Bible Hermeneutics Made Easy with Josiah Nichols

Good evening, everyone. This is Anthony Silvestro here, and yes,

I am back again. My plan is to be on the show for a lot the rest of this year, other than when

I have to travel. And tonight, not joining us is Andrew Rapoport, who our beloved leader is still taking some time off.

And Justin Pierce, not sure if he's gonna join us yet, but we do have a couple of very special guests, which we're gonna get to in just a moment here.

First and foremost, I wanted to be able to say as a follow -up, you know, a couple of weeks ago, we had

Mike Riddle on from Creation Training Initiative, another ministry that I work with. And the big thing we do is train people how to teach better.

So to be more effective teachers, both in Sunday school classes, at seminars, and even in pulpit preaching.

So that's one of the big things that we do. And our flagship course is coming up August 1st.

And what we decided to do after a lot of prayer, the course, it has a cost of $970 per person for the five full days.

And that is partially funded by donors. The cost per person's really around $1 ,600.

It's a wonderful deal. We actually, through a lot of prayer, decided to drop that cost to 450 and rely on donors to help to support people who can't normally afford to go to this, to be able to go to it.

So that's some good news for anybody who is looking to still join in.

Go to creationtraining .org for that. And number two, you may not have seen a whole lot of posts from me lately.

What I found out is that my Facebook account has been restricted for a while. So apparently ever since I started doing homosexual and transgender posts out there,

I'm not getting the views on my Facebook account. And I officially got the restricted notice for 24 hours as of yesterday.

I think I might be out of Facebook jail now, but that's the second time I've been restricted in recent times.

And so I have a feeling that it's coming up real soon where it's all gonna be just done and I'll be off of Facebook completely.

So having said all that, I am really excited about my guests. One of the big issues we see in Christianity today is people who just don't know how to interpret the

Bible properly. And it's a major issue. We see every one of the cults has a problem in terms of interpreting scriptures.

All the Christian cults out there are misinterpreting scripture and building entire theologies and really their entire religion off of this stuff.

So Job's Witnesses, infamous for not believing in the deity of Christ.

So they go and reinterpret passages, bad hermeneutics as they do this. We see this with, again, other cults.

And so how do we respond? But it's not just about the cults, right?

It's also within our own Christian circles. And you may have heard me speaking on this in the past, but there's something called deconstructionism, which has really damaged

Christianity over the years, or at least damaged what people think about Christianity over the years. Deconstructionism, part of the whole

Marxist movement, social justice movement, and specifically targeting churches is this, is you deconstruct whatever you see and reinterpret it in light of what you believe in in terms of your experience.

And so it looks kind of like this. When you go to the art museum, we have been taught to look at the art.

And I love Renaissance art and Baroque art, my two favorite time periods of art. We're taught to go in, and what does this mean to me?

Rather than what did the artist try to convey in this painting or this sculpture for us to get out of it?

So that type of mentality, this deconstruction, has filtered its way through everything in society, including, and not limited to, the

Bible, where it looks something like this. You got Bible studies of six or eight people sitting around, and one person says, well, the leader of the group says, hey, here's our passage.

What does this mean for you? And the first person answers and gives their meaning of this passage.

And then the leader says, oh, that sounds really good. Thank you for that. And it goes to the next person and asks, you know, what does this mean to you?

And before you know it, you've got eight different people and eight different interpretations of the same passage.

And the Bible leader has said to all of them, wow, that sounds really good. Well, no, it doesn't sound really good because it's not about what we think.

It's not about how we want to read it. It's what did the author intend in what he wrote?

So when we're in a conversation with somebody, as we're in a conversation and I'm speaking,

I'm expecting them to hear me for what I'm saying and interpret what I'm saying based on what they believe me to be saying to them.

But my words are not open to interpretation to somebody else. Well, this is what's happening with the Bible. And so we need to figure out how to teach people to interpret the

Bible properly. Having said all that,

KT and Jesus asked a question. Did he say he was disabled on Facebook? Yes, I was disabled for the last, oh, that's the wrong one.

I was disabled for the last 24 hours. I think I'm back out of Facebook jail now, but I've been throttled for months now.

When I put a post of a picture of my wife, there's hundreds of people who like the post.

When it's a picture about homosexuality and why it's evil, there might be three people that likes up and I'm just not getting the views.

So it's what it is. So having said all that, without further ado, let me bring in our guests.

First guest is, huh, I see a book.

When My Ox Scores My Neighbor. Oh, hi, sorry, I was just really enthralled in this book.

This guy did an excellent job teaching hermeneutics. I heard that was a good book.

We'll have to figure out who the author is at, and that is in a moment. Let me bring on our other guest into the show.

Justin, how are you tonight? Hey guys, doing well, doing well. How are y 'all doing? Oh, we're doing great.

I'm doing great. I'm speaking for Josiah, I guess, too. Well played, Josiah, well played. Yeah, so I'm really excited about this.

I'm stoked about it. And so we also have Drew just typed in the way of reading the

Bible. What it means to me is ultimately relativism. Yes, you are right. That's the issue of deconstructionism is it really is relevantism in disguise.

So that's exactly what it is. Thank you for your comment there. Okay, so Josiah, let's start off with you in this question, in what is hermeneutics?

Actually, both of you guys can answer this. What is hermeneutics? I'll start with Josiah. I would say it's a science and art of interpreting literature.

It's where you interpret what somebody else is saying in written form.

You can't just take the Bible and be like, what does it mean to me? You have to ask, what does the author intend?

That's right. Justin, how would you? Yeah, exactly right.

When Paul wrote to Timothy and said that he needs to study to show himself approved unto

God, a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, rightly handling that in the

Greek, that's the word orthodimeo, and it literally means to cut it straight. We are to cut it straight with God's word.

It is the science of rightly reading and interpreting scripture to get to what we sometimes refer to as authorial intent, the intent of the author.

As you said, Anthony, it doesn't matter what the verse means to you.

It doesn't matter what the verse means to me. What matters is what did the author intend?

What did the author mean? And if you come to any meaning or interpretation that the author did not intend, that was not in the author's mind, then you've got the wrong meaning.

Yep, amen to that. So good, okay. Okay, we've got a side question already, has nothing to do with hermeneutics, but Justin, you may know this.

Does anybody know of some great lesser known non -Hillsongy Christian music channels on here?

I know it's not really related to the topic. That's okay, we answer all these good questions on here. So are you guys aware of any of these stations?

Keith and Kristen Betty, I think, do a decent job writing hymns. Yeah, yeah, but it's not a channel though, right?

It's not a music channel. So I think, well, it's on YouTube, I think. Yeah, and that's what

I was gonna say is what I do is I just open up YouTube and I just play different songs I know. And oftentimes if you just type in like Christian or Baptist hymns, it'll have a whole list, like playlists that are already programmed into YouTube that most of the songs are really good.

So that's typically what I do when I listen. So I hope that answers that question.

Okay, so we got to the interpretation of the Bible in terms of hermeneutics.

And I think one side point to really to make is that while there is one proper interpretation, one meaning that God has for that typically, sometimes we see prophecies that have dual meanings to them, but otherwise there's still an authorial intent to each passage, but yet there can still be multiple, what do you call it?

Multiple applications for passages. So we want to keep that in mind as we go through this today. Okay, so obviously -

It's kind of one of the goals of preaching. What's that? It's kind of one of the goals of preaching is to take the principles that are in the passage.

You want to show them the historical and grammatical context, but you also want to take the principles out of the passage and apply them to your readers.

If they can be applied. Sometimes they can't. So, okay, let's work through this a little bit.

Why is it important for Christians to know hermeneutics? Right, because there's a lot of people, let's be honest, that look at people like us and they say, well, you guys are just all about theology.

Like where's your love, where's your this, where's your that, right? You're just all about head knowledge. So how do we answer that to people in regards to why we need to understand hermeneutics?

Well, your typical Bible study, they'll sit around and read

Romans 8 .28, which says, I don't know why

I'm drawing a blank, but it says all things work together for the good.

The all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

Now, some people take that passage and say, well, you know, God just doesn't want anything bad to happen to us.

Anything that happens that's bad, God didn't send it our way. It was Satan, it was circumstances are out of his control, but that's not what the passage is saying.

It's saying that God will use all things for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

And in the context, he's talking about suffering. He's talking about all creation groaning together, waiting for the sons of God to be revealed.

And that's when he says, and we know that for those who love

God, all things are called together for good, for those who are called to his purpose. And then he says in verse 29, because those whom he foreknew, he also predestined become conformed in the image of a son.

So he would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified. And so for those who are called by God, God's working all things together for their good so that they can be conformed into the image of Christ, from their election, to their justification, to their sanctification, to their glorification.

Okay. So before we get to Justin on this, Drew says, we need to know hermeneutics so we don't read Russia into the

Bible. That's a good one, or America, right? Or America. Yeah. So, okay,

Justin. Obviously, you have a lot to say about this.

Why is it important for Christians to know hermeneutics? I mean, you have an entire ministry built off of this issue.

Yeah, because you can take most, any number of verses in the

Bible and lift them out of their proper context, and you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say.

I mean, and then people do that all the time. Every cult is based off of that. Every aberrant religion is based off of that.

It's what Mormonism is based off. Jehovah's Witnesses is based off. Roman Catholicism is based off. All of them.

I mean, name your favorite false religion. They would, many of them anyway, would claim the

Bible as their authority, and yet they take verses out of their proper context, isolate them, and read a meaning into the verses that simply is not there, and going back to authorial intent, was never in the intent, was never in, hadn't even crossed the mind of the author, much less was that his intent.

So yeah, hermeneutics is very, it is the most important discipline that there is for the

Christian, because we're talking about the word of God that is theonoustos, that is

God -breathed, and we are not at liberty to read our own meaning into the theonoustos, the

God -breathed word. We're not at liberty to do that. We are talking about holy writ.

We are talking about the words of God. If you want to read some mystical meaning into green eggs and ham, or go -dog -go, or war and peace, or grapes, knock yourself out.

I mean, have fun doing it. Not with scripture, not with scripture. We are talking about the breathed words of God.

This is how we know God. And if we come to a faulty understanding of scripture, then we have a faulty understanding of God himself.

You cannot have a right understanding of God and not have a right understanding of scripture.

They are two sides of the same coin. So you understand scripture wrongly, you understand

God wrongly, you understand God wrongly, then you are headed for an eternity apart from God, at least in the relational sense.

The presence of God in the judicial sense, but in the relational sense, separated.

So the stakes could not be higher. Yep, that's right. And so Chris, I know you're in the background.

I'll get you in here in a little bit. I wanna just kind of get Josiah rolling a little with talking about his books.

But Chris says, amen, your hermeneutics are a mirror and a window into your view of God. It's a great statement there.

And this is often my issue when I talk to people who have a wrong view of God, right?

So as an evangelist, apologist, you often have Campus Crusade for Christ now called to crew because they wanted to drop the

Christ out of their name. And they'll stand on the side as you're preaching. And they stand really, they smile, they stand really quiet right next to you, waiting for you to get done.

And I always know who it is. And I'm on college campus. And so you get off your box. Next guy comes up, you go talk to him.

And they're like, you know, we really appreciate what you're doing, but we think you're doing it all wrong. Oh yeah, why?

Why am I doing it all wrong? Well, because you're not preaching about God's love. To which I'm like, what do you mean?

Well, the gospel is all about love. Like, hold up, timeout. Let's talk about this, right? And so I've been whole apologetic for that in walking them through.

They have a misunderstanding of who God is. They have erased God's wrath, his justice, his everything else.

And they think he's just love, which I'm sorry, you now have a wrong view of God. You have a wrong

God. You have an idol. You don't have God at this point. So it's an issue.

And it's a silly example, but this is a real example. It doesn't have to be just the cults doing this.

This is the average professing Christian that is doing this in one way or another. So yeah, it's a really important thing.

And you brought up something else, Justin. I cannot believe how often I'm reading this now about people who are into annihilationism.

I mean, people who seem to be solid Christians over the years. I never even knew this was a thing outside of Seventh -day

Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and another cults, right? I didn't even know it was a thing in biblical

Christianity. There's nothing in scripture that you would read that you would come to this conclusion.

And yet I'm seeing person after person to person that I thought was solid for years come out. I mean, ever since that whole

Chris Date debate that he did against Len Pettis years ago in a Striving Fraternity event, I have seen these guys come out of the woodwork like roaches and they won't die.

Yeah, I'll tell you, ever since my YouTube channel has kind of taken off or whatever, there's two kinds of quote -unquote

Christians that I guess I knew maybe there were a few of them, but I didn't realize how many there were.

What you just said, annihilationists, people who believe that if you die outside of Christ, then you just cease to exist.

You've just gone nothingness and flat earthers. I was just about to say that.

They're both growing like crazy. I know, man. They just like, they come out of the woodwork.

Where did you people come from? I mean, are y 'all really allowed outside of the house without adult supervision?

I mean, you people vote? So anyway. Yeah. I don't think -

I look at the comments in a lot of my YouTube videos and a lot of my YouTube videos, at some point in there,

I end up presenting the gospel and people will say, oh, hell does not exist.

Hell's not forever. It's just, you cease to exist. You're just, you burn up maybe for a little bit and then you're gone.

You're just gone, nothingness. And these are people who claim to believe scripture.

It's astonishing to me. Yeah. It's amazing how this has, again, seemingly come out of nowhere.

I know it's been there, but the amount of people that have jumped onto this ship is astounding to me. I can't figure out why.

So, and Chris with another great quote here, the deification of the love of God has become a golden calf in the professed evangelical church today.

And you're absolutely right, because it's this idea of love that causes people to justify homosexuality, transgenderism, and every other whacked out sin that they want to, again, justify, so.

That's a good quote. Well, I mean, you should put that, that's quote worthy right there. That's a very good quote, yeah.

He's got a couple already, so he's winning the race today so far. Yeah, he's absolutely right.

And that's, and what Chris is talking about is people are separating out one of God's attributes and elevating that attribute above and to the detriment of his other attributes.

And certainly God is love. I mean, we know that, right, from scripture, God is love. But he's also holy, he's also just.

