Refuting An Embarrassing Critique of God's Law

Psalm 119 and the Enduring Truth of God’s Law

I would say if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have created a humanist principle.

Well, I would say the same idea. I would say the same. I would say what's the problem with stardust. Bumping into stardust?

In the cosmic picture? No, there's no problem. In the cosmic picture, it won't matter.

No, Mr. President, you are not protecting religion. He is a powerful savior, and the gospel is not a suggestion. It is a command. Ramola, don't you sympathize with that? I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God, but I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ, and the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.

But you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true. Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever. Look on my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget your law.

Plead my cause and redeem me. Give me life according to your promise. Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek your statutes. Great is your mercy, O Lord. Give me life according to your rules.

Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, but I do not swerve from your testimonies. I look at the faithless with disgust because they do not keep your commands. Consider how I love your precepts. Give me life according to your steadfast love.

Here it is. The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. Did you hear that? Forever. I did. Did you hear that? Forever. Every one. Every one. It says every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

Every one? Every one. Welcome, everybody, to Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world. ApologiaStudios .com is where you guys can go to get more. You can get hundreds, literally hundreds, of radio shows, podcast episodes, everything from Apologia Radio to Sheologians, with this one over here, and Summer Yeager, and you've got Provoked, and you've got Cultish with Jeremiah and Andrew.

Jeremiah's getting married this weekend. What? He's getting married. Right. Now that is a Christmas miracle. That's what we've been praying about for a long time. We even tried to hook you up with Jerry back in the day.

We were trying to make it happen. It's been a long time coming. Yeah. It's been a long time coming.

We've got stories. Sorry. I don't want to make it feel awkward. I'm waiting to see how Joy's going to respond to that. Not awkward.

It was probably, what, like 12, 11 years ago or something? About 11 teen ago. Yeah.

11 and some change. Yeah. 11 and some change. We were trying. We were just trying. We've been praying, and I do want to say that Pastor Luke and I can take credit for a number of marriages that have taken place, and this is one where I get to say.

You did. I mean, certainly the ones you officiate. Yeah. You can take credit for it.

But this is one. He means making the connection. I'm not only officiating, but I'm actually the matchmaker. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Did you know that? Uh-uh. I was the matchmaker. Yeah.

Yeah. I sat down with him. We actually do this quite often. It happens a lot. Because we're a bunch of sad sap single Christians. We're like, we can't find anybody. Oh, and Jeremiah's in the thing. Is he here?

He's in the chat. Oh, what's up, Jeremiah? Yeah. We'll just be like, hey, why don't you take a look to your right?

Yeah. Have you noticed that cute, quiet girl over there?

Hey, she loves Jesus, and she's cute, and that's what you're looking for. And she's right over there. And then they go, oh, that's actually a good idea. And next thing you know, on Monday, they're going on their first date.

It's like, what?

Well, now at our church, if you just sit on the opposite side. You get pregnant. That's not what I was going to say.

We've got a lot of babies coming. Someone's going to take that one out of context. We've got lots of babies. What I'm saying is, like, add apology. There's babies everywhere. And babies being. It's true.

There's babies on the way. Babies here. Lots of babies. Yeah. I think this 2023 will have a wave. We're due for a wave. We are.

Especially after that sermon a few weeks ago. After my Proverbs sermon. We're expecting a big wave in August. Right. I have nine months from two weeks ago. Welcome, everybody. So, apologyostudios .com is where you go.

You should tell everyone what that sermon was about. Yeah. Or maybe just wet Proverbs. Yeah. Well, it was Proverbs. Just look it up in Apologia Studios thread here on YouTube. Not right now. But I'll go back to that later.

The title is The Whore in Death.

I know. This is going. You really covered a lot in the sermon.

Well, the reason why I called it The Whore in Death is because that's literally a summary of what the whole sections say. So, it wasn't necessarily trying to be provocative. It was just like, that's a summary title of what we're talking about today.

And one of the ways. Well, if you're expecting a wave of children next August, obviously, you were being provocative in some way.

Well, one of the points that God makes, and I love this. He makes the point about the harlot, the whore, and, you know, people going to her, go down to death, and the chamber of death, and all these things.

And then he says, God says in his wisdom, one of the ways to preserve your marriage from infidelity is to enjoy one another sexually. That's what he says. And so, I did a whole section on, let's deal with the text, is the word of God.

