When it comes to the Word of God, almost everyone has an opinion.
Some are right, many are wrong, and a whole slew of others have questions.
Questions about difficult passages, questions about doctrine, questions about the Word of God itself.
The problem is, when people rely on bozos to get those questions answered,
it leads them down a path in which oftentimes there is no return.
And YouTube is filled with bozos, from Mike Winger to David Platt.
You can find a large supply of a effeminate dude who thinks he understands the Bible all over the internet.
But there's also Catholics, Pentecostals, Calvinists, liberal, non-evangelicals, Methodists.
Hell, even some Muslims get up there and post some videos to act as an apologist for their idiotic false religion.
Yes, everyone, indeed, has an opinion.
But it's important for us as Christians to get answers from those who actually align with Scripture, or even better, from Scripture itself.
And if you really want to talk to someone about it, make sure you ask an individual who has the Baptist bias.
Thanks for joining us on The Baptist Bias. I'm your host, Pastor Shelley.
We've got a unique show. We're going to be doing a Bible Q&A.
So we're actually going to be taking calls. 231-Baptist, you can call in.
We'll also be opening up spaces and integrating it into the show.
And so if you're in our spaces, you can join us.
We can try to add you as a speaker and you can ask your questions and interact with us on the show as well.
And if you have questions, you can put them in the chat.
So we've got the rumble chat going as well.
I'm here with my co-host, Ben the Baptist.
How's it going, Ben?
It's great to be here for this Bible Q&A.
We have no idea what questions will be coming at us tonight, but I can guarantee you this.
We will try to offer an answer.
I have a question.
I'm sure those of you listening do as well.
So make sure you file into the "x" spaces that we have up and running right now.
And I'll be monitoring the chat over on Rumble as well.
And we need your help tonight to make this show a success.
Post your questions in the Rumble chat.
Log on to the "x" spaces.
I do believe we may also take some calls later.
And so be willing to participate and ready as well.
Pastor Shelly, I'm going to throw it back over to you.
You know, I already see someone posted a question in the chat.
And I just want to answer this one.
So I'm going to go ahead and read this question.
It says, "J Tank, please let me know how synthwave music is satanic, worldly music."
That is a question.
I don't know how to answer that because I don't know that that's necessarily true.
So, you know, here's the thing.
It's kind of funny, we're experimenting.
Some of the people on our crew and some of our staff were experimenting with AI and just kind of seeing how it works.
So they just took sections of the Bible and threw it into AI and tried out some different samples of some music.
And it ended up coming out and it sounded pretty good, some of the different samples.
In fact, I think that we ended up making samples of almost every kind of style and genre.
But it's probably just leaning towards one of the crew members pace and I thought it sounded good.
And so we decided we would just kind of put it on as a teaser for the show since we were just playing like instrumental random music.
We were like, why don't we just play this? This seems even better.
And so we started playing it and then a lot of people actually said, hey, I really like this.
Why don't you, you know, share where you got it or what is it?
So I think they asked, can we put it on the website? I was like, sure, just put on the website.
If people want to grab it or listen to it, whatever, I don't care.
And so they put it up there. And then there's all these people that are just like,
Pastor Shelley's so wicked and so evil and making satanic music.
And I'm just like, it's literally just the Psalms put to music.
I don't really, I don't know if I understand why it's so satanic entirely,
but I guess some people just really want to pick me apart or, you know,
of course the whole world's dying going to hell in a hand basket bin.
And the most important thing is that we don't ever put King James Bible lyrics
to music that's non like hymn style or something, right?
I mean, isn't that the biggest issue?
Oh man, sorry, I just, I always laugh when you make that point because it's just so true.
It kind of puts things in perspective.
The whole world's dying and going to hell.
America especially is going to hell in a hand basket right now on a bobsled straight there.
We are very possibly going to select because she ain't going to be elected.
They're going to put her in there. Kamala Harris is going to cheat her way into office
and bring the United States one step closer to a communist state.
And people want to nitpick about AI music potentially being satanic.
Look, if you don't like it, there's personal taste, and I get that.
I have my own personal taste in music styles.
I've always liked country music, for example, things like that.
So I get that there's personal taste, but I'm not going to sit here and say that
if your personal taste conflicts with mine that you're in sin or violating scripture.
Hey, some people like vanilla ice cream, other people like strawberry, you know,
some like chocolate. You're not violating scripture if you happen to like chocolate ice cream.
You know, I like vanilla ice cream.
Well, I mean, here's the thing.
Like, I'm definitely not replacing the Psalms and hymns that we sing in our church with other music.
So, you know, it's kind of a silly thing.
It's just like if you like anything outside of a church setting, somehow it's satanic now or something,
you know, I guess people are going to get mad because if you realize our documentary film, The Preserved Bible,
we actually used instrumental music that was not Psalms and hymns as background music.
In fact, one of the scores is kind of coming from Inception.
So now, obviously, we promote Inception and we promote all these evil things.
The fact that you even eat ice cream, I mean, how wicked, right?
I mean, isn't there like a context of like in church versus not in church?
Like it's probably inappropriate to just be like gorging on ice cream
and looking at your phone while in a church service.
But does that mean that eating ice cream or looking at your phone is wrong?
Yeah, that's preposterous.
Think about this.
Or how about this? How about just dressing in a casual manner?
I was just going to say that.
I don't dress in a casual manner behind the pulpit.
Yeah, you wear a t-shirt and shorts, I'm sure, in your personal life,
but you wouldn't walk into the house of God like that.
Right. And I'm sure in times past I've criticized some churches
for having a pretty worldly-style music,
specifically in the grudge to their lyrics
and how they're not really using the Bible.
But that's in the context of the church service.
And I've even tried to say,
I don't know that you could say that's necessarily wrong.
It's just that it's not the best.
It's not the most God-honoring.
It's not the most Spirit-filled.
And so it makes sense that we're going to try
and sing the songs that are the most Spirit-filled.
I mean, I even,
I listened back to a little bit of a sermon I had
where I talked about drums, and I'm like,
I'm not going to use drums in our church services,
but I can't say that drums are wicked or satanic or evil.
And if another church used drums,
I can't even say that that's necessarily wrong.
But at the end of the day,
it's like, you know, some people may just say
like drums are literally satanic.
Hey, I want to check and see
that our space is working.
If you're in our spaces and
it sounds good, give us a thumbs up.
If you can't hear us, thumbs down.
I don't even know if they could know how to do that
if they can't hear me. But if you
can hear me in the spaces, okay, good.
Sounds like the space is working well.
I invited some people to speak.
If you would like to speak, you can join
us and you can ask your questions
or give us some comments.
You can always join us at
@BandPastor on Twitter and you can
find the space. Also, there's some
questions people already put in the rumble.
You can also call in. So we're going to be prioritizing
our call-ins and spaces
but then we'll also go to the
live chat questions.
You can call us at 231-Baptist.
It's actually pinned in the
live chat if you want to see what that number is.
If you don't know how the letters A, B
and C work, you can figure it out
right there. It's got it spelled out for you.
227-8478.
So it's 231-
227-8478
or 231-Babdus.
You can call in and we'd love
to get your comments.
Ben, I'm going to go throw it back over to you.
I'm going to let you kind of drive the train here on some of these
questions as far as where
you want to go or start with. You said you had a question.
It looks like there's some questions in the chat.
Go ahead. Yeah, there's a few questions
in the chat and so
I'll go ahead and read them. Did I
answer the question on how satanic the music was?
Did we conclude that? I think we concluded that.
And the point you made,
it was like you were reading my mind because I was
going to bring up about how
obviously the way that you dress, you're not in a
suit and tie 24/7.