Sometimes theologians will talk about the simplicity of God, and that doesn't mean that he's simple in the sense that we most often think of simple, but it does mean that you cannot isolate any of his attributes to the exclusion or over and above any of his other attributes.

You cannot emphasize his love over his holiness or over his justice.

So he's, all of his attributes, he has in complete perfection and they're completely integrated in perfection.

You can't take out like just a little part of God that you really like, almost like a game of Tet, not

Tetris, what's the, Jenga or whatever? I think it's Jenga, yeah. Jenga, you pull out one little thing and then it all collapses.

So that's kind of what people do, tend to do with what Chris was talking about here. No, they do.

And where I often bring them to is 1 John 4, where it does say God is love, right? And then if you keep reading, it says, and the love of God was made manifest in his son's death on the cross.

And so you're like, wherever we see the word love in the New Testament in terms of God's love for people, it's always connected to the cross.

And so the cross, we have God's, all of God's attributes on display, his love, his mercy, his justice.

I mean, on down the line, it's all there. And so that's usually how I walk through this with whether it's the homosexuals at a homosexual parade or the crew guy standing next to me while preaching is let's understand

God's love in the context of all his attributes. I'll tell you one really good sermon I heard back in the day was, it's gotta be five or six years ago now.

And Justin, you may have been in that conference. It was a Strident Fraternity Fire Conference in Columbus where Pastor Dan Phillips came.

You were at that one, right? And so we went through the attributes of God, right? And each of you took an attribute.

And I remember Dan's sermon and he said, not only does God have all these attributes and some of these attributes, but he said each of the attributes is encompassed with all the other attributes, which means that God is love as an attribute, but God's love is perfectly just.

His love is omniscient. His love is omnipotent. His love is on down the line, right? All like you can't take out one of the attributes because they are so intertwined in that way.

That sermon was, there's always these sermons in your mind that you go through in your life that were really impactful.

That one was hugely impactful for me back in the day. So. Yeah, if people are unfamiliar with Dan Phillips, I would commend him to you.

He's an excellent preacher, excellent writer. He's got a couple of books. One on, in fact, I think

I have it. Okay, it's fine. One on Proverbs, Dan Phillips on Proverbs.

And then one entitled The World -Tilting Gospel. And both of those are excellent books.

Yeah. And I think he was one of the pyromaniacs, right? With Phil Johnson and Frank Turk.

Not Turek, but Turk. Yeah. Who had a lot of good articles and used to do conferences together too back in the day.

So yeah, great stuff from him. Okay, so how early should we be teaching hermeneutics?

Is this only for adult Sunday schools, adult Bible studies, or? I think you can teach it to children.

I really do. All you really need is a newspaper. Because you can take, you can say, hey, look, here's the front of this.

This is a headline. This is what the main news thing you wanna see here. So here's this genre.

So here's the middle of it. Here's the funny section. So we interpret this a different way than the beginning.

Or we go up and take the sports section and show them the sports. And then you can say, look, here's what we have in the

Bible. We have historical narratives. We have poetry, like in the Psalms. We have apocalyptic literature.

We have the gospels. We have letters written to people.

And all these have different rules of interpretation. But if you look at the context, read what it says before and what it says after, then you can really get a feel for what

God's saying to these people. And if you pull out the truth, the timeless truth principle in there, then you can apply it to your life.

Yeah. Yeah. And when it says 1 ,000 years, it means 1 ,000 years, right? I mean, that's really clear in scripture.

For some of our guests out there. Okay. So Josiah, this is more for you.

You've written several books on this topic, right? You have, When My Ox Scores My Neighbor. You've written

Roman Roadblocks. And then you've written a little primer called What Does It Mean to Me? My wife, by the way, loved that little primer.

She wrote more notes on that primer than you have words in your primer. It was just, she absolutely loved that one.

So why do you like the study of hermeneutics so much so that you decided to write several books on this?

And they're all very good books. You know, I do encourage listeners that if you want a primer on this,

I mean, Andrew has a great course on hermeneutics. Andrew also says that if you really wanna get down to the nitty gritty of things, get

Josiah's books. So he, you know, who we view as the guru of hermeneutics, Andrew, points to you and your books as great primers for people.

So why'd you write the books and what do people get out of these books? Yeah, well, it all started really back with my upbringing.

I got saved in a Christian church, Church of Christ background.

So I never believed that you were saved by baptism, but I was hearing that taught all around.

I was hearing people saying, if you're not baptized, you're not saved. If you are not in the waters, you're done for.

And I was like, that doesn't make any sense. And they teach that the

Bible is their creed. They're very big about the Bible being their creed and that it is what we interpret everything by.

And they never thought that there was rules for interpreting the Bible. So you'd get annihilationists, you would get flat earthers, you'd get all kinds of crazy people alongside of Orthodox people.

And you're thinking, what's up from down?

And then my dad started driving a semi -truck and he had serious radio and he was listening to Todd Friel on wretched radio.

And he heard about this guy and started listening to him. He was like, yeah, a lot of ways saying it makes sense.

I had already been plugged into Ken Ham. So I'd been listening to that. And I'd already been listening to a little bit of John MacArthur.

He really got me hooked on John MacArthur. And I listened to his

DVD, Herman Who, and I was like, there are rules for interpreting scripture. It was

Todd Friel that taught you this? Yeah, it was Todd Friel. And his first DVD, Herman Who.

And it was amazing. A whole new world opened up to me.

So I started getting everything I could get, studying about the rules on how to interpret scripture.

I was buying Duvall and Hayes, Grasping God's Word. I was reading as many articles and journals as I could.

And when I first got into Bible college, they didn't teach hermeneutics right off the bat.

They taught you Old Testament survey, New Testament survey. And the

Old Testament survey guy was pretty rock solid, but the New Testament survey guy was saying, hey,

Satan is actually on equal level playing field with God.

He was teaching that Satan could actually win in the end, that there's a possibility of him doing that, that God doesn't have any control of your life.

He can't see in the future. He can't control the future. And he can't even have revenge.

If he had revenge, he'd be committing sin. And I was like, what about the passage that says, vengeance is mine, thus sayeth the

Lord. He got me kicked out of class. So I was like, they need to teach hermeneutics first semester

Bible college. In fact, they need to teach this in Sunday school. So that's why

I wrote, When My Rock Scores My Neighbor. I picked one passage that I thought

Todd Friel did an excellent job explaining in Herman Who, but I realized there's a whole lot more that he could have explained.

And he could have taken just that passage and shown each principle of biblical interpretation.

And so that's what I did. I picked Exodus 21 verses 28 through 32, and just took you through each step of the biblical interpretation process, starting with checking your preconceived ideas at the door.

And also I got into a fight, an argument with somebody saying that the

Bible isn't true because there's all these different translations. So I devoted a whole chapter to textual criticism and why we can trust the

Bible. And I also put in, I showed the observation stage.

I showed what it meant, looking at the original audience.

I show how to draw principles from the passage, show how to see if they fit over into the

New Testament, because we're talking about an Old Testament passage here. And then I talked about,

I wanted to actually show you how to apply the passage. And then I should also show you how to springboard into a gospel message, because we can teach people biblical hermeneutics all we want and how to rightly interpret a passage.

But if we don't share the gospel with people, if they just know how to interpret the Bible correctly and don't repent and trust in Jesus, then they're going to go to hell.

So I want preachers to be able to take any passage of scripture and springboard into the gospel message.

That's what I did with the last chapter of the book. So, okay. And I know that book has a lot of copies out there, right?

People are using it for all kinds of things. Like your book, I mean, family studies and whatnot.

So, okay. So you wrote that book. Why Roman Roadblocks? I wrote

Roman's Roadblocks because I couldn't find anybody that teaches how to develop your own systematic theology from hermeneutics.

Todd Friel was the closest, not Todd Friel, John MacArthur was the closest with his little booklet on correlating passages.

So I showed people a passage in Romans that has, it's basically the gospel in a nutshell and take the principles of interpretation, go through that.

And I also showed people how to correlate the passage to develop your own theology, your own systematic theology.

And then your last one, what does it mean to me? You wrote. And so this, you had a little different audience in mind for this one.

It's a small booklet. But yeah, I wrote it to Sinos, Christians in name only.

That's the term Andrew and I came up with together. They're Sinos because they're in love with their sin.

And I was evangelizing and you keep hearing, well,

I'm a Christian, but I don't believe in that hell stuff. Well, I'm a Christian, but I believe that there's multiple ways to interpret the

Bible. And it doesn't really bother me that somebody interprets that Mary is the mother of God or that, or if you give me a hundred dollars, you'll get a thousand in return.

That doesn't bother them. And I was like, well, I'm going to make a little defense for interpreting it according to authorial intent.

And I started it out with an illustration of how Joel Osteen does his

Bible studies. And here's how I imagined Joel Osteen does his Bible studies. He sits in a recliner, puts a blindfold on.

He'll take the Bible, he'll smell it. He'll ruffle through the pages.

He'll feel that, he'll taste it. And then he'll go off, put it down, thinking of all the wonderful things people say about the

Bible and goes up on the stage next Sunday morning. This is my Bible. I do what it says

I do. I am what it says I am. And then go, never picks it up again. And, because that's what

I think he shows in his preaching and his lifestyle that he doesn't really care.

It's old outdated dated to him and it's hard to interpret. Yeah. Well, if I can give a plug, what

I love about your writings, Josiah, is you are, I mean, you write now for Striving for Eternity.

You've got blog posts that go up and you have a knack for taking harder concepts and making them simple.

And so, I recommend anybody who wants to learn more about biblical hermeneutics, even if you think you know a lot about it, pick up Josiah's books.

They're an easy read because he knows how to write well for people to understand. And you'll learn a bunch through those books.

And so, I think they're all sold through Striving for Eternity now as well, right? It's all through our website?

Yeah, everyone except Roman's Roadblocks. I just, it's not sold through there yet.

But Roman's Roadblocks is the only one that's on Amazon only. So that's on Amazon only. The other two are through us.

Okay, so that's where everyone can get them. We'll remind everyone later on about that as well. Before I get to Justin with the same question, if anybody has any questions about biblical hermeneutics or anything in apologetics, feel free to join in.

If you are not on the StreamYard link and you are on a Facebook link or YouTube link, all you have to do is go to apologeticslive .com

or .org and either one. And get to the, scroll down and get to the duck.

Click on the duck and it'll take you right to the StreamYard link that we are on right now. And you can get into the background and we'll bring you into the show here.

Of course, I will bring on Chris first before I bring anybody else on, which I'll get to you in just a moment.

So Justin, same question for you. Now, you have an interesting background as well because you were kind of in that prosperity gospel health, the healing type, not into it, but you were dabbling in it,

I would say. And then you had a pretty good wake up call through this too, so. Yeah, and so the overall question is what now?

So it's how, is, why do you like the study of hermeneutics? How has it affected you? Yeah, it's changed my life.

I mean, in God's providence, it's changed my life. And you're right, Anthony, when I was a teenager,

I, well, I thought I was a Christian, but I wasn't. I wasn't even converted, thought I was, but I wasn't. But I grew up,

I didn't grow up in a Word Faith background. I grew up in a Southern Baptist background. Very typical

Southern Baptist, very Arminian, very decisional regeneration. If you were nine years old and had not yet been baptized, then you were over the hill.

People started wondering what's wrong with that kid. He's, you know, he should have been baptized three years ago. So, you know, pray the prayer, ask

Jesus into your heart, never examine yourself, see if you're in the faith. None of that, I mean, just very, very typical

Southern Baptist. But there was a man in my church named

Charlie, and he was lock, stock and barrel Word of Faith. Of course, at the time, I didn't know what Word of Faith was, but this was a guy who was always claiming to get a dream, a vision from God.

God seemed to speak to Charlie more than he ever spoke to Moses. You know, one of those kinds of guys. And Charlie started spending some time with me, showing me scripture that seemed to support his belief that it's always

God's will to be healed. You know, Isaiah 53, four and five, by his stripes, we are healed.

Oh, healing, it says we're healed. I was healed and by his stripes at the cross, and you know, the flagellation.

So my healing has been paid for. So what am I doing with cerebral palsy? You know, third

John two, beloved, I pray that in all things, you may prosper and be in good health, even as your soul prospers. Well, there it is right there.

Prosperity, good health. How can you argue with that? That's what it says. So I knew nothing about hermeneutics.

I'd never even heard the word hermeneutics. And so, yeah, I mean, he got me completely convinced that it was

God's will to be healed and I should be going to see faith healers. And so, yeah, by God's grace,

I'm feeling much better now. I have jettisoned that stuff long, long ago, but it all does come down to hermeneutics.

It's how to rightly interpret the word of God, cutting it straight with God's word, because, you know, it's, yeah, you can take these verses,

Isaiah 53, four and five, third John two, you know, Romans 10, 17.

I mean, you can take any number of verses out of their context and make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. But if you're going to do that, then you've got a wrong understanding of scripture.

Therefore, you have a wrong understanding of God. And going back to,

I think, what you said, Anthony, kind of as we got going, if you read your own preconceived theology into scripture, then you're an idolater.

You have created a God after your own image, not the God who has revealed himself to us in the

Bible. So you may as well have a little wooden pot -bellied Buddha on yourself and worship that as you would worship a different God than the

God of the Bible and yet call yourself a Christian. And it all comes down to hermeneutics. Yeah, and of course, now you have 12 hours or something of teaching on clouds without water too.

And really all you do is you walk through all these Bible, all these video clips of teachers that are misinterpreting the

Bible. And you're walking through teaching people how to properly interpret the Bible and why that all these guys are wrong.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, every false religion is a result of taking scripture out of context.

You might quote it rightly, you might quote it correctly, but you interpret it wrongly.

And therefore, you've got a false God. Yep, that's right. Mm -hmm. Okay, so.

So I wanna go back to the question on why is it important to study hermeneutics to know how to interpret the

Bible? Well, the Bible claims that it is the only book that teaches salvation.

Going back to 2 Timothy 3, that the scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation.

