English.

But these are just nuance.

The real meaning of what he's saying is exactly what, again, the New American Standard Bible's saying.

But you can just tell by looking at the Hebrew, life.

He is, you know, the language, the way he's saying it in the Hebrew,

he's just begging God, please don't kill me.

So it's just really neat.

But again, those are just subtleties.

But other than those little subtleties like that, your English Bibles, they work.

Let me tell you.

They are, let me put it this way.

So virtually you have,

it's like ivory soap,

99 .999 pure.

And I'll just say that you're really reading the originals, just like it came from Moses, in my opinion.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Well, praise God for that.

Now, how much of the original manuscripts of the scriptures

were written in Aramaic?

Well, in the Old Testament, there's about ten chapters of Aramaic,

starting about chapter, there's some

pieces in

there that's

Hebrew, and then there's a few words

in this one little statement here and there that's in Aramaic in the rest of the Bible.

So most of what you have in the Old Testament is in Aramaic.

There are Aramaic translations of the Bible that were done by the Jews,

and they're fascinating.

But again, those are just interpretations.

And do you know Aramaic?

And how commonly is Aramaic taught in the seminaries alongside Hebrew and Greek?

Yes, we teach Aramaic here.

I teach it.

I teach two semesters.

One semester we read them all.

And if you know Hebrew, you can do Aramaic quite quickly, close languages.

Two classes.

But we're starting, we're going to start some more.

It's a different language, it's called Syriac, but really that's part of Aramaic.

So really we teach, you know, for a

seminary, we teach quite a bit of Aramaic for a seminary.

Now you co -authored Invitation to Biblical Hebrew, a beginning grammar.

You co -authored that with Kyung Won Choi.

I hope I didn't butcher his name.

That was perfect.

Wow.

Absolutely perfect.

And is this only for a person involved in seminary

studies, or is this something that somebody with the time and the interest?

I hate to use the word layman, but just so people understand where I'm coming from.

The average person who's a Christian who has some time and interest, will this book be of value to

them?

Yes, because there are three parts

to it.

There are DVDs where you can actually see me lecturing.

I give keys to all the exercise.

A person who's a,

DVDs.

And you don't even need that, really.

I mean, you can just do it from the textbook, and you can do it from the word.

People really like to watch me do the lectures as well.

And so, no, I wrote, let me say

this.

They're using my book.

Yeah, there's all sorts of people.

Oh, yeah.

My book.

I know of two prisons in America that are using it right now.

Wow, praise God.

Yes.

That's something.

Well, if anybody listening wants to pick up this book, one of our sponsors is

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Cvbbs .com.

That's C -V for Cumberland Valley.

B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.

You can contact them.

And if they don't already have it in stock, they will order it for you.

It's a Kregel academic publication.

So just make sure you tell Todd and his wife,

Patty Jennings, over there at Cvbbs .com that you heard about them through Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And so if Dr. Fuller believes that the average

Christian can pick this up and be blessed by it, I would urge you to do that.

And you are going to be speaking at the Christ Our Redeemer conference at

Pittsburgh Baptist Church in Indiana.

As I said, one of my dearest friends, Pastor Josh Fryman, is one of the speakers.

In fact, he almost became my pastor.

But the Lord had mercy on him, and I, unbeknownst to me, was

going to be moving to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where I now reside.

So God had a different plan in mind.

But Josh remains a dear friend, and also Reverend Isaac Evans from

Glastonbury Baptist Church in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Reverend John Peoples from Grace Presbyterian Church

in Indianapolis, Indiana, and you, Dr. Russell Fuller, will be all speaking on

the theme of the centrality of Christ throughout redemptive history.

What are some of the specific themes that you are going to be addressing at this conference?

There will be, let's say, two things in particular I think I'm going to stress.

One is in the New Testament, the New Testament

rocking about Messiah, they

say things that lead to the idea that Christ is not just in

the Old Testament, but actually Christ

is throughout the Old Testament.

He, from Genesis, basically chapter 1, all the way through the Old Testament, and then

obviously in the New Testament.

So that's one thing I'm going to really stress, the fact that Christ is, again, not just in Isaiah 53,

Isaiah 9, Isaiah 11.

Clearly he's there, that's true.

But I want to get people to see that, look, he is throughout the Old Testament.

He's

just not just here and there.

Then I'm going to talk about how a lot of scholars, some

of them, some of them are just basically saying

Christ is not in the Old Testament at all.

Are you talking about liberal scholars?

Of course, any scholar who would say that, in my opinion, would be a liberal, that's correct.

But there's schools like at Calvin Theological Seminary.

There's professors up there.

A man wrote a book on the Old, and in there he says

there is, he's talking about the Old Testament.

He makes a certain statement, let me see, where he says, and I'm quoting him now, no

pre -existing messianic paradigm, written or symbolic,

that he healed the sick, raised the dead, forgave sins, was crucified, rose on the third day, and then

ascended to heaven.

That's a direct quote from him.

Wow, I mean, why on earth believe that he is the Messiah

then?

That's right, and here's how he's thinking.

He looks at things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, or let's say pre -Christian Jewish

literature.

He looks at that and he goes, I don't see a lot about Messiah here.

Well, first of all, I think he's wrong there.

I think if he looks at pre -Christian Jewish material, you'll see they do talk about it.

Now, he says, but wait a minute.

He'll say, but they're not talking about some type of pre -existing messianic paradigm, healed the sick, raised the

dead, and so forth.

Here's how I would respond to that.

Like I told you, I attended Jewish schools.

If you look at what the rabbis say, as a matter of fact, maybe I'll quote some rabbis.

Yeah, definitely.

Is this Talmudic sources or modern -day rabbis?

The rabbis clearly believe.

Now, again, the reason I want to bring the rabbis up is not because what they say is,

that's not what I'm saying.

I want your listeners to understand that.

The reason I bring them up is because so -called Christian scholars, like Mr. Crump at Calvin,

he's saying, hey, listen, it's Christians basically made up all this,

okay?

They made it up.

That's his claim.

Wow.

Yes.

And so what I want to do, I'll tell you what I'm going to read to you.

I'm reading from a book here called Every Man's Talmud.

And it's written by Abraham Cohen, okay?

And he has a chapter on Messiah.

Let me read

it to you.

First of all, he talks about how Messiah is going to suffer when he comes.