You're not in a suit and tie right now
in fact. And yet
in the house of God that's how you show
up every time. So there's
differences, there's a distinction there
between what you would do outside
of church versus what you would do inside
of church and I think that's obvious. But again,
for me it's personal taste. Maybe you
don't like it because you just, you're not
into synth wave or whatever it's even
called. I don't even know what it's called. Maybe you're not
into that. Yeah, I would be
offended if it's country style just because I don't like country music
but I couldn't say that it's evil or
wicked or satanic. I mean this
would be like if you were saying like beans and chili
is satanic. It's not satanic,
it's just a bad idea. Sure, it's just
extremely wicked. There's a difference. Yeah, like
I would kind of find it a little bit
distasteful when people do it in a rap style.
But at the same time, can I really
say that that's like evil or satanic
or something? I just wouldn't
like it. You know, God allowed us to create
music and do whatever we want.
I don't think there's like a... Some people have even said
there's a satanic tempo.
You can have tempo be satanic
and stuff like that. Obviously, I wouldn't
want to necessarily take the most
satanic music
and then just pair that with King
James lyrics. That might be a little weird.
So don't hear me wrong, but I'm just saying
in general, I don't think
that you can really get, you can take this
too far and start creating
doctrines which are, you know, basically
the traditions of men. You're teaching for doctrines
the commandments of men here. Again,
we're not talking about the sermon,
the setting of church.
You know, like, what was his name from?
Oh, man, what's the guy
that did Highway to Hell?
AC/DC? Yeah, and he's
a drunkard. He got thrown out of his own church.
Is it like New Spring or
something like that? I'm going to think
of this guy's name here in just a second.
There was some guy that...
What's that guy's name? Francis Chan.
No, he's Asian.
We'll have to look it up. He's Asian?
What the hell does that have to do with anything? Francis
Chan's Asian. Let me... This is a
tall white guy. Okay.
I'll look it up. Give me a question. While you
search for that, I'm going to look at the chat room
here, and we see a question from somebody
who calls themselves New
IFB. It's a good name.
"In Judges, when Micah
makes the Levite to his priest..."
First, we see that the Levite is like
a son to Micah, but we also see
he's described as a father and priest.
His father here used like
teacher. Do you have a
Bible verse? Well, he didn't put a Bible verse, but
it's Judges 17, I believe, is what he's
referring to. I'll look it up here
on the screen. I don't know if you can... Can you pull up
the other window that has my screen on
there? Yeah, we can keep this up.
It was in...
You know, I might have to go to the older setting to
go quicker. This was in Judges
that we're talking about. I just want to pull it up
on the screen just so people can kind of see, too.
If you're in our spaces, of course, we'd love for you to
call, you know, call in and talk and
listen, but you can also see the video
on... Judges chapter 17
and verse 10, "And Micah said unto
him, Dwell with me, and be unto me a father
and a priest, and I will give thee
ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit
of apparel, and thy vitals."
So the Levite went in, and the question is,
is father here used like
teacher? I mean, to me
father can just mean anybody who's
an authority or ruler, so
I would say that is most
likely what it's referring to,
but Pastor Shelley, if you have a
deferring view, then
feel free to offer
yours.
I think it's an interesting question. I don't know that I've ever
considered it until, you know, being asked.
Honestly, to me,
it doesn't really matter
in one context, because
what Micah's doing is wrong.
He's just like ordaining himself
a Levite as a priest, which is not
biblical. This is a
disaster story. And
you know, it does seem though
in verse 10 that he's, it's
a spiritual context in which he's applying
father, which Jesus said that
you're supposed to call no man father on the
earth. And so
I think that it's probably an inappropriate
title anyways. We don't see that
as an example anywhere really in the
Bible in a good light.
There are a couple times where the
Apostle Paul references
him and Timothy in like a father son style
relationship, even in a
spiritual context. And so it's like
someone that's kind of leading,
guiding, maybe a begetting
in a soul winning context
or something like that. But
generally speaking, you know
I don't think it's really a biblical
concept to be calling anybody your father
as a title
if you're using it in like a
metaphor, like this guy's
kind of like a father unto me. You're just
saying this is someone that's guided
me, protected me, led me, taught
me. That's what a father does, right? A father
is there to protect you, shield you,
guide, teach, instruct,
discipline, those kind of
different attributes is what a father
does and so that's typically
what people mean. Sometimes
someone's not your actual physical father
but they are, they're like
a father unto you
and what they kind of took you along, taught
you, cared for you, provided for you,
protected you. So
I think that's the context but in
a spiritual framework
it's, hey come tell me
how to live my life and protect
me and guard me and guide me but
honestly I don't even know that it's
necessarily a proper use, he's probably
just saying stupid stuff
using flattery to attract
this Levite. What do you think about that
response? Yeah, I mean that checks out and
obviously in Judges Chapter 17
we have false religion being
set up there and so
there's a lot of parallels actually between
the false religion that Micah sets up
and the Catholic Church.
You could argue that you could apply it to the Catholic
Church so that's great.
There's another one that I think is interesting
if you want to move on to the next question. Well, I think we got a speaker
let's go ahead and see if we can move to a speaker here
we have in spaces.
Nathaniel, how's it going
Nathaniel, see if you can chat with us
G'day guys
I'm keen to hear your thoughts on Revelation
chapter 7, verse 9
Revelation chapter 7, verse 9
Yes, it says
"After this I beheld and
lo, a great multitude which no man could
number, of all nations and
kindreds and people and tongues
stood before the throne and
before the Lamb, clothed with white robes
and palms in their hands."
I want to know what your thoughts
on languages in heaven
or in the millennial reign and onwards
are. Do you think
God will supernaturally reverse
the division of languages which
happened at the Tower of Babel?
Or alternatively, do you think
various languages will continue
to exist and God will allow
all believers to communicate
through the miracle of tongues?
I think that's a really hard question to answer
because I don't think that we know.
I think it's a really good question.
I would lean towards that
languages will continue to exist
in a diverse manner.
Now I think the biggest question would be
do we all just kind of
have the ability or wisdom instantly
to understand each other?
You know, you kind of have the
apostles being filled with the Holy Spirit
and they're able to speak in other tongues
which they had not previously studied or learned.
So in our glorified state
do we have this ability to
in a sense communicate in any language
but then we all have kind of our
preference as far as our mother tongue.
Maybe that's
an answer to your question.
But honestly
I don't know because
I don't see anything contradicting
the idea of multiple languages
continuing.
And to me
God did this to have separate nations
and it seems like at least during the millennial reign
that we're still going to have separate nations.
Post that, I have no idea.
Do you have an opinion on that Ben?
I lean toward the idea that there's going to be
separate nations and separate tongues
even going into eternity.
It's just that, and this is pure speculation
on my part, we'll just be able to
understand each other through
the act, similar to the
Acts chapter 2 day of Pentecost
where a bunch
of people were hearing each other
in different languages yet they were able to
understand miraculously. I would
lean toward that direction that there will still be
different tongues and nations
it's just that we'll be able to understand each other
miraculously in eternity
future. What is your opinion
Nathaniel? I
tend to lean towards what Ben is saying
there, but I was interested to hear
your thoughts and perhaps if you had
a different view. I don't think we had
a different view did we? Did we disagree
on that Ben? Um, I don't
believe we did. Okay I just want to make sure
I just want to make sure it sounded like you were agreeing with
what I said too. I don't think everyone considered this.
Um, but I just wanted to make sure
so I mean
very interesting question
I think that, I think that
the flip side is something
that I hear often is
I've heard people say like we're all going to speak Hebrew
in heaven. Like it's all going to go back to
Hebrew or something but I just don't
think that that's true plus
you know the Bible itself is pretty much
written in Hebrew and Greek so I
don't think that um, it makes
sense that it's going to only be one
language. I think it makes more sense
that it's going to be multiple languages
and even Jesus Christ himself, if we just take
the New Testament and isolate it
he brings up the Jot and Tittle and the
Gospels and then he brings up Alpha and
Omega in the book of Revelation
so he's talking about different
tongues in different languages. Additionally
the Bible brings up different tongues
and it talks about his name being
written on, above his head
the title being written on the cross above
in multiple languages and that would
almost like make no sense if we just
only had one language. So to
me it makes more sense that we're going to
kind of continue with maybe these base
root languages and
so we're going to just because
people speak them natively they're going to stick
with us forever in eternity potentially.
