Dispensationalism, Apologetics and Ethnic Diversity

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

Saints. I'm Dylan Hamilton. I'm Michael Deere. And this is Andrew Hudson. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

And today we're gonna start right in with a question about dispensationalism.

Uh -oh. All right, so the question's from David, and if you've read or if you heard our first episode, you know

David Kassin is a member at our church who likes to ask a lot of questions, and very good questions.

So, question from David says, I was taught that if you take the Bible literally, you will naturally arrive at a dispensational view.

Liberal teachers spiritualize many Bible passages in the Old Testament about the New Temple, so they do not think it will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.

You are also not dispensationalist and do not think that the Temple must be rebuilt in Jerusalem in order for Jesus to come back, which

I believe is a statement directed at Pastor Michael. The question is, does that mean you spiritualize the

Old Testament? How can you say you take the Bible literally, but then say that you are not being a liberal when you spiritualize the

Old Testament? Yeah, so we have a lot of key terms here that need some definition, and when a dispensationalist—and my grandfather was a dispensationalist deacon at a

Baptist Church, and taught Sunday school, and labored very diligently in the text, and I still have some of his hand -drawn maps of the

Holy Land, and a hand -drawn map of Jerusalem, and some charts that he made.

Were they accurate? Well, I don't know, but they were very well drawn. He was very meticulous in all that he did, a man of good reputation.

So when we think about this term, taking the Bible literally, the desire is to believe the

Bible for what it says, and that's something that all Christians agree on.

And when a dispensationalist says you need to take the Bible literally, I think ultimately what they're saying is, well, we need to believe what the

Bible says as it says it, and we don't need to be bringing in non -believing assumptions that color our reading of the text.

Something that is called eisegesis, where we bring something from the outside, and we bring it in and read, for instance, you know,

Genesis chapters 1 through 11, through the lens of the Neo -Darwinian hypothesis, and so on.

So we are all in agreement that the Bible needs to be read according to its own terms.

And in fact, this would be the best way to define the term literal, as it has been defined according to the literature, that we read the

Bible according to its own literature. So if we are reading in Psalms, for example, and it says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, we do not then—and

I don't know a dispensationalist who would—read that as, but on the thousand and first hill, those cattle are not owned by God, right?

I would not accuse a dispensationalist of believing that, because they would read that as poetry according to its literature and be blessed by this pronouncement of God owning everything, and that He's our

Heavenly Father, and we can depend on His resources, and so on. And so why fear? You know, these are—this is a wonderful poetic comfort in the

Scripture. I think when they say we need to take the Bible literally, and they're referring specifically to the promises that God made to Israel, because it's of the utmost importance for a dispensational hermeneutic that the promises that God made to Israel be fulfilled only in particular to an ethnic, national

Israel sometime in the future, because obviously these things have not come to pass in the way that is expected when you first read the text.

So that is, I think, what they mean by that. And I would say that given their presuppositions,

I would agree with their arrival, that if you take the

Bible literally according to what they mean, that the land is eternally

Israel's, and Israel's going to live in that land forever and ever and ever, and that there's going to be a new priesthood that will be sacrificing animals on an altar in a rebuilt temple, and so on, according to various passages that you would read in Ezekiel and other passages, even in the

Torah, where there's very clear this is going to be forever and ever. That if you read those according to what you would say would be the most immediate sense of those verses, then you would end up expecting all these things to take place at some point, because obviously they haven't.

Now, I think that the goal, of course, and I think dispensationalists would agree, is to read the

Bible on its own terms. Let the Bible interpret the Bible, and I think there would be a total agreement about that.

We'd all be at the same table at that point, and I think there would be disagreement when we would begin to then say, okay, well, how do we read the

Bible in its own terms, according to its own values, according to its own interpretive scheme?

And at that point, you would have dispensationalists interpreting Scripture in light of Israel, and I would differ in that, because I'd be interpreting

Scripture according to Christ. I'm not trying to say that in some sort of, you know, I'm more holy than you, and I think many, many dispensationalists would say, yes, of course,

Christ is the most important. Christ is the center, and He's the hope of Israel. He's the Messiah, and again, there'd be tons of agreement there before we would part ways on particular readings.

It is wrong to take up Bible passages in the

Old Testament, and to begin to read them in ways that seem to be more compatible with modern sensibilities, and so on.

That would be wrong, and I know that many dispensationalists are concerned about that. But the main question here is talking about, okay, what do you do with the passages in the

Old Testament to talk about a new temple? In particular, that's what's in David's question, and if you spiritualize that, meaning you're interpreting that in a spiritual scheme, it's not going to be a physical temple, it's going to be a spiritual temple.

If you read it that way in the Old Testament, that's a wrong reading according to dispensationalism, and then doesn't that make you a liberal?

Doesn't that put you in a liberal camp? Well, I would say no for the following reason, that when we read the

New Testament, when we read how Jesus instructs his disciples, how he manifests his person and work to the crowds in the parables that he tells, and then as we read how the apostles write their letters and deal with different concerns and challenges in the church, they interpret

Old Testament passages in light of Christ. And there are passages in the

Old Testament, when you read them, they are about Israel. They are about Israel and God's covenant with Israel, and they are about Israel's land, and they are about Israel's temple, and so on.