They call him the son of Joseph.

And now when I say son of Joseph, I'm not talking about New Testament, that his father was Joseph.

They mean they call him son of Joseph.

They're talking about Joseph in the Old Testament.

The way they're reading the Old Testament is they look at Joseph's sufferings and they go, Do you see how

Joseph's suffering?

The Messiah is going to suffer.

Like, not in the exact way that Joseph did.

But they look at what Joseph did and they go, uh -huh, Messiah's going to suffer the same way.

They even call him, listen to this title they give Messiah,

and they call him, he's got leprosy.

And they say this, and this is by Rabbi Judah, the reason we

call him the leprous one is, quote, Surely he hath borne our

griefs and carried our sorrows.

We did esteem him stricken and spitten of God.

He quotes Isaiah 53, saying Messiah's going to suffer.

Now again, this is not a modern rabbi.

This is a rabbi back, you know, close to the time of Christ.

Now this rabbi, Judah the prince, is after Christ, but not too far, and not too many years after Christ he

wrote that.

They believed he would die.

And when they talk about the death of Messiah, they say he's going to die because in Zechariah it talks about the wounds in his hands.

It's talking about Messiah's wounds, they say, you see.

So the rabbis, I hate to say this, many times the rabbis are more messianic

in their interpretation of the Old Testament than Christian scholars are.

Wow.

Let that sink in for a minute.

I mean, um...

Now are you using that term Christian scholars loosely there?

Very much so.

Very much so.

A part of Christendom is what you really mean.

Yes, that's correct.

Correct.

I appreciate your correcting me on that.

Again, see, the Jews had this problem in their thinking.

They said Messiah's going to die, but yet they also taught Messiah's going to live forever.

Together, but we know today the solution to that.

That's the resurrection.

He was raised from the dead.

That's what happened.

They don't describe Messiah as being raised from the dead, but they have what looks like a contradiction for them.

Namely, yes, he dies directly.

That's the, again, the resurrection.

Something else they say, they say when Messiah comes, and again I don't agree with totally what I'm about to tell you, they say there's

going to be sacrifices, but not sacrifices for sin offerings

anymore.

Well, that tells you they believe that when he comes, he was going to deal with sin.

So, clearly the rabbis had what this guy is denying.

They had a pre -existing messianic paradigm, and basically I can show you from the rabbis

that everything that they're saying here, forgive sins, raise the dead, and so forth, that's exactly what they say

Messiah's going to do.

If you'd like to share some more of that, in fact, let me just give our email address again for anybody who would like to

join us on the air with a question of your own.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

I'm sorry, so you could continue there.

Okay, let me give you two quotes of the rabbis.

It's very important.

There's two quotes I think that are just so essential to understanding how the rabbis see Messiah.

Now, again, they have no problem with Messiah.

The Jewish problem is they don't see Jesus as Messiah.

I want to make sure, again, you're...

They have two quotes that I think are fabulous for Christians, and that's this.

The first one is, the prophets only prophesy of Messiah.

Now, when they say that, you've got to understand when they say prophets, they're not just talking about Isaiah

through Malachi.

The way that the Jews...

You can see this in the New Testament.

The way the Jews describe the Old Testament is,

when they say the prophets only prophesy of Messiah, what they're saying is the

Old Testament only talks of Messiah.

That's what they're saying.

Okay?

Their other statement is this.

The world was only created for Messiah.

So, again, what they're saying is, all of human history is

to Messiah.

He is the gold.

He is the ultimate fulfillment of all Old Testament.

Therefore, the whole world, the whole history of the world, is really aiming toward Him.

Now, I think this is very important, and this is why sometimes when the rabbis...

There's certain verses.

Let me read you...

There's a verse in Leviticus 26 that I think is very

interesting.

The rabbis say it's messianic, but I think if you and I were to think about this, we would say, wait a minute.

Where is this messianic?

It's in Leviticus 26.

Let me see if I can find it very quickly here for you.

It's not describing the future.

It's describing the past.

I'm just going to repeat our email address while you're looking.

Go ahead.

Chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

I also want to give a plug to one of our sponsors.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air.

But I'm sorry, I would now like to return to our discussion.

Dr. Fuller?

Okay, I was going to talk about Leviticus 26.

The Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you should not be their

slaves.

And I broke the bars of your yoke.

And you go, wait a

minute, the Messiah is in the future,

not the past.

Again, they'll say, no, no,

only prophesies of Messiah.

And so, what they see is that even Israelite history is a window into the

Messianic age.

So what they're saying is, you think there was a great redemption at the

time of Moses, and he caused you to walk upright.

You just wait until Messiah comes.

You've seen nothing yet.

Wait until he comes in his redemption.

And so they would look at the Passover,

a window into the Messianic age, you see.

And that's why, again, with Joseph, you see how he's suffering?

That's a window into the Messianic age.

Messiah's going to suffer.

This is why Jesus, again, when he looks at the Old Testament, he'll say, do you see how they lifted up that serpent in the wilderness?

So they're going to lift me up.

Do you see that manna in the Old Testament?

I'm the true manna.

And so you can see how the New Testament authors, and the one

that everyone gets stuck on sometimes is, out of Egypt have I called my son.

And you read that and you go, wait a minute, that's talking about Israel in the past.

Yes, but you've got to understand, all of Israelite history is a window into the

Messianic age.

It's as if when Messiah comes, he's going to repeat Israelite history.

So just like they're going to go to the wilderness for 40 years, he's going to be tempted for 40 days.

He's going to be baptized.

They went through the sea, you see.

Messiah is going to repeat the history of the Old Testament, but on a much greater scale, you see.

This is the way the rabbis understood it.

I think they're absolutely right.

And by the way, those two quotes, you can basically find them in the New Testament.

For instance, in Matthew chapter 11, prophets in the

law put very much the same thing that the rabbis were saying.

In Moses, everything they said was up until John.

Everything they were talking about ends with John the Baptist.

And then what does it say in Colossians chapter 1?

It talks about Jesus and it says, all things were made by him, all things were made

for him.

So again, all human history, biblical or even outside the Bible.

And that's why I would say, no, we need to see Jesus from

the Old Testament and then of course in the New Testament.

We do have a listener from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who

wants to know, are there any theologically sound faculty members left

at Calvin Seminary?

And if so, are they protesting such heresy that is being

taught there?