I don't know what do you think about those comments Ben?
Yeah I would agree with that. I think that
they'll stick with us going into eternity
future and we'll
be able to understand miraculously
each other even if perhaps
you never studied that language on this earth
you'll be able to understand another person
who speaks a different language
that you never studied in this life.
Here's a more interesting
nuance to this because
listening to Nathaniel it sounds like he
might be from Australia.
Is everybody going to speak proper English?
Or are we still going to have the Australian accent?
That's the more important question.
Oh mate this is a bit rough.
I'm actually tuning in from New Zealand.
Oh New Zealand, okay.
Now here's the thing, do you take offence
if someone thinks you have an Australian accent
if you're from New Zealand? Is it different?
It's like they would ask you if you're Canadian
if you're over here.
So that's a hard diss,
obviously.
No I'm just kidding, that's funny.
I mean I was thinking New Zealand, Australia,
same thing.
That's funny. Do you have any other questions?
No that's all, thanks guys, appreciate it.
Thanks Nathaniel, thanks for tuning in
and chatting with us.
Participating, we appreciate the question.
He's in our spaces folks, and if you want to
we can add some more speakers into our spaces.
We also have our phone number
where we're going to be taking some calls.
And we have clips too, if you want
to play some clips.
Yeah, we have our phone number pinned
to the chat, 231Baptist,
and we have a caller,
Johnny from Sacramento,
and he wants to
ask a question. I don't think it's necessarily
directly related to the Bible, but
hey, we'll take the question.
Johnny, how's it going? Good, how's it going, Pastor Shelley?
Doing great. I'm from Verity Baptist
Church. Awesome. Y'all had a
great, y'all had like a big service recently.
Y'all celebrated 14 years. I think I saw
y'all had like over 350 people
in the service. That's great. Yeah, we did.
We had an office there. So, what's your
question? My question is,
do you guys think that Trump
is part of the New World Order
or any, I know where you stand, Ben,
but mostly to Pastor Shelley,
do you think that Trump is part of
some satanic cult or
New World Order or Illuminati?
Or do you think he's like a puppet
for the spiritual wickedness
in high places? Pastor Shelley, what do you think?
Yeah, I would guess
if I had to decide right now,
I'd say he's more of like a pawn
of forces. So,
I think that there's too many
negative things that have happened to him
in the last few years
that it would be hard
for me to believe that he's just willingly
going along with a lot of it.
Of course, it's hard to know exactly what happened
with that first assassination attempt,
but it seems like he really got
shot in the ear, and
if that's true, I just don't think
that that was staged. I don't think that
you can have someone nick your
ear with a rifle
from that far away. I don't think anybody would be wanting to try
that. So, you know,
he really got shot at, you know,
and again, he's been through all this law fair.
He's had
properties taken away from him in the New York
cases.
He's had to go to jail. Like, he was literally
arrested. And they shot him, or they
tried to shoot him again a few days ago. Yeah, I don't
know much about that news story, but
I'm just saying, like, there's a lot of things that
to me, I'm just like, I don't see
why if I was evil and wicked. And they're
like, hey, we want to arrest you and throw you in
jail and lie about you and take everything
away, just so you can lose
the election and another rigged election. Do you want
to do it? I mean, it's like, what does
he gain from that? I just don't see
how he would be signing up
for that. Plus, my world
view is that I don't think that there's only one
person in power until it's the Antichrist.
So I think that there's always
multiple forces, dark forces,
vying for power, and they're
all trying to get a little bit more power,
and that there's still a diversity
of strength and power.
And I even think even with the Ten Kings, there's still
some power that is spread out in the world
until they all decide to give
their power under the beast. And that's
when we finally have the, quote,
guy behind the curtain, or the
individual that wields all the power. I mean,
the Bible talks about the devil giving
the Antichrist his seat and his power and his
authority, and I don't think that the devil
had given that to a singular individual
prior to that particular
time. I think the devil is the only person behind
the curtain that wields all the power,
and he has several different minions at his disposal.
But those minions don't necessarily
understand what they're doing, and they're all vying for
more power and authority
simultaneously. And so, it's
a constant cutthroat situation.
Lots of people are there just
burning each other and turning on each other.
So, I think it's possible that
there's dark forces on both sides of
the election and our government,
and that they don't even necessarily
like each other. That would be my personal
opinion. Is that different than what you think,
Ben? Or, I don't even know
what you stand on this. I mean, I think
that he's definitely
a Zionist puppet
in the sense that he's going to do
the bidding of political
Zionism. I don't believe that
he's like, and people disagree, that's
okay, but I don't necessarily
believe that he's in the New World Order
or necessarily like part
of the New World Order cabal, just because
of all the persecution and the fact that they've tried
to kill him twice now and all the
lawfare and things of that nature. But it doesn't
mean that he isn't controlled in other
aspects. I think he's controlled on the
COVID vaccine issue. He's definitely controlled
on political Zionism.
So there's
ways in which they're able to influence
his policy decisions
for sure. But as far
as the political establishment is
concerned or the ruling class New
World Order establishment,
I don't see him as part of that
because of all the hatred and vitriol
that has spewed his way on a
24/7 basis
by the corporate media.
He's obviously got to be controlled to some extent.
The question is how much.
I don't know. Is that kind of your
opinion or do you think something different
there Johnny?
You guys actually shed a little light on that
because honestly I thought
my view was before I talked
to you guys that he was full blown New World Order
Illuminati but you guys actually
put a lot of light on
his persecution and things that you
can go and write for him. So that makes a lot
of sense so yeah I'm kind of up in the air now
about that. You guys shed a little light on that.
Yeah obviously I think the New World Order
is kind of just the devils
the mastermind really behind all that
and he's just using
a lot of chess pieces on the board
and that's why I use
the term pawn that
trumps just a particular pawn on the
on the board being wielded
and controlled by the devil. I mean the Bible
literally talks about how the devil can
take captive a people at his will
and specifically that we were all
children of disobedience when we were
unsaved. I believe Trump is unsaved
and so I think that the devil can
kind of move the pieces
as he sees fit until people decide
to get saved and the truth shall make you free.
So obviously there's some level
of control but I kind
of think that he opposes
the leftist agenda
that doesn't mean that he couldn't still be
used to bring in the Antichrist. I
think that you know if you study
German history that
Hitler is kind of like a in a
sense like an Antichrist type figure
but at the same time he destroyed
a lot of leftism and a lot of even
Satanic type people
in his rise to power.
So God can sometimes use really wicked people
to destroy other wicked people and it's kind of
a kind of just interesting way that
God just tosses the chessboard
up and just destroys whatever the devil
is working on.
But, no, interesting question.
Thanks so much for calling in. Is there
anything else you wanted to ask?
Nothing else. I just wanted to say thank you so much,
Pastor Shelley, and thank you, Ben,
for all your guys' hard work.
And just thank you so much for everything that you put out there.
It's really informational.
You guys are helping the cause of Christ.
And just thank you so much. And Pastor Shelley,
your sermon at the Red Hot Preaching Conference
was epic.
It caused me to try to eat a little more
healthier.
That's good.
Thanks for the comments. Thanks for being a listener
and watching the show and calling in.
Yep, thank you.
Well, have a good night. God bless.
Looks like we got another speaker here
in our spaces.
And so, if you'd like to join our spaces,
you can at BandPastor.
We can try to invite you or you can ask
to be a speaker and you can put your questions
in here as well.
We got another speaker, Dim Sun Soup.
What's up?
Nice to meet you.
Big sinner here.
Nice to meet everybody.
You know, through
the grace of Yeshua,
I'm saved and all that good stuff.
Not to say
I'm not perfect.
