On A Christmas Eve Dividing Line

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Somehow I managed to get through an entire hour on the topic of Christmas and persecution of Christians and...lots of other relevant topics! Hope you find it useful.

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And good morning! Welcome to The Dividing Line on Christmas Eve of 2013.
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I'm not sure where that year went, but it is just about gone. One week left and we are on into 2014 and could we have imagined the things that have happened this year?
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I don't think we could have. You know, a lot of wonderful things have happened this year.
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Laura's been faithful to his people. We'll probably, sometime next week, do a review program or at least a segment of 2013.
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It was pretty amazing. I think back to Dublin and Berlin and London and Johannesburg and all the places within the
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United States and the Canada that I traveled to became a platinum -frequent flyer.
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Biggest travel year of my life, distance -wise to be certain. Thankfully not by number of flights, but by time spent inside a pressurized cabin, there's no question about that.
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A large number of debates, primarily on Islam this year. That's certainly the case.
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We're up to about 135, somewhere around there now. And it's been, we press on.
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But I have to admit, when I think back over 2013, much of what crosses my mind is the, think how much farther down the road in cultural decay we are now than we were a year ago.
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Just an amazing thing, real reasons to be considering the freedom of speech in the future within our society.
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This may be one of the last bastions, webcasting may be one of the last bastions of the freedom of speech.
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I mean, think of all the stuff that's on the web right now and how difficult it is, even for repressive governments, to control what's on the web.
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Now, what is, what will be in danger in the future will be, especially large organizations, or really any organization.
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I mean, you know, I could certainly, I could see members of the
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United States Congress today introducing legislation to remove tax -exempt status from any organization that is quote -unquote homophobic.
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In other words, it would quote Romans 1. I mean, because we all discovered last week that just, that Paul was clearly a homophobe, and a bigot, and a hatemonger.
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You just use the hate speech laws, just move them over one little bit and voila. I don't think anyone would call me crazy for thinking that someone would introduce that.
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Now, would it get passed yet? No. But we know how the left works.
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You start off with two or three people pushing something, they get laughed at. And the next time they introduce it, there's 10 or 15 people.
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And eventually it gets through. It's just, you keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and if there's not any firm foundational bedrock left to a society, it's like rotten wood.
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You know, when you first push on rotten wood, it's still got stiffness to it, but you keep pushing, pushing, pushing, but eventually it gives way. And I think that's what we're seeing.
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So, who knows? It could be very true that the dividing line long outlives
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Alpha and Omega ministries, if you know what I mean. I mean, that's a real possibility. I mean, you know, just looking at the future, that's the way things are.
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But really, when you think about it, this whole Duck Dynasty thing right now, and you look back over the year, and what have you seen?
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You've seen this progression. And it's the speed of it is what is truly breathtaking.
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And where will you be at the end of 2014? My prayer would be that God would have granted great repentance.
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But let's be honest with ourselves. That normally comes with great judgment.
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And what kind of judgment would bring repentance to this land? I don't know. I don't know. Good questions.
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Lots of questions we could be thinking about. All I know is when I look toward the future, there is a,
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I think, very fleshly temptation to be focused upon all the negatives. And a very fleshly temptation, and it's a lack of faith for us to become entangled.
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And I think I'm talking to a lot of people. I know the mindset of a lot of people that are attracted to this kind of program.
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And we have a tendency toward worry. We have a tendency toward saying, things are just, they're so bad, they can never get any worse, etc.,
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etc. Rather than looking to the future in light of the past and recognizing our current circumstances do not determine the reality of God's blessings.
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They do not. There are people this day who are in just dire straits.
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They have nothing in comparison to you and I. They don't have personal freedom. I mean,
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I did have, let me get up to my, why didn't
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I bring that up? Well, that was dumb. And you click there and you go there.
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There was one article that I was going to mention today. It's called
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Violence Weary Iraqi Christians Can't Celebrate Christmas in Peace.
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Many Christians in the West usually celebrate Christmas with door -to -door caroling, special church services, and family gatherings to share the joy of the birth of baby
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Jesus. But that is not the case in many restrictive and dangerous countries around the world, including Iraq. The risks are too great, mainly from Muslim terrorists.
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Iraq is number four on the 2013 Open Doors World Watch list, which ranks countries that are the worst persecutors of Christians.
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It is estimated that there are only 330 ,000 Christians left in Iraq, as many as fled the country due to violence and persecution.
