WWUTT 1165 Q&A Corona Virus, Saturday Podcast, the Bible Project?

How should we as Christians respond to this coronavirus outbreak? Do I have any tips for some hopeful podcasters?

And why don't more people see what's wrong with the Bible project? The answers to these questions and others when we

Understand the Text. This is

When we Understand the Text, a daily online Bible study that we may grow in the knowledge of God, understanding that the fear of the

Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .utt

.com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. As everybody is listening to this program in the comfort of their own homes, or maybe driving in the car, wherever you are, you're quarantined.

You are quarantined. And not out in public and open to the elements, namely the flotation of germs that may infect you with this pandemic that is going around.

You know, I am not a prophet. I'm not the son of a prophet. But every once in a while,

I have my moments. And this was one. God -given moments. Yeah, God -given moments. This was one where I was able to tell my church before this thing blew up and just got all crazy.

I was able to tell them, look, I think that this thing is bigger than they're telling us it is. And we're going to see that in the coming weeks.

So I'm just telling you, be ready for the panic. But don't panic yourselves.

Calm down. Trust in God. And I read them this passage from Isaiah chapter 8.

And actually, I wanted to read this in response to Christine's question. So because Christine, and I hope she doesn't mind this, on Twitter had asked,

I don't even know what to believe. Every time I feel a spark of concern, I hear something else that contradicts the hysteria.

I really don't know what to believe. Do we believe the mass hysteria that's going on concerning coronavirus,

COVID -19, the Wahoo virus? What's the other name for it?

Yeah, I don't remember. Anyway. But it's something like that. It's something. Wuhan. Wuhan. Wuhan. That's what it is. Yes.

Wahoo. Wahoo. I know. Terrible. You know, what do we believe concerning all this?

You're seeing the NBA is getting canceled, the baseball is delaying their season. The NCAA tournament is getting canceled.

We were supposed to go to - Colleges. Yeah. Colleges are moving. Shut down. Moving classes to online.

Right. Public schools are getting shut down. Yep. Which they need to. Oh, stop.

Stop. Stop. Not for coronavirus, but they just need to.

Uh -huh. You're terrible. And then, what was the other one

I was saying? Oh, well, we were going to go to Iwana Games tomorrow. Yep. And that was in Kansas City. Mm -hmm. And the mayor of Kansas City has said, nope, no public events.

Yep. He's banning public events for like 30 days. So even in the midst of all of this, we just got news that we've had the first death in the state of Kansas -

Right. For coronavirus. Mm -hmm. Now, this was a man who lived in Wyandotte County. Mm -hmm.

He was in his 70s. Yes. He was also, he'd also been in long -term care for quite a while.

Mm -hmm. So he was not in good health anyway, but what should be concerning about his death, as tragic as it already is, recognizing that he was not in contact with any of the other known cases in the state of Kansas -

Right. Of people who have coronavirus. So that just tells you how easily it is spreading.

Mm -hmm. And so maybe the shutdown, maybe there are legitimate reasons for the shutdown and like Ligonier Conferences -

Right. They canceled Ligonier, which was going to be in Florida next week, I think was - I think so. Mm -hmm.

Yeah, when the Ligonier Conference, so very late notice. But because all of this stuff is being canceled by the spread and the fear of this pandemic, then

I think that in wisdom, they made the right call there too. Yeah. That deciding to cancel the

Ligonier Conference, I mean, especially if you have to travel a long way to get somewhere - Mm -hmm.

And then they start regulating or shutting down travel - Right. And you get trapped there. Yeah. That would be -

That's an issue. Yeah. That would be a very difficult situation, not to mention costly. Mm -hmm.

And so it's wise to not be traveling around right now - Yeah. With, it doesn't matter how big this thing gets, it may not be the massive deadly pandemic that some are saying that it's going to be.

I hope. But with the scares going about the way that they are and travel getting shut down, it just would not be a good idea.

Yeah, with the panic. Yeah. Yeah. With the way those things are going. So anyway, Christine had asked about this online, like, what do we believe regarding the hysteria?

And I just shared with her the same thing that I shared with my church, and that was reading from Isaiah chapter eight, starting in verse 11, for the

Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.

But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread, and he will become a sanctuary, and a stone of offense, and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And many shall stumble on it, they shall fall and be broken, they shall be snared and taken.

So to those who fear the Lord, the word that we read of his in scripture,

Genesis to Revelation, his word is a comfort to us. It is even a sanctuary to us.

Yes. But to those who do not trust in the word of the Lord, his word becomes a rock of stumbling.

And those who hear it will fall upon it and be broken, they shall be snared and be taken.

And so we must trust in the Lord our God, according to the promises that are given in his word.

We don't fear what other people fear. Right. It's okay to be concerned.

Concerned and also precautionary. Yeah. You know, don't be dumb and be like, oh, yeah,

I believe in the Lord. So I'm immune to everything. Oh, yeah. That's not how that works. Right. That was like Gloria Copeland's thing a couple of years ago where she said,

I have my flu shot and it's Jesus. Yeah. As long as I believe in Jesus, I'm not going to get the flu. That's not the same thing.

Yeah. That's how that works. No. So still be smart. Practice good hygiene. I mean, we live in a fallen world.

So we have to deal with the things of the fallen. And so like, you know, we still have hands, right?

We still have corruptible bodies. Don't touch your face. Do all the things that they're telling you to do. Yeah. I don't know about that.