I'm probably
his favorite
because I'm such a sinner.
What do you think about the name
of Jesus?
Yeshua, the Hebrew.
You gotta know the name.
You can call, you can do whatever you want.
Of course.
Do you have a question for us tonight?
Yes.
Well, I had a comment.
I was going to talk about eternity.
I believe eternity
is, you know,
we're all, so I guess this goes
against what, because you're
a pastor,
a Baptist pastor, so
you believe in like, you know,
and all that good stuff,
but are we, like,
this eternity,
I mean, we're just here, we're just, you know,
all the conspiracy, blah blah blah,
I'm that guy, but like, you know, we're just
eternal beings,
we're just here in this, they call it
a prison planet, whatever you want to call it, you know,
that world, but
so I guess, no, I don't have a question, I'm just
kind of, you know, chilling, listening.
Alright, well thank you so much for your input.
I have something to say.
Shelley, your response, what do you think?
Well, let me respond to something that you said there.
I do believe that we're all
eternal, in the sense that
you're either going to eternally live in
heaven, or you're going to eternally live
in hell. And
I guess, you know, the Bible does talk about the
meek shall inherit the earth, so
of course those that
go to heaven won't stay there, we're going to
eventually come back down to the earth and
live on the new heaven and new earth, but
it's really important to get saved. And of course
the gospel is believing in Jesus Christ,
there's none other name
given among men, whereby we must be saved
and that name is Jesus Christ, and of course
it's important to
recognize that that's the most important
decision you can make in your life. It does say
if you don't come through his name
you must know the name, like the name
is very important, it's not a Yahweh
I'm not going that way
because that's your, see
but you gotta go through
the son, you get to the father
the son's name is Yahweh
is Yahshua, not Jesus Christ
well see I
I think his name
if we're gonna go strictly based on what the New Testament
says, you know the New Testament
is written in Greek
hold on, I thought Jesus was okay
I asked you earlier, now you're switching
it up on me here
Jesus is okay
I'm just saying
because you seem
to know the Bible, I mean you're a pastor
but it does say
you know, through the name
the name, name, name
right, but when I read that verse
it also provides his name in that text
and it's Jesus, like I have a King James Bible
I read that verse and then it says Jesus
I think you could say anybody's
a companion Bible
I don't know what that is
oh wow, so you don't know much
alright, okay
well, we're gonna move on to another question
since he doesn't know much, just go to a different screen
we're gonna go to some different people
go to some different questions, so
thanks for joining in
if you
if you want to ask us a question
we'll add you as a speaker
and I don't mind someone providing some comments
but we just want to keep it mostly to questions
because we got a lot of people popping in questions in here
and be sober please
and, you know, we don't know
but sure, the companion Bible
have you heard of this one, Ben?
there's a lot of translations out there
of this individual
before and I've certainly never heard of the
companion Bible
it looks like it came out in
does it literally say Yeshua instead of Jesus?
it says it came out in 1990
it's E.W. Bullinger
I don't know if you can pull it up on my screen
you can keep my screen up there
because I'll just keep the chats and stuff
a direct descendant of a great Swiss reformer
I guess I would be surprised if this guy
actually read this thing
because of being of a Swiss and reformer influence
he didn't seem like he had much of a reformed leaning
here's the issue
is that when people start saying
well it's actually not Jesus
it's Yahshua or something like that
I get personally offended
the Bible says
Philippians chapter 2
wherefore God also hath highly exalted him
and given him a name which is above
every name that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow
and things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth
and so the name of Jesus Christ
is not something to sit there and tell me
that it's bad or
to insult me for believing in
or anything like that because at the end of the day
you're spitting in the face of Christ when you do that
so I get personally offended
listening to somebody say oh his name isn't Jesus
don't talk badly
about the name of Jesus Christ
Amen. You know, another thing
I think you can say Jesus name in multiple languages
obviously there's people that never heard the name of Jesus
in the sense that maybe they live in
another country that doesn't
use English and so they've heard the name
you know Jesus
or if you were in a Greek country
Jesus. I think
though that you know for most Hebrew speaking
people they say Yeshua
so I don't know what variation
of his Yahya'shua or whatever he was
trying to say
didn't seem like it was coming
from a place of sincerity honestly
but at the same time
people need to recognize that salvation
is only by trusting in
Jesus Christ
and that name is important
but the King James Bible is clear
this is what I don't like about this doctrine for sure
you'd basically have to believe that
everybody before 1990 had the wrong name
if I have to have the
"right name"
and it's not Jesus
then you're damning every English speaker
for the last 400 years
how is that even possible
if we were all unsaved for 400 years
how did anybody even get staved again
because faith comes by faith, right?
faith is shared by faith
so faith comes by hearing
I mean, isn't it shared
in Romans chapter 1, faith to faith?
yeah, the righteousness of God is revealed
so if every English person was unsaved
then how did you get that spark again?
it wasn't until 1990
with the Swiss Revolt
it kind of sounds like a cult actually
to sit there and say that
it's blaspheming his name
and it's an attack on the word of God
because then every single King James Bible
and every Bible that came before it was wrong
you know, give me a break on this nonsense
let's just go to something else
alright, I think we added another speaker
I don't know if they're in there or not
I tried to add another speaker in here
1611 Populous, okay
let's go ahead
as we're getting him queued up
in here
let's see if we can get
another caller, we have a caller
we have Phil from
it looks like California
I guess California just loves us or something
I don't know what this is about
let's see if we can get Phil in line, hey Phil how's it going?
Hi gentlemen, this is Bill actually from
First Works Baptist Church LA, how are you guys doing tonight?
Bill! Great, sorry
I said Phil, it's Bill, you know
it all rhymes
No worries, you guys are a couple letters
off, no worries
Good talking to you guys, Patrick Shelley
We spoke at a roundtable
this past year at the Red Hot and then Ben
we spoke a few times at
the last two Red Hots, not this
past one. I'll have to take your word for it
because I don't remember
It's hard to see the face
It was definitely, whatever it was
I'm sure it was great to meet you there, so appreciate it
Yeah, no worries, you guys meet a lot of people
The question is
I wanted to see what you guys thought about
I know the Bible doesn't really specifically say
and I had a conversation about
this with Pastor Buzarnsky last week
and he had some interesting thoughts
I don't even know if it's a biblical term, the age
of accountability, what do you guys think
about what the Bible either
speculates or kind of hints at as
to what age do you think
a person would be sent to hell
without salvation, would it be like in the teen years
early twenties, what do you think?
Well, you know, I remember growing
up hearing this doctrine and I remember
trying to find it in my Bible
and then I realized that there is no such
thing as like an age of accountability
as far as a proof text.
I think that it's more of an indirect
understanding. So
you kind of have a couple passages
to look at. I think there's one in Job
and then
David also brings up
a particular passage where he says that
he can't come to me, but I
I'll go to him.
I want to see if I can
find that real quick and pull it up.
But I believe
what would that be in like 2 Samuel
chapter 12. Let's see.
Yeah, so in 2 Samuel chapter
12 verse 22 it says
So I think from inference
or from indirect
context reading here we can
kind of assume that
this young baby that had died
which was a young infant
would have gone to heaven because we know that's where David went
and so David didn't go to hell
the child was obviously alive
and so the question will be like well
how does an infant go to heaven?