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Folks, we need to seriously recognize there were over 2 million Christians in Iraq when the
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United States went in and its coalition partners, and there are only 330 ,000 left because the
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United States of America purposefully chose not to protect the Christians so as to not quote -unquote offend
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Muslims, as if that worked. So 1 .7
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million Christians were driven out of Iraq, primarily because of the attitude of the
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United States government, not the Obama regime, but the United States government as a whole, because the majority of those left under the
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Bush administration. The United States government, not much of a friend of Christians around the world.
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Not much of a friend of Christians around the world. Pastor Tariq tells Open Doors that churches are targets for terrorists, especially on Christmas Day.
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Many Christians stay home because they are too afraid. Common Christian traditions are still important to the Iraqi believers.
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Tariq and Human, another pastor, say that in the past many families would purchase a Christmas tree, decorate the house, and make special food.
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They would also buy new clothes and visit relatives and friends. However, because the situation is worsening in Iraq, they can't always do these activities anymore.
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The pastors tell Open Doors that believers enjoy celebrating the Christmas feast because it reminds them of God's love and his promises, but because security is limited, the freedom to celebrate
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Christmas is growing less and less, Tariq explains. Last year, Christian students in central South Iraq were warned that if they skipped classes to celebrate
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Christmas, there would be severe consequences. Last December, Christmas coincided with Muslim religious observations.
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That is also the case this year and puts Christians more at risk. In regards to feeling God's nearness,
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Tariq adds, as believers, we can see the hand of God with us while we are passing through everyday situations, and every day we feel his protection and love, but some people who are far from God feel that he does not care, does not take care of them.
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As well as facing the threat of persecution, many Iraqi Christians have lost their jobs and live in poverty. Akram, an
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Open Doors co -worker, states many Christians are very poor. They cannot give gifts or new clothes to their children.
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At Christmas, many of us in the West are comfortable, warm, and safe. Persecution for our faith is the most remote thing from our minds.
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I challenge you to keep these brothers and sisters in your prayers, says Open Doors USA President and CEO Dr. David Curry. Pastor Tariq says that we can show our love to believers in Iraq this
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Christmas by joining them in prayer. Well, there is, you might say, oh wow, what a downer.
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No, I think we need to recognize it's a balancing act.
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It is a balancing act. There is absolutely no two ways about it. I have mentioned the text to you many times before, and we're going to be hitting here in the not -too -distant future in my series through Hebrews chapter 13, but a book of Hebrews.
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In chapter 13, let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels, not knowing it.
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Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill -treated, since you yourselves also are in the body.
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There is a command to remember the prisoners as though you were bound together with them, literally is what the
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Greek term in verse 3. That's what we should view ourselves as, bound together with them.
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Well, how do you do that? How do you do that? I mean, my family's in town, at least the family that's out of town, my daughter and son -in -law and granddaughter, and so each morning we're getting to see, you know, today
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I was walking her. She evidently doesn't like, I was told that she didn't like it when you would hold her arms up and walk her.
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Well, she lets grandpa do it and seems to enjoy it, and now she's letting other people do it, so who knows?
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I mean, she could walk. She can stand up on her own, do all the stuff, but she's a little bit too chicken yet.
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She hits the knees fairly quickly, but she could do it. So, you know, I'm enjoying all the things you do with little one -year -old baby girls, you know, they make all sorts of funny noises and faces and all sorts of things like that.
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How do you balance that and the joy of having your family around you and the food that we're going to have?
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I mean, we'll have, Lord willing, our traditional turkey and dressing tomorrow, and that's just so good and just so many massively bad calories that I'm going to have to ride for, you know,
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I did 95 yesterday, I'm going to have to ride 195 afterwards just to get rid of it all. How do you balance that with viewing yourself as soon dead and menoy?
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Well, I think one thing that does help me, because this is something I think about a lot, is to recognize that these believers do not live, they live in poverty and need and want and fear of persecution, but they have joy.
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And that's the amazing thing is that they have joy. In fact, sometimes, to be honest with you,
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I think they may have more joy than many of us do, because we look to the wrong sources for our joy.
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We look to the family relationships and the food and the enjoyment and the health and the things, and all those things are passing away.
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That's not where true joy is found. Very, very often, it is Christians outside the United States that know the true source of joy, and hence they experience it in a way that we do not.
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And in a way that our so easily distracted from. We are so easily distracted away from really seeing the grounds of our joy, which is a recognition of the peace we have with God that the world cannot take from us.
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I've said this many times, and I certainly say it in the prayers that we have at the church.
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Normally, when I'm not preaching, I do the pastoral prayer on Sunday morning. And I will often make reference to the necessity, the propriety of considering our most precious possession to be the gospel itself.
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That the contemplation of the gospel, the contemplation of God's eternal purpose, the contemplation of, yes, the eternal covenant of the redemption, the covenant between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternity past to bring about creation and to glorify the triune
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God, the redemption of a particular people. That should be something that brings us great joy.