Better than, let's say, Mr. Crump does.

Again, I think he teaches Old Testament.

Are there any people who would really

strict orthodoxy about the person of Christ, the Trinity, and so forth?

I doubt it, to be honest with you.

Wow.

And that was not always the case, right?

No, no, no.

There used to be...

Yeah.

Oh yeah, no.

Now, this was affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church?

That's correct.

And I guess it's gone downhill with the denomination, then.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a shame.

And there's a lot of post -mortem.

Really, Crump, whose quote I gave you, he's...

And by the way, Crump goes on basically to say even passages like Isaiah 53 have nothing to do with Jesus.

But, yeah, those...

Well, that's a

shame.

Now, I am...

I don't know if you are, because I haven't asked you this, but I happen to be a theologically Reformed, a Calvinist, a believer in

the doctrines of Sovereign Grace.

I don't know if you share those convictions.

But one of the reasons I'm adding that to my question is

that, obviously, according to my way of

viewing the Scripture, and of the Gospel, there needs to be a supernatural

miracle that actually occurs in the heart of a dead sinner before they can embrace

the truth.

So I understand anyone, whether they are Jewish or Gentile,

rejecting the truths of the Messiah, the prophecies of the Messiah, and so on,

until they have been born from above.

But excluding that supernatural issue, what are the

arguments that the rabbis have that would lead them to

reject Christ as fulfilling their Messianic prophecies?

Yes, I totally agree with you in my

thinking.

Again, a big fan of the London Confession that I just gave you.

I really like the Western Course.

I'm Baptist, so I would make a couple of adjustments here and there.

But to me, probably the best expression of

theology that's out there.

But now with that said, the way the Bible describes it is, it's a blindness

of mind

and

situation.

Country to get fixed.

But if you say, well, to do that we need to get sin fixed.

Oh no, no, no, don't forget that.

We're not going to get sin fixed.

But look what Paul says, like in 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

There's really two ways of thinking.

To the Gentile mind, Messiah dying on the cross.

Because again, they were looking...

And one of the rabbis says that the days of Messiah will be just like our days today,

except just for

Messiah to come and die for sins and

not destroy the

society.

If you look at the very end, it talks about the Gentile nations.

It's sprinkling them, and it says that they who had not heard,

they will believe.

And they who did not see, they will see.

And what that means is, the Gentiles, when Messiah comes, the Gentiles will receive him.

But then Isaiah 53, the very next verse, 53 .1 says, but who has believed our report?

And so what's being prophesied at the very end of Isaiah 52 and the beginning of 53, is that when Messiah

comes, the Gentiles will receive him, but the Jewish people, not 100%.

There's always a remnant according to God's election.

But as a whole, are going to reject him.

That's what's told the Jews, you will

not basically receive me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

And that's going to be toward the second coming, I believe.

So I do believe that at the end of time, when the times of the Gentiles have been fulfilled,.

We'll be saved, is what I think.

You mean all of those who are ethnically Jewish?

I don't think it will be 100 % necessarily, but I think it will be predominantly.

So I think when the times of the Gentiles are in by the Lord,

then I think at the end of time, I think you'll see the conversion of the Jews again.

Now I'm not a dispensationalist.

The Jews will become...

The dispensationalists believe that two -thirds of them will be murdered in the Great Tribulation,

do they not?

Some of them do, yes.

Some forms of dispensationalism would see something like that.

Again, I believe we're in the Tribulation now.

You know, this

is the last hour and things like this.

Yes, because we live in a messianic age.

And we actually have a related question here.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, Is your

guest amillennial, premillennial, or postmillennial?

Yes.

Yes is a good answer.

And let me say, sometimes when I read the Bible, I say, you know, I could see that view on that verse.

But overall, I'm an amillennialist.

Yes, right now that would be where I see myself, an optimistic amillennial.

Yes, now let me say this.

I would see...

I would see...

When you say amillennial, it sounds like I don't believe in a millennium.

I really do believe in a millennium.

But I don't take it as a literal...

is that Satan, during this time, is no longer deceiving the nations.

If God were just to... Satan was deceiving the nations.

But I think today, he's been not completely bound, but only bound in the sense that

he's not able to deceive the nations like he was in the Old Testament.

So I believe we're in the millennium right now.

And at the end of the millennium, then you'll have, you know, the Gog and Magog,

you know, the last battle, as it were.

You'll see the resurrection, the final judgment.

So I'd see a June of things like that.

And then the hereafter.

New heavens and new earth.

And we have John in Augusta, Maine, who asks, one of your

former guests had presented the idea that there were

many Jews who, at one time, in the days of

Christ, were accepting an understanding of

Yahweh in a Benetarian concept.

They were not completely refuting or rejecting the notion of different

persons of God.

Although, obviously, not having reached the point of being Trinitarian.

Does your guest agree with this, that there were many Jews who had a Benetarian

understanding of Yahweh?

That's a very good question.

You can tell by the New Testament that it's not like at the beginning of the New

Testament they have to explain the Trinity.

They just describe the Holy Spirit and Jesus, almost already from, let's say, a

Trinitarian framework.

If you read some Jewish books, like in the old days, I'm not talking about a theology book like we think of a theology book.

Like, for instance, I'm thinking of a work that's called the Song of

Solomon, but it's the Aramaic edition of it.

If you read in there, you can see how they personify the Holy Spirit.

And they, of course, and they look at Messiah, and again, they almost see Him as divine.

And so, when you look at some of the Jewish writings, they

are very, I mean, they're Unitarian.

Listen, they're Unitarian.

I don't want to give the idea that Jews are not strict, but yet when you read their

literature, the way they personify the Holy Spirit and even use the term Holy Spirit, when you see how they

view Messiah, you can see how when a Jew comes to Christ, Trinitarianism is not a

problem.

To answer the guy's question, our listener's question, the answer is, he's on to something here.

That's right.

It's not that they were, I mean, they were still Unitarian, but they were really close.

And once Jesus comes, by the way, I mean, the question is, who is this man?

And once you say He's God, then Trinitarianism becomes inevitable.

I mean, and that's where, there's not some theologians in a back room somewhere making up this doctrine.

I don't know.

Once Jesus came, it's like, wait a minute.

This man is God,

and now when we look back in the Old Testament, and I love what, he talks about the

Old Testament.