An infant can't believe in Jesus Christ
but I believe that you know you could also use a couple
other passages to kind of understand this
there's a passage that
in Romans
where yeah he says I was alive
once
see for I was alive without the law
once but when the commandment came
sin revived and I died
and so the Apostle Paul kind of
insinuates that there's a period in which
we die through sin
and I think that it's kind of modeled through Adam
and Eve is kind of a loose metaphor
how they were in innocence
then once they sinned
they died spiritually and then they needed
to be saved and so
this is the progression of most people
almost everybody has to go through this progression
of innocence, sinning
dying spiritually and then needing to be
saved spiritually before
they die physically. When it comes
to the age, I guess
for me it's whenever you've
kind of crossed that Rubicon of innocence
so when you actually
understand the
consequences of sin and you understand sin
I don't know what that age is
I think that, I believe
that children very young can get
saved. So I would say that I believe
children that are four, five, six
they can understand and believe in Jesus
Christ. I think for most
children four years old is too young
I think that it would take a very precocious
child. I think that
most kids are, it's
probably not very possible until they're about
five or six to really
understand and grasp these concepts
but you know for me
if I have a child
who's you know seven
or eight years old
and they still haven't decided to believe
in Jesus, I would probably
try really hard to you know preach from the
Gospel and explain it to them
because I think you know it's very possible and very
likely that by around
that timeline children could
be held accountable for their actions and you
know I don't know what that age is
I don't even think it's an age personally
I think that it's the individual
because I think someone who is physically handicapped
could be like fifty years old
but mentally only like
three or four years old and I
believe that person would still be in the
innocence category. So like for me
personally I don't even think it's necessarily
an age I think it's more of a
certain awareness
mentally that someone has
to reach and that for
each individual it's probably different
and so you know again I
wouldn't I wouldn't
ever really put a particular age
as like this is the one
for all age
I do think that every
baby that dies goes to heaven
Job talks about
he wishes you know being an untimely
birth being better than him that
wouldn't make sense if they're going to hell
plus it wouldn't make sense if they went to hell because
they literally had no choice
and I'm not Calvinist so
you know that's that's kind of my
response I don't know do you have anything
you have any thoughts Ben on this
question it's kind of a difficult question
I think it's difficult because the scripture
doesn't outright tell us
what age at all that
somebody must cross
in order for them to now
be capable of believing the gospel
we have several different
indications in the Bible lots
of them that babies automatically go to
heaven so the question is
then when does somebody cross the line
to the point
where now they must believe the gospel
to be saved when does somebody become
accountable that's where that term age
of accountability is coming from and
what it's alluding to and I think
that it is
as has already been stated
an individual basis
I think it really does fall
on the individual and it can be
different from person to person
you know my son is four
years old right now and he
definitely does not understand
enough to believe
the gospel he asks me questions like
will Cheetos go to heaven so he
doesn't know anything about what he's
saying and he runs around
are you telling me Cheetos won't be in heaven Ben?
no sorry to break that to you
but you know some people
have brought up the concept of like well
kids will often
run around naked without feeling
any shame and so maybe that's an indication
that they're still in a state of innocence
and can't yet comprehend the
gospel but really it
is a person by
person, case by case
situation and scenario where
there really isn't a
catch-all answer in my opinion.
I don't know, does that kind of answer your questions?
Do you have any other thoughts there, Bill?
No, both your explanations
was spot on. It kind of
coincided with a sermon I heard
recently with Pastor Robinson but
one of the things he mentioned in the sermon, I can't remember
the name of the sermon off the top of my head, but
he had mentioned that he didn't really think God was
as cutthroat where it's let's say
a teenager such as, you know, 13, 14
years old where they died
without being, you know, a chance
to be given the gospel that he would send them to hell.
He kind of pointed to maybe
the biblical age of
an adult which is around 20 so
he was also speculating so I'm not
trying to put words in, you know, speaking for him.
I'm just kind of repeating what I
heard in the sermon and it made a lot of sense
but like you guys had stated tonight, it's
a very difficult one to wrap my
head around. I've known people
who died when they were, you know, very young
always wondering if they were in heaven or
if God was, you know, like you said,
to the point where he just said,
"Hey, you didn't believe
on, you didn't call upon the name of the Lord
while you had a chance." But it kind of
bothers me how long is that chance, you know,
is God, I guess, and Patrick Buzarnsky also
said something, he said, "Hey, you know, at that point
you just got to say it's in God's hands and just
leave it at that." Well, I mean,
you know, one thing that I would say though
is I think we should always try to plan
for the worse and hope for the best.
So, you know, I too
would hope that God's really
gracious in that area from my own
just personal selfishness,
I guess, but it doesn't really
matter what I want or believe. It just matters
what's true. And there are
a few passages that are concerning. I mean, you
have some young children mocking Elijah
and God sends she-bears
to destroy them, and you
kind of have to wonder, like, did some of
them go to hell? The Bible talks about
the curse of children when we look
in the book of Jude
and 2 Peter. It kind of gives this illusion
of evil
children. And so
I would be really careful with that.
While I would like to hope,
I wouldn't want to jeopardize
my children's eternity on
not giving them gospel clearly
when they're seven, eight, nine,
even five and six. I wouldn't
want to wait for them to be a
thirteen-year-old and just be like, "Well, I hope
the cutoff is still fifteen
or something. I would think
that we should have a sense of urgency
and doing our best to try
and get everybody saved."
Well, piggybacking off of this, I have
a question. It's not...
I'm not trying to get weird here,
okay? Don't be weirded out
by the question. I'm already weirded out.
You have babies
who die and they appear
to be adults in heaven. They're adults
in heaven. So is there an
age in your mind, let's say somebody
does die without Christ
and they're younger. Do they
appear as a certain age in hell,
do you think? And I know this is pure speculation
and probably a little bit of a weird question,
but I'm curious. Have you ever thought
about that? Is there a certain age
everyone appears as in hell, maybe?
I don't know, because I
almost feel like age is
limited to this experience and this
vessel. So I would
just assume that everybody
is in the same kind of state.
That our soul and spirit is kind of an ageless
thing. And that when we
get a glorified body, it will probably also not
have an age associated
with it. But that's, again,
pure speculation. I guess there's nothing
really in the Bible. The only reason I bring that up
is I think sometimes people have
issues with maybe a ten-year-old
or something that could have gotten saved and then ended
up going to hell. And it's like,
well, they aren't going to be
appearing as a ten-year-old
in hell, in my mind.
We all have the same age
once you die, you look the same.
Well, according to Peter Ruckman, we're all going to be
thirty-three-year-old exact
replicas of Jesus, but
he said there wouldn't even be women in heaven,
so there you go.
Sorry, Pastor, go ahead.
You hijacked the caller's question.
Bill, any other
comments here? Just one last thing.
I don't want to take up much because I know you got
other questions, but the one thing I was
thinking about overall, just reading the Bible
through, is there doesn't seem
too many examples of
young, I mean, you gave
the example of the she-bears
attacking the young children who were
making fun of Elisha. And that's
one, but there doesn't seem to be too many other
instances of
younger children or say
like, you know, young men, teenagers. I mean,
obviously, there's very rarely
ages given, but I would say
that God's long-suffering, you know,
He gives people a chance.
Everyone's without excuse either way,
but it's just a matter of what age
that is, and I guess there's no sense
speculating on where God is silent.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Yeah, thank you guys for your
time tonight, and I think I recognize that
caller from before, that weirdo that called.
I think that's Kamala Harris's husband.
[laughter]
Well, thank you so much for the call in.
God bless you. Have a
good night.
So Shelly, some would ask if
numbers, where the Bible
refers to men having to be 20 years
old to be part of the
Israelite army,
Numbers chapter 14,
do you think there's any kind of significance
to the age of 20
as it relates to the topic of
the age of accountability? Because some make that
connection. I don't know if
you kind of stumbled around your
questions, so can you state it clearly
one more time? God requires
men to be 20 years old and up to take
part in carnal warfare. Is there
a connection between that and the age of
accountability? Some ask that question.
I'm curious if you have an answer.
No, again, I would assume that the
age of accountability could be as young as
seven or eight potentially in
certain circumstances, so
I don't believe that there
is a clear
line at all, but
and I don't think it is for
it's the same for every single person.
God's a righteous judge, he's going to judge people
how he sees fit.