And as you read through them, you say, okay, this is what this passage is about. And then later on, those very same passages are taken up by Christ, and taken up by the apostles, and read as being fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Mount Zion is a physical location in the Old Testament where there is a mountain called

Zion, and on this mountain there is the worship of God, and King David reigned there, and all of this truly did happen, and God made promises about Mount Zion in the

Old Testament. And then when you get to the New Testament, you find out the fullness of what this means, such as in Hebrews chapter 12, and in Galatians, and in other places.

Mount Zion is read as the church, is read as the body of Christ, is read as our, as Paul says, our heavenly mother, the new

Jerusalem, the true Jerusalem, and so on. And so, I would say that I'm trying to read the

Bible literally as well. I think it's a good endeavor according to the literature. And so, I want to read the plain meaning of the text.

And so, when I'm reading in the New Testament that these Old Testament facets turn out to be the shadows of Christ, and the substance has now come, when

I read that these are promises that are fulfilled in Christ, I want to roll with that. And even though I might be surprised, we're also told in the scriptures that the prophets themselves would be surprised at how this turned out.

And, well, God is God and we're not, and I think that's when we read the New Testament, we see what the

Old Testament means. And I think that there is a beautiful symmetry to it, and I think we are supposed to read the

Old Testament in light of the New. I think we're supposed to read the Old Testament as Christians, as followers of Christ, and see it through that lens.

And I think if we don't, I think if we read the Old Testament in light of Israel, then it's like, well,

Israel is the most important, Israel is essential, and so on. I think we're missing that Christ is the light.

So, Andrew, what do you think about spiritualizing the temple and not looking for a physical temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem?

Well, I think along the same lines of what you're talking about, the inspired interpretation as recorded in the

New Testament of Old Testament passages, should they not take supremacy over my own literalistic reading and trying to insist that it, no, no, it means something different.

I'm gonna take what was said by Christ and his apostles to be the truth that it is.

Additionally, in, I'm gonna use a Bible reference here, in Joshua chapter 21, verse 43 through 45.

Now, if you were to read literalistically or literally, just listen to what it says.

So, the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it.

The Lord gave them rest all around according to all that He had sworn to their fathers, and not a man of all their enemies stood against them.

The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. Not a word failed of any good thing which the

Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass. Right. I think the emphasis of dispensational view is that God is not a liar.

Oh yes, and we agree with that. And that's where I can have a large portion of unity.

But I see in passages like this that, no, no, God has fulfilled the promises that He promised to the patriarchs, to Israel.

He has done it, and now He has given us His Son. Praise the

Lord. Amen. Yeah, I think you both are pointing out an important point as far as taking the

Bible literally, and sometimes with the dispensationalist view, too, we can go to inconsistencies with that statement, where, you know, take the

Bible literally except for when Christ says, this is gonna happen to this generation. You know, and when we take their presuppositions and show where they've been inconsistent with them, back in on the argument or back in on the worldview, that's gonna be helpful, too, because that's where I've had that pointed out multiple times from different men where they, when they start looking or they start reviewing premillennialism, that's where they go to a lot of times is, okay, you're gonna, you're going to be literal, literal, you know, air quotes over here, but when

Christ says, upon this generation, okay, we're not gonna take the biblical view of 40 years being a generation.

And so in judgment coming as well, like, you have literal views of the promises being fulfilled.

Now do you have literal views of judgment that's promised for covenant breakers being fulfilled as well?

Right, and I think that's where, you know, hermeneutics matters, and I think humble believers all agree, look, we want to, we believe that the

Bible is consistent, there's no error, God always keeps His promises, He is true, and Scripture should interpret

Scripture, and there's just this broad agreement, joyful agreement, about all of that, and then when we engage in the

Scriptures, if we don't have a proper hermeneutic, if we don't have a proper way of interpreting the Scripture, our own way of reading the text will collapse in on itself.

So if we read the Scriptures and we make Israel the most important aspect, then we're going to end up in dead ends and cul -de -sacs and self -contradictory things and going the wrong way on a one - way street and so on, because we've picked the wrong hermeneutic.

The same goes for if somebody from an Adventist background picks

Sabbath as the most important idea. If somebody takes even so lofty a term as covenant and makes covenant their interpretive reading, their hermeneutic, and how they see everything in the text, we're just going to end up folding in on ourselves, and we we are humbled and unable to master but given everything we need when the

Scriptures tells us time and again, and Jesus was so clear on this, that it is the

Scriptures that testify of Him, that He is the light of the world, that He is the way, the truth, and the life.

He is the one mediator between God and man, and so how else are we going to understand the Word of God except through the person and work of Jesus Christ?

Now, at that point, covenant is pretty thick as far as a hermeneutic, and Israel can get real complicated and so on and so forth, but if we read the

Scriptures through these hermeneutics, we could almost master it. We could master the theme of covenant, we could master the theme of Israel.

We can't master Christ. He masters us, and it humbles us then when we read the text, and we're reading it in light of who

He is, and we see His shadows and His types and the promises in the

Old Testament, we see the fulfillments of these things in the New Testament, and we will come to points where we just stand in awe, and I can't go any further, and I'm just worshiping, but I'm not going to master that hermeneutic.

You know, it's absolutely true, but it doesn't leave us with dead ends and cul -de -sacs and going the wrong way on a one -way street.

It leaves us with vistas of glory that I can't go and penetrate, but I can worship, and I think that to me that's a different approach.