And the second thing is there's false teachers out there. If we do not know how to properly interpret the

Bible, we will be swayed by false teachers left and right. We won't know what up from down is.

So that's another big reason to interpret the Bible. Also, I don't know if you experienced this,

Justin, but whenever you're just taking the time, pouring into God's word, it's refreshing to see the depth that God puts in every single verse.

Yes, yes. In a proper study of it, right. Yeah, and all of us, we could spend a thousand lifetimes studying scripture and just barely scratch the surface of it.

One of the reasons I get so frustrated when people say, oh yeah, I believe the Bible, but I need something more.

I need a dream. I need a fresh word from God. You don't even understand what you have in black and white right in front of you.

Why don't you start there? So, I mean, it's the depths of it. We will never, never, never fully plumb this.

We gotta get that quote. We gotta cut that video and we gotta put that out there. That was great. So, sponsoring for Jesus, the link.

If you go to apologeticslive .com, it'll automatically send you to strivingforeternity .org

slash apologeticslive. And you just have to scroll down maybe halfway down the page.

And then there's gonna be a YouTube link, a StreamYard and apologeticslive .com.

Right in the center is the duck, the StreamYard duck. You just click on that and it'll literally take you directly to the

StreamYard that we are on right now. I just checked it on my other computer in front of me and it is working. So, that's where you can go on to get on live.

So, now before, now that I've got him wound up completely and I'm sure he's got about an hour of stuff to say all at once.

Welcome, Chris Hough. What's up, man? Hey, brother. How are you?

I just see you, like your facial reactions are priceless and it just cracks me up on the inside watching you.

And so, I know you got a lot to say right now. So, just go. Well, so much.

What I just put in the comments on YouTube a second ago, I'll say here to thank you, to echo off of what my brother

Justin Peters just said is every false religion and every false view of worship we see from professing believers in the

Lord Jesus Christ today stems from an improper approach to hermeneutics. Another great way to think about this is framework.

How many times, how many times today when you walk into a church on the

Lord's day, do you see practices? And I used to be one that would contribute to these practices that are wrought from improper hermeneutics, instead of properly looking at the scriptures and drawing our framework from what the scriptures say instead of reading our framework, preferences, desires, flesh, basically, into the scriptures.

Hermeneutics are incredibly important. How we approach scripture, how we approach the, and Justin, I love that you use theonistos.

Drew and I were talking about this earlier today. The breathed out living word of God.

All scripture is sufficient. There was a post today written by a brother that commented about the miracle signs and wonders and prophecies that we saw in the first century church.

And the comment was this, and I'm not gonna say who it is, but he said that miracles and prophecies existed because the

Old Testament was insufficient. Now, I know what this brother was trying to say, and I agree with what he was trying to say, but never, ever in the history of the scriptures has any part of the scriptures ever not been sufficient.

So we must draw our frameworks, all of it from scripture alone and totally.

And it's when we don't, and we're all guilty of it at one point or another. When we don't, we need to clean that filter and we need to go back to seeking to understand what the scriptures say, who they were written to, authorial intent.

You guys have said that multiple times. That's incredibly important and something that I think a lot of pastors miss out on.

And in turn, a lot of believers miss out on. I mean, Justin Peters, one of the things that John MacArthur said in your interview with him, you asked him what's one of the biggest threats to the church and what did he say?

An abysmal lack of biblical discernment. And that all goes back to, and stems from having the right framework and proper hermeneutics.

Yep, yep. Absolutely. Okay, so we have someone in the background, Bond Certain for Jesus. She wants to come in and ask a question here.

So I'm gonna bring her in. So how are you tonight? Hello, can you hear me? We can hear you, yep.

Yeah, I'm doing fine. It's really hot though. And my room's a little bit cooler. I'm in Southern California having a heat wave.

Next week is supposed to be all super cool too. So that's weird. Wow. Oh, well, okay.

My question is, well, first, what I know from her news is you're supposed to do things in the context and what those people believed in that time and how the

Bible's supposed to be. And I was wondering, how did we get that information to know the context, to know what these people's lives were at that time, of the time of wherever it is in the

Bible? So just to make sure - Oh, okay, you're talking about historical context. Yeah. Historical context, okay.

Where did we get that? Because I know people go to school and they learn stuff like that, but not usually regularly, like me, we call a layman a regular person.

Yep, that is a great question. So where do we get the historical context from? So Josiah, I'll let you kind of handle that first.

Okay, well, a lot of the historical context we can see in the ancient writings.

Josephus talks a lot about the history of the Jews and what was going on during his time and his history.

So we can see some things from there. We also have some ancient writings from Romans.

We have archeologists who study a lot of the buildings and the type of equipment they used.

And there she is. So there's also books that historians have compiled.

J .I. Packard has a really good book. Yeah, my mom. What did you say?

Yeah, something's going up with her. I think she's back now, so okay. Okay, J .I.

Packard has a really good book called - Oh, I said my mom was calling.

My mom was calling. Oh. Okay, well, he has a really good book called the

Bible Almanac that he did with several other theologians. And they record a lot of what some of the early

Roman practices were, Greeks, Jews, the time of the Maccabees. The Apocrypha is another source that we can read to understand a little bit of the history that was going on between the

Old Testament and the New Testament times and some of the cultural practices that we've seen.

One of the best ways to get historical context is to just read the narratives and the laws.

And that's in Deuteronomy and that was recorded during the time of Israel.

And the more you read the Bible, the better knowledge of the narrative you get.

And so you're able to get a little bit more with that. So Justin, what are your thoughts on that?

Justin probably knows more resources. Yeah, no, no, that was great. There's a few good tools to have in your hermeneutical toolbox, so to speak.

Get a good Bible dictionary so you can look up names of places and individuals and things like that.

A good Bible dictionary, there's the Holman Bible Dictionary is a good one.

A Bible Atlas will help you with geographies and places and things like that.

And really a good study Bible is probably one of the simplest, most concise.

And the John MacArthur Study Bible is an excellent one. I have that one for the

ESV, the John MacArthur Study Bible. You have a John MacArthur Study Bible? Okay, that's great.

Yeah, because that'll give you kind of a bird's eye view of the background of each book, the major themes of each book, even some of the difficulties that most books have, some things that people debate over and walk you through some of that and good explanatory notes.

So that's a good study Bible, MacArthur Study Bible is probably the single best, concise, most concise tool you can have.

But some good commentaries will help you in your study as well.

So Justin, who do you like as your favorite commentaries? I mean, of course, MacArthur is number one in everything. So I'm saying

MacArthur. What are the commentaries or go -to ones for you? Yeah, there's the

New International Commentary on the Old and New Testaments. New International Commentary on the

Old and New Testaments. So NICOT for Old Testament and NICNT for the

New Testament. That's a really good commentary set. Phillips Commentary is good.

Let's see, there's some older, then you can get into some works from like Calvin's commentaries and things like that that are older, but still very, very, very good.

Matthew Henry is a common one. Matthew Henry, yeah. Matthew Henry's got a good single volume.

It's a big, but it's a good commentary. It's a good commentary.

Yeah, if I can jump in just for a second, I think we need to remember too, to Josiah's point and Justin's absolutely right, all those resources, but we need to remember that as was pointed out by Dr.

Abner Chow at the Shepherds Conference, that when we use these resources, we don't need to go use these resources to try to validate scripture.

Scripture validates everything. So as Thomas Watson would say, as only a diamond can cut a diamond, so only can scripture interpret itself.

So a fantastic tool that was recommended to me years ago is the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge by R .A.

Torrey. And that is a treasure trove of what it does is it's got

Bible study concordance, chain references, topical narratives. I mean, it is rich, a rich, rich tool.

But to answer your question, we have the original manuscripts. And so as we study history as well, we understand that scripture validates history, not history validating scripture, but we see the stories and narratives that we see in scripture, we see that taking place and recorded in other places in history also.

So, but it's again, important that we start with scripture and work our way out from there.

Thank you guys for answering my question. Oh, you're welcome. I like that you mentioned Abner Chow. He has a really good book that you might want to get called hermeneutics according to biblical writers.

Yes. He'll show you how that they, how they studied the scriptures to interpret scripture.

Yeah. Yeah. And I will say too, one great free resource is blueletterbible .org.

So Pastor Andrew Rappaport and I had an opportunity to give devotionals there.

It's gotta be three or four years ago now. We got to see their operation and they're in Southern California. A Santa Ana area and a great, great operation there.

Great guys in there. And they provide all their stuff for free. So if you can't afford

Lagos, you can go to blueletterbible .org on the computer and they've got all kinds of these resources for you to check out.

Yep. Great, great place to go. So thank you for your question. Anymore? You're welcome.

That's it. Bye. Thanks. Okay. We'll see you. Thank you. Let me, can

I give a quick example of kind of authorial intent, kind of what we're talking about? Absolutely. Most people, there's a few

Greek words that most people have heard, at least in Christian circles. We've heard of agape and we've heard of koinonia, you know, fellowship.

We've also heard dunamis, right? And that's the word for power.

Dynamite, yep. Dynamite, yes. I mean, how many times have we heard that? You know, Romans 1 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God and the salvation.

That word power is dunamis. And you know what dunamis is? That's the word that we get our word for dynamite and God's power is like dynamite, except that it's absolutely nothing at all like dynamite.

Right. Okay, so think about the absurdity of this. Just every time I hear this and I've heard it so many times,

I cringe. Okay, let's get in our little imaginary time machine and we'll go do -do -do -do -do -do.

We'll go back 2000 years to the Romans, the recipients of Paul's letter.

And let's read it to them. So we're reading Romans to them and we're in chapter one, we get to verse 16 and we pause there and say, hey guys, you know when

Paul says dunamis here, the gospel is the dunamis of God. You know what that means?

It's like the power of God's like dynamite. And they would be like, huh, what is this dynamite?

What do you mean dynamite? What is dynamite? They would have absolutely no idea what you're talking about because dynamite didn't exist 2000 years ago.

And if you had told that to the original recipients of this letter, they would have stared at you like a calf in a new gate.

They would have had no idea what you're talking about. So if you come to a meaning that would not have made sense to the original recipients, then you've got the wrong meaning.

That's good. You need to go back and do some more study because you got the wrong interpretation. Of course they will say, there's a number of unbelievers that do blow up like dynamite when you give them the gospel.

So there is that. There is that. Dynamite is explosive, but it's instantaneous and then it's gone.

I mean, God's power is nothing like that at all. God's power is sustained.

It's directed. It's eternal. He upholds all things by the word of his power.

God doesn't uphold all things by dynamite. You mean it's not reckless, Justin? You mean it's not reckless?

No, it's not. God's love is not reckless. Okay. Thank you,

Chris. First time I ever heard that song, I wanted to punch my radio. So, okay, let's switch gear just a little bit here.

Obviously we know that understanding the right genre allows us to, the genre affects interpretation, right?

So we have to understand the genre of the writing. And so how do we identify the right genre in terms of what we're reading?

Now, I'm gonna bring up an example on my own, right? I deal with the book of Genesis a lot when

I'm teaching on creation. And Genesis, when you read it for what it says, you have a six day, six literal day creation,

God rested on the seventh. You look up the genealogies, about 6 ,000 year old earth. I mean, this is a really clear cut book when we understand it as a historical account being written and that we're reading what was written.

And so we look at it this way. However, you've got a number of guys who have taken the idea of millions to billions of years and the idea of evolution happening, macroevolution, taking that and taking an outside thing, shoving it into scripture, and then having to now reinterpret scripture in order to fit their narrative that they're taking in from the outside, from secular science.

And so in order to do so, they either misinterpret words like the, what does the word day actually mean?

Yom actually mean in the context of the six days of Genesis of creation account, or they try to take the entire beginning book of Genesis and say, eh, it's poetry.

So how do we determine? Now, I will say that one of the answers we give, I'm not gonna give it all here tonight because it's about you guys teaching hermeneutics, but one of the things we say is that there are guys who've done word studies.

And so we can look at Hebrew poetry, we can look at Hebrew historical narrative, and depending on the word choice in the

Hebrew and the way the words are structured, that we can determine quite well whether it is historical narrative or poetry just based on the word and sentence structure.

And the guys like Dr. Lyle and others who have done these studies in the book of Genesis have found that it is unequivocally an historical account.

It's not poetry based on just the word studies alone. So that's what we use for Genesis as one of our thoughts.

But for all three of you, how do we answer this? How do you identify the genre? And then why is it important?

So I guess I'll start with you Josiah again. Okay. Okay. Well, every genre has its own rules of interpretation.

Every genre is laid out a specific way. The historical narratives, usually one or two people are mentioned, sometimes three.

They're the main people acting here. It'll have an action and the grammar will also fit with it.

With Genesis one, we see a lot of, and he did this, and he did that, and he did this.

And when you see a lot of those, and then he did this, we can tell that there's a sequence of events going on.

It's a historical story being said. Now there's some story elements in there, like a plot and action and climax.

We see those elements in the Genesis one narrative. Poetry has a completely different array of rules of interpreting.

Poetry generally gives a lot of imagery and big ideas, metaphors, similes.

We don't see a lot of, we don't see any metaphors or similes in Genesis one. We also, poetry has a lot of parallelism.

It'll have one line say something, and then it'll have another line pretty much repeat that, but expand upon that idea a little bit more.

Genesis doesn't do that. So that's kind of how you would see whether Genesis was a historical narrative or if it's poetry.

And of course, there's only one exception in Genesis. Genesis one 27 says, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

So there are some guys who say that that particular verse may be poetic. Right, but that's prose.

In the context of a historical narrative, right? Right, about any time you see people speaking at that in Genesis one,

Genesis two, three, there's a lot of poetry going on when they're speaking, and that's to emphasize a main theological point.

And God's trying to emphasize there, humans are created in God's image, and the males are created in God's image, the females are created in God's image.

That's the main point of Genesis one 27. So a quick little story of a creation class

I was teaching in a couple of years ago. We had these guys that it was in one of, it was in the flagship course

Mike and I teach on our five days on the creation training college.

And there were some guys in the class that were just a little bit off. You know, we couldn't put our finger on it until one of them made a comment and said that man is made in the image of God, but women are made in the image of man.