He compares it to a dimly lit room, that when the light of the New Testament is shined back

on it, we're not reading the New Testament into the Old Testament, but when you shine that light back in there,

you say, hey, wait a minute.

The Holy Spirit was there all this time.

Jesus was there all this time.

We just needed the light of the New Testament to brighten up the Old Testament.

So we could see it more accurately.

By the way, our guests, our previous guests who our listener in Perry

County was referring to is Douglas Van Dorn, and he did a program not long

ago, Christ in the Old Testament.

If you want to look that up in our archive at ironsharpensironradio .com, you can do so.

That's ironsharpensironradio .com, and that's actually the title of his book, Christ in the Old Testament,

From the Shadows to the Savior, and Doug Van Dorn is also a Reformed Baptist,

and so I hope that you, if you missed that program, enjoyed it.

Again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

What you were saying just now, it probably explains

why some of the Hasidic groups, when they have believed

that a modern -day figure was their Messiah, they really border on, if

not going over the border, of worshipping that individual, and that should be

anathema in Judaism, but the way that they have embraced and responded

to some of these modern -day figures who have passed away, it

seemed that they were really holding this figure up

as a figure to be worshipped.

Yes.

Even if you go to Israel today, sometimes you'll see pictures of these rabbis.

You're right.

He's deceased, and they almost have, exactly like you're describing it, a worshipful attitude toward him.

That is correct.

And we have, let's see, we have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,

who wants to know, I've heard some Messianic Jews

say that the New Testament was truly written in Hebrew and then

later translated into Greek.

Is this true, or is there any evidence of it?

When it comes to the Gospel of Matthew, Sibius,

he mentions that in

Hebrew, probably it was Aramaic,

there may have been a Hebrew or Aramaic

version, and

that there's any evidence whatsoever,

Greek, I would agree with

Aramaic version,.

Matthew.

Matthew in Greek.

Yes, and obviously not all Messianic Jews hold that view.

That would probably be a minority view, even with Messianic Jews.

Yeah, I hope so.

I bet you that's true.

We also have a listener in, let's see here,

we have Terrence in Queens Village, New York,

and he wants to know if you are familiar with the writings of

Moses Maimonides?

A little bit, yes I am.

He did, you know,.

A Guide to the Perplexed, and so forth, so yes, I am somewhat familiar with him.

I think Maimonides also

might be like the year

5776, or maybe we're at the 77 now, and that's been that many years since

Maimonides.

Yes, he was a famous...

And by the way, Terrence, since you're a first -time questioner, you are receiving.

A free New American Standard Bible, and that is compliments of the publishers

of the New American Standard Bible.

Their website is nasbible .com, nasbible .com, and it's

going to be delivered to you absolutely free of charge as well, by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service,

cvbbs .com, c as in Cumberland, v as in Valley,.

Bb as in Bible Book, s as in service .com, cvbbs .com.

Thank you very much, Terrence, for your question, and we look forward to receiving more from you in

the near future.

By the way, the Jews also say about Moses Maimonides, they

talk about from Moses, so they

have a very...

And I just need to now take a break since our system is not permitting me to

air commercials at this point.

I do want to make sure that our listeners know about a conference that I will be attending,

God willing, January 19th through the 21st, 2017.

This is the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and this is in celebration

of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and the lineup of speakers

is more lengthy and more impressive than any lineup I've ever seen at

a conference because I don't think I've ever seen this many speakers on the roster at a

conference before.

I think there's nearly 20 speakers, and they include Paul Washer, Stephen J.

Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcom, James R. White, Tim Challies,

Conrad M. Bayway, who I keep repeating this, but it just is so true.

I think he is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, preacher on the face of the earth

today.

He's pastor of Kubwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

He's a Reformed Baptist, helped to launch a Reformed seminary there in

Zambia.

He is going to be speaking.

Phil Johnson, who's the executive director of Grace to You Ministries with John MacArthur.

He will be speaking.

Rosaria Butterfield, who we've had on this program at least twice.

She is a former leftist lesbian tenured professor at Syracuse University

who was saved by the grace of God.

Totally transformed.

Is not only a heterosexual, but a Bible -believing Christian now and married to a

conservative Presbyterian pastor.

And she is going to be giving her testimony there.

And Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio and a whole host of other folks.

If you'd like to have more information on this conference, go to g3conference .com.

G3conference .com and that's g and then the number 3 conference .com.

And please, if you do attend this conference, look me up at the Iron Sharpens Iron

exhibitors booth, which is going to be right next to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

exhibitors booth.

And we are going to be working together to spread literature there and so on.

And I would love to meet as many of my Iron Sharpens Iron listeners as possible there.

So I hope to see you there in the future.

And that is January 19th through the 21st, 2017.

And my thanks to Lindbrook Baptist Church in Lindbrook, Long Island for helping

to finance my way to get there.

One of our sponsors, Lindbrook Baptist Church, Nassau County, Long Island, New York.

And also, Pastor Josh Bice, who is orchestrating this event.

He is enabling me to have a free exhibitors booth there.

And I really appreciate that and hope that Iron Sharpens Iron gains a larger audience

than it already has.

When we have our exhibitors booth there, we thank them so much for accommodating us in that way.

And I also want to remind our listeners about

one of our other sponsors who helped to make Iron Sharpens Iron possible.

Helped to make our program enabled to relaunch a year ago when we had

been on hiatus for several years.

Many of our listeners remember the old Iron Sharpens Iron program broadcasting out of

WNYG and WGBB radio in New York.

Well, we relocated here to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

And our key sponsor at the time, Wading River Baptist Church in

Suffolk County, Long Island.

They helped with all the expenses necessary to get the program back on the air.

Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church is a former

professor at Talbot School of the Bible.

And he is a pastor there now and he is a dear friend and a powerful preacher and a

brilliant man of God.

And if you live out in Suffolk County or are visiting there, especially the eastern part of Suffolk County, I

strongly urge you to visit there.

And if you don't have a church of your own that you are a member of, I urge you to seek them out

and consider them for a church to join.

Their website is wrbc .us.

That's wrbc .us for Wading River Baptist Church.

And we are discussing Christ Our Redeemer, the centrality of

Christ throughout redemptive history with our guest today, Dr. Russell T. Fuller, who is professor

of Old Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky,

co -author of An Invitation to Biblical Hebrew.