And go check it out. And hey, watch it as a couple. Watch it as a married couple. I hope it'll bless you guys, because honestly, I mean, that's God's wisdom. That's what you do. So, go to BonsonU at ApologiaStudios .com if you haven't done it yet.

You should definitely get on that. You are missing out day by day by not doing it. BonsonU, ApologiaStudios .com. It is totally free to sign up and to start learning from one of the top-tier seminary courses available.

About 2 ,000 audio lectures and video lectures are going to be there when they're all finished and done. And there's a ton up there already. So, if you haven't started, start it. Start it by yourself.

Young men in ministry, training for vocational ministry as ministers, you should definitely be doing that. Bible studies, do it with your church. It'll bless your life. Dr. Greg Bonson, one of the greatest blessings to the Christian church, I believe.

And we've got all of his stuff, thanks to the Bonson family. So, BonsonU at ApologiaStudios .com. And don't forget also, it is today, December 1st. And so, we last year, thanks to actually Jessica Banegas, she was the first one to suggest it.

She's actually in the chat right now. Is she? Hi, Jessica. We have a lot of friends in the chat right now. I know, it's unusual. Jessica suggested it first. Isaac got that to me. I love how Isaac said it.

I'll just do this quickly. Isaac was just more like, hey, let's just do this quick devotional thing. 25 little devotionals, whatever. It was not quick. Wow. Which I'm totally happy to have made an investment in because it's blessing so many families.

But it was more like, yeah, just a quick meal, a couple friends. No, that's not what this is.

It's going to take a bit. I don't know why he would think that doing anything with you would be quick. It's just how he got me to do it.

Oh, he was trying to lie to you. He was being deceptive. I think it's quick compared to the industry standard. Sometimes when you come in the studio, people are like, just real quick, real simple. And it's like, so you mean compared to what other studios do?

And he's chomping at the bit right now. He's just trying not to say something. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, I can hear you.

Yeah. Yeah, cut your mic. Cut your mic. I'm just joking. So anyway, go right now. It's the first day of the Advent series. It's an apology of studios. There's actually a playlist for it. So you can sit down by yourself.

You can sit down with your family, your church, your friends, and go through a daily Advent devotional. We are so honored to have been able to do it and grateful that it's there as a resource. Reinforce your Christian faith.

Yes, that's what I meant to say. Resource for you and your family. And the great thing about it, too, is that not only is it something you can do with your family and easy to click and do this devotional every day all the way to Christmas.

But you can also share this because within the whole series is just the gospel, the story of the gospel.

Sometimes I look at Luke and I wait for him to see the comment that I just saw. I don't even know. Is that Carmen? Is that Carmen in there? What? Someone needs to just ask for repentance. Oh, OK. Ask for repentance.

At the bottom. Repent. Say my name? Yeah. No. Yeah.

Oh, that's OK. Yeah. Oh, I see. OK. It's got to be Carmen. So, hey, listen, we're back. Thanksgiving was wonderful. I hope yours was wonderful as well. It is the Advent season. So we are thrilled here at Apologia because we love to celebrate the incarnation and the coming of Christ to save his people from their sins.

And so, again, check out the Advent series. We're back and we've got an important episode today. We're talking about theonomy, God's law. And I open up today with Psalm 119. And so we're going to be engaging a bit with actually a friend of ours.

She's been on cultish, I believe, Doreen Virtue. And I was on her program once telling Augustine's story. So we love Doreen. She's super sweet. She loves the Lord. We love her. But she did a show with somebody that clearly was out of his element in terms of understanding God's law, the issue of theonomy.

And we're going to engage with it, not just there's so much stuff that comes across. We're like, hey, engage with this, do this, do this. We're like, it's just not going to be really valuable for the church.

Like, what's the point? And we try our best to avoid any kind of conflict and controversy between Christians that can be avoided. But when it comes to some doctrinal issues that actually have a dramatic effect on the church, our mission in the world, and just on rightly handling the word of God on some issues, like you do have to engage.

And we think that this particular engagement is going to be a blessing to you. And this is an important element because I'm going to turn this over to Luke here in a second. But this is an important thing to talk about today as you guys are sort of gearing up to listen to this.

It's important because the witness of the church is not doing so well. I think we can agree with that in the West today. And there's a number of reasons for that. There's a number of reasons in terms of unfaithfulness, not solid preaching, the problems in the pulpit at the beginning, bad eschatologies, bad perspectives of the future, the role of the church, the role of government.