And they use that to be very, not have women biblically submissive, but like Muslim submissive.

And that's how they acted. When I started to catch on what was going on with them and started asking them some questions, found out they have one misbeliefs and all kinds of other whacked out stuff too.

But something that never left my mind is this one little crack that they spoke of that a lot of say, something's up with them.

All on that little misinterpretation. Yeah. So Kate, so Justin and Chris, I'm gonna open that up to you as well is, how do you know what the genre is on the book?

And I think Josiah already answered why it's important, but if you have any more to add to that, please do. Yeah, well,

I would just say quickly that a lot of times it's pretty apparent. Right. You can tell pretty quickly once you get a few paragraphs into it, you can tell what you're dealing with.

You can just tell the difference between poetry and historical narrative example.

A lot of times it's very evident. You can see symbolic language, it's very evident.

You know, you read a Song of Solomon, for example, you know, it's obviously poetic language, language, symbolic language.

When Jesus said in John 10, I am the door, he doesn't mean that he's literally a piece of wood with hinges on it.

There's obvious symbolism there. So anyway, many times in Revelation, it's quite clearly prophetic and apocalyptic.

So, but a good study Bible, a good study Bible, just go to the front of that, whatever book you're in, and it'll tell you real quickly, you know, what the genre is.

Right, right, yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that we see often, especially in today's world is people,

I mean, for the most part, have lost the ability to think critically, truly.

And believers have lost the ability to think biblically. And that's because we don't know what the

Bible says and what it means by what it says. And that's ultimately is, like I said earlier, a mirror and a window.

And the fact that not only do we not know the word of God, we don't know the God of the word. So to piggyback on what

Justin and Josiah have said, it's very simple, I mean, it's pretty simple. Just you start reading, you should be able to tell what the genre is.

And, but at the same time, you know, going back to the question that we had before, what are some good tools?

Study Bibles, standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us in church history, and looking at the work that they've done and the commentary that they provide.

And of course, again, not taking that as inspired, but doing that research.

So, but again, just opening the scriptures and reading the Bible, knowing the word of God through and through.

I mean, you're gonna be able to tell. Yep. Amen. Okay, so here's a question.

If my pastor requires face masks for church, can I respectfully disobey or should

I submit in this situation? Well, maybe I'll let you guys answer first. I'm not gonna lie.

What'd you say, Josiah? It's like everything else with hermeneutics, depends on the context.

Does everybody in church have really bad breath? As a dentist,

I can tell you that doesn't work either. Yeah. Bad breath goes right through masks.

Not quite as easy as the coronavirus does, but it does go through. Exactly. I would say it's more effective for, what's it called?

Halitosis. If your pastor requires face masks.

It makes me wonder about your pastor. Yeah. Yeah. That's imposing in an area of a believer's life that you have no authority to impose into, regardless of whether or not they worked, which they don't.

Yeah, they don't work. And how far do you carry out that logic? What if the pastor says, in order to come for worship, you've got to prove you're healthy, so therefore you've got to do 10 pushups before you enter the sanctuary.

Right. Well, I'm out. So, yeah.

Yeah. As a pastor, I could imagine doing that to my congregation. I love them.

I care about them. I want to see their face. Yeah. Stay humanized.

Yeah. I would really recommend going to a biblically solid church. That's go to the most biblically solid church you can in your area.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I've had this discussion in recent times. We're only about 45 minutes away from Alistair Begg's church here in Cleveland, Ohio area.

And Alistair was famous for keeping his church closed for like six months. And then even after he opened, they were still segregating people within the church.

And there was a number of people that left the church, and some found their way to ours. Some found their way to other good churches.

And then when Alistair reopened and then kind of dropped all the other nonsense a couple of months after he reopened, people went back.

And I'm like, okay, I get it. Like, he's Alistair Begg. I get it.

The church campus is unbelievably gorgeous. I mean, you would think this was a health, wealth, prosperity church if you looked at it without knowing who is behind it.

You know, it's absolutely a beautiful campus. But could you ever really trust

Alistair again if he made this mistake and never came back and said, guys,

I goofed. I'll never do this again. Like, this is a big... I never... I haven't heard that, right? And so I bring this up not to slam

Alistair as much as to say, if you have a pastor who's requiring face masks, you've got to wonder about other parts of his theology.

You got to wonder, how is he going to handle persecution when it comes into church? I mean, you're worried about wearing face masks.

What happens when you get threatened to stop speaking on homosexuality or else you're going to get arrested?

Does that mean your pastor is now going to cower and stop teaching what the Bible actually teaches?

I'm all about submitting to elders. I mean, that's a biblical concept. I'm all about that when it comes to spiritual matters, when it comes to theology, when it comes to doctrine, because that's how we understand

God. So I'm all about that. But a face mask, that's not theological.

That's not doctrinal. My opinion, that's fear. If you want to wear a mask, that's fine.

I'm not going to think less of you. If you want to wear a mask, that's fine.

Please feel free to do so. But I don't want someone telling me, I've got to wear a mask.

And if I don't wear a mask, I'm not loving my neighbor. That's lunacy. So wearing a mask, that's not theological.

That's not doctrinal. Amen. So I would not submit to that.

Yeah, that's a health issue. I have too many people in my church that have breathing problems.

And to require them to wear a face mask. Yeah. My wife,

Kathy, is one of these folks that is extremely claustrophobic. You know, she's one of the folks that would climb out of an

MRI machine if she ever had to. I have one. But she's just very claustrophobic. And she can't handle something on her face.

And so, you know, some people are like that. And I don't think any of us likes wearing a mask.

I don't like breathing in my own carbon dioxide for hours on end. So what did

MacArthur call it? A bacteria zoo? Yeah, a germ zoo, I think. Yeah. I mean, look, this goes back to hermeneutics, right?

Um, it does. It's not, you know, loving your neighbor is not.

And I see some comments on Facebook right now from some people. And it's a preacher does not have a pastor.

An elder does not have authority over your body. Nope. To tell you that you have to do something.

And if they're requiring that for worship, that's extra biblical for the gathering of the saints.

That's not biblical. And he's in sin. I mean, I mean, if it's a conscience issue, you know,

Justin, to use your words, beloved. If you want to wear one, go for it. There's there's absolutely zero judgment at all.

If, if go for it. But that when you, when you again, look at the truth, you look at what scripture commands and teaches, but then you look at the truth, the science out there of what masks do and don't do.

No, at that, at that point, you're trying to hinder conscience. And again, you're in sin by doing so. Yeah.

And even if now as a dentist, you know, we've talked about this before in the, in shows, we, we deal with biological aerosols more than any other profession on this, on the planet.

And we've had research for 40 years in regards to masks and their effectiveness.

And, and so there's a lot of us who are screaming since March of 2020, that this is bogus, that we shouldn't be doing this stuff.

And, and it happened anyway, but I think what you guys are saying is let's forget about the research even from that aspect, right?

I think we all agree that the research has shown it's they're useless. They can cause harm.

We have seen harm from a dental perspective. Not only do we see people's in general health issues, but inflammatory issues have been at an all time high.

And we can directly correlate a number of those to the use of masks. One of the most direct ones we see dentally is with, with gum tissue disease, people's gingivitis and periodontal disease have been much higher than they have been in the past.

And the only thing that seems to be different is face masks, even for people who, yeah, there's some people who stopped coming to the dentist for a while because they were afraid of whatever's in the air, but there were other people who still maintain their cleaning cycles and had, and were worse off in their mouth because they were wearing masks.

So we have all this stuff out there. Okay. Let's put that aside. Let's say masks did work.

Let's just pretend that they worked. Is it still a problem if a pastor says you must wear a mask walking in and somebody says, you know what?

This isn't, this isn't in the Bible. Why, why should I have to do that? Do they work as far as COVID goes or if COVID was as worse as, as, as bad as they said it was going to?

Let's, let's drill down just a little bit more. Okay. Well, let's, let's use worst case scenario. Let's say that, that COVID was really bad, which it isn't.

Let's also say that masks had some effectiveness. I mean, cause no mask has any effectiveness unless you put a plastic bag over your head and tie it and it'll be really effective.

But, but aside from that, it's not. So then, then we'll do, what, what do we do? Do, do pastors have that ability to say that to their congregation?

I don't think it's a little bit harder. Maybe I still don't think so. I don't think a pastor has authority over your body.

Pastor, my elder is much respect as I have for them. And rightly so when it comes to theology and doctrine, the spiritual matters of the church.

If my elder tells me, you know, Justin, I think you should have hamstring surgery.

I'm going to get a second. He doesn't have, he doesn't have the authority to tell me to go have surgery.

Right. He doesn't have authority over my body. Yeah. Body rights given to us by God.

So yeah. If you're not, if you're not Martin Lloyd Jones, you're, you're probably not, you don't probably have a medical background if you're a pastor, right.

And so you, you, you really need to, you really need to not enforce anything that you don't know anything about.

And especially when it comes to the medical field. I, I'm sure a lot of people in our church could benefit from going on diets, but I'm not going to,

I'm not, I'm not going to enforce diets on my congregation because it would benefit their health.

And that's something that's actually clear cut, right? I mean, we're to be, we're to be taking care of our temples and right.

So that's something that could actually be preached from the pulpit. It's not preached from the pulpit. Gluttony can. Yes. Yeah.

Gluttony. Right. Right. So things that are, you know, if I start giving you advice on how to run a marathon, don't listen to me because I don't know what

I'm talking about. Yeah. So by his stripes, could I get more hair on my head?

That's the question. According to Kenneth Copeland, you can just, just put your hair grow.

Obviously haven't been doing it myself, but I'm going to be shaving this whole thing real soon.

It's a, okay. Enough, enough about all that. Let's let's go back to her. Thanks for that.

It's a little sidebar question. I'm going to add a couple of the guys in the stream. Drew, welcome on.

What's up? Hopefully you can hear me in this. Yeah, we got you. Okay, great. I was having trouble. And then I'm going to add one more chicken, man.

Nice. Hey, of course, you're not a biologist. So I can't tell if you're a chicken. You know, everyone's been throwing out the, uh, the

MacArthur study Bible. Um, I want to throw out the MacArthur Bible handbook.

Okay, grab this. This is a great resource so much so that it sits right here on my desk within arm's reach.

Yeah, that is a grab one of those. Yep. Yep. I really anything with MacArthur on it is is really good in my opinion.

So solid. He could write a book about, you know, how to fix my car, and I'd probably buy it and listen to whatever he has to say, even though he's not a mechanic.

It's just MacArthur. So you get it. You listen to it. That's right.

Well, he spends about what 30 hours of research a week, just on the

Bible. Right. Uh, I mean, any guy who spends that amount of time in the

Bible, you need to be listening to. Well, he explained when

Chris and I went to the Shepherds Conference in 2019. He explained actually what he does in his study.

And what he does is whatever he's preaching on, whether it's a text or a topic where he needs multiple texts, he studies everything he can about that text so that he knows it.

And then when he gets up to preach, it just flows. So that 30 hours a week is trying to figure out through scripture primarily, and then through supplemental sources such as articles and commentaries, what the text means by what the text says.

Yep. Yep. Amen. So, John, did you have anything to add or just want to show your smiling face to us today?

Um, no, actually, I was going to ask you was, um, one of the things that I've always thought when it comes to hermeneutics and actually, um, applying it when it comes to interpreting the word, um, is to always kind of make sure that having the thinking of that most scriptures will either point to Jesus directly or indirectly.

Um, is, is that a proper way of, uh, I mean,

I know that's the answer is probably yes, but, um, would that be, you know, a, a, a good way though of, of reading the scriptures, would you say?

Well, let's go down to not every scripture. Not every, I know, obviously, you know, when we're reading, uh,

I don't know. Um, yeah, when we're reading like maybe

Samson or something, I don't know. I'm just thinking of off the top of my head, but yeah, not every single story is going to actually paint a picture of Jesus.

Um, but you know, I think there's a lot though out there that will remind you or see parallels of Christ, I think.

Um, yeah. So, okay. So, so you're talking about like a common example where some people pretend that the song of Solomon is really about Christ and his church rather than just being the love letter that it is between, um, he and his bride or you're talking about that kind of stuff, right?

Out of the old Testament. Okay. So Josiah, Justin, I guess I'll start with you guys. Yeah, that's a, uh, that's a really good question because that's, that comes up a lot in hermeneutics.

Does every single passage talk about Jesus? Every single little thing pointing to him? Uh, I, I hate to give a yes or no answer, but literally not every passage talk is talking about Jesus.

Again, the song of Solomon is a love letter. Now the ordinance of marriage that song of Solomon is based off of does, okay, that does point to Jesus because marriage points to the love of Christ with his church.

But we don't want, we don't want to be saying that, you know, Judas hanging himself.

That, that doesn't point to Jesus. Right. Satan falling from heaven is not pointing to Jesus.

Yeah. Uh, Nathaniel or yeah, let's see.

Ezra rebuilding the temple. Jesus didn't, didn't read.

It wasn't a prophecy about Jesus, right. Resurrecting. Now the temple does point to Jesus symbolically several different ways.

Um, the Israelites building a golden calf doesn't literally point to Jesus, but it is part of the narrative to where God is ultimately bringing history to Jesus as Jesus dying on the cross, rising from the dead.

People of Israel did have a hand in that. So we want to be very careful when we say every passage points to points to Jesus.

I agree. What about, yeah. What about America? Cause I've been coming across a lot of verses lately or a lot of people saying, oh, we're, you know, this is the prophecy about America.

And I'd scroll my eyes now, like, oh, come on. No passage points to America.

Unless, unless the original audience would have understood that as America, it's not talking about America.

Right. Yeah. Babylon is America. And I was like, come on, really?

Babylon is Babylon. Yeah. There are, there are some texts that are just descriptive texts.

They're just describing what's going on. But then there are some passages, entire chapters where just the greater theme points to Christ.

You know, you, you can, you can make that line, but some texts, they just describe what's going on.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So, okay. Let's take this vein because I actually had this question written down already.