And he is one of the speakers at the Christ Our Redeemer conference at Pittsburgh Baptist Church in

Pittsburgh, Indiana.

For more details on that conference, which is being held next weekend, the 9th and

10th of September, Friday and Saturday, you can go to pittsburghbaptist .com,

that's p -i -t -t -s -b -o -r -o baptist .com,

and you can find out all the information that you need when you click on Upcoming Events at the

top of the masthead there at the Pittsburgh Baptist Church website.

And one of my dear friends, Pastor Josh Fryman, is also going to be speaking there, among others.

Pastor Josh Fryman of Community Baptist Church in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, which

nearly became my home church before I moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania,

which was an unexpected move at the time.

So I really strongly urge you to go to that conference if you either live in, near

Indiana, or if you are able to get there by plane, train, or

automobile.

And I do know, as I said earlier, that there are at least two that I know of in our audience who live in

Indiana who have told us that they intend to go to the conference.

So we look forward to hearing a good report from you when you return.

Dr. Fuller, just to get a little bit more of a thorough definition of the

course you teach there at Southern, what exactly makes the

course Old Testament Interpretation different than some other Old Testament studies?

It's a pretty general term, the way we're using it.

And teachers are called Old Testament Interpretation.

But each of us usually have our own kind of specialty at Southern.

So again, language teaches here,

and he's theology, and he does also what they call literature, say

about the Old Testament.

We have a doctor that would

be a history, archaeology, but especially the history of the

Bible, of the Old Testament.

He's in, let's say, background studies to the Old Testament.

That's his specialty.

And then we have a man named Peter.

Now you brought up the

Septuagint,.

Which is an interesting subject, the Greek Old Testament that was

available in the time of Christ.

And there are Roman Catholic apologists who will try to

use as a proof what they would call the deuterocanonical

books, which we would call the apocryphal books.

They would use the Greek Septuagint as proof that they were a part

of the canon of the Old Testament because they are a part of the Septuagint which Jesus used.

How do you respond to that?

Yes.

My response to that would be that just like when the...

If you go back to the time of King James and the Bibles produced at that time, many times they would put

Bibles like the King James not because they thought it was

more translation, but because they thought that those intertestamentals

would give you...

Them were given the oracles of God.

And we know what the Jews have today,

the books we have in Protestant Bibles today.

And even really to the Catholic Church.

Now there were people all through history that accepted some of those books at times, but it really wasn't until the Council of Trent

in the 16th century.

They made a dogma.

Whereas before scholars could disagree over it.

That's correct.

Because even Jerome who wrote the Vulgate, who compiled the Vulgate,

he didn't believe that they belonged in the Old Testament.

Yes, that's what it looks like.

That is correct.

So yes, those books, again, they're Old

Testament books, but they say

no.

When you read like Maccabees, it talks about they're looking for a prophet to come.

So that shows you right there.

They're looking for a prophet

to come back to John.

So this is absolutely amazing to me that serious Roman Catholic scholars

would insist that books that the Jews never, anywhere in recorded

history, accepted as a part of their canon, that they would say that they are a part,

with certainty, a part of the Old Testament canon.

That's correct.

And to me, that just cannot be.

Also notice in the New Testament,

Paul will sometimes quote books, even heathen poets, he quotes, you know.

But as Scripture,.

Almost every book of the Old Testament.

And by the way, our listeners may be interested in viewing a debate that I

organized a number of years ago with my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega

Ministries.

He debated Roman Catholic apologist Gary Machuta on the issue of

the Apocrypha, or as the Roman Catholics call them, the deuterocanonical books.

So you could go to the Alpha and Omega Ministries website, AOMIN .org,

AOMIN .org, and you could look up the debate with Dr. James R. White

who was defending the historic Protestant view of the

Apocrypha.

Actually, also endorsed, who was defending the Jewish view of the Apocrypha.

And Gary Machuta who is defending the fact that the

deuterocanonical books are a part of the canon.

So go to AOMIN .org and just, I guess you could either put

Apocrypha in the search engine or Machuta perhaps, M -I -C

-H -U -T -A is I think the way he spells his name.

But I'm sure you'll find it if you try enough different variations of that and get to

that debate that you can order through them.

Quite a remarkable debate as I recall, and Mr. Machuta was a

very respectful individual and very bright and knowledgeable, but I

think with certainty I believe he was, is on the wrong side of

scholarship with that issue and the wrong side of faith.

But we do have another listener who is

asking a question.

We have, actually he's anonymous, he prefers to remain anonymous and he is writing from

North Carolina.

He says, I have a pastor of the

church that I have been attending that I have not joined yet, but he

is convinced that no other edition of the scriptures other than the

King James Version are God -breathed.

They are not inspired of God and therefore those who use them

are in eternal peril.

I find many other things about this church that are wonderful and my heart has been knitted to the

people there, so I don't know if this issue is serious enough to

compel me to leave.

What are the thoughts of your guest on this?

I know this is kind of off -topic, but I think it relates a little bit here.

With that, if the King James is a God -breathed document, what do you do with stuff

before King James?

Right, I've never understood that.

But also, remember this, the King James that is probably being used at his church is not

the 1611.

The late 1700s,

if that's the God -breathed one, then they changed it.

The one he's got is not the 1611.

Yeah, I'm sure he's reading the one that was revised in the 17...

No, this is...

Remember, there was great English translations even before the King James.

Yeah, those who believed that the Genevan Bible was superior, they condemned and looked

down upon those using the King James as having a liberal Bible.

That's correct.

That's exactly right.

The Puritans, many of them, anyway.

That's right.

It took about a generation before the King James really caught on.

Because people, again, preferred the Geneva Bible.

That's correct.

I would disagree with that.

Now, I know a lot of godly people who hold to that position about this.

You know, to me, I'm just telling you the way I would view it.

If a pastor...

I don't think I

could change the

Bible.

I think it's a fantastic Bible.

They'll never be, in my opinion, they'll probably never be another Bible in English like it that had that type of influence

for over about 400 years.

But yet, the problem is, you know, there's so many people in our country today that if you give them a King James Bible,

they can't understand it.

Or something like a New American Bible.

And really, that's...

When you look at the Greek that the New Testament's written in, it wasn't the scholarly Greek of

the time.

It was Koine Greek.

It was the Greek of the common person on the street.

Which shows you that God wants His Word to be understood.

And so, I think it's important that we do have

God's Word.