But specifically one of the core issues is the law of God. We have such a terrible, terrible perspective, an unbiblical and disconnected perspective of the law of God today in the church in the West that we are failing dramatically.

And there are some very, very bad perspectives of the law of God in the minds and mouths of many professing believers. And so this is an important discussion to have because the inconsistencies on this issue abound, abound.

And now just to be humble enough at the front for everyone to understand this, all of us are fallible creatures. None of us are omniscient. We aren't all-knowing. All of us have some failures in our theology or our ecclesiology or somewhere where nobody's got perfect doctrine, only Jesus.

And of course, you know, the inspired apostles. But when it comes to an issue like this, the scriptures are really clear on this. And so we're going to critique it. So before we do, I'm going to kick it over to Luke real fast.

Guys, get your Bibles ready because we're going to do this and try to get through as much as we can today.

So bear with me because I promise I'm going to tie this all together like a fine rug. Did you see what's happening in China right now?

No. They're like—. What? Oh, I heard there's like—is there protests in some way?

Oh, like major. I haven't seen them, but I've heard—. I've heard some people saying this could be the end of—. The CCP? Yeah. No. Yeah, people have had enough. They literally locked people in an apartment building.

People are starving. I heard that. Yeah, they welded the door shut. Shut up. And burned them alive. Wait, what? Yeah. I have not seen this. It's crazy. I've been on a loop. People are like—they've had enough.

No kidding. Yeah. So the reason I brought that up, one, this is going to lead into why theonomy is important. But two, I bet you the people there wish that they had tools of liberty.

Ah, yes. See, I got a nice little segue there. Tools of liberty. Nice little segue.

Very good. People that sell tools of liberty would be our friends in the Armed Republic. And just read this real quick. The famous first battles of the American War for Independence, which could be happening in China.

China. The battles of Lexington and Concord— China. —have an important piece of history behind them. They were fought to resist the British taking away guns and ammunition from Americans living in those areas.

People of China don't have those things. Tools of liberty. Firearms are the first and primary tool of liberty. But a growing number of freemen are realizing that firearms are only the beginning. The next most important tool of liberty is body armor, a defensive tool of liberty to match the offensive capabilities of guns.

This is where our Armored Republic of America—America! This is where Armored Republic comes in. This is where America comes in. Armored Republic equips the freemen of America with the tools of liberty that are necessary to defend their God-given rights to honor—or to the honor of Christ the King.

But we need your help. The Armored Republic is hiring for more good stewards in this time of massive growth. To join this mission, check out careers page at ar500armor .com. Need a job? Backslash careers.

Contact Armored Republic. They're awesome. We love them. They've been great. And I also want to thank our sponsors at New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. They're the best. Love those guys. Send your kids there.

That's right. NSA .edu. Sorry. Yes, that one. .edu is important. I didn't do this intentionally today, but the shirt I'm wearing— Moses Nut Marks. —is perfect. It's perfect for today. But you can find this shirt—I don't know what we're doing.

Which camera? Which camera? You can find this shirt at shop .apologyastudios .com. Leftover from ReformCon, and it's awesome.

Moses Nut Marks. That was from a side comment I made on one of our shows, and you said that's our new shirt. And I love it. Moses Nut Marks. I love it. And that's a key issue. I think it goes to very much a lot of what we're talking about today.

You're always going to have an ultimate in society. There's just no avoiding that. There's no avoiding an ultimate. There's no avoiding ultimate authority. And so you have today radical leftists, and you've got communists—literally communists and Marxists— who are trying to impose their system upon the world.

And you see it in all the woke propaganda, and the intersectionality, and all the other stuff you see, and the tactics and tools that they have for their dominion. And you see that going on all around us, because they're imposing their ultimate.

For Christians, the ultimate is Jesus. He's the King of kings and Lord of lords, the one with all authority in heaven and on earth today. Not coming to get it someday. He already has it. And so when we say Moses Nut Marks, what we're saying is if you've got questions about morality, if you've got questions about justice in society, then you need to look at Moses Nut Marks.

And why? Because Moses gives us the first five books of the Bible. Moses gives us the revelation of God. We have the Torah. We have the law of God. If you want to know what is just, righteous, holy, and true, you go to the Word of God.

And so that brings us to this discussion. By the way, I didn't even say hi to Joy yet today. That's the bear. I'm the ninja. And that's the girl. How are you? Doing good.

Did you get new glasses? I did not. Oh, they look different. Something happened to them, because I also looked in the mirror this week and was like, these look different. So I don't know what that's about.