And I'll start with you, Justin, on this, because I think this is kind of your field of study is understanding when we have, when we understand historical texts versus poetic texts versus say some of the texts in the

New Testament, where these are the letters to Titus and, and to Timothy where it's teaching us things.

Right. So we, we have different understanding of what those texts are pointing to. So we have this thing called descriptive versus prescriptive.

Hmm. And we have this major issue of people that are taking things that are, that are just describing what happened in history and trying to make it prescriptive for things that they think we're supposed to be doing today versus texts that are actually prescriptive.

Right. So if you can care to give us maybe some definitions on this and then kind of walk us through some of these differences, because obviously in the word of faith movements and health, wealth, prosperity, and all, all these other movements you teach on, they're very big on taking descriptive texts and turning them prescriptive.

Yeah, that's exactly right, Anthony. That is, that is one of the fundamental hermeneutical flaws of the charismatic movement in general really is that they take texts that are descriptive and they make them prescriptive.

Not everything that is described in the Bible is prescribed in the

Bible. Um, there's a lot of things that are described. A burning bush is described, but I haven't seen any burning bushes.

A talking donkey is described, but I haven't seen any talking donkeys lately.

And I hope none of our viewers here are seeing talking donkeys. If you are, you should probably lay off the suds a little bit because something's wrong if you're seeing talking donkeys.

So, um, and the same thing is true with the book of Acts. Uh, the book of Acts is historical narrative.

That's right. The book of Acts is a book of transition. It is transitioning from Judaism to Christianity.

And by definition, a transitional period is not permanent.

That's what transition means. So, uh, there are things described in the book of Acts that are not prescribed.

I believe 100 % that, that the apostles performed signs and wonders.

2 Corinthians 12, 12, they performed the signs. And it talks about the signs of the, of a true apostle. They healed the sick.

They raised the dead. They cast out demons. Those things are described, but they're not prescribed for us as believers in the post apostolic age to do.

So, um, that is, that is, that's really the, the, the foundational hermeneutical flaw that underlines the entire charismatic movement, really.

Um, and it's just not true now they will often use. Oh, but Hebrews 13, eight,

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so whatever was happening in the days of the

Bible should be happening today because he doesn't change. Well, you keep using that verse.

I do not think it means what you think. Jesus Christ by his character and his nature.

Right. He does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change.

God does not change, but his revelation has progressed and culminated in the personal work of Jesus Christ.

The foundation of the church was laid upon the teaching of the apostles and the prophets. And since that foundation was laid one time, because the foundation is only laid one time.

Then since then, Jesus has building, been building his church on top of that. But if you're going to use that logic,

Oh, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So whatever was happening in the days of the Bible should be happening today.

Well, okay. Let's go with that logic. Why aren't we still sacrificing animals today?

Right. Sacrificed animals in the old Testament, millions of them. Why aren't we doing that today?

Why aren't we slaughtering sheep and goats and calves and pigeons and all that kind of stuff?

Why are we doing that today? Has God changed? No, God has not changed, but his revelation has progressed, culminating in the personal work of Christ.

So, yeah, that is a, that's a big, that is the hermeneutical era of the charismatic movement.

And if, if they could clear that up, I mean, really the, the charismatic movement would collapse in on it.

Well, let's take, let's take that idea, right? The, uh, God is the same yesterday, today, and, and, and forever in the charismatic and Pentecostal movement.

If that is true. And we know Justin, as you just explained, yes, God is the same. He doesn't change.

If the way they view it and the way they read that is true, then they should be the most regulated by the scriptures, lest they be put to death for false.

Come on, brother. Amen. Come on. Absolutely. They should be stoning their profits and their profits are so prolifically wrong.

They would literally have a, a, uh, you know, a firing squad at each other, you know, picking up rocks and killing all each other off and short amount of time.

That's right. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to make this point, but you also in the charismatic

Pentecostal movement, this idea of the descriptive and prescriptive texts. If you were to just take the church of God statement of faith, one of their statements is that we believe in the gift of tongues as the initial evidence of the baptism of the

Holy spirit. And they would go to ask to, to, to make that point.

The problem is where you see all those people, the 3000 who are converted. It doesn't say that those 3000 spoken tongues.

That's right. But also you have a problem in first Corinthians. Uh, I believe it's 12 where Paul says not everyone speaks in tongues.

That's right. So now you're, you're, you're taking a descriptive text of something that Justin, you said happened a narrow historical narrative of what happened.

And now you're trying to say that if you don't do this, then you don't have the baptism of the Holy spirit.

That's right. Well, and it shows an improper, a massive improper hermeneutic because what people are trying to do, and, and obviously it's true.

Yes. And the charismatic Pentecostal movement, but it's also true in, in certain reform circles today, where there are people who will, will, will look at something that's described by someone who's in the

Bible or a biblical writer and say, well, if so -and -so did it, then, then, then it's okay if I do it.

Well, no, that's not the way it works. If you're like cursing. Yeah, exactly. So that's exactly what

I was thinking of Jeff Durbin. Um, so if, if, if what is described contradicts with what is prescribed, then one needs to obey what is prescribed over what's described.

Okay. If, if, if what is described in scripture contradicts the clear prescribed commands, then we as believers are called to obey what's prescribed, not what's being described in a narrative.

And we've talked about this as to why this validates the truthfulness of scripture, because their sin is on the page.

So just because you had someone at some time that did something that is sinful, we would look at it and we would say, yeah, that's, that's sinful.

But then we have a command that says, don't do this thing. You're right, Chris. Yeah. Yeah. We obey the command.

We, we don't try to justify our sin because someone else sinned. Yep. Yeah, that's right.

We even see this in the complementarian versus egalitarian debates, right? And so we would say that descriptive, um, well, the egalitarians would look at different passages, especially weird ones in the old

Testament, and, and try to try to take those passages as teaching us that women should be in these types of positions.

When we have prescriptive texts in the new Testament that are clear about women's roles.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. We can point at all kinds of, of obvious things like that.

I don't know if you guys have anything to add to that or anything else. Yeah, absolutely. So let's just, let's just go, let's just, let's just stay on the, on the

John MacArthur train right here. John MacArthur has taught clearly from the scriptures when

God has raised up and he has raised up women to, to, to over a nation.

What is that? That's judgment on that nation. So if you're seeing women being raised up as pastors or leaders or, and whatnot, that's judgment on that nation.

And, and I'll say this, cause since it's funny that Anthony, that you're just going along these, this line of things, because this take this for a hot take or whatever it is, but Chris and I have talked about this as well.

Every problem that we see in the modern church can be stemmed back to, um, uh, has its roots in Pentecostal theology, which is an abandonment of the sufficiency of scripture.

Bingo. Bingo. That's right. Ding, ding. Every form of theological mischief that plagues the evangelical world all comes down to an abandonment of the sufficiency of scripture.

Yep. Every form, whether it's charismatic, Pentecostal, word of faith stuff, NAR stuff, social justice stuff, um,

Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic stuff, all of it, all of it comes down to an abandonment of scriptures, sufficiency, sufficiency, sufficiency, sufficiency.

Yep. Yep. And the crazy thing is you'll have people that say, oh, well we believe in the inerrancy and the infallibility and the authority.

Yeah. But if you don't believe that it is sufficient, you cancel those things out. You don't act.

Your actions are saying that you don't believe in the sufficiency of scripture. I'll tell you a quick little story. You know, SBC, I can pick on SBC because I were one for the first 37 years of my life.

Yeah, come on. The, the, the dumpster fire that is the SBC today.

All right. So those of you who are SBC, you probably know this back in, in the year 2000, the

Baptist faith and message was revised and updated. And I know from firsthand accounts that the, and you can read the

Baptist faith and message 2000. It, it affirms inerrancy. It affirms the authority of scripture.

It says nothing about sufficiency of scripture and sufficiency was intentionally left out.

It was intentionally left out. Yes. Intentionally left out of the

Baptist faith message. And so now when you look at the SBC, it is a theological dumpster fire.

It is, it is so much of it is quasi charismatic. It is embracing social justice.

It is embracing egalitarianism, all of that stuff. And it all comes from an abandonment of scripture sufficiency.

They intentionally left it out. And this is what they're reaping the whirlwind. Yep. That's right.

You know, in Voti's book, Fault Lines, he, he dissects second Timothy three, 16 and 17.

Right. And he says, all scriptures breathed out by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training and righteousness.

And so he says, all of scriptures breathed out by God. And he makes that point.

And then he says that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

That's your sufficiency right there. God's word is sufficient for everything we need to do. Yep. And, and, and the church by and large has left sufficiency.

That's right. Yeah. I'm writing right now, putting together a lecture on, on preaching. And in there,

I discuss, it's not just any kind of preaching that we need. It's expository preaching because it's from the

Bible that we need to hear from. It's the, the, the preacher is the mouthpiece of God when he opens the word.

And then he proclaims what God has said. He, he's not at Liberty. And let me, let me quote

Dr. Lawson. Not free to reinvent preaching. Okay. Preaching comes from the word of God.

That's, that's the only thing that people need to hear. They don't need to hear a word. They need to hear the word because a word cannot save you.

A word cannot change the heart. Only the word of God is, is what cuts to the soul.

It's what fillets the heart open. Okay. Only the word of God has the authority to actually reprove me to, to critique me of my faults.

And then correct me and bring me back in line with what God says. Only scripture has that.

Well, brother, you know, I mentioned this earlier, right? And this is, this is how dare any of us, how dare any of us approach the scriptures and think that we can, we can, we can read our own framework into it.

That's blasphemous, right? That is, that is taking the name of God in vain. That's taken the word of God in vain.

Like the Belgic confession of faith says that, that, that, that the scriptures sovereignly contain the will of God.

How dare we shake our fist at God and think that we can look at him and say, you're breathed out words, not enough.

And we know better or worse. We twist it. We twist God's word.

And you know what happens when we do that? We show who our true father is. Our true father is not the

God of the word, but the God of the world, right? Yeah. The Prince of the power of the air, the one who works darkness, the father of lies as John 8, 44 says.

So when we approach the scriptures, we, we approach them in a way that there's, there's reverence and there's fear and there's all, and there's, there's, there's, there's, how dare

I twist the message that God has given? Now I didn't get to go to, uh, to the shepherd's conference this year, but I just started listening to the messages and Vody's message where he talks about, um, going through the strawberry patch and picking strawberries.

Right. And he relates that to the gospel where when people hear the gospel and they get those fresh strawberries after they've had slush, right.

They don't like it. It doesn't, it doesn't taste it. Well, that's the same with the Bible. People don't get the Bible. So when they actually get the

Bible, what, what do they do? Well, they call you a Pharisee, right? They call you a legalist, right?

But who fundamentalist or a fundamentalist, right? What were the, what were the

Pharisees doing? The Pharisees were actually neglecting the word of God and then adding their own on top of it.

So what was truly the Pharisee? So who's truly the Pharisee? Thank you. So what we see today is we see people neglecting the word of God, adding their word and then saying things like, well,

I had this dream and I don't care if you can't find it in the Bible. I know what God showed me. Like, I don't think you do.

Like, cause how are you going to test that spirit to tell me whether or not it's actually from God?

Like, no, you hold to the scriptures. You know, it's amazing because a lot of this shows the shame that a lot of professing

Christians have about the word of God. And, um, you know, Voti said it best. And, and I, I've, I've started to use this in a lot of my talks now on social justice, as well as, um, some other topics.

He talks about how Christians, especially a lot of pastors, saying that the pulpit tend to kill things with a thousand clauses before they're willing to say, thus saith the

Lord, if they even get to that point. And so one of the things I really point out to people as an evangelist and apologist, and when

I'm teaching others is, is saying, look, God says, homosexuality is a sin.

Thus saith the Lord, right? We don't have to make excuses. We don't have to come up with all kinds of dialogue to try to explain this away.

We say, this is what God says. This is his word. This is what he says. Well, by the way, he made the male and female period.

This is what his word says. Marriage is one man and one woman. This is what his word says, right? We don't have to do anything else other than saying this, thus saith the

Lord. Um, and so I feel like it's, it's, it's also the, again, shame of, of the word where people get off in all this nonsense.

You know, Anthony, every time you, you bring, when you say something, it's just,

I got stories in my head that come up. I mean, just recently, you know, someone, someone close, close to me, uh, they're dealing with homosexuality and they're always told, well, you know, just pray and wait for God to speak to you.

And cause God spoke to me and he said that, you know, homosexuality is wrong. And well, you know,

God never spoke that to me. And so I finally had to say, look, God doesn't speak audibly. Okay.

God speaks through his word. His word says it's sin. Therefore you obey God's word.

You repent and you come to faith in Christ. He doesn't, if you're waiting for him to speak audibly, he's not going to.

And then I, you know, famously quoted Justin Peters. So, but I added,

I added my friend. I really appreciate your ministry. So, um, before I go to the next question,

Josiah, do you have anything to add to this? Oh, well, this is what he was talking about.

It's kind of a different kind of why I got kicked out on my last church. I wasn't, uh,

I, I was preaching verse by verse book by book and they couldn't stand it because their last minister apparently watched

Fox news and he would just talk about what, what, uh,

Sean Hannity said or Tucker Carlson. And now we can talk about what Bruce Jenner says.

Yeah. That's just terrible. But I was just like, no,

I, I can't do that. I have to preach God's word. And I showed them, I showed them what

Ezra did. He took the word of God. He read it and explained it. That's my preaching style.

As I read it, I explain it. I show how I give a little bit application to let people's imaginations start running wild, see what they can do to apply it in their lives.

And that's, that's what I do. And eventually I started seizing some of Justin Peters material and pointing out the errors of Joyce Meyer saying that Jesus used to be the son of God on the cross.

And I pointed out some of the errors of Joel Osteen and they, they didn't want me back. So they didn't vote me in again the next year.

Yeah. And this, this church loves the word of God. So that's, that's amen for that.

Amen. What's that? Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

So before we get to the next question, um, Josiah, you've got some other projects in the background now on hermeneutics, right?

So as if your three books aren't enough for people to buy right now, what else do you got cooking? Well, I think the blogs on striving for eternity are, uh, really good blogs that, uh, would help people see the errors of hermeneutical fallacies, like baptismal regeneration.