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It should be something that we, well, let's face it, for most of us in our traditions, contemplation is not a big part of our lives.
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If we spend five minutes concentrating on something, we think we've really put in an effort. It is just so easy to be distracted, so easy to move from one thing to another and to be taking in all this information, but not really thinking deeply about any of it.
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And I think we're seeing the results of that in our society, by the way. That's how the degradation is taking place and things like that.
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But I won't go down that road right now. But the contemplation just of God's purposes should bring us great joy, let alone our participation in that.
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And yet so often we are short -circuited by all the stuff around us and everything that's going on around us and the ringing of the phone and the arrival of email, whatever else it might be.
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And as a result, we don't end up really seeing the heritage that is ours, which we can see if we look at our persecuted brothers and sisters who don't have all those things that get in the way.
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And yet, in many ways, they seem to have more peace and more joy and more contentment than we have in the
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West, which may say something more about our faith in the West than anything else. So how do we have a balance?
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Well, we pray for them. We make it a part of our celebration to pray for the persecuted church and to pray for those that that day cannot gather, they can't have the family together because any unusual gatherings would attract people.
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And then do what many of them do, and that is pray for their persecutors.
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Because it's so easy for me to sit here and to have a righteous indignation and anger toward the
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Muslims who would be watching with evil intent to persecute
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Christians on Christmas Day. I mean, we've listened. It's very interesting.
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Again, there are different Muslims. I've just recently had
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Muslims, I'm not going to mention them so as to not cause them problems, but I've had Muslims wish me a happy Christmas.
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But there are Salafi and Wahhabi Muslims never do that.
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And I understand why. Remember, and please forgive me, the name has escaped me and I didn't look it up, but remember the young man that I responded to last year where I played.
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He's a young teacher and he was speaking about Christianity and he got it all wrong.
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And I responded directly to him in about three programs. And I've seen videos from him, and one of his videos where he says that to wish someone a
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Merry Christmas is worse than mass murder. And that little snippet has sort of gone viral and he's sort of given as an example of a terrible, horrible person.
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I understand what he's saying. He's saying the worst sin, the only unforgivable sin, is shirk.
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And to wish somebody a Merry Christmas is to wish them well -doing in idolatry.
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So I understand. I mean, if I believed what he believed, which is based upon misunderstanding, but if I believe what he believed, then
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I would probably have to hold his position. But it's so easy for us to, when we think about our fellow believers literally hiding their homes and maybe very quietly leaning.
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Yeah. Yeah. Akhadi. Yeah. I think
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I thought it was Akhadi, wasn't it? I think it was. Wajdi. Yeah. I think so.
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Yeah. But they may have to lean in close to one another and sing quietly, very quietly.
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So it doesn't get out of the room. A Christmas carol. It can't go door to door. Then again, to be honest with you, we only get persecuted for doing it, but I just read an article this morning about how at a certain army base down South, they were talking about the
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Christmas football tournament and they were informed by their female diversity officer.
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They couldn't call it that. It had to be a holiday tournament. Can't be a army.
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You can't talk about Christmas. Leftists really do give me heartburn.
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But anyway, that balance is something I think we should always be looking for.
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It's a whole lot easier just to put it out of our mind, not think about it. But I think there's a much deeper enjoyment of celebration and prayer for others and what we do have when we do seek to find that balance and to recognize that even as we enjoy
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God's blessings in our lives, there are brothers and sisters who can't have those blessings and we should be praying for them because they are probably praying for us as well.
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So with that in mind, I gave a holiday presentation, a specifically incarnational presentation, on Sunday night.
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It would have been the 8th of December at Covenant of Grace Church in St.
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Charles. You can go to their website and I would imagine that that has been linked there and posted there.
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It was a very unusual one because it was a version of a presentation
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I first gave a couple weeks earlier, a couple months earlier, in Canada on manuscript p52.
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And believe it or not, I connected it to the Incarnation. In fact,
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I'm planning on doing that tonight for my family. They don't know that yet, but I'm gonna be bringing my digital projector home and gonna do that for them.
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They frequently don't get to see most of the stuff that I do when I travel, which I find, you know, that's where I hopefully do my best work.
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Anyway, so in thinking about texts that are relevant at this point in time,
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I suppose I should make mention. I just noticed
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Squirrel and Channel says he's going to be, he's going to sing Born in the Shadow of the
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Cross at church tonight. I wonder if that's the one that Ruby did. Remember that,
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Rich? Do you remember? Do you remember that? The Shadow of the Cross? The one thing
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I will admit that I miss about this time of year and that big church that you and I went to, which isn't nearly as big as it was back then, were the
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Christmas presentations. Those were a lot of work. Oh my goodness. I ran sound there and you talk about work.