It's kind of weird that you just confirmed it. I'm just excited that it's December.

I'm just having a great time. All right, real fast, say it quickly, because we got everyone watching. We're chomping on the bit, ready for the thing. Christmas tradition you have that's very special to you and your family.

Anything you think is yours. Oh, man. Oh, wait, can I have a second? Luke goes first.

Okay, Luke, go. Favorite tradition? Yeah. One thing that we do is I make, on Christmas Eve, a longtime family recipe of German potato pancakes with my kids. And I love doing that. I've seen the photos.

They're awesome. And that was something, as a kid, that we always did with my grandma and my grandparents. And so we've been able to kind of continue that with my kids. So it's fun. Nice.

Well, I like the, I guess the typical ones of like jammies, like the presentation of the Christmas jammies. And then Georgia gets an ornament every year. That's sweet. So, and it just kind of has, you know, you get to like think about what's representative of my kid this year.

That's nice. So how about you? You guys are like full of, I feel like some traditions take a second to establish. They take time to build. Yeah, no question. And sometimes you try something and you're like, nobody really liked this.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much how ours have developed, was we would just try something new and we're like, well, this is really cool. This is something fun. Our kids, this will build a memory. And so for us, we want that day of celebrating the incarnation to be something that kids look forward to and they remember.

And that's on our lips. Like, why are we doing this? Like we explain everything. Like the reason we're exchanging the gifts is because Christ is God's gift to us. It's a free gift. You didn't do anything for it.

You know, all that. And God lavishes this upon you. For us, Christmas Eve, obviously we do all our special foods and we watch all the Christmas movies and all that stuff. But when the kids go to bed, we read, of course, the account of Jesus' birth in scripture.

And then we pray. We thank God. Kids go to bed. They usually sleep in exactly the same rooms that night because we have so much to do. And so they sort of pile up a sleepover in one room. And even when they're older, they're still doing that kind of a thing.

And we just basically change the entire house. Like we just have like, I mean, hundreds of lights. We like install stuff. Like we go to bed at like two, three in the morning because we're just like up all night, like making this into a spectacle.

You know the portion of the animated Grinch when they have all the crazy decoration? Like that whole little montage of them. Like they just have like things laying on the ground and whatever. That's you.

That's what we do. We create light trails from the doors to the tree. And we create a candy trail where we literally put candy out all the way to the tree from their door. And then we put lights everywhere.

We put special stuff up. So when they walk out, they went to bed with it looking one way. They can walk out in the morning and it's completely different. We're playing Elvis Presley's If Every Day Were Like Christmas when they walk out.

And, you know, it's just this very special moment. And that's what we do just to make that day something memorable. You know, we're really thinking about the coming of Christ. And we're doing all these special traditions and symbols to point the family to that amazing truth of God becoming a man.

I don't have a super large family yet. But there is a tradition I am hopeful to implement, which is basically where you turn on the Electric Light Parade song. And then you make a train and the whole family, like, goes and picks everyone up at their room.

Oh, that's awesome. And then they add on to the back of the train. That's actually really cool. That's really fun. But, you know, we live in a small apartment. There's just three of us.

How's that going to work out? It's a little train. Hey, the train will get longer and longer. All right. So here we go, guys. So this question of I'll just jump right into it because we're going to have to do so much response to this.

Let's just get right to it. This might be a long show. Yeah. But hopefully a blessing. Like I said, we try to be very careful what we choose to interact with, especially when we're interacting with other believers.

And, you know, let me just make one comment as I hit play here. The title of the show today is Refuting an Embarrassing Critique of God's Law. Before we did that, I asked Luke, do you think this is a good title?

And we agreed. And Refuting an Embarrassing Critique of God's Law, of theonomy, that's what this was. I mean that with all due respect to my brother and sister here who did this. But this was an embarrassing critique.

And I wanted to say at the front because we're going to get to a lot of response here. It's embarrassing because now this has been put down as a public record. So when I say embarrassing, what I mean is if you make an error in private, that's one thing, right?

It's an embarrassment, but it's still a private error. Said something wrong, said something false about something, you know, that's a private error. But when you do this publicly and you pontificate and you pretend to have authority to be able to teach on something or explain something, and you clearly are out of your element because you literally are saying things about a system and people who believe it that is not true, it becomes an embarrassing critique because now this is public.

In other words, you've now left a public record of ignorance. Now I'm going to say ignorance and not lying, even though this brother says that he's studied this and he's read books on it and everything else.