I talk a bit about the errors of, uh, what you see, saw with RA Fuentes, trying to say that Calvinism was, was, was actually evil.

It's like, no, it's, it's biblical. But, uh, I also am working with you on, yeah,

Andrew did a great job, but I wrote the blogs covering

RA Fuentes' use of the verses that he used and showed what they looked like in context and showed that Andrew was actually right.

Go figure. I'm also working on, on your book. Uh, I wrote two chapters for your, for your book, uh, on the origin of kinds.

Yeah. So my second edition is going to be coming out here shortly. You've re rewritten a couple of the chapters, um, from my previous coauthor, who wrote a couple of chapters.

So excited about that coming out. We'll have some updates to some of the science that's changed in the last couple of years.

So that'll be really cool. Yeah. Change, right? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You said science changes. Yeah. Well, only if you believe in masks,

I guess. I don't know. No, you know, as we, as we continue to learn in science, right.

We recognize the error of our ways in the past. And, uh, there's, there's some big ones, even in the creation realm that, uh, we've with some studies of genetics now, epigenetics and understanding, um,

Randy Galusa's, um, understanding of, of CET as a, as a replacement for natural selection, which, uh, is, is outstanding research over the last five to six years.

That'll be in the book coming up. That's all that's for a different show though. But so yeah, so Josiah's writing that and you got something else in the pipeline right now.

There's a big hermeneutics book. You're right. Yeah. I'm pouring my heart and soul to the study of this.

I took, I've, I've been researching Hebrew for the past two years now. I've been learning

Hebrew, fell in love with the language and I've been translating Genesis one and I've, I've decided to write a, a book on how to interpret historical narratives.

So, uh, it's, it's still about, about nine months before it'll be finished, written, being written, but, uh, you're going to help me out with one of the chapters, uh,

Anthony on, uh, Genesis pre, pre -sub, right?

So yeah. And, uh, so it'll, this'll show what, how to interpret historical narratives.

If Genesis one is a historical narrative, spoiler alert, it is. That's a big spoiler alert that Genesis one is a historical narrative.

So the big question is, are you going to send a copy of that to William Lane Craig? I would love to,

I think he would get it in the mail and he'd say, well, this isn't, this isn't published by Tyndale or Zondervan.

So it'd probably just go in his trash can, but yeah. Be happy to send it. That dude's on such a downgrade that only a supernatural miracle of God stepping in is going to stop him.

Oh man. It makes you, it makes you worry for the man's soul, honestly. Yes, yes, sir. That's right.

So, okay, Justin, you had a, a passage you wanted us to bring up and actually practice hermeneutics with.

So let's, let's do that and let you start, Josiah, jump in and then everyone else kind of jump in after that.

So, so let's actually do this. And the passage is going to be John 10, starting in verse 27.

Yeah. So I invite you brothers to open up your copy of God's word and good.

All right. So John 10, 27, I think this will just, we've been talking about hermeneutics.

So I think this would be a good little, a little example of, of how to do some hermeneutics and how to clear up a commonly misinterpreted verse.

John 10, 27, my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. That is definitive proof that God speaks to us outside of the scriptures that we should be hearing this still small voice in our head.

And, you know, God speaks to us because we're his sheep, right? And my sheep know my voice.

And so we should be hearing the voice of God and John 10, 27, clearly establishes that.

I mean, you can't refute it, right? And this is Priscilla Shire. This, she, she wrote a whole book based off of John 10, 27 and, and many others.

So, but does it say that? Is that what it means? Well, if you're importing in the still small voice, you have a problem because that ain't in there, but also the still small voice as Jim Osmond has taught, wasn't a still small voice.

He had to go outside to hear what was being said. Yep. It was an external audible voice to Elijah, 1

Kings 19. So, yep, absolutely right, Drew.

But what, so what do we do with John 10, 27? I mean, what does this mean?

My sheep hear my voice. How do we get to what it means? Okay. So Josiah, how do we get to what it means?

Give us some of your, your hermeneutical. When you just read a

Bible verse, you, you have to go to the, to the immediate context.

Oh, because yeah. So what does that mean? Huh? It means the surrounding information that makes that determines the meaning of a passage.

So it actually helps to look at the verses around the said verse.

Okay. Yeah. So we're going to go to the pericope here and I'm not going to go to the complete episode.

That's where you would want to start if you were actually doing this yourself. So I would,

I'm going to start with 22 and it says at the time the feast of the dedication took place at Jerusalem, it was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple and the colony of Solomon.

So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the

Christ, tell us plainly. He answered. I told you, and you did do not believe the works that I do in my father's name, bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep, my sheep, hear my voice.

And I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

I and the father are one. I'll stop reading there.

So is Jesus talking to believers here? It says he was, he was, he was okay.

So he's in the temple of the portico of Solomon, it says that the Jews had gathered around him and he said to the

Jews, you do not believe why?

Because you're not in my sheep. That's why you don't believe you're not of my sheep. And so verse 26 tells us that something a lot bigger is going on here than just God whispering to you, telling you where to go to have lunch one day, right?

Yeah, he's, he's, he's, yeah. One, he's not talking to believers.

Two, he's talking about who listens to him. He has his sheep that listen to him.

Who has the ability to listen to him. Ah, right. Well, that's because they're the ones who are given to the son.

Oh, given to, now where might we find that? Given to the son. Oh, you know, where you keep reading.

I mean, you guys are just sounding way too intellectual here. I mean, come on. Yeah. You don't have to be a

Greek scholar. Or a bunch of Calvinists. That's right. Yeah.

Keep it simple. Just keep reading. Yeah. So the sheep are those people who have been given to the son by the father, right?

Verse 29, my father, who has given them to me, who? The sheep. Is greater than all.

No one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. So my sheep hear my voice. Jesus is talking about believing.

He's talking about sheep. He's talking about people who have been given to him by the father. Among whom have not been given to him are the

Jews to whom he is speaking. So we're talking about salvation here, right? We're talking about the new birth.

We're talking about regeneration. We're talking about the effectual call of the gospel. Amen. Yep.

This is when the shepherd, the good shepherd calls his lost sheep to himself in salvation.

This is the region. This is regeneration. This is the new birth. This is not God telling you where to go to have lunch one day.

Telling you go talk to the guy in the red shirt of the car. That's not what this is talking about.

This is talking about the new birth. All of us before our conversion, we were sheep. Now we were lost sheep, but we were sheep.

You see, a goat doesn't turn into a sheep. Sheep doesn't turn into a goat. We had been sheep from when?

Before the foundation of the world. Come on in. And we as lost sheep, we're out there in the pasture of life with our heads down, grazing, minding our own business.

But then all of a sudden there comes a voice, a call, and we perk our heads up and we see the shepherd and we go to him in salvation.

This is a beautiful passage of scripture. That's right. It's a beautiful and what a travesty to reduce it to something so trivial and menial as God telling you, you know, go eat lunch at Red Robin instead of Burger King or something.

I mean, it's in anybody who would take John 10, 27, and they could extrapolate from John 10, 27, a meaning like that.

Whoever that person is, that person has no business teaching the

Bible. Sit down. If you ever hear a preacher or a

Bible study leader, someone writing a book like, oh, I don't know, Priscilla Shire or Beth Moore. That's what they get from a

Rick Warren. Rick Warren does the same thing with John 10, 27. If that's what they get from John 10, 27, and that person has absolutely no business teaching scripture, has no business teaching the

Bible, don't ever listen to another single word that person ever has to say ever. Amen. Now, this is one of the downfalls of having verse divisions, right?

Because, and we love verse divisions because they're very helpful for us, but one of the downfalls is people take one verse and they, well, they think the

Bible is just a compilation of verses, almost like the

Koran is. But they don't understand that verse divisions are a new thing to the

Bible. When Stephanos added them to scripture. So you'd be surprised how many people you say that and they're like, oh,

Paul wrote the numbers there. I know he did. But if you remove those verses, just ignore those and take the whole passage in its context.

It's super clear, right? You can't misinterpret it then. Yeah. So that is one of the downfalls of having verse divisions.

Somebody still would. I mean, they would still twist it because it's what

I said earlier, that there are those who are goats to Justin's point and who are of their father, the devil.

And so they will contribute and add to the lie of did

God really say? Um, and then, and then there are those who will, will join in and twisted along with them.

I mean, but for somebody to take such a beautiful passage of scripture, such an, such an assuring passage and such an assuring text.

When you think about, think about the context here. It's in this passage that Christ says that I and the father are one.

So this passage speaks to the deity of Christ, the God, man, the creator.

Psalm 33 says, who spoke stars into existence knows you and you are known by him.

The hope, the encouragement that, that, to know that he will wipe away your tears one day, to know that you are known by God and that nothing, nothing eternally can snatch you from his hand.

That's, that's what needs to be preached. Not listen to the still small voice and start brushing a homeless man's hair.

No, no, no. Keep going. Chris, keep preaching here because it's, it's not just those things about being known, but just stay along the lines of my sheep and Christ as the shepherd.

Why? Because what does the sheep do or the shepherd do with the sheep? He protects them, protects them.

He leads them. He guides them, feeds them. He feeds them. Right in this, this section is so beautiful.

Right. Look at the mag, the magnificence and the beauties of, of the office of, of, of Christ right here.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And, and look too, Chris hinted on it. The, the eternal security here.

Look at the eternal security. He says, my father, well, hang on. He says, I give eternal life to them.

They will never perish ever. No one will snatch them out of my hand. So we, as his sheep, he calls us, he summons us.

That call, by the way, is not a, Hey, if you have some time drop by, that's a summons. Yeah.

The shepherd is summoning us, his sheep to himself. He holds us in his hand.

And then look at verse 29. My father, he repeats it. He repeats it. And he says, my father who has given them to me is greater than all.

And no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. So think about this brothers.

We are, we are held in the hand of Christ as his sheep. The good shepherd is holding us in his hand.

And then as if his hand, we're not strong enough and it is, but then he takes the hand of the father and wraps it as it were around that of his own and friends.

Ain't nobody getting out of that. Right. Wow. This is a lot of language that we've heard before in just in the book of John, a couple of chapters earlier in chapter six, it is the same thing that those, those whom the father have given me will come to me.

And those who come to me, I will never cast out. And all that the father gives me, I will lose none.

I mean, it's basically the same idea. And then reiterated here in chapter 10.

Right. That's what I was going to say. This is a major theme in John that Jesus is

God, that he saves those who believe in him. It's the father's will to save them, not their own.

That's John one. That's not, that's not John 22, 21.

That's, that's the first chapter that he, he, he actually says,

I want to, I want to quote it here. It says, but to all who did receive him, who believe in his name, this is verse 12.

He gave the right to become the children of God who were born, not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And we see again, John's trying to prove Jesus is God that you have to believe in him.

And yes, because he is God, he chose you before time began. He is the one who, who saves you fully and completely and will never let you go.

And this is the second time Jesus just told them he's God. Cause in chapter eight, he, he, in, in the temple, he said before Abraham was,

I am. And this is also, that was the first time they tried to stone him.

And this is the second time they try to, they try to stone him because in verse 31, it says the

Jews picked up stones again to stone him because they realized he was claiming to be God.

Well, and see brothers, how much, how much sweeter are the truths accurately handled, rightly divided, and how much sweeter is our doctrine and theology and a balm to the soul when we accurately handle the scriptures.

When you, when you unpack that and for everybody listening to what

Justin just did and what we just talked about, like I didn't, we didn't pull up any commentaries.

Like this is just reading the text. I'm not looking at the original languages. I'm not parsing any verbs.

If I do that, it only gets sweeter and it only goes deeper. But, but, but how sweet.

And the soul, the soul of those created in the image of God, and especially the soul of the elect when this truth is uncovered and presented before you, this is when, this is when you take a breath and you rest in the sovereignty of God.

And it, it just, it, it, it brings a joy that is indescribable by words.

This doing that, what we just went through, right. That gives me hope.

That's right. Listening, trying to listen. The eternal need, not the temporal. That meets the eternal need, the need of the soul.

Listening, trying to listen for the still, small voice and trying to listen to where, where I need to go eat.

Right. That doesn't meet my, my actual needs that, you know, it's like,

I think I'm supposed to go here, but no, it's sure this gives me hope and who

Christ is and what Christ has done and the father's will for his people. Yep.

Yep. That's right. So I have to say first and foremost, uh, we are in Anthony time. We were, we were going to do it anyway tonight.

So we just, we slipped it right in there. So, uh, so we're going to go a little longer. You guys are, are game for it.

Um, I was going to say, you know, why don't we just go ahead and while we're in Anthony time, just have a

Bible study because it's really good stuff. We've got some great guys on right now in hermeneutics, right?

We might as well do this. So, okay. I gotta say this. One of my favorite things to do

Jehovah's witnesses is even though they have, have blasphemed John one, one and, and, and a

Colossians one first 15 to 20 and then change those passages. Um, there's other things we can go to scripturally.

And one of the questions I'd love to ask, actually, the only question I like to ask is why did, why did

Jesus get put on the cross to die? And invariably they know the answer.

They know it's because he claimed to be God. And I say, you're right. Let's go to John eight. Let's go to John 10 because it's clear in here.

He called himself God. And guess what? Everybody else knew it. And so do you repent to put your trust in the one true

God? And, uh, you know, they, uh, it wasn't a cross. It was a torture stake.

Well, that's what they say. Yeah. Yeah. It's a crazy stuff. Right. All right.

So we, we do have a question that I'd like us to get to here. A very good question. And, um, you know,

I think we'll start with Josiah and then kind of go back around the horn, but, um, our, our church has a new interim pastor.

I met with him this week, so he could review what I will teach an upcoming women's Bible study during the conversation.

He shared that while he believes in the doctrines of grace, he thinks limited atonement is unbiblical. I guess that's number one.

He also considers himself to be a cessationist, but affirms that God does audibly speak to believers today.

That's number two. So I disagree with him. How big of a deal are these views in relation to his trustworthiness as a preacher?