All right, well, we talked about other questions, but I'm seeing one that's going to connect to this first question a little better, and we'll go ahead and hit the other ones as we go along, but this is kind of from a

Church history point of view of the same subject just below. My dad taught me that the early

Church was premillennial, and that our Baptist Church is just trying to be like the early Church.

You are not premillennial. You are postmillennial. Does that mean you are breaking with the early Church? I thought that historical premillennialism meant that the early

Church was futurist, while you are a partial preterist. Is that another break with the early

Church? Yeah, so in discussions about Church history, the development of eschatology or just understanding last things and what's to come, and how are these prophecies fulfilled?

How are the promises of God coming to pass? The early Church is not monolithic.

It's wide, and it's varied, and there are a lot of ideas that float around in early

Church fathers that we don't believe today, because they were working it out, and it was messy.

When a toddler first learns how to eat, not everything makes it in the mouth, and sometimes the stuff that does has been cleaned off the face, and there are some things that the

Church is trying to work out in the early days that is just not very clean. There are some beautiful treatises like Athanasius on the

Incarnation of Christ that just immediately resonate in the heart of all Christians, and Athanasius, of course, himself was very much towards a post -millennial view.

And there are others who were premillennial who also wrote things that are just beautiful about the person and work of Christ.

But we have to remember that in the early Church, they were still struggling with a pagan empire who, from time to time, would lash out at them.

They were still trying to figure out how to organize. They began to have lots of controversies in the

Church, which again, when heresies afflict the Church, Jesus shepherds

His flock and brings them to a point where they can answer those heresies, and they grow in the faith, and they get stronger, and they move forward, and Jesus is a good shepherd, and He does that for us.

And the early controversies in the Church had to do with, you know, what is Scripture, what is not, the person of Jesus, fully

God, fully man. These were critical controversies in the early

Church, and that was what they were spending most of their time on. It is not the fact that you can say, well, all early

Church Fathers agreed on eschatology. Well, that is not the case.

There is a lot of different ideas out there in the early Church, and they were disparate in their views like we are today.

Now, it seems like a really weighty thing to say, well, all the Church Fathers were pre -mill, so we should be as well.

Well, when we go back and actually read what they said, and some of their works are still being translated, they were not all futurists.

Many of them were preterists. Frank W. Gemmerloch, for instance, is a scholar who's translating all kinds of writings from the

Church Fathers and finding lots of preterists among them, partial preterists, who said, you know, hey, look at all these things in Revelation.

These things were fulfilled in, you know, anywhere from AD 64 to AD 70. Here's what they were fulfilled.

And they disagreed with each other too about just how they were fulfilled, but not everybody in the early

Church were futurists. Some of them were partial preterists as well. Some of them were idealists.

You know, they had different ways of reading the text. So there was a lot of variety there.

And, you know, that's not really the case when you go back and you read. Now, if you only read futurist pre -mill

Church Fathers one after the other, you know, you can get the idea that they were all in agreement.

But, you know, you kind of have to do a little bit wider reading, I think. Right. But are they in agreement with John, needs to be the question.

Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what we're all striving to be is, you know, we would be submitted to the text. And that's what we desire.

But I know I'm not as avid a reader of Church history as others. I think this is a question that Andrew's been pondering.

Well, I would say, if you think about the appeal to authority in this question, the authority is, yes, the

Church Fathers had many blessings to be able to continue to pass on in their writings to us.

Now, did they hold every doctrine infallibly? Did they know everything in a way that they can speak authoritatively at the same level of the scriptures?

Well, the answer is no. So therefore, our appeal is always going to be, what does

God say? What does His words say? Yes. I think you could also think of some things like Origen's allegorical interpretation of the

Good Shepherd, or correction, the Good Samaritan. Right. Not many people still hold the allegorical interpretation of the

Good Samaritan. Well, are we wrong? Because we don't. And it disagrees with Ambrose and Augustine and their allegorical interpretation that they also received from earlier generations.

Or do we just look at the text itself and go from there, allowing the

Holy Spirit to do what He said He would do and to lead us into all truth?

Right. That's a good observation that this really is an authority question. By what authority are we—by what standard are we reading the text?

Right. And I appreciate that. But would we say that a historical objection or a historical discussion of these things, do we find them useless in the light of that fact?

Or are they still going to produce some sort of edification that we can come—and I think they produce wonderful conversation, as we see right now.

But when we get down to brass tacks, is that something that we really need to pursue?

Or methodologically, do we need to shift back to something more like what Andrew was saying? Right, yeah.

Because if you—many movements have thrown out all of church history, so to speak, even though they can't.

They claim to throw out all of church history and say, well, now we have the truth, and claim that the church has been lost since the first century, but we have revived it, and so on and so forth.

And historical claims run both ways on that, you know, a double -edged knife, where, again, a claim made by non -dispensationalists might be, well, the idea of a pre -tribulational rapture wasn't even introduced until 1830, so on and so forth.

But again, are we making our appeal to church fathers, to church history, as the standard by which we interpret the text?

Well, obviously not. But what value is there, is the question.

What value is there? And the value comes in where a lot of work has been done that is a blessing to us.

Just like somebody in the church, a teacher or a preacher, labors in the text, and then blesses others with that labor.

Well, we have many ancestors in the faith, you know, who have come before us, and they've labored in the text, and they have done some work that is still edifying to us today, such as the

Christological creeds. And a lot of work has been done that is truly a blessing to us.