I don't know, it's sad because a lot of young
people die all the time, so I don't know what the
answer is to that, but I think
that, you know, there should
be, that should just cause us to
all the more preach
the gospel and get people saved, because
whether a guy dies at ten without Christ
or a thousand without Christ, they
still go to hell, and both are a bad
situation, so
let's be honest, most people, once they
get past their youth, aren't even
receptive to the gospel anymore anyways, so
how much more
time do they even really need? I think
that, you know, it's kind of a sad reality,
but it should motivate us to preach the
gospel. I want to go to another caller. We have Logan
from Pennsylvania.
He wants to ask a question kind of related
to what we're talking about, so let's see if we can bring on
Logan. Hey Logan, how's it going? Good, how you guys
doing? Doing great. See, my question
is related to that, but maybe
a bit more light-hearted.
Let me just ask the question, and then I'd
like to read a few verses to
kind of give some context. Do you
believe that children, when they die
as children, grow up in
heaven, or they just kind of
like spontaneously become adults?
Or, let's say if they live to
the rapture, children are
raptured up, and do they, you know, grow
up in heaven? So
I would say that they do
grow up, and it takes time, just like
here on Earth, and according to
Galatians 4, 26,
and 27, the Bible says,
"But Jerusalem which is
above is free,
which is the mother of us all.
For it is written, Rejoice, thou
barren, that beareth not, and break forth
and cry, thou that travailest
not. For the desolate
hath many more children than she
which hath an husband." And so
if the Bible's claiming that the desolate
who didn't even have a husband
on Earth, or, you know,
what they did, and they just didn't have children,
the only way that I could
see that they would ever have children
is if children go to
heaven, and, you know, they grow up
in heaven as children. And
there are literal women in heaven
raising children. Does that make sense?
I want to make sure I understood your last statement there.
Are you saying that you think women are giving birth in heaven?
Or did I mishear you? No, that is
not. No. Raising
the babies of heaven.
Yeah, raising.
Well, I think if we read
Galatians chapter number four
in its context, it's contrasting
heavenly Jerusalem
with physical Jerusalem.
And I believe it's
contrasting the fact that
physical Jerusalem
is not going to have as many
people as spiritual
Jerusalem. So I think that's the
comparison that it's making.
And it's kind of like
in the context of
you know, at one
point Sarah had no children
and then she ends up having children.
And so it's kind of like replacement
theology of
in the New Testament, like the
Gentiles really aren't producing
in any context or any way. But after
the Gospel, you have this like
explosion. And I think that
if we were to go to heaven,
there's going to be way more Gentiles
saved than Jews and
Hebrews. I think that we're going to have
we're going to outnumber them by
and large. And so I think
that's the comparison that it's making. And when
it uses the word children, I think it's
more in the context of offspring, not
their age. So like
if my mom were here, and unfortunately it's not,
but my dad, my dad would say like
if we took a picture, me, him,
and my brother and sister, it'd be like these are my children.
But it's not that
we're kids. It's just that we're his
offspring. So I don't think
that children in verse 27 is relating
to age whatsoever. I think it's just
more a descendant.
And so I don't
I'm not going to say that what you said is
for sure wrong.
I just don't think that this text supports
that idea. I think that
I guess I lean in the opposite
direction though. I probably lean towards
the idea that
when someone dies, they just
like I said earlier in
the other question, I think that your
soul and spirit probably are ageless.
And that they
have a certain level of awareness
or knowledge that's
immediately granted to them. And
therefore they're not necessarily like a baby
and have to learn language and grow
up. But I don't know,
because here would be the question. What would be the
native tongue of a baby that never learned
any language? I mean, I guess
that's kind of a difficult question.
I have no idea. It is speculative.
Ben, do you kind of lean
on the fence on either of these or have an idea?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting
question for sure.
I would say that
when someone dies as a baby
that they would appear to be
the same age as Adam.
You look at Adam
and he was in a perfected state
when he was created and so I would imagine
that everyone who dies probably
looks whatever age he
looked. That's my personal
opinion. I guess one
comment I would make in support of the idea
of an age
in heaven is the idea that it seems
like people in heaven still have their memories
and so those who lived longer
lives would arguably have more memories
to kind of hold on to and
maybe that in a sense ages them
apart from those
who didn't really have an
experience that was memorable
on earth. But generally
speaking I don't know there's going to be a
diversity of
children and babies and
grandmothers. I feel like we're
all kind of
in my mind we're all in
our mature ideal
state. Like whatever our pinnacle
of maturity was and then
we started aging like
right before that aging that's
kind of the state that we're all in.
So whatever that is and I don't know what that is
whether that's 30, 40, 50, something like that.
I would argue like the appearance
I think that babies
would have the appearance of like a 25 or
30 year old. Yeah and I don't even think
like let's just say somebody
had chopped off their arm. I think
they're going to have their arm. If they
were really fat I think they're going to be healthy.
I think if they're really skinny they're going to be really healthy.
I think if they had blemishes they're going to be
corrected and fixed. So I think
we're like going to be in
we're going to look like ourselves but
kind of in the idealistic version
of ourselves and whatever
maturity would be like the ideal
maturity. That would just be my
speculation but I have no idea. A
perfect version of yourself carnally.
Yeah. Whatever that would look like.
What about, I know Jesus brings
it up a couple times in the Gospels
to his disciples when children
would come around and then he would
compare the children to
how people need to be
meek and humble to be saved.
But sometimes he
says it in a way that makes it sound
different where he'll say like
he'll talk about the kingdom of
heaven and then he'll say
"Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Yeah, and he says, what is it?
He talks about children. You know,
suffer little children.
"Come unto me."
Do you know what I'm talking about with suffering little children?
Yeah, yeah.
So Matthew 19, 14 says
but Jesus said suffer little children,
forbid them not to come unto me, for of
such is the kingdom of heaven.
So maybe children in heaven?
Right? Well, I do think so.
I just don't think that means that necessarily
their physical appearance. It's more the innocence
and the soul and the spirit and just
that it's filled with
lots of youthful
spirits and souls, but I don't know that
that means that the souls and spirits are youthful.
I think that it's more of just
in the context of those people
that were killed as
children or a lot of babies.
That innocence.
And so, again,
it's really difficult because, again,
the Bible really focuses in on sinners
and faith
and all of this, and so
when we talk about all these little children and
the age of accountability, it's
not a lot of information, and so it's kind of hard to
ascertain how much of that
is heaven, what percentage of that
is heaven, what that's going to look like.
I'm very interested myself.
I think I look through a glass darkly.
Yeah, we all do in this
aspect, but again, just to be clear,
we're talking about what
age children
appear to be. We all agree
children go to heaven
that are not able to understand
the gospel. It's just a matter
of what's their appearance of
age going to be, if you will.
Thanks so much. Do you have a follow-up
or another question?
Real quick, that we have more
context on. In Isaiah,
I don't remember the chapter. I'm looking it up right now
where it talks about a new heaven, a new earth.
And later on in the
chapter, after talking about the new
heaven and new earth, which is verse
17, and then
after verse 17,
it brings up
verse 20, "There shall be no more
than an infant of days, nor an
old man, that hath not filled his days.
The child shall die a hundred years
old, but the sinner being a hundred
years old shall be accursed."
Is this going back to the millennial
reign, even though we just brought up
the new heaven and new earth?
It's a good question. Yeah, I think
that Isaiah is very difficult
because I think it jumps around a lot as far as
context, but I have interpreted
this verse as being
millennial specifically
and that it's
basically suggesting that children
aren't going to die.
So we got rid of the vaccines,
we got rid of SIDS, right Ben?
Amen. Yeah,
I think it jumps around. Do you think that that's
millennial? I do think it is
talking about the millennial reign. I think sometimes
in Isaiah, it'll start off referring to
the new heaven and new earth, but
then it'll jump back to the millennium, then it'll jump
forward again, so
it's difficult.
That's why it is the meat of the word.
But I do think that it jumps around,
and that particular passage is in reference to the fact
that people will have advanced ages
in the millennium, because
lifespans will be much, much longer.