But I'm still going to say ignorant because, you know, it's either ignorance or lying. Because you know, and you're contradicting what people have said, so you're lying about it. Or you're just truly ignorant, you don't understand, and you never have really read any books on theonomy.

Here's what I would say at the front. I get the feeling and my understanding is that the brother who tries to give a critique here has never actually read a book on theonomy by a theonomist. Yeah, I agree.

And the reason why, and I say that, by the way, there's lots of people trying to make critiques of theonomy and you hear me saying that a lot. Like, I don't think this guy's read a book on it. And the reason I say that is because the literature is like very, very, very clear and consistent on some of these things.

And so for someone to just completely mischaracterize it, it just brings me to a place where I have to say, I don't think you've read anything on this. Because people actually take pains to be clear about what you're saying and you're not telling the truth.

And so that's why I'd say, like, I don't think you've read anything on this. So at the start, I'll just point everyone, Theonomy and Christian Ethics by Dr. Greg Bonson, By the Standard by Greg Bonson.

Good books to start with. There's a whole bunch. You can go back and read the Puritans and many of the reformers on this. You can go back into church history and read lots of the giants on this issue.

But I would say if you want a good one-stop shop, just get By the Standard by Bonson and Theonomy and Christian Ethics by Bonson. If you read those two books, you wouldn't make the mistakes this brother does.

That's all I would say.

Even By the Standard would clarify a lot. Very much so, yeah.

So here we go. This is our sister Doreen Virtue. And let's see here. The title of this episode was Three False Teachings to Avoid Federal Vision, Theonomy and Dominionism. And so here we go.

So should we segue next into Dominionism or Theonomy?

Yeah. I mean, they're kind of connected, but we could. Yeah, let's definitely do Theonomy and then we'll connect it over to Dominionism. Okay.

So next, if you could please tell us what is wrong with Theonomy. What is it and what's wrong with it? Because we're hearing a lot about Theonomy and we want to be able to recognize it so we can avoid it.

Yeah, for sure.

What's interesting about it, it's kind of gone through some waves. Probably.

Quickly. The way that he describes Theonomy, the errors that he makes and the errors that Doreen, that you make as well. The way that you describe Theonomy, I would also want to avoid that. Yeah. But what you guys describe here is actually fundamentally denied and rigorously denied by Theonomists always has been.

I've never met, read, or heard from somebody who says they're a Theonomist that believes some of the things that they say here. So tell us what it is so we can avoid it. Well, the picture you're painting here, I would also want to avoid.

But it's not the Theonomy that I teach or that I believe or anybody I've read teaches or believes. So that's, I'll just say at the start.

40, 45, 50 years ago is when it started to really kind of take precedent. And then it died and now it's kind of coming back.

So quickly, if you're trying to put this into, I don't know that he's doing this here. So I want to be fair and just to him here. When he says 40 or 50 years ago, he's referring back to the days of like Bonson and R .J. Rushdooney and Gary North and Gary DeMar and Kenneth Gentry and those guys.

Where there was a resurgence of a pointing back to the law word of God. So yes, you can put a pin there. However, I would want to make sure that it's abundantly clear that Rushdooney, Bonson, and all those guys were not coming up with a theological novum.

Nothing that they were saying was new. They were actually calling everybody back for a revolution back to the foundations. In other words, let's get back to what our Christian historic predecessors and ancestors have given to us as a deposit on these issues.

Let's get back to Christendom and what Christendom has said about these issues throughout church history in many times and many places. Let's just get back to what the Puritans were saying. Exactly. And I just want to say too, one of the things that boggles my mind here is that Doreen and this pastor are having this conversation and they're doing it under the blessings of the theonomists.

Yeah. Like you're in a Western Christian culture. Exactly. Under the blessings and experiencing the blessings, not like China or North Korea, able to start a channel and have the conversations about Jesus and Christ is Lord and King of Kings and all these things.

And you're doing it under the blessings of what the theonomists gave you. And so you only are doing what you're doing right now because of the blessings of the Christian worldview, the gospel itself. But also, let's just be honest, those standards of justice that come from Moses, the freedom of speech, all those blessings that you have that we're all holding on to, and some of them, I admit, are hanging on by a thread, no question about that.

But those come from the law word of God. Our court system today, though it is failing massively, like underneath it, if you look at what they're supposed to be doing, they're supposed to be doing things like cross-examination and witnesses and warrants and all the rest.