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Oh my goodness. Those presentations were a lot of work.
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I remember I really messed up once. My job was to play the, oh, this is the
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Easter one. This is the Easter one where my job was to play the sound effect of a rooster crowing with a
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Peter thing. Well, somehow it was one of those reel to reel tapes and somebody got, somehow it got messed up.
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So I hit the button, nothing happens. And like about four lines later, it was like, oh no, just the kind of thing that frequently happens in those things.
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But I do miss the candlelight service because that was pretty impressive. Probably illegal when you consider how much flame there was in that one room.
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But that was highly impressive. And then those musical presentations, which
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I was, I mean, one of the things that I've really missed, and every year I say I want to do this and it just gets so busy and busy, busy.
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The last time I got to sing even parts of the Messiah was decades ago, decades ago.
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And they almost always have Messiah sing -alongs on Sundays. It's like Sundays?
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The people who want to sing the Messiah, don't we have responsibilities someplace else on Sundays? I mean, come on.
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I would love to find a non -Sunday Messiah sing -along. I have the score someplace in that room.
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I just need to find it. And I would love to get a chance to do that. But anyway, Shadow of the
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Cross. That was a, I remember we cut out the cross in one of the spotlights and put it across the manger scene.
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And a black woman by the name of Ruby Brown sang that song.
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And man, I'll tell you, she could sing that song. It was amazing.
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A little bit of personal story there, I guess. I don't know. Anyways, what was I saying?
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I lost a complete track there. Oh, I realized that we have a mixed audience and that there are some who would listen to this program who do not view this day or tomorrow in any special way.
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There are others that object to it on the grounds of regulative principle issues, object to it because it's not commanded in the scripture, etc.,
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etc. And if they're consistent in that, I certainly can respect that.
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People are a little bit surprised to come to our church and there aren't any lights up, there aren't any wreaths hanging anyplace.
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We did sing three hymns, though, from the Advent section of the
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Trinity Hymnal on Sunday. But while my fellow elder did address the birth of Christ on Sunday morning from Matthew chapter 1,
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Sunday evening he was in Nehemiah, which is where he's been for a while.
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And so the last sermon prior to Christmas was on Nehemiah's examining of the wall, and that was what that was.
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So we try to take somewhat of a middle road there as far as we are not a liturgical calendar observing people very much.
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And that's fun. But obviously I do think it's a tremendous time of the year.
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It's always been one of the most important times of the year for me, even more so after writing
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The Forgotten Trinity and having defended the doctrine of the Trinity so many times. I've noted that the most angry
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I become in a debate is when a Roman Catholic compares the doctrine of the
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Trinity to some Roman fable that they've made up, like papal infallibility or the bodily assumption or some absurdity like that.
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There I truly have righteous indignation when that type of thing happens, because the
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Incarnation is truly one of the most amazing statements that the
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Christian faith makes. That we not only believe there is a Creator God, which is rare enough in our society, but we also say that that Creator God has entered into his own creation, which is what makes the
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Muslim shake his head. It's just not possible, which is why we've done the debates that we've done recently.
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Can God become man? And the reality is that as we consider this particular subject, there are very few,
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I think, even in the professing church, and I'm using that term very broadly there, there are very few in the professing church, even in the
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United States, that really believe what the
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Christian faith is saying took place. The Christian faith does not say on what day this took place.
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But could I mention just in passing, please, please, please, please, don't be one of these people.
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There are so many who repeat this, but we've all heard it, and it's just become so commonplace that everybody thinks it's true because they never hear any opposition to it.
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But please don't give in to this cultural norm that, well, you know, the
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Christians just borrowed this from the pagans, you know. I mean, Mithraism, you know,
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December 25th is the birthday of Mithras, and so they just, you know, they borrowed it, and they just sort of incorporated it in.
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That's baloney! It is historically naive to believe that.
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I know it's repeated all the time, but the very fact that it's repeated all the time is the only reason it's repeated all the time is that everybody just figures that it's a given thing, and it's not.
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It's not the case. I mean, the idea that the Christians would have any desire to borrow from a dying religion that didn't even have any impact was still developing in Palestine at the time of the ministry of Paul and the apostles and things like that.
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But it was passing away. Christianity was on the rise, at least culturally, at that particular point in time, after 313.
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The idea that they somehow said, hey, let's borrow this from the pagans, it just doesn't make any sense.
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And there's a fascinating article. I didn't grab the book out of my library, but I mention it probably every year.