About not touching your face. I just did it right now. I was rubbing my eye when you were asking that question or making that statement. But I mean, like, don't touch the shopping cart and then touch your face.

You know what I mean? Right. Like, be smart about it. Some people can be transmitters of a disease like this and not even know.

Very true. So you do need to be considerate of other people. It may not even affect you at all.

Maybe it hits you and passes you by, but you become a transmitter for it. Right. And you pass it on to somebody else that it may actually harm.

So we need to be considerate about some of those things. We're still going to have church on Sunday, but I am going to tell my congregants on Sunday, let's not shake hands today.

Yep. Bump elbows if you must, but we're going to surpass the greeting time for now and we'll just continue on with worship.

So we're still going to do that, but still be responsible with some of those things. Church, by the way, church attendance on Sunday is not the same thing as a

Ligonier conference. Right. You don't have to fly or travel long distances to go to church.

They were saying like clean off countertops and stuff like that. Yeah. You know. Just be smart about it.

Be smart about it. But don't fear what people fear. Don't be in panic and don't live in such a state that you just don't think that you can go out and talk to anybody or interact with anyone.

Right. I mean, as Christians, there are going to be times when we're going to have to put ourselves in situations that most people probably wouldn't, and we do so out of love and affection for each other.

Right. Because we are a community who loves and cares for one another. And so while the world might say, yeah, don't go messing around with other people who may potentially have this disease.

You could get it to, hey, you may be that person who needs to go and care for somebody who is sick.

Right. And you're the one that can do it. Sharing the love of Christ and sharing the gospel, praying with one another.

I sat in a room with a guy in a hospital one time and I was wearing a hazmat suit. That was what they told me.

I had, if you're going to go in the hospital room and sit with this guy, you have to wear this suit. Yeah. And so I did to protect me from the disease that he had.

But nevertheless, it didn't make me afraid to sit in there to pray with him.

I will admit that it was on my mind. Yeah. Wow. He's got such a serious disease that I have to wear this suit.

But it also made me fear for the man. Yeah. And I prayed with him and sang hymns to him and he did eventually die.

But not to be afraid of those things like the world is afraid of them. We trust in God.

Right. And we trust in God with our whole lives. And he is sovereign. So I mean, whether it's our time to go or whether it's our time to stay, that's up to him.

Yeah. I mean, there was a statement that I shared on Twitter earlier this week. You're always one breath, bug, bomb, blow, blip, bump, bash, bang, boom, bacteria, break or bad decision away from death.

Amen. What makes today's news any different? Yeah. Believe in Jesus. Be forgiven your sins.

Belong to God forever. We're always close to death. You never know if today could be the day that you take your last breath.

We just happen to be hearing word right now of a pandemic that may take the lives of a lot of people.

Yeah. I mean, I don't laugh at that because I'm laughing at others' misfortune. I just I have a general good humor about things because I know that the

Lord is in control. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Yeah. And so it is tragic to hear of the loss of life and we should mourn over that.

This goes with something I shared with my own congregation this past Sunday, preaching from the

Beatitudes in Matthew chapter five, blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Mourning is not like, you know, you're just sad all the time or you're grieving over somebody hurt your feelings or you're sad because you lost a loved one or you're sad because things are not going your way.

That would be like a natural state of mourning. But we're mourning over the fact that we have sinned against God, but we're comforted in knowing that Jesus has paid the price for our sins.

We're mourning over the fact that we live in this sinful and fallen world, but we're comforted in the fact and knowing that in Christ we have eternal life in his perfect kingdom forever.

We're mourning over the fact that we see people wandering in their sin and even wandering to their deaths. Right. But we're comforted in the fact that we've been given the gospel to share with them so that there would be many who would hear the gospel and believe and so turn from that way of sin and destruction and so be saved.

And so this is how we understand Jesus' statement in the Beatitudes of blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.

And we do mourn in this world, but we mourn knowing that there is a savior who is going to rescue us from all of this and deliver us into his eternal kingdom.

So we do not mourn hopelessly, right? And it's that's different from the world where they are hopeless because I mean, what else is there?

Yeah. What? So that's why the world is living in panic right now, right? That's where they're going crazy and blaming

Donald Trump for absolutely everything. Of course. I mean, we've well, not everybody heard this song before.

Well, that's true. There was there was somebody online that was saying, man, you turn over to CNN and it's just hate for Trump, this hate for Trump, that hate

Trump, hate Trump. He's doing everything wrong. But then you turn over to Fox News and it's Trump is great at everything.

Trump is doing everything exactly right. It's just depends on who you're getting your sources, where you're getting your sources.

There we go. Where? Yeah. What source are you getting your news? There we go. Yeah. And so and so somebody chimed in and said, where is the happy medium here?

Well, Megan Basham on Twitter had chimed in and said, hey, there's a couple of places that you can go for good, solid news reporting.

Oh, one is called The World and Everything in It. You can find them on Twitter at TWE Radio.

I listen to them on Ref Net. OK, I don't really go looking for the world and everything in it podcast. There is a podcast that you can download and listen to.

So whatever device you use to listen to your podcast, look for the world and everything in it.

OK, or just listen to Ref Net, because that's where I listen to mine. And then the other one, of course, is World Magazine.

Oh, yeah. Subscribing to World. Very great source. And I listen to The Briefing with Dr. Albert Mueller as well.