So I guess the first question I'll give the first part to Josiah. Um, he believes in doctrines of grace, thinks limited atonement is unbiblical.

How would you answer that? Okay. Well, it's, it's not unbiblical.

Um, just think of communion. Jesus said, this is my blood poured out for many, not every single person for many, for the forgiveness of sins.

And we see that only those who repent and believe only those who've been called by God are their sins are forgiven.

That's the atonement only applies to the elect to believers.

It doesn't apply to unbelievers. Otherwise we get universalism. Now, what, what he does with the atonement is dangerous.

If he weakens its power, because the Bible teaches that the sacrifice of Jesus takes away sins.

But if, if he's teaches that it it's for everybody, but it's only effective and removing and removing the, just, just the sins applied to believers.

There's a, there's a, that means that Jesus is that Jesus died for people to go to hell.

Jesus died so that some people would go to hell. He's also teaching that, that the atonement isn't enough to forgive your sins unless it's without your help, which means

God isn't the one that saves you means you save you. In reality, we see in the scriptures teaching that God's the one who gives repentance.

God's the one who gives faith. So it, the limit, limited atonement isn't, isn't unbiblical.

And I'll now turn around and point out, pull out first John saying that, you know,

Jesus died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. I would say that the world's only hope is

Jesus and that they need to repent and trust in Jesus. There's no other sacrifice for sins other than Jesus.

But again, Jesus only died for believers, for the elect.

So Chris and Drew, do you guys want to add anything to that? Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, the definite atonement, limited atonement is not unbiblical.

Matthew, what is it? One, I think it's 121. He died to save his people from their sins.

John 17 says, I did not, I do not ask on, on, I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world.

Sorry, my Bible's over there. I'm looking that way. You know, he's only asking for those to whom the father has given him.

You've got Romans nine. It talks about vessels of wrath versus vessels of mercy. Potter and the clay.

I mean, it's the doctrine of definite or limited atonement is wrought throughout the scriptures, period.

You can't get away from that. And to Josiah's point, if you say you don't believe in it, then you are saying that the sacrifice of Christ also covered the sins of those who are experiencing the wrath of God, the just wrath of God in hell currently.

And that makes God a liar. So denying definite atonement is denying, denying

God and God, and God's character. It may be a tough pill for you to swallow.

And, and, and that's okay. You work that out. But again, we submit to what the scriptures teach concerning the

I'll stop there and then, and then address the cessationist issue here in a second or right now.

But look, I mean, if someone claims to be a biblical cessationist, but affirms that God audibly speaks to believers today, then they're not a cessationist.

They they're not, and they, they don't believe in and deny the sufficiency of scripture as well through their actions.

And to, to address that last question, I won't speak for my other brothers, but I think these two issues combined,

I would take them to Melissa to, to your elders. I would do so making sure that you, if you're married, your husband is with you, that you take this issue biblically to your elders and show this to them.

If they still are practicing these things, it's, it's time to find a church that teaches what the

Bible teaches period. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that, Chris. So Justin, something I'd like to say.

Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Something I'd like to say. Um, yeah, he can say not being a sensationist doesn't make you an unbeliever, but, um, it is dangerous, very, very dangerous.

Um, and as, as to whether it, it makes him trustworthy as a preacher or not.

Um, and he's definitely in the danger category because he's allowing for all kinds of unbiblical doctrine to creep into the church by saying,

God speak audibly speaks to believers today. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what

I was kind of wondering. So let's have Justin answer this first and then let's get into that part about the pastor and his qualifications.

But so, so Justin, what are your thoughts about this? Um, when I read Melissa's comment, my first thought was, um,

I appreciate Melissa's heart in this and wanting to take what she's teaching to the elder.

I mean, to the interim pastor, that's, that was the right thing to do. I appreciate so much of her heart in this and her desire to be above board.

And, and, uh, that is commendable. Uh, my second thought was I'm glad that he's just the interim pastor and not, not the senior that are not the full -time pastor.

So I'm, I'm assuming that this man will be temporary, but you know, when you get to,

I tell you a four point Calvinist is a confused Arminian. Hey man, a four point

Calvinist is a confused Arminian. Uh, you cannot, the doctrines of grace, you, you can't pull out kind of like earlier, what we're talking about, the

Jenga thing, you know, you can't pull out limit, uh, uh, the atonement, pull that out and make that a general atonement and still have the doctrines of grace.

The whole thing collapses. Um, in fact, we've been in John 10. I mean, we can even go in John 10 in verse 15.

Uh, even as the Jesus speaking, even as the father knows me and I know the father and I laid down my life for whom?

For the sheep, not for the goats, for the sheep. And Jesus says, I have other sheep, which are not of this fold.

I must bring them also. So, I mean, it's just, you can't get around it.

Um, now I, I have observed this with four point Calvinist quote unquote, um, that has its way of fleshing out in other, um, other areas of church life and theology in general.

And, and almost without exception, it eventually will lead to a, a version of antinomianism.

Yep. It will lead to that. Yep. Yep. Maybe not full blown like Rick Warren or Joel Osteen, but it's going to lead to a kind of a easy believism, uh, antinomian kind of thinking.

So, uh, that is, that, that is a big issue. It is. And the audibly speaking thing, that's another big issue.

I mean, Drew is absolutely right. You can't claim that God speaks to people today outside of scripture, whether it's audibly or some still small voice, whatever, and be a cessationist that, that those two positions are mutually exclusive.

You can't have that. Right. So I would say to Melissa, um,

I would say I could not, if that's the position of the elders in general there, which it is, she did write that.

She said it was. So if that is the position of the elders in general, um,

Melissa, in all sincerity, I would tell you what, what I would do myself. I would, I would be looking for another church.

I could not stay there. Yeah. So, and so let's break this down a little bit more for, for listeners.

Right. The, the point alone about a pastor believing that people can still hear from God to me is, is itself the biggest problem, right?

Because once you believe God can speak to you individually, you now become a Roman Catholic where you're getting special revelation and some people get more than others and, and you can change anything that's clearly written down in the

Bible. Um, we see that in our own, uh, professed believers. You see that in the SBC with, um, people like Beth Moore who, who are being spoken to, right.

And, and, uh, now are fans of homosexuality and obviously women preachers and things. So we see the dangers with that.

And we probably are all in agreement here, including John, that, uh, that if a pastor believes that he is here, he can hear other voices or, or people in the congregation can hear other voices, that that's a danger, right?

Leave the church. Amen. After talking to him, of course, what about the issue of, uh, the, the first issue she brought up where maybe they're not all the way there on the five point

Calvinism. Um, there's a video from Paul Washer that dates back 12 years.

14 years, something like that. Um, where he said he was a four and a half point Spurgeonist, right.

And people kind of just sloughed it off, whatever. But he said that, and I don't think he would say that today.

Um, so is there, is there room for a preacher if they're not quite there in limited atonement that we can let it slide because they're still learning the scriptures?

I think there can be, there can be an area of grace, but, um, it takes diligent study.

The, the, the real question to the pastor is, do you want to actually find out the answer or do you want to live in the gray area trying to appease people?

Well, it could be this, it could be, it could be the other, I don't know. We're just going to unite and form around unity rather than actually seek what the scriptures say.

Right. Um, but the reality of the atonement now maybe limited is, is, is not a good word, but the extent everyone limits the atonement in one way or another, either in its extent as to who it covers or in its power as to, as to its ability to save.

Oh, that's good. But as long as not everyone is in heaven, then the atonement is limited.

So you, so you have no choice, but to believe in a limited atonement. Yeah. I like what

Steve Lawson calls it. He says definite atonement. Definite atonement is, I think is a much better term, but, but just take, take the term limited and then flip it, flip it to the opposite.

Well, do you want to believe in an unlimited atonement? Unlimited atonement is as Josiah said, universalism.

So now everyone goes to heaven, but we know that's not true. I'll tell you what, uh, while I'm thinking about Mike Riccardi, uh, has a series on the atonement on the great in the grace life pulpit.

You know, it's like Sunday school at John MacArthur's church and man, it is fire.

It is breakout. So good. His breakout at the shepherd's conference this year was about, was about the particular, particular atonement.

Yeah. And he made it one, just one, one of the many points he made. But, um, so if, if, uh, if the general atonement is a correct view, think about this and you've got old

Testament goats, uh, Pharaoh, um, um, who else?

I mean, um, Samson, not Samson. I'm sorry. Goliath.

Sorry. So you've got Pharaoh. You've got Pharaoh and men like Pharaoh and Goliath who are in hell in the lake of fire, enduring the wrath of God at the same time for a period at the same time that Jesus is on the cross, also enduring the wrath of God.

How's that work for the same sins. So Pharaoh and Goliath, they're enduring the wrath of God for their sins.

At the same time that Jesus is on the cross, also enduring the wrath of God for those same sins from those same people.

That makes sense. And this is, this is Justin. That was, that was so good.

This is where we have to truly ask ourselves, because this is something, you know, when you start bringing up these questions, right?

What do you hear? Unity, unity, unity. We need to be unified. Don't break fellowship, but we have to understand that true, true biblical unity is going to draw a line.

Yeah. It's going to draw a line and, and true, true biblical unity.

You want to be on the side of scripture. Uh, drew, drew, and I've been chatting all week about this and I, he asked me to send him this quote by JC Ryle and JC Ryle said to keep gospel truth in the churches is even greater and of even greater importance than to keep peace.

The apostle Paul valued unity greatly as we know why, because he dreaded false doctrine.

He feared the loss of truth more than the loss of peace. Many people have a morbid fear of controversy period, you know, and, and, and it's unity unity.

Um, it was, it was later. He said that, that, that, you know, or peace without truth is a false piece.

It's the very piece of the devil. Yeah. Amen. That's right. Yeah. If you're, if you're not unified around the truth, you have a false unity anyway.

Right. What do you unify around? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So basically unless you find a new church is what you guys are saying.

I'd say that's a good idea. If that's what our elders think too. If that's what the elders, yeah,

I agree. If that's what the elders, if that's where the elders are as well, I couldn't stay.

Kathy, neither one of us could stay in a church like that. Yeah. Well, it's not to say that they're not believers.

It's not to say that they're not believers brothers. Um, they very well, maybe

I'm not saying they're, they're not considerate, but, oh, how do

I say this diplomatically? I, I, I want to, when

I'm, when I'm being fed scripture, when I'm listening to a man preach, I want to know that that man knows at least as much as do

I, if not more, I want to, I want to, I want to learn from someone that I have confidence in that, um, that has wrestled with the

Texans work through these things. Just like when I go to, uh, if I need a cavity field, which by God's grace,

I've only had one cavity my whole life. But if I need, if I need, if I have a toothache, I don't go to a, uh, someone that just watched a

YouTube video on how to fill a cavity. And that's the totality of his training. I don't go to seek medical care from someone who, you know, has read, uh, a pamphlet on nutrition.

I go to people who were proficient in their field. Um, and that should be exponentially more true when it comes to the one thing that is by far the most important in our lives.

And that is the nourishment and shepherding of our eternal souls. I want to go to a man who knows what he's doing.

Yeah. As a, as a pastor, I try, I work really, really hard to know, to know theology.

I said, Hispanics theology for me didn't stop at my, in my Bible college. I kept reading and I kept studying and I kept dissecting scripture to know what

I believed so that whenever I was preaching to others, I could preach to them with confidence and know that God's word was speaking directly into their lives.

Yeah. That's what if the pastor doesn't understand limited atonement, if he's not doing the diligence to study it, he needs to, yeah.

Theology matters. Yeah, it does. It does. So, you know,

Melissa, I would, I would be very kind, very gracious about it as I'm sure you will be, but, but I would,

I would be, I would be searching out another, another church, another local body that's led by men that are more aligned with my theological convictions.

Right. I, I just have the question of how can you say you're a cessationist, but still believe that God speaks audibly?

How do I would ask the, want to ask the pastor, how do those things go hand in hand?

Because they don't, you're, you're saying two things out of both sides of your mouth.

It's like being a little bit pregnant. I mean, or a soft complimentarian.

You are, you are. Yeah. Yeah. You either are, you are.

He probably, got a lot of that nonsense too.

True that. He's probably, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but the only way

I could say that I'm a cessationist and still believe God speaks to believers audibly is I'd have to end some kind of gifts, like the miraculous gifts and the, the offices of apostle and prophet, which he can't really do if repeat

God's still speaking to believers audibly. It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. So Melissa says he defines cessation is as being against speaking in tongues.

So that, that's his definition of it. Well, that's not the definition of cessationism. So he's missing some there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not a biologist, I guess. There's a lot more. Sorry. That's very old.

Okay. So let, let's be fair here. Pastor Darren Stead, great guy. He says this with genuine respect and love for all your brothers as a pastor who labors among the flock,

I think it's extremely unwise to be counseling a woman who you do not know. And without knowing any details about her life or her situation to be telling her, she should leave her church on a podcast.

It's not the kind of advice should be given to a person over a podcast based upon one question with no follow -up and no details regarding what is going on in her life.

So how do you guys feel about his perspective there again,

Darren, she has to meet him, talk to him last year, all that kind of stuff. She asked, no one said, and what we've all said is have a conversation with them.

If they're not willing to biblically and you show them biblically what's going on, if this is the situation, if this is what's happening, then it may be time to consider a new church.

No one said leave the church. I don't think anyway, it may be time to find a new church if they're not going to address these things biblically.

And this is the situation. Yeah, I think even Justin said, after you have talked to them respectfully to get a feel as to what's going on there.

Of course, Darren, if you have thoughts you want to pop in here for a few moments, we'd love to have you in because maybe you have a different angle that we're not seeing here right now.

Obviously you're a pastor who's in the thick of it, so I get it. It could be that one way

I'd say I'd counsel her not to leave her church is if her husband has some kind of influence in the church to where he could be teaching and changing their theology on it.

If he could hold a Bible study or something. Another situation would be if all our other churches in our local area are

Pentecostal or Roman Catholic, and there's just nothing else for her to go to.

So that's the things I can think about right now. Yeah, and I would say too,

I don't know where Melissa lives. In fact, I'm just reading her comment. She says that she's met me in the Philippines.