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But track down the article by Dr. Beckwith, not the converted -back -to -Romanism
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Beckwith, but the historian Beckwith. He's the one who wrote the work on the
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Old Testament Canon and the New Testament Church, which we have,
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I believe. Yes? Beckwith. Yes, we have them in the thing. And check out the article that he wrote on the dating of Zechariah's ministry in the temple and how that might be related to...
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Yes, yes, it's still in packs there. It's Roger, isn't it?
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Yeah, Roger Beckwith. Okay. Old Testament Canon and New Testament Church. By the way, I mean, if you've got some extra...
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Oh, you too can have a three -pack of Roger Beckwith.
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Yes, we will pack them separately. That does keep them in good shape.
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Yes. And dust -free as well. Anyway, Roger Beckwith article on that subject is very interesting because it basically tends towards substantiating the original date, which is very early attested, which is the
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Eastern Orthodox date for Christmas, and that is January 6th.
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Fascinating stuff. And of course, the 12 days of Christmas is December 25th to January 6th.
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That's the 12 days. And so there's, you know, when people go, well, we just know it wasn't
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December, you know, I was listening to Barry Young here locally, you know, and he's like, well, everybody knows that.
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And I'm just like, I don't know that. But the reason I don't know that is because I've probably done more reading on it than most people ever consider doing in that particular subject.
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But someday I'm just going to do a whole discussion of that. Anyway, leaving all of that aside, the
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Incarnation itself, you know, the
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Eastern Orthodox talk a lot about it. The Eastern Orthodox are probably a little imbalanced on it.
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But I think there's some truth to the idea that the East is imbalanced toward the
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Incarnation, the West toward the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the
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West towards Soteriology, the East toward, well, they have a concept called theosis, participation in the divine nature.
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They have a very weak doctrine of sin in comparison to the West. We need to be balanced. But I do seem to sense, especially amongst
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Western Christians, a de -emphasis upon the Incarnation and upon Trinitarianism as a whole.
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There really seems to be a de -emphasis upon those issues.
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I see a meaningful Biblical celebration of the very invasion of God into His own creation as an appropriate matter for the attention of God's people.
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Now, obviously, that means that a lot of the other trappings can be a distraction.
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But certainly, as I have spoken on the subject over the years, one of my favorite things to do when
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I do have the opportunity of speaking is going to the prophetic passages, going to Isaiah chapter 9, talking about a child to be born to us, natural terms, yelad and yelad, the very same root that's found in the
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Qur 'an in Surah 112, he begeth not and neither is he begotten. Well, long before Surah 112 came along, what would that be?
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1 ,300 years prior to Surah 112, Isaiah had used those very same roots to say to us, a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us.
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I love going to the prophetic testimony, something I think Western Christians tend to be really weak on.
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We tend not to be able to do what the early Church did and be able to preach the Gospel from the
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Old Testament text, because we tend to be canonically challenged. But I go to the prophetic text, and then
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I really think that one of the reasons that the great high
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Christological texts of the New Testament tend to be remote to us, they don't tend to be the primary texts that we would put in our list of favorites, is because in essence we do allow a division to take place in our thinking between the
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Christ of Bethlehem and the Christ of the Cross, and then there's really a distance to the
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Christ of, say, the Book of Revelation, who rules the rod of iron, who has the sword coming forth in his mouth, and rules over the nations.
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One's a little more acceptable to us because it's not challenging to us.
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We like the baby Jesus. There are a lot of people who like the baby Jesus, because the baby Jesus isn't going to judge us.
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But the Jesus of Revelation is judge, and he has wrath against sin, and we just figure that Jesus is just simply the
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Reconciler. Well, yeah, for those who have faith, but it's putting all of the faith together.
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It's putting all of this together that's most important, and I think this is a great time of year to emphasize the amazing condescension that is demonstrated in the
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Incarnation, and that then requires us to have the highest view of Christ. And so, for example,
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I think one of the great Christmas passages is Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1, when it talks about the fact that he has transferred us, he's rescued us from the domain of darkness, he's transferred us.
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He's the one that did this, transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Once he mentions his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, then you have this great passage, starting
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Colossians 1 .15. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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Firstborn does not mean first created thing. And then, for by him were all things created, whether in heaven or earth, visible or invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him, for him he is before all things, in him all things hold together.
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They consist. And yes, I believe that is a Christmas passage, because again, when you recognize the unity and harmony and oneness of Christian truth, then you see you cannot possibly have that kind of text without understanding who
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Jesus really is and the fact that he was the God -man. Almost all heresies that have cropped up in the history of the
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Christian church have been heresies that have missed somewhere the balance that is necessary to affirm positively everything that the
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Bible teaches about Jesus. There's so much. What am
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I always saying to my Muslim friends?