And all of us here, we've read books by dead men, and been blessed and fellowshiped even in the

Holy Spirit with our brothers who have shared these things from the Word. But the

Word of God is the norm that cannot be normed. The Scripture itself is self -authenticating.

It is the standard by which we evaluate everything else. And so no matter how big the name is, you know,

Irenaeus, Polycarp, Clement, Augustine, Calvin, Edwards, any...

doesn't matter how big the name is, all of these writings are subject to the

Word of God. And we do our very best to hold that as the standard.

And our own convictions and opinions and so on and so forth must be ready to be normed and changed, altered by the clear teaching of the

Word of God. One might say semper reformanda, right? Yes, always reforming, that's right. And the direction of that is toward the

Scripture, right? Not toward a better cultural modification.

It's towards the Scripture. Right. Well, if you're not going towards Scripture, in a lot of these cases, appealing to a church father or something like that could slip into something like ecclesiastical demagoguery, where you're following this one person and whatever they say goes, which we have cases of that in certain sects of Christianity as well.

But then you have the extreme of that, and they break completely. And like you said, they've had a renewal of the church, or the true church.

And that leads into the next question here. When a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness comes to my door, what is the correct response?

Do I give them the gospel and then, if... do I give them the gospel and then, if they do not listen and try to argue, shut the door?

Do I try to engage with them in a friendly way and even invite them to church? Do I just give them some cold water in the name of Jesus and shut the door?

And the reason it led in is because with Mormonism especially, we have a claim of revivalism of the true church.

And how do we handle people who are proselytizing these sorts of things?

Yes, so... and this is not a cop -out answer, but the prayer that Paul...

the prayer request that Paul mentions is that in Colossians chapter 4, in verse 3, he says, "...meanwhile

praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the Word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which

I am also in chains, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak."

And then he exhorts the church in this way, he says, "...walk in wisdom toward those who are outside," and that would be definitely

Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, "...redeeming the time," and here they are at your front door, here's an opportunity, "...let

your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one."

It's going to be different based on the people that you're talking to.

However, the truth of the Word of God obviously has to be maintained as the standard.

I recently had, I think, well, it's within the last year, two Jehovah's Witnesses come by our home and try to speak with us, and it's interesting because they are technologically advancing, and this is detrimental,

I think, to the conversation, where before they brought their

New World Translation, which is, I think, was... I forget who said it was the most dangerous book ever to be published in the

English language, because it is a perversion, particularly it has an agenda to mistranslate passages about Christ being fully

God. And so it's striking at the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of Christendom, to deny the divinity of Christ.

Well, if they bring the hard copy with them, there are some opportunities to even use their corrupted translation and show where their own translation clarifies the deity of Christ, because they can't get rid of it even though they've been working at it for quite some time.

Ron Carlson has an example of that, and he, in his fast facts about false teachers, he's got some good examples in there about how to do that.

Well, these Jehovah's Witnesses come, and I want to have a conversation with them using that methodology.

I want them to read out a revelation and see where Jesus is making claims, where He's the Alpha, the Omega, the Beginning, and the

End, and He was dead and alive forevermore. So what are you going to do with that? Just to kind of destabilize them,

I want to put pebbles in their shoe so that they think to themselves, I don't have an answer for these claims.

There's something missing here. And I was enabled to do this because, as I was talking with this lady,

I would ask her a question about the text, and rather than answer me, rather than think about the question and try to answer it, she was using this tablet, and she would click on the verse, and there was a commentary that answered all these known objections to Jehovah's Witness teaching.

And so she did nothing but read off the tablet. And I would try to ask her a question, and she would do nothing but read off the tablet.

And then I would ask her a question about why she was reading off the tablet. You know, and then she just said, well, you're not going to listen anyway, and then she left.

And the other lady stayed just a little bit longer, you know, and making sounds about how, you know, she was concerned for my soul and so on.

But the older woman was calling her away, and we're done here, you know. So that didn't work out very well.

You know, I wanted to have a conversation, but that didn't work out very well. And I suppose that Jehovah's Witnesses are going to be more and more that kind of encounter where they're using technology and reading off their approved script and not allowed to do so otherwise, and that's very disheartening.

But I think that it probably differs from person to person about what kind of encounter you're going to have.

And I had an acquaintance in seminary who ordered some

Mormons and had them delivered to the seminary. You can do this. You can go onto the website and ask for a visit.

And he gave the address as the seminary grounds, and he met them in the seminary library or the bookstore and began a series of conversations with them.

And this actually generated a visit from one of the head elders.

I don't know what they're all called. Bishops. Bishops, yeah. A bishop came with these two young men who were called elders, and he came and had conversations with this seminarian.

And it actually generated a visit to one of our seminary classes where we were studying

Mormonism in our World Religion and Cults class on the very day that we were talking about the life and times of Joseph Smith.

So providentially, you know, God arranged this, and I don't know what the outcome was of this, sitting there listening to how

Joseph Smith was all these different things, and none of them holy, and it's documented in his own words and so on.

So these opportunities, I think, are fairly unique and not standardized.

But what do you do? Well, obviously, Paul says, you know, pray that I can speak as I ought to and try to let, you know, your speech should always be with grace, seasoned with salt.