Almost daily. Yeah. I listen to it just about five days a week. That's another great resource to utilize as well, to know what's going on in the world from a

Christian world news perspective and a Christian worldview. That's what Dr. Mueller says.

And and he will praise the things that Trump does right. And he will criticize the things that Trump does wrong.

So there you go. This is Friday. And on the Friday edition of the broadcast, we take questions from the listeners.

You can send your questions to when we understand the text at gmail .com. The first question that I have on here is a little lengthy with the answer.

So I'm going to save that one and come back to it. Let me do the second one first, because I think we could get through this one a little more quickly.

All right. This is from Jake. He says, Dear Pastor Gabe, I do a weekly podcast for my church and notice that I can't get rid of the room noise when

I'm talking. So I'm emailing you to see what your thoughts are on how I can fix this.

I use GarageBand, an Apple software on my way better Mac, dogging on my

PC use there to record and edit my podcast. I use the noise gate to block out the sound.

So it's silent when I'm not talking. When I talk, I still hear the room noise, but it's only when

I talk. I use Neewer NW -700 mic to record. It works just fine. I went to an audio store and they recommended a new cord on the basis that it might be a cord problem and a dynamic mic called

PodMic by Rode. I still hear the room noise with both mics. I guess my question is, do you know how

I can fix this? Would a mixer help? GarageBand has some built in EQ templates. Should I go with a different software?

I don't know much about this stuff. So if you have any advice, please, please explain it as if I were five years old.

I hope I was clear enough to explain what my problem is. If not, feel free to ask questions if you need more clarification and no,

I will not get a PC. Thank you, Jake. P .S. That's a few exclamation points on that.

Quite a number of exclamation points at the end of no, I will not get a PC. So then P .S.

I listen to your podcast on double speed and I think your Sunday sermon music at the beginning sounds better at two times.

Okay. And P .P .S. Whatever happened to the Saturday sermon of old?

You used to find a great sermon from preachers who are now in glory and read them. What happened? Well, to answer that last question first, it just was too time consuming.

I have too much going on, especially when I took on the project of reading through the Bible for literal word.

That's what I have to commit that extra time to. Yes. So what you're hearing on Saturday now is audio that I've already recorded.

Because now on Saturday what you hear is my reading that I've done for the literal word

Bible app and we're sectioning out 20 minutes of that every Saturday and you're hearing just a straight reading from the word of God.

Awesome. So listen tomorrow. It is from the, how'd he word that, preachers who are now in glory.

Oh, that's true. Yes. Technically. Because as right now on the scripture reading,

I'm going through Matthew, Matthew is in glory with the Lord. There you go. That's a good point. Good catch there.

So that's the reason why I don't do the historical sermons on Saturday anymore, but just now having put in the scripture reading, just straight scripture, not teaching, just reading straight from the word of God.

That's going to be our regular Saturday thing for now. We'll see how that goes. Okay. Now, as for the question on, on podcasting, this is going to be interesting to some and others are going to find this boring.

So I'm going to do this real quick and Becky's already finding it boring. I have no idea.

Gabe does it all. Let me just kind of describe to you my space in here. So we are recording in a basement room.

This is my study. Becky gave this whole study to me as a gift. Originally we were planning, even when we bought the house,

I said, I'll have this side of the study and you have that side of the study. And I said, no way. Yep. But then she just gave the whole thing to me.

Yep. So where I sit at my desk, I've got a shelf on my left, a shelf on my right and shelf above me.

And so there's a little bit of an overhang here where I'm sitting at the microphone. So I'm speaking into kind of an enclosed spot.

Sort of a cove. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of, kind of into the wall a little bit. Yeah. And the wall in front of me is covered with carpet.

I did that. I put the carpet there because it would muffle the sound. As I'm speaking, whatever sound is going past the microphone is not bouncing back to the microphone because it's being canceled out in the carpet.

The rest of the room is carpeted. The ceiling is high, but the ceiling is textured and the shelves are covered with books.

Books are actually really good for dampening sound. Yeah. Now, generally when you want, when you have a sound booth where you want to record something, you want it to be small.

Smaller is better. I have a very large room that I'm utilizing, but I know how to utilize the space.

You may not. So if you can even have a closet in your house that you can dedicate to recording and you cover the inside of that closet with like the egg crate foam, you would have just a perfectly dead space for recording a podcast.

If you're really that concerned about having no room noise or anything like that, that would be the best way to go.

Now, a lot of your room noise has to do with your room. It really doesn't have to do with your microphones or your software.

It could have some to do with it, but you can still get a pretty decent mic. You can get like top dollar, $5 ,000 microphones.

Like you're talking a Newman microphone. You would still have the problem with room noise. So even paying top dollar for your stuff is not going to help you with the room noise.

It needs to start with your room first. When it comes to having a quiet recording sounding or yeah, quiet, professional sounding recording.

There you go. You need to be thinking about the space that you're in. And even the room next to the room that you're in can cause problems.

Yes, it can. So we emptied out the room next door and it affected his recording.

It did. So. Because it had a tile floor. Yep. A higher ceiling than this room.

Yep. And so when I would talk, I'd be like, boy, that just sounds really echoey. Yeah. Well, it was outside the room, even with the door closed.

It was still just the way that I would talk in the sound of my voice would bounce around in that room. Yeah. It was crazy.

Because when you use a condenser mic, those are super, super sensitive microphones. You should use a condenser mic, but they're going to pick up all kinds of sound.