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I mean, you can always tell a Muslim who has never opened their mind to Christian teaching on the subject of Jesus when they, for example, will quote
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John 5. I was listening to Nabeel Qureshi giving a presentation at the
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University of Georgia while riding yesterday. It's one of many things I listen to. And there are some
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Muslims in the audience, and when you listen to their objections, it is very easy for me now to tell when
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I am talking to a Muslim who understands what we believe and objects to it, or the
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Muslim who does not understand what we believe and is simply repeating the objections they think are valid based upon the teaching they've received within Islam.
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They've never opened their minds to really understand what we believe. You can always tell the difference.
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Both the individuals in the audience in this particular thing I was listening to demonstrated that.
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One of them quoted from John 5. Didn't Jesus say this? I just got the real strong feeling he'd never read
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John 5, because there'd just be too much in John 5 he couldn't accept. But, well, I do nothing, but I can do nothing of myself, etc.,
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etc. That means he can't be God. In the same way, most of the time, what you'll hear from a
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Muslim will be, well, look what it says here in Acts. A man testified by God to have done this, that, and the other thing, as if we don't believe
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Jesus is a man. He is a prophet, as if we don't believe Jesus is a prophet. Every false view of Christ that has cropped up over the years has been due to an imbalance, an unwillingness to allow
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Jesus to be more than that particular teacher would allow him to be. So you end up, well, he's a prophet, and so he's only a prophet.
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He's a man, so he's only a man. He's a king, so he's only a king. No, it's all of it together.
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It's all of it together. And if you don't have a real Incarnation, then you don't really have the fullness.
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Same thing in regards to the new attacks coming out of England on the virgin birth, based upon a poor view of the
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Bible. The idea that, well, only certain authors mentioned this, therefore it would be easier for us if we didn't believe this, and we don't have to worry about this harmonization thing.
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Let's not worry about harmonizing Scripture. Let's take a different view.
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Let's allow Scripture to be torn up into various parts and pieces. That's just the very foundation of what you have in so much of liberalism.
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But that stuff's out there, and without a virgin birth, without the historical reality of when the
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Incarnation takes place, you would not have the Christian doctrine that gives us hope and peace.
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And so I do not apologize for gathering with my family tonight and tomorrow and thinking on these things and celebrating and reminding ourselves once again that light has come into the world and how bright was that light.
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And I do not apologize to the secular naturalist who thinks
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I should be out duck hunting in camo with a long beard if I actually believe in the
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Christmas stories. You really think angels appeared to shepherds? I mean, come on.
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Yeah. You know, have you ever thought about that particular story? Doesn't it strike you as a little bit strange they appeared to shepherds?
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I mean, I think if you were writing this, the angels would appear to Herod, and they would appear to the powerful and to the mighty and to the people in the great places of intellectual and cultural learning, not to a bunch of smelly shepherds that had never even heard of antiperspirant or deodorant.
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But that's who they came to. And you see, what it does is it tells us that what the rest of the
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New Testament says is true. God chooses those who are not. He chooses those who do not have power, the non -well -born to make foolish those who think they're wise.
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So yeah, I think angels can appear to shepherds, and I believe that wise men can follow a star.
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Oh yeah, the moving star story, boy, you people are stupid. It's a miracle, guys.
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I mean, I know there's some really interesting stuff about what was going on at that time period, and that there had been a lunar eclipse, and you know, there may be some interesting stuff there.
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But when you boil it all down, it was a supernatural event. And if they were the only ones who could see it,
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I don't care. The point was they were led there. Are you telling me
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God cannot do that? He created the stars in the heavens. He created us, and you're saying it's beyond his ability?
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Let's say it was just a vision. Let's say it was just a vision that is given only to these men.
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God can't do that? That's beyond God's capacity. Well, you know, from a historical perspective, yeah, if you're a naturalistic historian who absolutely excludes the possibility of God's existence and intervention in history, then you're not going to believe these things.
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But then there's all sorts of stuff that happened in history that you have no answers for, and you just simply have to say it's really strange. Okay. But you can't say that in a supernatural context that God could not do that, or that God could not warn
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Joseph in a dream, or that the differences between Matthew and Luke in the information they record isn't relevant to the sources they were using and the audiences that were theirs, as if they had to be, well,
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I was about to say CNN reporters, but they're about as unbiased as I don't know what anyway. So they have to somehow record only what you would see on a video camera or hear on an mp3 player.
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That's not what they were doing. That's not what anybody was doing back then. So yeah,
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I believe all those things, and I am not embarrassed by it. And I recognize that in the vast majority of instances in the media today, when those types of questions are asked, they're not being asked so that I could actually give a full answer, one that's consistent with my worldview that would challenge somebody else's worldview.