You know, what's the most effective way that I can reach this person in this moment? To try to get the

Word of God, because the Word of God is eternal seed. My words aren't. So how do

I get the Word of God into their life? What can I do to be a good witness? And that's going to vary.

I mean, I don't know if there probably are some standard questions, and I know that Apologia and some others have been thoroughly engaged in that.

Andrew, what would you say? Well, I actually had a question along these lines.

So there was a question about, should I give them something to drink? Right, right. So I'm going to read a passage from 2

John, starting in verse 7. For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess

Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. Now, this is, I think, directed a little bit more towards a

Gnostic understanding of who Jesus was, but maybe the principle still holds, so I'll continue.

This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves that we do not lose the thing we work for, but that we may receive a full reward.

Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the

Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him, for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.

How does this apply to wanting to convert in the sense that we want to give them the gospel, but at the same time being mindful of not sharing in their evil deeds?

Right. So the situation in the ancient world as far as traveling and people not having a place to stay, they did have inns, but these were few and far between and often not the best places to be.

And it was understood that if you came into a place, a town, a village, whatever, that the ancient codes of hospitality, you would find a place to be put up for the night.

And if they didn't offer hospitality, it affected the reputation of the entire town and it was very, very bad.

So Jesus himself gave instructions to his disciples to preach the gospel and to go from village to village and to look for a man of peace there, a person of peace who would receive them and receive their message and take care of their physical needs.

But if there was a rejection of the gospel, then to wipe the dust off their feet and to leave that town and go to the next, because they would not make it through all the villages and towns of Judah before the

Son of Man came in judgment against Israel for their covenant breaking. And so in this case, when it says, do not receive him into your house nor greet him, this is going to be pertaining to that kind of support.

We're going to let you spend the night and take care of your physical needs, make sure that you can continue in your mission.

So there should be no kind of support to false teachers.

So today's equivalent would be, you should not be sending your money to false teachers, even if they are on TBN or even

Christian radio. If they're false teachers, don't send them physical support.

And then it says, don't even greet him. And I think this has to do with the kind of greeting of,

I approve. Maybe I can't do anything for you, but I approve.

There's a pat on the back, there's a thumbs up, kind of like Timothy Keller giving approval to the atheist chaplain at Harvard.

So that's definitely a violation of this text. Thank you.

And one thing we're seeing now in our current context, it may change a lot of this stuff too.

I know since COVID, I've heard that Mormons have been pretty shut off.

They've canceled pageants and conferences and stuff like that. And I don't know what the elder or their missions look, what they look like these days, but at some point they're starting to pull back some of this stuff because of the situations that are around us.

And they're very fearful right now of COVID. And to the same degree, or to a differing degree,

I would say, the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're retreating to a certain extent, but to just technology and having lines and you don't answer the lines, that's a different form of retreat in my mind, not being able to answer questions thoughtfully or to accept your answers in any sort of fashion and answer them thoughtfully.

So yeah, the context around these groups are changing a little bit in 2020 and beyond because of what's happened.

Yeah, it seems to me that it's an opportunity for apologetic -minded

Christians, evangelistic -burdened Christians, which we all are at some degree, but especially those who have a heart for those who are trapped in the cults, like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, to go on the offensive.

They're on the retreat, so what does that mean? You can't sit around and wait for them to come to you. I mean,

I see Mormons out and about today. And the other day I saw them in their SUV, so they upgraded from their bikes, but they had their bike rack on the back.

So I figured that that was just their main vehicle to get them from place to place. But I mean, I see them out and about, and that would be an opportunity to engage since their uniform is so distinctive.

So it's an opportunity to maybe go on the offensive and go strike up a conversation with them.

And again, some of these things you're not going to be able to win any kind of debate.

There's going to be very well -guarded arguments that run in a circle that you can't penetrate because they've been told what to say and what to believe.

Nevertheless, God's Word is far more powerful than Satan's lies.

And so simply by engaging with them and speaking the Word of God into their life, we're acting in faith that God will use that, and that God will take that seed and plant it, and that God will bring about the new birth and so on.

Amen. All right, we'll move on to the next question. Why doesn't your church have more ethnicities in it?

Your church is mostly white, but the Bible says that the gospel should go to every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Yeah, this is a major concern of many today is that,

I think, I forget who it was who said it, that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in the

United States of America, in our culture. Jesus loves tribes, and He loves tribes, and He loves nations, and He loves peoples, and He loves tongues in terms of different languages, and languages themselves, because they diverge at the

Tower of Babel as an act of God's judgment upon man's hubris. But it gets turned into honoring and glorifying

God and bringing glory to Christ in that He saves these different languages.

Now, a language, of course, when you have differing languages, they differ on more than just the phonetic sounds coming out of someone's mouth.

They have different nuances of ethics, morality, relationships, the names for people, and so on.

So, these are representative that when you have different languages, you have different cultures.

And Jesus loves the tribes. He loves the peoples. He loves the languages, and so on.

And He shed His blood for their redemption. And the concern of our modern period is about appearing in our churches to be diverse, that not only do we need to have different skin colors present that manifestly represent different cultures, or so on, is the assumption.

We need to have people of different backgrounds. We need to have people who are natives, people who are immigrants from 10 generations ago.

And we need to have people who are immigrants, first -generation immigrants. And we need to have different genders being represented in their fullness, and so on.

And so, the concern is diversity, inclusivity, and equity are the three important terms being tossed around today.