Well, thanks so much, Logan, for calling
in, and thanks for your questions.
We're going to go ahead and
get to some other questions. If you want to join us
in the
spaces, you can also do that.
We can add you as a speaker. We've got that
on Twitter, or X, at
bandpastor. You can join the
spaces request, or
we can try to send you an invite,
as well as you can call in
231-Baptist.
And we've been kind of neglecting the chat.
Let's see if we can get some of these chat questions
in here, Ben. I feel like they've
been kind of stacking up. And so,
let's go ahead and get
to some of them as well. I have a few that
were asked earlier on that
I thought were interesting. There's one about
Matthew chapter number 18
and verse 6. Who's the question from? This question
is from AlwaysBaptist.
And his question is this, is about
Matthew chapter 18
and verse 6. And he asks,
"Can Matthew 18 and verse
6 also mean in general
anyone who obstructs others
from serving God, or is it only
for pedophiles?"
There's the verse about those who offend children, it would be better
for a millstone. I definitely don't think
it's limited to one particular group.
I think it's anybody that offends a child.
I think that
it can also very
clearly reference a
spiritual offending. You know, people preaching them
false gospels,
trying to cause them to be
led astray away from Christ. I think
that the context is really more
being offended in the sense that they're
stumbling away from the truth of the gospel
and Christ and spirituality
more so than it is even the
physical offending would be my
personal opinion. I think that it obviously
applies to both because I think
when someone is molested or taken advantage
of that it also
can tend
to lead them down a dark path and
cause them to be disgruntled against God and to be
upset and frustrated. But
obviously there's many children that have been
molested, taken advantage of and yet they still
decided to serve God. They
still allowed themselves to heal and get over that
and of course
it doesn't mean that God doesn't love those people
and of course evil
wicked people do some horrible things out there
and I wish we had the death penalty for them
but I think
that it could apply to multiple. Do you have
another suggestion or
tip or opinion on that?
No, you covered it.
What other questions we got? There was one
other question that I thought was worthy
of bringing up and it was from
Y-M-O-U-S
I don't know how to pronounce that.
Is there
any hope for
Gentiles who were born
before Christ
who never heard the gospel nor
would have had the
opportunity?
I believe that we were all saved
through the gospel.
I think that the gospel was preached in the
Old Testament albeit
they may not have had all the details
to talk about
but I believe that the concepts
of we're sinners
we deserve hell but there's a
savior that savior will take
the punishment for us
is mentioned in the Old Testament
and of course you can find all of the doctrines
of the New Testament found in the Old Testament as far as
the cross
as the serpent was lifted up
in the wilderness. That's John
chapter number three. We have
Jonah being in the
well's belly. That's Jesus descending
into hell. And then we have
a multitude of resurrection
pictures even with Jonah specifically
again. Jonah
is spit out by the whale.
We have Joseph coming out
of the pit. We have Daniel coming
out of the lion's den. We have
people literally resurrected
in the Old Testament. And so
you know I also, I have
this opinion, and this is just computer
opinion, but I believe that many
of the verses that we have in the New Testament
may have been preached
in the Old Testament. It just
wasn't pinned down yet. And specifically
a clear example of this would be
in the book of Jude where the Bible
says Enoch prophesied saying
and then it gives a quote of what he said.
He's quoting Jude.
And if you look at Romans,
Romans is basically a conglomerate.
Romans chapter 10 specifically. Romans chapter 10
is a conglomerate of virtually
just all Old Testament quotes
mashed together in a singular narrative.
There's nothing to me
that is stopping any of these
Old Testament saints from being filled with the Spirit of God
and preaching Romans 10
from these Old Testament references.
And even
mentioning all the same concepts
and even doing soul winning in a similar
manner that we do today.
The Bible says there's no new thing under the sun.
So I do believe that the Gospel
is being preached. That's kind of part of this
person's question. I do
believe if someone didn't hear the Gospel
and they
were old enough that they would
go to hell. And here's
how I would explain that. I think
if you go to Romans chapter number one
and maybe I can
pull this up on my screen
as well. I had
never considered what you said about
how in the Old Testament
they were likely preaching
a lot of the same scriptures that we have
in the New Testament and our Bibles.
Well, think about this. Just look at the Apostles.
Did they have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
Acts, or Romans to use?
So what were they using? They had to have been using
Old Testament scripture. Yeah, people already
knew how to get people saved with the Old Testament.
That was what they were using. That's what they were doing.
But just the fact that the New Testament
quotes from the Old Testament so much
is also proof of that. As you were saying,
that was a good point. Go ahead. Yeah, Romans
chapter one verse 18 says, "For the wrath
of God is revealed from heaven." See, pull this up
on the screen. I don't have the button control.
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all in godliness and righteousness of men who hold the truth
and the righteousness because that which may be known of God
is manifest in them for God hath showed it unto them
for the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen
being understood by the things that are made
even as eternal power and godhead so they are
without excuse because that
when they knew God they glorified him not as
God neither were thankful
but became vain in their imaginations
and their foolish heart was darkened. Now this goes down a dark road
I want to explain this concept though
I believe that
everything in this world
is talking
about God, is talking about the gospel
and is a certain level
of the light and the truth
and that we all have an obligation
to accept the light
when we see it and that someone
that accepts whatever light God
has given them he will continue
to give them more light and will lead
them to the ultimate light which is the Gospel
of Jesus Christ and that
some people will not respond
to the little bit of light that they've been
given and therefore
as a rejection of that light
there's no point in giving them more
because they've already shown they're
not interested and therefore
it's not even necessary
that the explained full
detailed Gospel is given to every
single individual for God to
justly and rightly condemn that person
because they already
despise the light that he
had given to them and the opportunities
for truth he had exposed
them to. But the Bible says
"seek and ye shall find." The Bible also
talks about how the Word of God is
not hidden up in heaven or
buried down in the earth. It's
nigh thee. It's even in thy
word in thy mouth. It's even in my mouth
I'm misquoting this for a second.
Romans chapter number ten. Even the
word that we preach, it's
this. Romans ten verse
like eight. But what say it
that the word is nigh thee even in the mouth
and in thy heart. That is the word of faith
which we preach. So
you know the whole concept of Romans
chapter ten is that the word of God is not hidden
it's readily available to every single
person. And I think
with actually pretty minimal effort
if somebody really wants to know the truth and really
is seeking God and in responding
to the truth or light that they have
then God will give them the full
detailed gospel plan and they will believe in Jesus Christ
and they will get saved.
That is my belief. I think that's
true in the Old Testament. We have Old Testament
saints that are not
of the children of Israel. We have Ruth the Moabitess.
We have Nahum in the Syrian.
We even have in the New Testament
one of the disciples, Simon
the Canaanite. And so I
think that there's an example of Gentiles being
saved in the Old Testament. We have
the Sumerian woman
in John chapter 4 interested
in the gospel and getting saved.
We have many people in the Old
Testament going out and preaching the
word of God to the heathen nations. Jeremiah
in chapter 25 is going out and
preaching to the entire world the word
of God. I think that many people got saved
during that time. In the books of
Esther you have King Ahasuerus
sending these great proclamations throughout
the entire world. I think that it's very
reasonable to think that many people came up to Shadrach
Meshach and Abednego and asked
them about salvation after seeing them
going through the fiery furnace. I think many people
probably asked Daniel after him going
through the lion's den and all the different
miracles he did. I think that
Joseph was able to minister to a lot of people
in Egypt. And think about this, the entire world
had to come to Joseph specifically to get
life. They had to come
to Joseph to get physical life.
I believe that he was also there ministering
to people. Salvation,
the Israelites were there. They were supposed
to be a light to lighten the Gentiles. That was
the whole goal of the nation of Israel
was to preach the word of God.
And the book of Acts chapter 15
tells us that the law of Moses was
read in every city
on the Sabbath day. That tells me that the
word of God had reached the entire world.