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I know why they're asking those questions and the way they're asking them. I understand that. I understand that.
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And I am confident that in a context where truth could be spoken, I could give a good reason for why
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I believe what I believe, and that it's appropriate to believe those things, even if it's pretty rare these days that we are given those types of opportunities to actually answer those things.
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So I think it's perfectly appropriate to consider the...
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and in fact, I think it's necessary. I'm not saying you have to celebrate Christmas, but I think it is necessary to provide a counterbalance to the...
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how do I describe it? The fractured nature of Christian truth in the minds of most evangelicals today.
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What do I mean by that? Well, let me give an example. An example that it's real relevant to what we've done here on the program recently.
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We've been doing a Radio Free Geneva series, and I've been responding to Pastor Steve Gaines. And one of the things that I've noted in listening to some other things that he's done is that while Pastor Gaines seems like a wonderfully nice man,
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I do believe he's on the side of the angels and has done wonderful, great things, he is not a systematic thinker.
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He is not a systematic thinker. In other words, what he believes about X and Y and Z has never been brought very close to what he believes about A, B, and C.
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And so those of us who are systematic thinkers, we go, well, wait a minute, you said this over here, and then you said that over there, and you try to put them together, and that don't fit.
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And there are a lot of people who say, that's what I want, you see. That's good for me.
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That's okay. Makes it impossible to defend that apologetically.
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Makes it impossible, I think, to really be consistent in your biblical exegesis. But there's no—I've yet to encounter in his speaking any desire to be consistent in those ways.
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And there are a lot of people like that. That becomes a problem, from my perspective, when we try to bring the faith and proclaim the faith to people outside of the
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Christian faith. And people who aren't doing much of that, or live in areas where, you know, they're still sort of running on the cultural inertia of the past, and you can quote the
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Bible down in Tennessee, and people still sort of respect that, okay. But in the rest of the world, that ain't working very well anymore.
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And we have to be consistent in the presentation of the Christian faith that we're giving to others.
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We have to have thought these things through. Not because we're trying to get their respect, but because God can use that.
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I mean, the unregenerate, if the Spirit of God's not working in their hearts, doesn't care whether you're consistent. It's irrelevant to them.
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But being inconsistent can be an unnecessary stumbling block when you are engaging in apologetics.
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And in our day, evangelism and apologetics, it used to be apologetics is just sort of a little subcategory down here.
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It can't be anymore. You know, the Muslims have been right for a long time on this.
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Their dawah is both evangelism and apologetic all in one.
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And I've said many, many times, apologetics is just simply the flip side. It's the other side of the coin of evangelism.
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They go together. They cannot possibly not go together, and those who have ignored the one are now realizing that accomplishing the other is next to impossible.
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Because our society, under judgment from God, is so willing to believe even utter foolishness so as to have an objection to the
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Christian faith. And so we cannot any longer just go, I don't really think it matters a whole lot what we really believe.
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We don't need to worry about crossing our T's and dotting our I's and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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And after tomorrow, if we get together later in the week, we'll go back to having to deal with the issues.
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I'm looking at an article right in front of me. The article titled in front of me says,
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What You Believe About Homosexuality Doesn't Matter. And it's from an alleged minister.
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Now it's a United Methodist Church minister, which will tell you a lot because the UMC abandoned the
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Bible and the vast majority of its pulpits for a long, long, long time ago. But we'll get back to talking about that.
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And there's a really interesting development we'll see. I haven't gotten, well, you know,
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I haven't even looked, but there's a really interesting development, possibly in regards to the, did that come?
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Nope, nothing, nothing yet. But um, in regards to the
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Eric McCann situation, the possibility of censorship, uh, in regards to people, uh, talking about this, there's an article was written that pointed out that in comparison to what
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Eric McCann has done, Mark Driscoll has done diddly and yet, brum, you know, people just blogging forever.
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And then you've got Eric McCann and it's like, yeah, whatever, you know, that matter. Um, and someone basically pointed that out and their, uh, their editorial was deleted.
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And we are wondering why that might be and who's in charge of the deletion and stuff like that.
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We'll get back to all that. We'll get back to all that, uh, when we, when we aren't looking at what's going to happen tomorrow.
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But still, um, again, if, if you don't, if you aren't doing anything tomorrow, please don't feel like I am in any way, shape or form of putting you down.
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Um, you know, if you're a, if you're convinced in your heart and mind, that's fine.
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That's great. But, um, uh, I don't have any problem with that at all. The problem
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I do have is when the folks who take that position then decide that, well, that makes me more spiritual than you because you do these things.