You can remember them because they spell out the word die, D -I -E. And they're not usually arranged that way because of that.

Maybe on purpose. Yeah, maybe on purpose. Yeah. So, I remember them because of that. So, that's the concern.

Now, I think that the word here, diversity, kind of stands for all three, but they all have their own place.

The idea of diversity is the new holiness code. Think about how surface level this is.

The world is watching, so when they look at our church, they had better see that we are living according to their standards.

And those standards are that Fortune 500 companies are required to have so much diversity on their boards.

And if you don't have enough women in visible positions of leadership, then obviously you are evil.

And so, many churchmen have taken that up and said, well, we have got to have those same standards in our own ranks.

And so, we have to go actively recruit people who look different and have different ethnicities so that we will be up to the standards of the day.

It's not being motivated by Scripture, although it is being described and being justified through the use of Scripture, I would say an unrighteous use of the

Scripture. When Jesus builds

His church, He is building His church all over the place, amongst the tribes, amongst the nations, where all these different languages are.

His number one priority is the spread of the knowledge of the glory of God throughout all of the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The priority is not that all of the nations be moved around so that you have an equal representation of all skin colors and ethnic backgrounds and gender representatives in every church so that everybody has the proper percentages.

That's not biblical. I would give an example out of Acts chapter 2, which also reaches back a little bit to our conversation last time about translations.

In chapter 2 of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, we see that the

Holy Spirit comes and fills the church. And in verse 4 of Acts 2, it says, they were all filled with the

Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, which is a word which means languages, known languages, speak with other tongues as the

Spirit gave them utterance. And now what happened, verse 5, and they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, right?

So they had Jews, these devout men, they had grown up in these other nations, maybe they were ethnically

Jews, maybe they were proselytes who had been converted to Judaism, but they had all gathered for Pentecost there in Jerusalem.

So they're from all these different backgrounds, different languages, and they all come together for this feast.

Now, verse 6 says, and when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.

So the devout men from every nation under heaven heard the

Christians filled with the Holy Spirit speak in his own language.

So men from all over the place heard the preaching of the gospel in their own heart language.

Verse 7, then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, look, are not all these who speak

Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in our own language in which we were born?

Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya, joining

Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.

So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, whatever could this mean?

When we read that, we see the way that Jesus is building his church.

If his goal is simply diversity, then what we have here is all of these different Jews have come together.

How is it that they were able to travel from all these other nations under heaven and come together in Jerusalem? Because they all had a common trade language called

Koine Greek. They all could speak the trade language of Greek.

And if Jesus' only goal here is, oh, I want diversity, then he's achieved it.

Just have the church preach in Koine Greek. And look, look at all these different skin colors, look at all these different backgrounds, look at all the diversity we have achieved.

Now we're all going to speak in Greek. But he doesn't do that. He, through his

Holy Spirit, equips the church to preach the gospel in the heart languages of all these people so that they would hear the gospel.

And obviously the idea is for those who come to faith in Christ to go back to those areas and preach the gospel in those same languages, you know, the language of the

Elamites, the language of the Phrygians, and so on, and to preach the gospel in those heart languages to those people.

See, Jesus is saving the tribes. He's saving the languages. He's saving the peoples through the preaching of the gospel.

And so when we see this, we see that the goal is not simply to gather together people from different ethnic backgrounds and, you know, into our

American churches, and now we're all going to, we're going to have a service and we're going to preach in English.

And all the immigrants are going to be here and representing and making us look good because we have different skin tones in the congregation.

And we, you know, we look really good, but we've gathered them all together and we're going to preach to them in English.

And I think it's funny that in verse 7, they all knew that the men speaking these different languages were

Galileans because Galileans had a particular accent. You remember, this is what outed Peter at the fire.

Galileans had an accent. I wonder if it was something like, you know, a deep Texas accent or something. And these men were speaking in a really thick

Galilean accent, but speaking all these different languages, you know, how the French wince when Americans try to, you know, maybe they get the words right, but it's terrible accent.

And so what's happening here is Jesus loves the tribes. Jesus loves the tribes.

He's not trying to erase the fact that they're Elamites. He's not trying to get rid of the fact that they're

Cappadocians. He's not trying to bring them all into some big muddle where no one can retain their distinctiveness anymore.

And distinctiveness isn't bad. Jesus saves the tribes.

So I think that's just one example. I think that the concern about diversity is one in which someone's saying, well, we don't want people of a different skin color to feel like they're not welcome.

Well, number one, we're not in control of their feelings.

But of course, anybody who wants to come and worship Christ, definitely welcome. Yeah, absolutely.

Definitely welcome. And then the concern is, you know, well, we don't want anybody to be racist, which is a form of partiality based on skin color, right?

To be judging somebody by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character, as it has been wisely observed.

But is that not what's going on, the sin of partiality, when you're looking at your church and saying, do we have enough variety of skin tones?

Are you not then being partial and saying, we must find different skin colors to show up at our church?

I mean, are we not then trying to judge on the basis of partiality?

And James, we are warned of a very classic example of putting a poor man over here in a bad seat, and the rich man gets a really nice seat, and that's the sin of partiality.

Well, the same thing goes. It's like, well, oh, you have black skin. We're going to give you a prime spot over here because we need you to be visible.

What did we just do? We were reducing people. We're reducing people to the material, to the physical.

We're not treating them as those who are made in the image of God. And it's partiality in the most elementary of ways, right?