And that comes from the law word of God. That comes from God's judicial standards in Moses. So you can thank the Huguenots, the Covenanters, the Puritans, all of that for the blessings that you're experiencing now to do this show.

And those came from Moses. So my point there is just to quickly say, as quickly as I can, this is not a theological novum. And I am grateful to God that what R .J. Rushtuni and Bonson laid down in the 60s and 70s, and that deposit they gave to this generation, many people are finally coming and going, Oh, wait, they were right.

Oh, their exegesis was very solid. Oh, their critical analysis of the culture was so solid. And I am very glad that there is a massive, important moment for us in the Church where people are saying, by what standard?

Wait a minute. The unbelievers and the secularists and the humanists are imposing their ultimate and their standards. The Christian Church seems silent and impotent now, but we actually have a word from God about these issues.

And so by what standard? Christians are asking that question. So I'm grateful that we're having this conversation. Of course, it's disheartening to see people completely mischaracterize a position and show, and I don't mean this to harm you, but just show such an epic level of ignorance on this issue and to talk about it publicly with that kind of ignorance is disheartening for sure.

I mean, honestly, it seems like he, I'm not accusing him of this, but it sounds like he got his information from gotquestions .org or whatever that site is. It's really bad. Because I've seen some of these.

Literally, his response is, I've seen this and right on that website when you look up this stuff.

So, you know, anyways. Well, something just to say, and by the way, I'm not the standard here. Joy's not the standard. Luke's not the standard. But I just want to say one of the things that has blessed us is being able to admit our own ignorance.

What I mean by that is that people message us all the time. Joy sees more messages to us than anybody ever has. Thank you, Joy. Pray for her.

You made someone really mad at the Bonson conference. I'm just going to go ahead and let you know. Really? I think you said something. You were telling a story about when you realized that Greg Bonson was a Presbyterian and you said, dang it.

Dang it. And you said that in a Presbyterian church. Dang it. Dang it. He didn't appreciate your joke. It's called an exclamation. He didn't appreciate it. Exclamatory remark.

Okay. Sorry to derail. No, it's okay. But one of the things that's been a blessing to us is to be able to, and this is important for this conversation right here, brothers and sisters, because when I say this was embarrassing, when I say this was ignorance, one of the things that has blessed us is when people message us and they say, hey, Jeff, can you do something on this here?

Or if I'm having a conversation publicly with someone who says, hey, can you tell me about this? If I don't know and if I can't faithfully represent that side and really express to you what they believe and be able to interact with it, I'm not going to try to teach you.

Teachers incur the stricter judgment according to God. And so I'm not going to attempt to teach people on something when I don't understand myself. And so one of the things that can preserve us from these major, epic, embarrassing failures, public failures here, is to be able to simply say when someone says, hey, can you come on and talk about this?

Is to simply say, you know, I have questions about that. I've seen some concerning stuff, but I don't know enough about that to be in an authoritative position of instruction. I can't instruct God's people on that because I just don't know.

And one of the things I respect greatly about pastors is they'll be in a section of Scripture teaching through the Bible, and they get to a section and they simply say, I'm not ready to preach on this yet.

I don't understand this well enough yet to teach, and so I'm not going to do it. And so in a situation like this, it would have helped to have simply said, given what he said here in the ignorance, to have simply said, I don't know enough about this position to talk about it publicly.

Because what we do when we mischaracterize somebody and their position, and we say something about them or what they believe that's not true, what we actually do there is we engage in the nature of lying.

I mean, ignorance is one thing, yes. But when you say they believe this, this is what their system is, you're actually engaging in a nature of lying. Here's the question you ask yourself. Would God do that?

Would God misrepresent others? Would God say things about people that is not actually true? And if your answer is, well, no, of course he wouldn't, then we shouldn't do it either. And that's why you have to be very cautious when someone says, can you speak on this?

If you don't know, you don't know. Just simply say, I don't know. I'm looking into it. I don't know. I'm working on it. I'm working my way through that. People ask me all the time. They'll say, hey, what do you think about this revelation?

Now, I actually have an opinion, but I'm not fully confident to teach on it yet. So I will simply say I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to give you my answer on that yet because I'm not settled yet on that.

So I'm not going to try to teach you on it. And so I'm just waiting until I feel confident.

So theonomy in its simplest form, just to kind of help you understand when you hear the word, it's not a bad word. Literally, theonomy just means God's law. So, you know, namas law, theonomy, Theogod.