All the little nuances in your voice and everything else that's in the room. Every time you swallow, every time you have a dry mouth.

Yep. All of that gets picked up. In fact, if you've been listening to the broadcast for a long time, you might even remember a certain outtake

Becky and I had when I was chasing a fly around the room. And if you listen close, you can hear the fly.

That was what caused me to stop recording. There's a fly in here. I can hear the fly.

Yeah. I hear it in my microphone. McFly. I thought I told you never to come in here.

Anyway. Good times. I use a PC, obviously, because Jake was making fun of me for that.

I go through a mixer. It's a Yamaha mixer. You do need preamps. I do not recommend using a microphone that's got a

USB port that goes right into your computer. I don't think that's the best way to do it. Some people do it that way.

Actually, I happen to know that the way Albert Mueller records the briefing, that's the way he does it. Oh, really? Yeah.

It's just a mic that goes straight into his computer. He has shown his setup on Twitter before.

He's got the little condenser mic, and he's got that foam guard that goes around the microphone.

You're gesturing quite wide around your mic. I am. We're using windscreens.

These things that we have on our microphones, they hug the mic. If you've got a good windscreen, you don't need the pop screen in front of it.

But he's got the big, it's shaped like this, a half circle around the backside of the mic, and it's foam on the inside, so as he's talking, the sound doesn't go beyond that.

Interesting. But when you listen to the briefing, you hear a lot of room noise, so that doesn't cancel it out.

That helps a little bit with the sound going past the microphone and not bouncing back to the microphone, but it doesn't cancel the sound out as well as you would hope that it would.

Yeah. It does have some effect, but just not the best. Anyway, the room is important.

Part of the reason why he's got that set up, though, is because he's probably recording in a lot of hotel rooms sometimes. Oh, yeah, definitely.

He travels around a lot. You'll hear him say, I'm reporting from Orlando, Florida, and this is the briefing.

So I said I was going to make that quick, so there's some quick tips on podcasting.

All right, let's go back to this first question here. Okay. This one is from Randy, and he says,

Pastor Gabe, I recently listened to your video, What's Wrong with the Bible Project? And I was so excited to finally hear someone speak to the theological errors that are specifically not taught by this very popular ministry, wrath of God, propitiation, and eternal hell.

These are topics you will not hear in the Bible Project videos that you see on YouTube.

So, excuse me, Randy goes on, I see by the up and down votes on YouTube that the video has not been received by everyone as joyfully as it was by me.

So my question is, why do you think more pastors and teachers haven't spoken out against the

Bible Project and the blind eye that they turn to clear biblical teachings?

In case you aren't familiar with it, the video that Randy is referring to is called What's Wrong with the Bible Project.

It wasn't done through the regular what channel, youtube .com slash WWUTT, but it was done through the extended channel.

Oh, the EXT. Right. Got it. The channel that I use to make the longer videos where I'm even talking to the camera there.

So you're looking for the video, you could even type in what, WWUTT, and you're looking for What's Wrong with the

Bible Project. It's had over 60 ,000 views, I think, by this recording. And most of the votes are negative.

Most of it is thumbs down. It's like 60 % thumbs down and 40 % yay.

Right. Well, I mean, we weren't even 100%. I mean, there is just something about them, but we couldn't figure out what until someone pointed it out.

And that was kind of what I shared with Randy. I think the reason why most pastors and teachers are not calling out the

Bible Project is because they just don't know. Right. Well, I mean, you don't see what they're not teaching.

You just are looking for what you want them to give you a heads up on. You know what I mean? Right. And for the most part, especially when you're watching their summary videos like What's in the

Book of Genesis? What's in the Book of Exodus? That's what I mean. Those are pretty good. And there were a few times they would say something

I wouldn't totally agree with, but it wasn't like I'd had - Wrote them off. Yeah. I didn't have to discard the whole video.

Right. And a lot of friends of mine, even from reformed and expository churches, were using those videos in their

Sunday school classes when they would say, okay, today we're going to be reading in the book of Romans.

What does Romans have to say? Well, let's watch this quick seven minute video that tells us about Romans, and then we're going to jump into our study of Romans.

And for that kind of a thing, those videos were very useful. I can't remember when

I came into them, 2014 or 2015, somewhere in there. And I watched them for a couple of years, not regularly, but I would watch maybe a dozen of them a year or something like that.

Yeah. And they seemed pretty solid to me. Most of the videos that I was watching was on their summary videos that they would do at Books of the

Bible. But there came a point, and it was watching the extra videos that they do, where I was watching several of these and I was going, something about this just isn't working here.

I don't really know what it is, but it just doesn't - It doesn't feel right. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you one thing that I noticed, and this was in the videos that were like the extra -doctrinal videos, they were never quoting scripture.

I mean, ever. That's weird. Like, I would go through six or seven videos and not one Bible verse would be quoted.

And I'm going, how can you call this the Bible project - Bible project. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. And not quote the

Bible. It's in your name. Yeah. So, you're telling me things about the Bible, but not even quoting it.

Like, how do we know what you're saying about the Bible is really what the Bible says if you're not going to show us -

If you're not going to give us that. If you're not going to show us what it says. I think that was kind of the first trigger I had where I was kind of like,

I don't think this is working. Trigger. I hate that word. Flag. It was the first red flag. There we go.

Let's go back to old school. Yeah, that's right. We use the millennial triggered words. Yeah. Anyway.