We're taking a phenotypic fact of somebody rather than something a little more complicated like thought or the ability to...or

strength or riches. We're taking something nobody can change, skin color, and we're making partial judgments based on those distinctions, and it's...

Correct. It is secularist and materialistic down to the bone. So in Romans 2,

Paul talks about God's righteous judgment, and starting in verse 6, who will render...God,

who will render to each according to his deeds? And then following in verse 11, you have, for there is no partiality with God.

All this talk about partiality makes me think about like what was just mentioned, the content of the character, the deeds done in the flesh that all will have to answer to.

You also had mentioned previously, what is the proper percentage?

Is there a definition that someone has for the proper percentage? Now, some might say, well, it should reflect the population.

And then others might say, no, no, it should reflect equity. So you should have makeup for the wrongs of the past.

Where do you see those types of phrases as being proper percentage and partiality?

Yeah, these are moving targets and changing terms all the time. What was considered proper a couple of years ago is now considered to be racist.

So we have to recognize that the people calling for these things are not dealing with static categories, but they're always on the move, and they're impossible to apply.

For example, I just watched a little bit of Frontline Missions International. They have 10 documentaries called

Frontline Dispatches from the Front. And in one of them, they were talking about Christians from Peru heading to North Africa to preach the gospel.

And they're establishing churches in North Africa. So they had a picture or they had a little video of this church in North Africa gathering.

There's North Africans and there's Peruvians, and they've gathered together to worship.

And if we're going to make the application of the new holiness code of diversity, where are the

Greeks? Where are the French? And in fact, where are the white -skinned

Americans? Don't they have a representative amount to be in this church? Those applications are not being made in the

Church of Jesus Christ globally. They're only being made in particular in various places in the

U .S. culture that is very sensitive right now and woke right now.

And it's being applied unequally, and it's being applied without any consistency as well.

So those kinds of factors should wake us up to, this is not...

A biblical standard matters for all of the Church of Christ, and it matters all the time, and it's clear, and it doesn't change.

And this does. This smells a lot more like man's capriciousness. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And I think we should all be against the sin of partiality, especially when the sin of partiality is being peddled as impartiality.

And I'd like to see it die unequally applied. I'd like to see it die here and not be sent out to the rest of the world on a platter for them to use in the same way that we have.

I think that this is the land I'm hoping and praying that it dies in, rather than it is exported from to be used to the detriment of our brothers and sisters in the

East or in Africa or the global South, any of those places. If this is introduced, this is catastrophic on a number of levels for other tribes that we know and love and have sent missionaries to as well.

Yes. Okay. Well, that wraps up our questions for today, but we're going to go and head on to our other segments in this week in witchcraft.

And yet again, I show up without my responsibility of coming up with witchcraft.

So the elements have been conquered with intense heat and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

Can you spot it out in the wild, Pastor Michael? Right. So we are given a lot of examples of the demonic appropriation of alternate authority, which is my definition for witchcraft.

And the goal, of course, is to take up the categories that were given in the scripture.

Witchcraft takes up the categories that have been defined by God and begins to change them.

So either new words are invented to cover the old words, and that would be a form of magic.

Oh, here's a new word. We're going to call this alternative lifestyles instead of sodomy. Or we're going to enchant the words that we do have with new definitions that are not so clear in terms of biblical condemnation and so on.

And so there are a lot of ways to do this. I would say one example, and it's not a new one, but it manifests in various ways, is the redefinition of the word love.

And this is an old trope in terms of Christian discussion that people don't know what love is.

When you see a sign on the side of the highway, God is love. Or there was a sign on I -40 back when

I was in seminary near a very large church, and it said, God loves you just the way you are.

Which, again, this signifies, well, then there's nothing to be done.

Thanks, I'll go about my business now. Well, yeah, that's kind of the message that you get. But God loves you in spite of the way you are is grace.

That's good news. And how did he manifest that love? Through Christ. So it's kind indefinite. But the word love is something that is enchanted now, enchanted not with biblical definition, but with an amorphous, confusing lack of definition.

So, for example, there was this awful cartoon running around probably a couple of months ago or three months ago,

Blue's Clues, and there was this parade of love. And there were seven verses of this pagan hymn that they had crafted for children.

And it was a parade, right? It was during Pride Month. So it's an

LGBTQ plus parade, and the floats come by. On every float, there is a different form of, you know, scare quotes, family.

So in this pagan hymn, they're trying to redefine not only love, but also family.

They're trying to say, you know, there's all these different forms of family that you need to recognize as family.

So we're going to keep the word family. We're going to keep the word love. We're not going to get rid of those words, or we're not going to cover them, but we're going to enchant them with new definitions.

So along comes the float, the floats in the parade, and they show every perversion possible of what the culture calls family today.

So here is a family, you know, quotation marks family, where you have two moms, and here's one, you have two dads, and here's one where just a whole bunch of people live together, and so on and so forth.

And they had transgender representatives. And anyway, so it got really sick and perverted.

It was like a parade of evil. And the goal was to teach these children to sing this hymn.

And it was very redundant, you know, like paganism is, you know, the pagan worship is one in which there's mantras that you repeat over and over and over again.

And even though it seems mindless, it is crafting a lie in the mind when you repeat these mantras over and over and over again.

So it's a very pagan form of worship. And so they were saying this is family, and the tagline again and again is love is love is love is love.