Let me look at your picture. Okay, I actually think I do remember. Yes, I do remember you,

Melissa. Yeah, I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but I do remember you.

Your face looks familiar, but I would say to people, be willing to drive further than 10 miles to go to a good church if you need to.

I know everybody can't do this, but when Kathy and I lived in Oklahoma, we drove 105 miles one way to church every

Sunday while we lived in Oklahoma. So you may have to drive a ways, but having a good church is worth it.

Even if it's too far to drive every Sunday, say it is 100 miles away.

It's better to go to a good church once or twice a month than a weak church every week.

Yeah, I drive 10 miles just to get to the main road. But I'm kind of in sort of the same situation that Melissa is here.

I talk to Darren pretty regularly, and he knows my situation as well.

Chris knows my situation as well. I've had some conversations with the pastor of the church

I've been going to, and I was being gracious because they are Pentecostal roots and a part of the

COG, Cleveland, Tennessee denomination. So I was willing to have some grace in some areas, but then it's getting to a point now where it's basically just, this is what

I say is going to be, and we're not going to discuss it anymore. And a lot of that centers around false worship, false worship songs.

And a lot of it centers around the bringing in of and being staunch on the

Pentecostal theology and the statements of faith through the church of God.

And so it's coming to a point now where I've got to go, I need to find another place to go.

And we've had numerous conversations. Not only that, Chris has had numerous conversations as well, where one thing was said to our face and then the opposite was done in reality.

So I'm kind of in the same situation that Melissa is here. Hey brothers,

I'm going to have to sign off. Oh, well, there goes the show. Yeah, no kidding.

Not far behind you, brother. I'll be better off. No, I've enjoyed it. We'll be ending here in just a minute.

We'll see if Darren can pop in real quick. And if not, maybe we'll save that for a different day.

But thanks for coming in, Justin, on that. Thank you, brothers. We'll let you sign off and we'll continue for just a few more minutes here.

Good night. Good night, Justin. Word bless you, brother. Y 'all too. Yeah, good topic.

And the church thing, I'll say this. When we left our old church nine years ago and found the church we're going to now for the last eight years, we found a church through the

Nine Marks website back when it could still be trusted and found a church 25 minutes away from our house.

You have to pass at least 20 churches on the way. And that's just on the route I take, let alone all the others around.

And so for us, it was well worth it. You found a good church that you can grow in and everything.

And it's worth the drive a couple of times a week. One of my friends who was going to our old church, it was only five minutes from his house.

And a guy who discipled me early on and getting saved, he knew he needed to leave his church, but he was reluctant to come out to ours because for him, it would be about a 30 -minute drive a couple of times a week.

And so I said, you know, bro, you go golf once a week, every week, and you drive up to two hours away to go golf.

And yet you're not going to go drive to church once or twice a week that's 30 minutes away.

It's not a distance of a church issue. It's a priority issue. And this is a reality for people.

They think we can't drive so far for church, and yet we're willing to do this for a good dinner. We're willing to do this for golf.

We're willing to do this for all kinds of other things. But arguably one of the most important things in our lives is to be with the believers.

So just some thoughts there. So I don't know if Darren's going to be coming in or not.

Yeah, he just messaged me. He didn't get the link. I just sent him the apologeticslive .org

link and told him to click the duck. So I just sent that to him. Okay. I also put it in the private chat.

Actually, he wouldn't be able to get in because he's not in. Never mind. He's a doctor, ladies and gentlemen.

I was going to say, put the link to join in the show that he's not in right now.

Yeah. You know what I was going to say earlier when Justin was talking about wanting a dentist versus somebody who just read something online?

I was going to say, so what you're saying is you want Anthony over Andrew to be your dentist. That's yes.

There you go. That's right. I do too. So this is a great talk through hermeneutics here.

So obviously we had Jian Josiah as kind of the main guest tonight. What are some other thoughts you have in regards to hermeneutics, things that we haven't gotten to before I bring

Darren here in a moment? Uh, well,

I really can't say anything else than, you know, hermeneutics is extremely important.

It's not just for people who are theologians, not just for people who are, uh, are pastors.

It's for every believer who opens up their Bible and you can learn the basic rules to interpreting the

Bible. There are some hard passages, but for the most part, it's not hard. In context, every hard passage

I've come across becomes clear when I read the whole, when I read the whole letter or the whole book or the context.

It's the Bible. Studying the Bible deeply is a joy and you can do it fairly easily.

You just have to have the right tools. And in my books, I show you the tools. I, I lay out some good tools here for, and what does it mean to me, including the

John MacArthur Study Bible. Uh, I also lay out great resources in When My Ox Scores My Neighbor.

Now some of the resources are a little dated, but you, you can, one's a tons of great free resources, including the

Blue Letter Bible app that you can use to get an in -depth study of God's Word.

You don't have to be a, be a deep theologian, a PhD. You don't have to be a pastor.

You can do it just as the average person opening up their Bible and trying to see what

God wants you to learn. Yep. That's right. And you know,

Andrew has always said that, that the way you get the most out of the sermon each week is that you do your own study at home leading up to the passage on Sunday.

That's going to be given by, by the pastor and, and you get so much more out of it. And it's, and it's through, it's our, it's through our own study using proper hermeneutics to do this.

And so, yes, everybody needs to learn. And, and again, what I can't stress enough about your books, Josiah, is that you lay it out so simply, easy to read small books.

So they're not, they're not intimidating like some of the other books out there. And so I encourage everyone, please go to strengthfraternity .org

and check out Josiah's books there or go on Amazon for his Roman roadblocks. For the couple of minutes we have left,

I'm gonna bring Darren in real quick. Chris, if you can hang out for like two more minutes, at least we can get a, a quick dialogue here on, on this part of it.

So good to see you again, brother Darren. Hey, hey, first, first thing I want to say is I love all you guys.

Some of you, I don't know as well as others, but I pass out that book about reading a verse to people in my church.

So I'm a big fan. And I liked the way that you guys went through that passage in John, you know, talking about, you know, the concept of the still small voice versus exegeting the text.

So I was hanging with you guys and agree with a lot of what you said on this podcast, but, and I debated whether or not to actually post the comment or not, because I didn't want to seem like I was publicly trying to blast you guys or anything like that.

But as a pastor on the other side, like sitting on the other side of the conversation, I know there have been many times

I can think of probably five or six times over the course of my pastoral ministry that somebody has made a move or done a thing in regards to the church, the, the flock that I'm shepherding based on advice from, you know, a person outside of the situation.

And that person may be given different advice if they knew the rest of everything that was going on.

And so my point was just to say, I think we should be careful about telling a person to leave their church without having details about like what's going on in their life.

Like, and it may be that many of you guys do know this woman and, you know, so maybe that's not the case here, but, you know,

I had a, I had a situation where I had a fairly prominent person tell a woman to leave my church based on a question that she asked in an email, and she was in the middle of a divorce.

He didn't have all the information, but based on the information she gave him in that letter, he gave her the advice to leave the church.

And the issue that she brought up in her email had nothing to do with what was actually going on, but it gave her the permission that she needed to go ahead and leave that church or to go ahead and leave our church.

And so I just want to say, I love all you brothers and I respect all your brothers. And so I'm not trying to put you on blast or anything like that.

I appreciate you letting me come on here and, you know, sort of, it seems like half the time

I come on here, I'm on the other side of the argument. But we still let you on. That's right.

I really appreciate you guys doing that. I just want to give that pastoral admonition and also to anybody else.

The reason I posted the comment is because, you know, who else may be watching this discussion? There could be legitimate issues.

There could be big issues with a guy who's a four -point Calvinist that denies limited atonement. There could be big issues with a guy who thinks that, you know, that believers hear that still small voice, they have that theology.

But without knowing what's going on in that person's life, without knowing what community they're in, without knowing, you know, maybe that is the only halfway biblically sound church within a hundred miles of where they live.

And so I wouldn't say that it's never appropriate to leave a church. I've left churches because of unsound theology.

And so I think that there does come a time where you have to, you know, you have to hold the line. You have to say, you know, this is it.

I'm not going to allow my family to be under unsound teaching. But I also think that that is a decision that should be entered into carefully because you're cutting yourself off from a body and moving to another body.

And so I think that requires patient pastoral counsel based on a lot of information.

And that's all I wanted to say. Yeah. And of course, I think the gist of the question was somebody asking a question about these specific points, right?

And so the question was answered based on those specific points. But you do bring up a great understanding, right?

Because I do know of situations of people who have asked questions of advice of others, right?

To make decisions in life. And yet in the background, like you said, they might be going through the divorce and looking for an excuse.

Right. Yeah. And that's... It's very wise counsel that you're giving. And it just, it gives us more thought process, right?

And how we understand from a pastoral perspective, dealing with these situations. Right. Well, when

I come into a counseling situation, and I've talked to Drew about this before, which

I talked through everything that was going on in your situation, Drew. I mean, obviously that is the right answer in that situation based on the details that we discussed.

But when I come into a counseling type situation with a person, one of the questions you always have to ask is, is this person asking for my advice or are they asking for permission?

And those are two very different things. You often find yourself, I'm not saying that this woman is trying to look for permission to leave her church.

I don't know her. So she's probably just asking an honest question. You guys are trying to give an honest answer. So, but there are often instances and you run into them when you're involved in pastoral ministry, where you bump into people that are asking, they're really asking for permission.

They don't really want your advice. They're looking for somebody to tell them to take the action that they want to take.

And then once they have that, that's all they need. And then they're going to take that. Yeah. And of course, also to be fair on the other side, right, that, you know, you run a, you're a, you're a biblically solid pastor.

And while we may not agree on every, every fine point of theology, your, your church is a, is a very good church led by a pastor who cares about his flock and has good theology.

And so, you know, you're going to come at it from a perspective of if somebody is trying to leave your church for, for something, you're like, why?

Right. I mean, like what's going on. So I understand your perspective there. And of course, again, going back to the side of Melissa's side, if you have a pastor who is, who's open, right.

About being a cessationist who believes God still speaks to people. I mean, that itself is a fundamental problem that regardless of whether she's going through divorce or, or any of those things, right.

Potentially that we still have to deal with the matter at hand that this is, is this a qualified pastor first and foremost?

Yeah. So it's a complex issue. And so I appreciate you, you coming in now,

Melissa did write in this just a few moments ago. She said, I appreciate Darren's point of view and don't really disagree.

Unfortunately, we, my husband and I have already established that there are no leaders in the church that will give biblical counsel.

I'd hope that this pastor would be an exception, but that does not seem to be the case. So. See, that's a sad, that's a very, very sad situation.

I'm really, really sorry to hear that. Yeah. And definitely, definitely want to cover her in prayers.

They figure out what to do, you know, moving forward. So I'm disappointed to hear that as a pastor and I always forgive me.

I look at the screen rather than the camera cause I don't do these very often, but I'm always disappointed to hear that as a pastor that a person is in that kind of context.

But I appreciate all you guys. I appreciate the discussion that we're having up until now.

And I love you guys. Appreciate the content that you're putting out here. We love you too. Thanks for coming on.

Give the other sort of the counter or other side, so to speak. So yeah, no, that's, that's very fair.

It's, it's good. And this is what this show is about, right? Is for people to learn and see all the sides on things. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. There definitely is a difference though, between leaving a good church versus leaving one that has, has problems right from the outset.

So absolutely. So I guess on that, we're probably running up to a time.

We should be a closing up shot. If I know Chris, you got to get going. So I'm just going to say, does anybody have anything final to say here before we end the broadcast?

Maybe Darren. I will mention his sponsor because on my bed that I'm heading to when

I leave here is a, my pillow. And every night, every night

I lay my head on that, my pillow and I drift to sleep soundly. Yeah.

Well, I'm so, I am such a bad striving fraternity member because I have not talked about my pillow once, but I will be going to sleep on my pillow here in just a few minutes.

So it is yes. Go to my pillow .com use SFE as your code.

You will get a great discount by using the SFE discount code and buy yourself some new pillows.

I guess the first thing I would say is given as somebody who's not regularly on the show, I have a, my pillow.

So I don't know. I love the, I love the discussion.

I'm not going to get in since I just joined, I'm not going to get into a whole lot of sharing my thoughts because I don't want to blow up and restart the discussion, but I love you guys.

I appreciate you having me on and I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to share that comment with you guys. So you're welcome.

Yeah, brother. John, do you have anything to say or want to show us a chicken or anything tonight? You know,

I'm at work, so I don't have any chickens with me right now. Sorry. That is so sad.

You got to bring on one of these days. One day, one day, if you guys actually, well,

I'll see if my work can schedule me off of Thursdays and we'll see. But yep.

Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Chris, anything last to say? Yeah.

I'll, I'll, I'll leave us with a, with a Martin Lloyd Jones quote, a quote, are we primarily concerned about the size of the church or the purity of the church, both in doctrine and in life?

Leave it there. That's great. And Josiah, I'll give you the, the last words.

Just, just it, hermeneutic salt boils down to read the Bible in context.

It, it, that's, that's really what it's all about. It's not about hearing a special voice from God.

It's not about, you know, taking your Bible and putting your finger in some passage, you might get Judas killed himself.

And that's not something you really want to follow. You need to be reading the Bible in context.

And the, again, the, the, the best way, best way to do that is to just read the

Bible, read, read a whole book, read the whole letter, look at it in its genre, and also buy my books on, on striving for eternity.

That'll, that'll really make you a, a great Bible scholar there. Yeah. I love shameless blogs, but you are right.

Those are great books. So that's right. We want to thank you for joining matter of the hour.

I mean, uh, sorry, you were saying something, Anthony kind of turned into it. I was just going to say that, uh,

I know the plans I have for you plans to prosper you and that's a harmony plans to give you a future to hope.

So, uh, we can, we can end on that, right? Sure. For Israel.

Sorry. Had a, had a third out there. Please. Nobody take me serious on that. We'll talk about that next week. Jeremiah 29, 11, the most abused

Bible verse in the world today on that y 'all have a good night. Thank you.

Guests for coming on. Thank you, Josiah. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Darren at the end. And thank you, Drew. So have a good night.