So, then what ended up happening was I started venturing outside of the Bible project videos and looking for Tim Mackey stuff.

He's the main voice that you hear on the Bible project. Okay. And I went to his website. I found his personal site and he had in his bio a list of teachers that are the most influential to him.

And some of them were like, whoa, dude, N .T. Wright being the first one that jumped right off the page.

Oh, wow. And being the most influential teacher for him. Then he also mentioned John Sailhammer and Sailhammer rejects six day creation.

Oh, okay. That's one of the first kind of false doctrines you would identify with John Sailhammer is that he rejects that the earth has been created in six literal days.

Okay. I actually have a commentary of his that I have just for the purpose of referencing. Here's how to teach

Genesis wrongly. Anyway, there were other teachers that he had mentioned in there and we talked about this on the broadcast one time.

Yep, we did. And went through several of those teachers and said, so, in light of this, we have to be very, very careful with what we're watching in the

Bible project because his influences are not sound. Right. Like none of the teachers that he was mentioning were actually good teachers.

And then, so, we did that broadcast and then after that, there were other videos I was watching.

Oh, so, I found this podcast. I found Tim Mackey in a podcast that he had linked to from one of the

Bible project videos. And I listened to the podcast and in this podcast, he totally rails on penal substitutionary atonement and misrepresents a biblical understanding of atonement.

And once I heard him do that, it was like, ah, that's the problem. There it is. So, he rejects penal substitutionary atonement.

And if you reject that doctrine, then I know that you're going to reject all these other kinds of doctrines as well, just like what

Randy was mentioning, the wrath of God, propitiation, an eternal hell. Yeah. It changes a lot.

It does. And once I heard that, once I recognized his rejection of penal substitutionary atonement, now

I hear it in every video. It's like, now it's like, okay, that's why you're explaining it that way because you're trying to get as far from penal substitutionary atonement as possible.

So, I want to play for you a couple of other clips from Bible project videos. But I think it serves us best if we first hear

Tim Mackey reject penal substitutionary atonement. Okay. And then it will help you, when we listen to these

Bible project clips, identify what the problems are in these videos. So, here's

Tim Mackey. Okay. God's perfect. He's holy. And he's perfect. You're not.

So, God has to kill you. He has to kill you. He needs his pound of flesh in the name of his justice.

And so, he's going to kill you because he's angry at you. But instead, he's going to kill

Jesus. And he takes out his anger on Jesus, and then he allows you, after you die, to go to the good place and not the bad place so you can sing forever the praises of the

God who didn't kill you. How you guys doing? Now, some of you,

I'm creating a caricature. But for some of us, you might think like, yeah, isn't that the story of Christianity?

Isn't that what Christians believe? This is one of those cases where there's so many distorted, not even half -truths, one -third truths in what

I just described to you, that there's nothing recognizable of actual gospel in what

I just described to you. If you actually read what's in the New Testament. If you read the character of God in the

New Testament, if you read the character of God in the Old Testament, you'd be able to spot what

I just said to you as a total distortion and perversion of God's character and of the good news and of the meaning of atonement.

So is that the biblical understanding of atonement? I mean, he's really just falsely, he's misrepresenting atonement right from the very beginning when he makes that statement of he needs his pound of flesh and he's going to kill you.

Incredibly disrespectful. Oh, definitely. I just, I can't, I can't even fathom.

Yeah. And he says that he's creating a caricature, but he doesn't even properly present an understanding of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which in my video responding to the

Bible project, I just call it atonement. I don't say penal substitutionary atonement because it is atonement.

Right. PSA is atonement. Right. So, and this, it's because of false teaching like this.

This is why American Gospel Christ Crucified was made. Brandon Kimber making part two of his

American Gospel series. And this one specifically on the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.

Yeah. So check it out. You've got to check out this documentary. It is such a good documentary.

And I think, I think we're approaching three hours or something like this on the documentary. It's over two and a half.

I know. And, but every minute of it is so wonderfully well -crafted and put together.

Brandon is just a master at taking the interviews that he does and piecing these things together.

Yeah. And, and getting such great comments from such great teachers describing in detail.

It's almost like all of them are in the room talking together. Yeah. Yeah. On here's what this is.

They've talked about it ahead of time. Yeah. And they're finishing each other's sentences and whatnot, but they're not.

They're totally in different spaces. And it's because we're all going from the same source. Exactly.

You know what I'm saying? We're, we're pulling from the Bible. That's why it's, it's possible for so many teachers to be talking about the same thing because we're going by what scripture says.

Right. So the, the doctrine, very simply the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, which is the doctrine of the atonement.

It's Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for our sins. It's the punishment that we deserve for our sins, but God put

Christ forward as a sacrifice for us. And this is plainly laid out in Romans three.

We're getting to this in our study of Romans. So in Romans three, verse 22, for there is no distinction.

Verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

There are two things that are talked about there in that section. That was Romans three, verse 22 through 26.

Two things that you hear in that section you will not hear in any Bible project videos.

And that is an understanding of the propitiation that Christ's sacrifice is, meaning that he satisfies the wrath of God.

You also will not hear that we receive this by faith.

You don't get that either one of those either way in Bible project videos, that the wrath of God has been satisfied by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And we receive this gracious gift of God by faith in Jesus. You'll hear neither one of those two statements.

And it really comes down to this, that the gospel that the Bible project presents is an incomplete gospel.