So how are they defining it? Well, they're saying that it is self -defining.

It is the standard that it is the norm that cannot be normed.

Whatever makes you feel good, whatever makes you feel happy, that is what love is.

And however you express yourself that makes you feel happy and pleasurable, that is love.

Well, that's witchcraft. That's witchcraft. And it is very much in agreement with where the talking heads and popular culture and approved messengers are at.

You know, they do not define love by any objective standard.

The scriptures tell us by this we know love that he laid down his life for the brethren, that he laid down his life for us.

1 John 3, 16, by this we know love. We don't have to be in confusion about what love is.

We're given a very clear definition in the scriptures. It's a righteous and sacrificial devotion that if I love someone,

I am for them in the right way, even if it costs me. And this is what love is. And so witchcraft muddles it up, changes it up, keeps you guessing, and brings the lies of Satan in and tries to displace the truth of God.

Andrew, you have any comments? I do. So if you were to extract from the great what love is passage in 1

Corinthians about how love does not...

So I'm supplying love here in verse six, but it starts at verse four, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

And then another passage in Romans chapter 12, verse nine, let love be without hypocrisy.

So abhor what is evil and cling to what is good. With love being self -defining in their terms, it seems like they can put whatever they want inside of that term to then change it to whatever their own capricious whims are.

Whereas what we see is that it's hypocrisy, where we're actually putting good and evil in the same package if we were to use what their term of love is.

Correct. In paganism, all is one, so everything is fungible. You can exchange one thing for another without any real problems at all.

In paganism, a man can be a woman, a woman can be a man, and so everything is fungible and therefore can always be on the move.

And so when it comes to the definition of love, it is consistent with paganism that the definition is always changing.

And you, by necessity, have to have a form of gnosticism in operation, wherein somebody says, well, that's not love, right?

If a Christian has an objective standard as a creator who is over creation and defining things for us, we say, well,

God says that's not love because love abhors what is evil and clings to what is good.

Love does not rejoice in iniquity. Then the reply would be, well, you haven't had the experiences that I have had.

I know this is love by my experience, and you don't have my set of experiences, so you are in no position to either say my definition of love is true or false, right?

So the definitions themselves become unfalsifiable based on experiential gnosticism or standpoint epistemology, however the term is.

Which then gives the opportunity to reduce their absurdity, run the reductio.

Yes, exactly. Because at that point, then you have to push them to a point where they themselves are making standards for other people, right?

So someone says, well, you haven't had my set of experiences, so you can't know what love is for me.

And then you can easily, very quickly, shock and awe, point out something to them that they would be appalled at and say, well, so -and -so thinks that this is love.

What do you say to that? And they may, you know, swallow the bile and agree on principle, but then push it more.

He's like, well, that can't possibly be love. He's like, well, you haven't had their experiences, so how can you define love for them?

And that's running the reductio. And I think in your description of the

Blue's Clues parade, I think they were missing one family. They actually were, and I was going to mention that.

Go ahead. They're missing the family with Uncle Sam and children. Oh, yeah.

Where the state becomes your father. Oh, yeah, the communist family. I was going to say they're missing, actually, the family.

On the parade, there was not a mom and dad and kids, married mom and dad and kids. Oh, yeah. I mean,

I expected— They didn't have that family. Yeah, I expected that one. Right. Yeah. But they're the family, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, so that wraps up this week in witchcraft. We're going to move on to, what are we thankful for?

Go ahead, Michael. Well, I am thankful for Christian fellowship, spending time with brothers and sisters in Christ.

We, from time to time, grow—get ill, and we have to miss church services, and perhaps we have to travel from time to time.

And when we come back together, it's always the sweeter, and it reminds us of what we miss out on when we don't gather.

And I'm thankful that we can do that, that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but to do so all the more.

And Jesus knows our frame, that we need this, and I know I do, and I am very, very grateful for Christian fellowship.

Amen. Amen. Living stones, right? Yes. Being built together. I'm thankful for many things.

Among those today, I would like to talk about just the Word. A lot of what we referenced today, if you did not have the objective

Word of God, the clear revelation, you would be in darkness. And I praise the

Lord that His Spirit has given me life, and I see the words of life for what they are, the truth.

Amen. Amen. As we're sitting here, my wife is at home with both of our very needy young sons, and I am just eternally grateful for her and for both of them as well.

We are very thankful for those two boys and the work that we've been given in them, the joy that we've been given in them, and the refining work that it is on both of us.

It is definitely a refining work, and it is bringing out things that need to be changing and repented of in our own lives, and that's a sweet thing as a parent to come across those things to be thankful for.

But I'm especially thankful for every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. As we were talking about before the show,

Heather and I went on our honeymoon to Antigua, and we went to a church that we were out of place in as far as skin color goes, but we were definitely at home.

And we were definitely at home with a diverse group of believers. There was all kinds of gifting. There was all kinds of talents.

There were many types of backgrounds, ages, and all these things that the

Bible calls diversity. And we were thankful for all of them because we were treated the same way as they treated anybody else that walked in, and they worshiped

God faithfully, and they practiced, they lived out the grace that they saw in the doctrines that are kept within Scripture.

So we were very thankful for them while we were there, and we continue to be thankful for them.

But we are also thankful for our listeners, and we appreciate any support and any sharing that you can do.

And we hope you will join us again when we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?