And I think today, and again, this is not the fault of the King James translators, but, you know, we

speak English or are different.

And I think if you give that Bible to people out there, that's

going to be a hindrance for the Gospel.

And so, I want them to have a Bible that they can understand like the New American Standard.

Because I think that's going to...

It's almost like giving them a...

The King James is like.

Giving them something in another language.

And let me also plug again my friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries for his

book, The King James Only Controversy.

Which you can also get at AOMIN .org.

AOMIN .org which stands for Alpha and Omega Ministries.

AOMIN .org.

Or you can go to CVBBS .com.

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CVBBS .com.

And, Dr. White also points out in that book that the translators of

the King James Bible did not view their translation the way King James Onlyists view it.

They did not view it as the exclusive and superior version

of the Scriptures that were to be used to the exclusion of any other translation.

They did not discourage or reject comparison

when reading the Bible.

In fact, they believed they encouraged it strongly to be viewed as a companion to other

translations.

Dr. James R. White.

That's correct.

And also, they used them a

lot.

And the Vulgate, all those things

that the King James translators were heavily influenced by other translations.

And it is ironic that many, not all, but many of the.

King James Only advocates today are Baptists and yet all of the translators

of the King James Bible were Anglican and, in fact, the Baptists were even persecuted by

the Anglicans in the 17th century and I believe one was even, at least

one Baptist was executed in the town square in London in 1611.

So, why on earth these Baptists who, most of which would frown

upon Anglicanism altogether and not even view it as a part of the true church,

how they would view this as some kind of exclusive

version of inspired scripture, it would also involve

miraculous revelation, wouldn't it, of the Holy Spirit to guide these

Anglicans to perfectly interpret the Bible into

the form it is in their King James Bible?

That's right, that's right.

Yeah, that's a difficulty, that's a difficulty.

Well, I'd like you to give us some recommendations, some advice,

some counsel when we are evangelizing our Jewish friends, family members, loved

ones, neighbors, colleagues on the Biblical evidence

that Jesus is the.

Messiah, that He fulfilled Biblical prophecy, and perhaps some responses

to the typical arguments that our Jewish friends may have.

Okay, yeah, when you're

witnessing already offensive

to them, the idea that they need to be

evangelized,

here's what I have found, that once, like if you really, like I have a good relationship with many Jewish

people, once you establish a good relationship, they are more willing to listen to

you.

If you just, sometimes, and I'm not saying just don't walk up to them off the streets, you can do that, but if you

have a little bit of a relationship, and they sort of know you, and they have,

a lot of times they'll listen to you more, they'll, it's still going to be, it's not going to be easy,

but I found that they've been far more open about Messiah, and

usually what I'll say to them is, what do you think of Messiah?

I won't start off immediately with you saying, what do you think Messiah is going to

look like when he comes?

And let them say some things.

And then what I would do is, and a lot of times what they'll describe is something similar to Jesus, and

I'll say, well look how he, and then I'll show them how he does, the

Jews are

going to reject him, and so forth, and that there's going to be,

for a long time, and that's describing them in their spiritual state.

At the end of the period then they'll seek David their king.

In other words, they're going to go a long time without Messiah.

But when you talk to them, it's very similar to what you see in the

stumbling block, dies for our sins?

No, he's a conquering king.

And I have to say to them, wait a minute, I agree with you, he's going to be a conquering king, but that's going to be at the end of the Messianic age, not at

the beginning.

And, you know, you have to, show the fit,

but again, also I think it's very important to pray for them, just like you

said earlier, for anybody to come to Christ.

It's the Holy Spirit has got to

call them.

Don't put it this way, don't think that you're going to give them the magic argument that's going to draw a Christian.

The main thing we have to do is give them the gospel.

You said that right, oh, this, this.

Now, yeah, I want you to say things right, but ultimately give them the gospel, because the gospel is the power of

God unto salvation that enlightens the eyes,

truly is.

And that's what you want to do.

So to me, I would just give them, don't feel like you have to be an expert in Judaism in order to talk to them,

that's what I would tell you to do.

And you mentioned that Christ will be a conquering king, but

isn't there a very strong sense where spiritually he already was on

Calvary?

Oh, that's correct, that's right.

I was thinking the Jewish way that time, but no.

And then all power and authority was given to him.

He's sitting at the right hand of God the Father.

Yeah, and he conquered sin and death when he said it is finished.

That's correct.

He was a conqueror in a more important

way than people view earthly conquerors of earthly nations and earthly enemies.

That's correct.

And he led captivity captive.

That is correct.

Amen, we'll praise God for that.

And there is a view that

it's a controversial disagreement that Christians have, even very

biblically sound Christians who maybe even agree on most

of what we have in the scriptures, but have other things that divide us.

But there are those who say that Satan right now is the Lord of

this earth.

Obviously not one to be admired and worshipped as Lord, but they say he

is the Lord of this earth, and others will say no, Jesus Christ is the Lord.

Satan is not the Lord of this earth.

How do you respond to that controversy?

Yeah, I would rules and reigns.

However,.

That's by, you know, God's allowing that.

Christ is allowing him to be the prince.

It talks about in scripture that Satan leads the unregenerate

his will, talking about Satan's will.

Satan, I think right now, is sort of in a sense, you know, death is sort of his kingdom,

but Christ by his resurrection, of course, has defeated death.

Death is the last enemy that's going to be defeated,

death below Satan and his kingdom.

So I think Satan does have a kingdom right now, but of course that kingdom is destroyed,

and the way I like to describe it

originally, even though most people can't tell by what I say, unless I say y 'all or something, but we have some pretty good

rattlesnakes down there.

And when you kill a snake, that snake can still bite you.

When you kill a snake, you don't just play with it.

Even though it's dead, it can bite you and put venom in you.

That's a very important lesson for some of our Pentecostal brothers to learn.

I hope you understand what I'm saying.

Yes I do.

He's a defeated foe, but he still has some venom.

And if we play with him, let

me tell you,

at the end of time...

Yes we do, amen.

And there.

Are some very, for lack of a better term,

evil people who profess to be Christians who would

dismiss the notion that they are racist, they are anti -Semitic, and they

dismiss the notion that Jesus was a Jew,

and they would insist that the true Israelites

are white, Anglo -Saxons, Aryans, whatever you want to

describe those who are in that group ethnically.