And so therefore it's a false gospel, right? The Bible project gospel is a false gospel, which is why

I cannot recommend those videos anymore. So now hearing that from Tim Mackey's own teaching, let's go to a couple of these

Bible project videos. Specifically, I want to single the ones out on atonement and holiness.

So here is the video that they did on atonement. We'll stop it kind of as we go and critique what's being said here.

Early in the story of the Bible, we're introduced to this practice of animal sacrifice, which I know it seems weird to us, but for the

Israelites, it was a very powerful symbol of God's justice and of his grace.

So remember, I'm a contributor to the evil that's in the world. I should be removed. But God is allowing this animal's life to be a substitute.

It's symbolically dying in my place. The biblical word for this is atonement, which means to cover over someone's death.

Okay, already we've got a problem here. Yeah. Because this is, all things considered, a soft definition of the word atonement.

Right. Atonement is to cover over someone's debt. Is that right? See, and this is what you're going to hear over the course of teaching that comes from the

Bible project. You're going to hear stuff that gets really close, but it doesn't quite take you there.

And this is a really good example of that, that his definition of the word atonement is to cover over someone's debt.

I would have been less squinty about it if he had said to cover over someone's sin.

But instead he uses the word debt there, as though atonement is a word that's used to mark on someone's file folder when they've paid off all their debts.

Yeah. There you go. Your debts have been atoned for. It's a dangerous place to start lightening what it really means.

Yeah, when you're talking about the forgiveness of sins. And you're starting to take those words and adding soft definitions to them.

Now I had taken my Bible dictionary to church to give an example of folks, here's what a

Bible dictionary is, so get yourself one of these. And I left it at church. So I had to grab one of my encyclopedias here.

This is the Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. That's right. From Merrill Tenney.

And I love this series. Volume one. I even know who gave me this. This was George and Catherine King. Oh yeah.

That gave me this. And it was before they moved to Germany. So it was kind of like, we got to narrow down some of our big books.

So here you have this. And I love it. I so appreciate that they gave me this. If you pick up one of these books, you're probably like, man, this looks like it was published in the 50s.

And yeah, it probably was. Probably. But still one of the best Bible encyclopedia series you can get out there.

Anyway, here we go. This is the definition here on atonement. Behind the English word atonement, there are several

Hebrew and Greek words which do not correspond exactly to one another.

Turning to the biblical vocabulary, the initial question is the crucial one regarding the meaning of the root

Kephar. The fundamental idea of this frequently employed

Hebrew word seems to be to cover or to wipe away. It is used to describe the effect of the sacrifices at the consecration of the high priest and the altar.

And then give some references out of Exodus 29, Leviticus 8 and Ezekiel 43. And of the annual sacrifices for the renewal of the consecration of the priest, the people and the tabernacle offered on the day called the day of atonement.

It is also used of the individual sacrifices offered on behalf of the individual, especially the sin and trespass offerings.

When the one sacrificing acknowledges his guilt and defilement, sometimes to make reconciliation or to purge away or to reconcile.

The term is closely connected with the word hete, which designates doing that by which atonement is realized.

It is important to note, with respect to the sacrifices of the Old Testament, that they bear witness to the rupture of fellowship between God and man, the sinner.

That they acknowledge the righteousness of the divine judgment upon man as sinner. And finally, that they constitute a provision for man's forgiveness and reconciliation to God, which has been divinely appointed.

All of these ideas are basic to the thinking of the writers of the New Testament. Of course, in the New Testament, the thought is added that the sacrifice of bulls and goats could never finally cleanse the conscience from the defilement of sin and appease the offended deity.

That's talked about in the book of Hebrews. So Hebrews kind of brings all that home in understanding that the blood of bulls and goats never really had the power to forgive sins anyway.

It was always pointing toward something greater, and that was Jesus Christ.

So again, our definition that we're working from here for atonement isn't adequate.

It means to pay off a debt. It means to forgive sins.

That sins have been atoned for, that they've actually been paid for. Not just expiating or not just covering over the sin, but that it's even been paid for.

That there has been a substitute or a sacrifice that has been made on behalf of another.

That is atonement. Who's innocent. Because in the sacrificing of lambs and goats, it had to be a spotless lamb, and it had to meet serious qualifications.

To be a holy sacrifice or to be that spotless sacrifice on behalf of the person who has sinned.

Yes. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is far greater than the myriads of animals that we see sacrificed for the sins of the people in the

Old Testament. Now of course, when we're talking about the shedding of blood, we're talking about the giving of life.

So it's not like there was power in blood or that the blood had itself some sort of mystical property to it.

And he does explain that as we go on here in our video on atonement.

But there's a second part to this ritual. Remember, evil also causes this relational vandalism.

And in the Bible, this idea is described as polluting or defiling the land and making it unclean.

So the priest would symbolically wash away the vandalism by sprinkling the animal's blood in different parts of the temple.

So the animal's blood is cleaning things? Well, remember, this is a symbol and it's a symbol that we're not used to.

The blood represents life and the sprinkling of the blood is this representation of how

God is cleaning away these indirect consequences of evil in their community. In the

Bible, this process is called purification. And so the temple and the land now become a clean space where God and his people can live together in peace.

So this ritual makes things right between Israel and God. And more than that, the Israelites experience

God's love and his grace through these symbols. And by being forgiven, ideally, this would compel them to become people of love and grace, too.

Right, that's the ideal, but it wasn't always happening. Okay, you wanted to mention something there.