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And therefore you're not as spiritual as I am. That's where I think you can get into a bit of a, a bit of a problem there.
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So anyways, um, well, that's interesting. I just saw a tweet here.
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I didn't get to check it. Pope Francis excommunicates rebel priest who preached in favor of women's ordination and appeared at, uh, some real weird events.
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Well, that's nice. I really think if they got serious about this excommunication thing and clean things out, they've, uh, uh, again,
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I've said many times, once you, once you clean house, we'll, uh, we'll, uh, start listening to your claims again.
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But, uh, oh, by the way, by the way, this has nothing to do with the thing, but with the topic, but there is a, uh, article.
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Um, let me see if I can find it here. There it is.
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Uh, yep. There it is. What is the name of this? Here it is. Diversitychronicle .wordpress
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.com. There is an article posted on December 5th by Diversity Chronicle called
53:57
Pope Francis condemns racism and declares that all religions are true at historic third Vatican council.
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Folks, it's a joke. Not a very good joke. There are some people that don't know good jokes from bad jokes.
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Just thought I'd mention that in passing, but, uh, this is a joke. If the
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Pope had said the things that, that he has recorded saying here, it would have been the biggest news of the century.
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Every news organization in the world would have people all over it.
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Okay. Uh, it would have been the lead story for weeks on end, not on one little, uh, thing here, uh, that I've never heard of before, uh, anonymously posted.
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But, um, for, for example, uh, this said the third
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Vatican council, what's that? Oh, concluded today with Pope Francis announcing that Catholicism is now a modern and reasonable religion which has undergone evolutionary changes.
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The time has come to abandon all intolerance. We must recognize that religious truth evolves and changes. Truth is not absolute or set in stone.
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Even atheists acknowledge the divine through acts of love and charity. The atheist acknowledges God as well. Well, he actually has gotten close to that and redeems his own soul becoming an active participant in the redemption of humanity.
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The reason people have been taking this serious is because Francis has allowed us to, okay.
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I, I hold him accountable. He is definitely giving all sorts of mixed signals, but then through humility, soul searching, and prayerful contemplation, we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas.
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The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer. This doctrine is incompatible with the infant love of God. God's not a judge, but a friend and a lover of humanity.
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God seeks not to condemn, but only to embrace. Like the fable of Adam and Eve, we see hell as a literary device.
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Hell is merely a metaphor for the isolated soul, which like all souls ultimately will be united in love with God. Pope Francis declared in a speech that shocked many, the
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Pope claimed all religions are true because they are true in the hearts of all those who believe in them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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And so I've had a number of people going, look, look, this is amazing. And I just go, maybe if it was posted on the onion, it would have been a little more obvious.
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But it's a, it is a joke. It is a, it is wishful thinking. And you just might want to check those things out before tweeting them out or anything else, because trust me, if the
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Pope had ever said anything, even slightly like that. Now, Francis has said some pretty weird things, and I am going to be talking about some of that in the future because it's so painfully obvious that his defenders are just working overtime.
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But something tells me I make a prediction. May I make a prediction here? We can, we can write this one down.
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Okay. Um, I'm going to make a prediction that sometime during the course of 2014, ready for this?
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Sometime during the course of 2014, James White's predictions for the coming year, the
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Pope will say something more ambiguous. Again, the
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Pope will do an interview that's going to make people go, what the
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Pope will write a commentary. He'll write to a newspaper and people will go.
57:31
And second prediction that Jimmy Akin and all of his defenders are going, well, what he meant was, and if you haven't looked it up, uh, what, what is the, um, what is the, uh,
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URL? It's the, uh, Lutheran satire. The guys do the Lutheran satire on YouTube.
57:57
Um, they did one on, uh, hippie Pope Francis. Maybe if you just, if you just put in hippie
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Pope Francis or something, it'll probably come up. Uh, but the, uh, the Lutheran satire guys, uh, will have more material to work with in 2014.
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Uh, they will be, they will have to expand their, their hippie Pope Francis one. I just, I'm making that prediction right now.
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And something tells me I'm on really safe ground, really, really safe ground. Uh, unless something happens to the
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Pope before 2014 and then I'm not on very safe ground at all. But anyways, well, folks, thanks for listening to my ruminations on the season.
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Uh, today, uh, like I said, are we, are we going to try to do something? Um, yeah, we're going to try to do something.
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Did we say Thursday or Friday? I forget which one. Probably Thursday. All right.
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Well, we'll see what we can, uh, come up with on Thursday and, um, have lots of things to look at.
58:54
But thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Hope you have a blessed day, no matter what you do tomorrow. We'll see you next time.