This is just pure nonsense.

Because if Jesus was not a Jew, he's not the Messiah, am I right?

That is absolutely correct.

As a matter of fact, now that you say that, concerning his

son, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, well,.

There was no lost tribe.

It's through Abraham's seed that all the nations of the earth

were born.

So to hold that view,

those people will repent for salvation.

That's what they need.

Yeah, praise God, because I would agree with you.

I have a hard time believing that people who subscribe to that kind of thing

are regenerate.

It would not appear to me that that kind of thought pattern would

be embraced by someone who is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

That's correct.

Like 1 John says, there are certain things that you have no need for someone to teach you this.

You have the anointing abiding on you.

If one of.

Those people were to get saved...

Yes, I agree with you.

Well, we actually have our computer ability

to air commercials now, so I'm going to go to a final station break, and we're going to be back

after these messages with Dr. Russell T. Fuller.

I hope that you don't go away.

Our email address, if you'd like to join us, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr. Russell T. Fuller.

Hi, I'm Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and it looks like our technology is working, but not quite

up to snuff because we had other commercials that were supposed to air.

So hopefully that will all be restored by the time we return to you tomorrow with a

live broadcast.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail dot com, chrisarnzen at gmail dot com,

and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live

outside of the good old USA.

Obviously, there are certain circumstances that would compel you to remain anonymous,

like an earlier listener who is a member of a church or actually

considering joining a church that he saw as having some problematic teaching.

He obviously did the right thing by remaining anonymous because we don't want to publicly

ridicule a specific congregation that we know nothing about.

Anyway, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail dot com, chrisarnzen at gmail dot com.

We do have a listener, let's see, this

one is Cindy, who is in

Corpus Christi, Texas.

Cindy asks, I have met Messianic Jews who

claim to love Jesus Christ, who believe that he is their Messiah, who

believe that he is God, but they reject the Trinity

as an unbiblical and Roman Catholic invention.

Could you respond to this?

And my follow -up question would be, would you embrace such people

as brothers and sisters in Christ?

Could there be salvation for them in spite of their serious error?

Trinity is a foundational doctrine,.

And to me it's not just a Catholic doctrine, but Protestants,

if you go back and look through

time, you can see that the Trinity, the Nicene, and so forth,

what they produced, really, was just the proper view.

What you have is one God, but yet the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit

is God.

So these three are one God, and

each of the three persons of

the Godhead, obviously, are all equally God, and they all have

in each one of them, and don't ask me to explain that, I don't explain it, but that's what Scripture teaches, and

they each have what's called personal properties, so that we can see that they're, it's

one God, but yet three subsistences, or three persons, but when we say three persons, you don't want to think of it

exactly like a human person, there's no analogy that's going to work, so it's

property of the Son, that's His property, is begetting the Son,

and for the Son to be begotten of the Father and from the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son, but this is from

all eternity, you see, so there was never a time when the Son was not, He was begotten of the

Father from all eternity, and so I think the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is

one, but yet the Father is God, the Son is

something that all do in my

opinion, you know, say look, who is

Jesus?

And clearly the New Testament writers tell us who He is, that He is God, that

the titles of God are given to Him in the New Testament, the attributes of God are given to Him in the New

Testament, the works of God are given to Him in the New Testament, and the worship of God is

given to Christ in the New Testament.

And the same can be said of the Holy Spirit, and therefore they're all three, one,

you see.

By the way, let me say one more thing because this is important for the discussion I'm going to do

at any time the Father does something, whether it's

in the Old Testament, New Testament, whatever, what it says in John chapter 14, what Jesus says

is, when the Father does His works by me, through me, in me,

you see, so any time one member of the Trinity is working, all members

are working.

Or what Jesus says in John chapter 5, my Father is working until now, so I have to work.

Because, again, when one member of the Trinity is working, all three are working, you see.

And so in the Old Testament, when you see God doing something, that's not just God the Father.

So every time you see God in the Old Testament, that's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And so each of them is what's

called in theology the inseparable operative, the Godhead, and that's correct.

When the Father works, how does He work?

He works through the Son.

And when the Father and Son work, how do they work?

Through the Spirit.

And so, again, the doctrine of the Trinity projected

to a fundamental level.

I would not recognize them as Christian.

Brothers.

Now, that would dovetail into others that would

view, and I believe, in fact, the listener did say that these

messianic so -called groups identified Jesus as both Messiah and God

while simultaneously rejecting the Trinity.

So, these would probably be in the realm of modalism like the

Oneness Pentecostals.

Is this also an issue that's so serious that you view it as placing those who

adhere to it outside of saved brothers and sisters in

Christ?

Yeah, I would not recognize them as brothers in Christ if they believed into a modalism

of different.

Modes.

I say separate.

I mean, again, they're one but not

between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Or, how do you explain in the Scriptures how they can talk to each other using pronouns like

I, You, Him?

The way the New Testament describes it, it's not one God in three different manifestations.

There's a tri -unity going on here.

And so there's a sense in

which

the one.

So there's a sense in which they're one and there's a sense in which they're three.

But we're not teaching tri -theism here.

They're equal in power and glory.

They're equal in substance.

They're the same divine substance.

Again, I would again reject this.

We have Robert in White Plains, New York, who says, I know that the Catholic catechism

teaches that Jews and Muslims adore the same God,

the one true God that we Christians worship.

Many conservative evangelicals, if not most, would reject

the concept of Allah embraced by Muslims as a false God and yet somehow

many of them seem to be inconsistent where they will view a Jew's

concept of God as being in some sense faithful

to Biblical understanding.

Can you have your cake and eat it too in this area?

If you reject any concept of a non -Trinitarian God,

could a Jew be rightly viewed as worshipping the true God of the Hebrew

Scriptures?

That's a good question.

The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old Testament.

But the God of the New Testament

with the Old Testament, we would be more Unitarians, I believe.

I don't mind that.

That's exactly correct.

Yes, it's the same as the New Testament God.

Now, you're not saying, or should I say, are you saying, but I believe that you're not

saying that the Hebrew Scriptures teach Unitarianism.

You're just saying that the way that they concealed the fullness of the Godhead

until the ministry of Christ and the New Covenant, that one could easily

view God in a Unitarian sense.

Is that what you mean by that?

That's what I meant to say.

Thank you for getting me out of that heretical thing.

I appreciate you for that.