I said, what does this all mean? Well, one of the things that he mentions there, and this kind of comes up a little bit later on more toward we get as we get closer to the end of the video.

But he says it's through these things that they experience God's love and forgiveness and grace.

Okay. Right. Yeah. So it's by doing these rituals, they experience God's love.

Right. But that's not actually true. No. God has already shown them grace.

They demonstrate their love for God by being obedient to what he has said. Right. So they're not doing this to experience or receive the love of God.

Because then it'd be by works. Exactly. That's exactly it. Not by faith. Yeah. Yes. You're on to it.

Because once again, you never hear them say that. You will never hear them say that the blessings of God's love and grace come by faith.

Yeah, I see it. It was in the Old Testament that way. We are saved by grace through faith.

Right. Just like in the New Testament, we are saved by grace through faith. Before Christ, we were saved this way.

After Christ, we are saved this way. Right. It's just that in the giving of Christ, the payment has been made for our sins.

In the Old Testament, it was an expectation of that Messiah that was going to come. And now on this side of the cross, we're looking back on the

Messiah that was given. Yeah. But again, we don't do things to receive the love of God.

That's just, that's, yeah. We demonstrate. That's wrong. Yeah. We demonstrate that we have received the grace of God when we do what

He has commanded us to do. Would it be okay to say that that's backwards thinking?

Yeah, it is, right, that He's got it backwards. Yeah. It's putting the cart before the horse. Right. We have salvation through grace and no other way.

Right. Amen. Yeah, that's so true. Because anything else, if you're doing something to earn the favor of God, to experience

God's love, whatever else, if you're doing something to get that. Well, that's not even grace.

Yeah. Because you're having to do something to earn it. It's not the gift of God anymore. Right. It's something that you have to do to earn.

It's not the free gift of God. Exactly. Precisely. Yes. Right. So, the prophet Isaiah, for example, he talks a lot about this.

He opens his book by saying that the continual sacrifices of the Israelites had become meaningless because they were also allowing great evil in their midst, ignoring the poor and the oppressed.

Even the Israelite kings were distorting justice. Now is that why? Is that why

God was not receiving their sacrifices anymore? Because they weren't caring for the poor and doing justice?

Once again, this is works. It's all works -based. It would be like we're making a payment and then he's going to give us something for that.

You know, it's no. And what did Paul say to that in Romans 11? Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

Right. No joke. So, the way that Mackie is laying all of this out is we do something to earn the favor of God and here the people are not caring for the poor and so their sacrifices are meaningless.

But what did Isaiah specifically say about this? Isaiah 29, 13. The Lord said,

Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.

Therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people with wonder upon wonder and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.

And it was exactly this passage that Jesus quoted also to the Pharisees when he said in Mark 7, verse 6.

Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

It's because their worship was vanity. They were doing it for themselves instead of to the glory of God.

Right. That was the problem. Themselves and everybody, you know, watch me, look at what I can do.

Yeah. You know. And even what Mackie is teaching here is a man -centered doctrine.

Yeah. So he's making the same mistake that Israel was making in the time of Isaiah and the

Pharisees were making whom Jesus rebuked in Mark 7. Well, when you have that much disrespect for God.

Yeah. You're gonna make yourself bigger than what you should be and what you are. Yeah. And that's a point that.

Scary. That's a scary place to be. Yes. And that's a point that I make in the Bible project video or the video response that I did to the

Bible project is that they elevate man and diminish God. Yeah. And once you recognize it.

Yeah. Once you recognize it's all over all their videos. Yeah. And then you start to see it. And it's sneaky.

Yeah, exactly. It's very sneaky because it's not outright said, you know.

And so I could see myself being like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Until you really listen to everything they're saying and what they're not saying.

Testing everything as we're instructed to do. And that goes back to the question that Randy asked.

Why are there so many teachers that are using this material instead of calling it out? Because they're sneaky.

We do need to have grace for those teachers. Oh, yeah. That may be misled or not quite understanding the problem with the things that are being said in the

Bible project videos. And not seeing the urgency or the severity of it. Right.

Which is why I made that response video and I tried to keep it short so that you can use it and utilize it.

Like here we're spending half an hour on this. Right. And maybe you want to share the broadcast.

Maybe you want to take this episode and share it with somebody else and say, here's the problem with the Bible project. But you've got a little shorter version, slightly shorter in the video response that I did as well.

Anyway, let's see if we can knock out the rest of this here. Okay. But Isaiah looked forward to a day when a new king from the line of David would come and deal with evil, but in a surprising way.

The king would become a servant and not just serve, but also suffer and die for the evil committed by his own people and his life would be offered as a sacrifice.

This is the promise Jesus believed he was fulfilling. Believed he was fulfilling?

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Brakes. Let's bring this bus to a stop here. Red flag. I'm waving it.

Jesus believed he was fulfilling? Like, wow.

He knew according to what the father had sent him to do. Right. According to his obedience to the will of the father, he knew exactly what it was that he was doing.

Oh, yeah. He didn't simply believe that he was doing that. Words, words are very important.

Anyway, so where he goes from here, I'm going to kind of cut it a little bit short because I want to get to the video on holiness. Okay. But where he goes from here is he starts talking about now there are ways that we can enjoy and experience this as well.

And it's through baptism in the Lord's supper. So then once again, he says, here's how we experience atonement.

Yeah. And what we can do to get it. Through our works. Exactly. Baptism and the Lord's supper.

How do we receive the gift of atonement? According to exactly what I just read earlier in Isaiah, or I'm sorry, in Romans three, we receive it by faith.

Yes. To be received by faith, believing in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we are saved. Isaiah 53, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.

And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

That is the doctrine of the atonement. Isaiah 53, 10. It was the will of the

Lord to crush him, to put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt and he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days.

The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Now, one of the other problems with Tim Mackey's understanding of atonement is his misunderstanding even of the holiness of God.

We'll see how far we get here, but you hear that in this video also. Okay. You've probably heard the word holy before, or at least sang it in a church song once or twice.

And for most people, this idea is really just connected to being a morally good person. So God is holy because he's morally perfect.

Yeah, that is part of it. But in the Bible, the idea of holiness is even bigger and more rich.

What it's really describing is how God is the creative force behind the whole universe. He's the one and only being with the power to make a world full of such beauty and life.

Let me stop it right there. What's wrong with that? Notice something that at the beginning of that, it says that God is morally perfect.

And then Tim Mackey blows it off and goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's more than that. Yeah. He skips the moral perfection and then starts talking about this energy.

Like he's this force that has created all things. And that's what holiness is. The holiness of God is that he is perfect and we are not.

Right. In his moral character, he is good. We are evil. That is everything about the holiness of God.

Everything he does is righteousness, is justice, is purity, is perfection.

That's the holiness of God. And that's what you hear over and over again in this video is he actually blows past the whole moral perfection aspect and wants to focus on some other things.

Here's another clip from that video. All right. And whether you're an Israelite living in the land around the temple or a priest working right in the temple, you're in proximity to God's holy presence, which is dangerous.

Yeah, this is a problem. So how's it supposed to work? Well, in the Bible, the solution is that you need to become pure.

So like being morally pure. Yeah. And that's easy enough to understand. But the Bible spends a lot of time talking about another kind of purity, being ritually pure.

So you notice how he does that again? Yeah. He blows right past our moral perfection before God being righteous.

Right. He blows right past that and says, no, we need to be ritually pure. Even says when it comes to moral purity there, he even goes, see, moral purity is easy to understand.

So let's talk about ritual purity. What the Bible talks more about. That we are to be righteous before God, that we are to be without sin, that we are to be holy as he is holy.

Right. Which is not attainable for ourselves. Right. It has to come from God. It has to be that he gives us his holiness and the righteousness of God has been imputed to us through Jesus Christ by faith, which, again, he won't talk about here.

Right. That's not in the video. It's not anything about we receive the righteousness of God by faith in Christ.

So frustrating. It is 2 Corinthians 5, 21 that says he became sin for our sake.

He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And we receive that by faith.

So anyway, the Bible project. Very, very dangerous. Stay away from it. It is not obviously dangerous.

It's real, real sneaky. It is. Sneaky, squid sneaky. Sneaky, squid sneaky.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Yes, but that's the way Satan does it. He is a sneaky, crafty devil.

Yes, yes. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time together, and I pray that people would not be deceived, but their eyes would be open to recognize the half truths when they hear them.

That doesn't quite take us to the truth of Christ, but rather closer and closer to the lies of the enemy.

Help us to be wise and discerning. Help us to listen to those who have that gift of discernment so that we can recognize the truth from error and that the church is benefited by those who have those spiritual gifts to be able to teach and edify and lead and build up according to what the word of Christ says.

It is through your word that we are sanctified, that we are growing in holiness and righteousness.

Help us to do that with one another and be patient with each other. For as we read in Romans 15, 1, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the week and not to please ourselves.

We also want to pray in these moments for those who are struggling with the panic that is going on in the world over this spread of disease and pandemic.

We pray that even in the midst of searching and wondering and looking for hope beyond the uncertainty of this world, that there's somebody who is there sharing the gospel with them, that they may hear the truth of Christ who has died on the cross for sins.

Whoever believes in him will be forgiven and have eternal life so that our hope is laid up in heaven in a perfect kingdom that has been promised to us and we may escape from this world which is fallen and perishing and coming under the judgment of God.

Lead us in a right way everlasting. Keep us focused on Jesus, pursuing his righteousness and holiness and doing that with one another as Christian saints as we traverse this earth.

We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. You're yawning already?

Yeah. We haven't even started yet. I know. You wait too long. You were talking with Sonya.

Don't even. No, that's not true. I was pulling together several clips.

The answering to this particular question is it took more work than I thought that it was going to.

Well, you get the privilege of taking the food stuff out of the garage and putting it in the dumpster and taking the dumpster to the street.

Thanks. You're welcome. I appreciate it. Anytime. Also have to put the food away. That's where I thought you were going with that when you were telling me that.

Oh. Because I still have the pork in the crock pot, don't I? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, you do. Did Raymond and Jubilee leave anything here?

They left a icebox, piece of icebox. The cake. Yeah. Okay.

Two pieces, one for Zieg and one for Ryan. Oh, that's it?

Yeah. You said you didn't want any. I don't remember the question. I was playing video games.

I can't do two things at once. I know, but this is food related.

You're expecting me to play video games and listen to my wife? Yes. Yes, I do. Wife is priority.

Now that I will agree with. I joke, but yes.

Let's see. If you can't pay attention to me while playing video games, you don't need to be playing video.

I know I have the same problem sometimes. Okay. I wanted to answer this right here.