What you're saying is only had the Old Testament Scriptures and

we did not have the Revelation.

But once we have the New Testament Revelation and a fuller understanding of who God is,

what I would say is it's still the same God between the Old and New Testament.

What I would say today is that Jews

do have a view of God, whereas when I look at

something like Islam, oh no, no, no.

I believe that I

will give to the Jews that again, they

say, no.

Now, would you say that the prophets in the Old Covenant who are actually

receiving new revelation at the time it was new, who were actually communicating with

God or God was communicating with them in a much more vivid

and real sense than even somebody reading the pages of the Torah or

the scroll, would you not say that they had perhaps a

deeper understanding of the nature and Godhead, the nature of God and

the Godhead than the average Jew might have had?

I mean, did you think that they were totally also blind to a Trinitarian concept, or

is this something that we just don't know and cannot know?

It's difficult to know, but I'll say this.

In the Old Testament, it is clear that Messiah would be divine.

One of the titles in Isaiah, chapter 9, is Mighty God.

So a divine title is given to them.

Isaiah fully understood what he was writing there.

If he did, then he's on the way to Trinitarianism.

But remember what Peter says.

Peter talks about searched and made

inquiry.

So you can see they didn't have full understanding of their prophecies.

So they were searching out.

What they were doing was probably looking at other prophets and trying to put the pieces together.

But there's different places in the Old Testament.

Messiah is divine.

Jeremiah 23 talks about Messiah, and his title there is the Lord our

righteousness.

His proper name, Yahweh, is Messiah.

Messiah's title there is Yahweh is our righteousness.

So he's being called directly God.

I mean, Yahweh himself, you know.

So, I mean, you can't be any stronger in a statement of the divinity of Messiah than something like that.

So it's there in the Old Testament, but I think it wasn't until Jesus.

Now, I'm sure they fully understood it.

Now, again, I'm with you.

Even passages like, to see my

day.

Well, how much of it did he actually see?

Did he understand the divinity of Christ?

Well, we're going to try to give honor to whom honor is due one last time, and go to our final station

break, and don't go away.

We'll be right back with Dr. Russell T. Fuller after this message.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, and we thank the Lord that he resolved our technical difficulties and enabled us

to air the commercials for those who keep Iron Sharpens Iron on the air through their

sponsorship and advertising dollars.

And we have been interviewing for the last nearly two hours with about ten minutes to go

Dr. Russell T. Fuller, Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

in Louisville, Kentucky, and co -author of An Invitation to Biblical Hebrew.

He's one of the speakers, in fact the plenary speaker, at the Christ Our Redeemer Conference at

Pittsburgh Baptist Church in Indiana next Friday and Saturday, September 9th and the

10th.

And the theme of the conference is the centrality of Christ throughout redemptive history.

If you'd like to get more information on this conference, how you can attend, the website is

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top of the masthead of the website.

That's pittsburghbaptist .com and please let everyone know there that you heard about the

conference from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Dr. Fuller, I would like you, oh actually before I ask you to wrap.

Up things with a summary of what you most want etched in their hearts and minds, I was just curious if you know

from any genealogical investigation you may have done, are you related to the great

Andrew Fuller?

You know,

my

folks are usually preachers or

criminals.

I'm on the preacher side so far.

Well, I would like you to summarize those things that you most want our audience

to remember when they leave this program today.

Well, I think it's important, again, as we read our Bible, that we realize

after one, it's the Spirit of God.

Even though it's written by different human beings, it's the Spirit of God who's the ultimate author of

Scripture.

And therefore, there's going to be a consistency in Scripture.

That's why, again, according to the London Confession,

we need to understand

who's coming.

From the Old Testament, the way it's described in the Old Testament, there's a person who's coming

in God, which are yea and amen.

And so, again, Jesus is not just in the New Testament or just a couple of places in the Old Testament.

But we need to be able to read Scriptures and see Christ in it from Genesis 1 -1 all the

way.

Now, again, it's not that Jesus is equally on every page of Scripture.

We've got

to be careful not to just force Christ

that way.

I don't know if you're familiar with Harold Camping, who really

morphed into quite a dangerous heretic before leaving this earth, and he did

that.

I believe he used a lot of eisegesis in the Old Testament.

Sometimes it's direct prophecies of Christ.

Sometimes it's through types and through certain ordinances.

Sometimes the way Christ is in the Old Testament is in different ways.

We've got to understand that.

But any time again that you see God, especially when God, for instance,

yet there's passages where people do see God in the Old Testament,

like John 12, there's no doubt it's Jesus who they saw.

When he saw the Lord high and lifted up, he saw Jesus.

So I think we need to read

our

It's about

God.

It's about him.

We've got to read scripture in a way that

that's what

I'd like to leave your readers today.

And if you could perhaps for a final two moments leave our Jewish listeners

with a couple of words because even though there may not be any Jewish listeners listening to this

live broadcast, this program will be archived, perhaps God willing, for

decades to come.

And I'm sure that eventually Christians who appreciated this

discussion will share the MP3 with their Jewish friends.

So if you could leave our listeners who happen to be Jewish with a word for about a minute and a half now.

Again, even Messiah is

to

look at the New Testament, read the New Testament, read the Gospel, and I think as they

look at the Word of God, as they look at the New Testament, and see how

in the Old Testament, I think

that the Holy Spirit,

and again, God's not through with the Jewish people.

He's saving Jews today.

We're going to see all Israel be saved.

Now, I'm not talking about all Jews from all ages, but at that time.

First was given to the Jews, then the Gentiles, and so I think the Jewish people today need to look at

how he connects to the Old Testament, and I think by the Holy Spirit, I'm going to see Jesus

as the Lord and Savior and as the Messiah, the fulfillment of all Old Testament prophecies.

Amen.

Well, I want to thank you so much, brother, for being on our program today.

I definitely want you back on Iron Sharpens Iron as soon as possible, and I'm sure

that there are many other discussions we could have that will benefit our listeners, and do you have any contact

information you care to share?

Reach me, we have a website, and you'll find my email there, but it's

bts .edu for education.

And again, if you forget that, just add, and you can find my

email, and please feel free to email me.

Great, and if you could just hold on for a moment after the program, I'd like to just finalize the conversation with you.

Okay.

And I hope everybody always remembers for the rest of their lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior

than you are a sinner.

God bless.