So I fully reject this idea that there's just all
these people that
are just doomed and going to hell
and they had no chance. Like
I think that there was so much
evidence to suggest the contrary to
this notion. And since there's no new thing under the
sun, I think it'd be strange to think that there
wasn't the opportunity of the Gospel
being spread just like it is
today. I said a lot.
Ben, I want to get your thoughts on this because
I think this was a chat question, so I don't know.
Yeah, it was a chat room question. I'm going to get much interaction
or pushback. I don't know
if you agree with everything I said. If you want to
clarify something, what do you
think? I mean, you pretty much said it all.
I think that if somebody isn't going to accept that
answer, they aren't going to accept very many
answers out there. I more so just have a follow
up question for you. And you had
brought up Romans chapter 10
when it comes to this
discussion where the Bible does say the word is
nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy
heart. Would you
apply that? And it seemed like you did.
You apply that to sort of
all of mankind? Or do you think
that there's a specific group of people
that he's referring to that were
extra close to getting saved?
Well, no one, no
two people are in the exact same boat.
So I think that every single individual
is in a different
category of how close they are,
right? Depending on your parents,
your environment, what church you go to,
like everybody has
a greater, or everybody has a
different chance of being saved, in a
sense. But here's the
thing. How are you going to respond to that light?
I think you could be born in the best environment possible
and reject that light and
end up not getting saved. And I think you could
be born in the worst environment possible
and accept the light that God has given you and he'll
lead you down a path to ultimately
getting saved. So I think that
while your environment could be
have more light or less, I think
that it's more still to the individual and how
they respond to the light that they're given.
Of course this is talking about people that come
to the age, past the age of accountability
and maturity. So everybody
is naive.
It's just some are closer than others.
No, the word is naive.
Yeah, I get that. The gospel.
Is that true for everyone?
Or just
some people, do you think?
Is the gospel near
as Roman says to everybody?
That's my question.
That was how I kind of explained it.
The law of Moses is in every city.
Bibles are spread out in all the world
in all kinds of different languages.
It's going to be closer to some than others.
You might be born with the King James Bible in
hand, and then there might be one at the
bookstore down the street.
But at the same time, it's readily
available to anybody that really wants it.
Sure. Yeah, I mean,
that checks out. And, you know,
one other verse I would just add to this
is in Hebrews chapter
number 9, where
the Bible actually says
what it talks about
the blood of Jesus Christ.
Let's see if I can find it here. I lost
it right when I had it.
In Hebrews chapter 9, verse number 15,
"And for this cause he is the
mediator of the New Testament,
that by means of death,
for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the First
Testament, they which are called
might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."
So there we see the Bible referring to the
death of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and specifically saying
that it was for the redemption of transgressions
that were under the First Testament.
So Jesus' death covered
those who
believed on Him, even though they were
under the Old Covenant. So that's just
something I would add to the discussion as well.
Great point. Hey, we got a super chat
in here from Johnny
CLLL, or Johnny the Third.
I can't tell.
God bless Steadfast Baptist Church.
So he gave us some money there.
Thanks so much, Johnny, for supporting
the show and giving us a super chat.
You can get a meal deal at McDonald's with that.
Hey, yeah, they have the $5 meal deals, don't they?
$5 meal deals. Just saying.
You would know all about that, wouldn't you?
Perhaps, maybe yes, maybe no.
Nothing except for the nuggets.
I don't really know that I want the nuggets.
Well, look, I'm not going to vouch for what the nuggets are made out of, but I do think the nuggets taste pretty good.
You think the nuggets actually taste good?
Yes.
See, I just don't even think they taste good.
Obviously, if you're eating McDonald's, it's not for the health at all.
No, it's not.
I think it's all extremely unhealthy, but at least the fries taste good, and hey, the quarter-pounder actually tastes pretty good.
I'll just have to admit it.
You are getting closer and closer to my side on this every day.
There's got to be a reason why people are eating it.
Yeah.
I just don't even find the nuggets good at all.
Let's get from the chat.
Give me a W if the nuggets at McDonald's are good.
Give me some Ls if the nuggets are terrible as far as taste.
Obviously, health, we're throwing that completely out the window.
We're all throwing that out.
Purely taste, are these nuggets good?
You got Ws in the chat.
What is this?
These are my people.
People actually like the nuggets.
These are my people.
Okay.
Always Baptist and L. Definitely this person's godly.
We've got several Ws in there.
This is sad.
This is a sad state of ...
This is why our country is the way it is.
No, I'm just kidding.
Because the people ...
People like McDonald's nuggets.
We got another speaker in our spaces, Joanna Puevas.
Let's see what her question is.
How's it going?
Hi, Pastor Shelley.
Hi, Brother Ben.
Hello.
It's going good.
I also wanted to add to what you guys were talking about too because I just read the
other day in Joshua how the Gibeonites were crafty.
Wiley?
They went and they ... Well, they kind of tricked the Israelites in a way, pretending
to be from another land just because they had heard of all the great things that God
did.
That was back in the day when there wasn't even internet.
That whole idea that people just don't hear the gospel, they passed it down.
They somehow got the message to these Gibeonites who feared the Lord, so they believed.
I just wanted to add to that because I was reading through that just last night.
And Rahab the harlot in Jericho, she, I believe, was already saved before the spies even arrived at her house.
So there's another example.
Because she believed. My question was actually in 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 8.
I don't know if this question has already been asked. I've been kind of in and out of the discussion.
But it's pretty much like God gave him wives. So I always get asked that.
And it kind of stumps me because it says, "And I gave thee thy master's house and thy master's wives."
Especially with the whole, "You should be the husband of one wife."
So I had questions on that specifically.
Sure. I've actually had many people ask about this particular question.
And I think it's a good question. I think that you have to understand the "gave" there in a different sense than the fact that God's giving the wives in a permissive way versus like He in an idyllic way.
So I think in a sense you have to argue like everything that we have has been given to us by God.
But that doesn't mean that that was necessarily God's will or ideal for that particular situation.
So the Lord gives, He takes away. Sometimes it's good, it's bad. He could give us good things, He could give us bad things.
I think it's just more in the idea of God's permissive will or permissive actions
in the sense that David took these women unto Him as wives and they were from God in a sense.
But it's not that God wanted any man to have multiple wives.
So I think it's just kind of in a context that we have to look at it like this is how I acquired these things
and God's allowing that to happen, but it's not necessarily what God wanted.
That's how I read that.
And I think that He's saying, "Look, I gave you a bunch of wives and you weren't even satisfied with that.
You should have been satisfied with that.
And frankly speaking, if you had decided to just go out and get more wives,
I probably would have permitted that even though I don't necessarily agree with it.
But why did you have to take your neighbor's wife?
And that was like a more egregious sin for him to do something like that.
So I think that sometimes God allows people to make mistakes or make bad decisions.
And it's not that he's okay with it,
but he essentially isn't necessarily going to give like a direct consequence for that.
He's just kind of permitting or allowing people to make bad decisions.
And then other times he brings in harsh consequences for them,
committing grievous sin or going down a really dark path.
And so from my perspective, I think that it's just in general he got the wives from God, yes.
But that doesn't mean that God wanted that to happen.
I think you could look at it this way.
I want to make more comment and then I'll let you respond.
Like Job, he received a lot of evil from the Lord at the hand of the devil.
But I don't think that that's necessarily representative of what God wants.
God doesn't want to just kill all your children and give you boils and take away all your money.
But he had received that at the Lord as a test to see.
And sometimes maybe God will give you multiple wives to test you and see what you're going to do, what decisions that you'll make.
God had given him this. He was a king.
I don't think it's right and he obviously suffered.
I mean, if you look at his wives, they have all these different kids and most of them are terrible.
I mean, David has some of the worst kids. He has Amnon, he has Absalom, he has Adonijah.
So like he has some of the worst kids from all these wives that he acquired.
So I think that he was punished.
But I think that God sometimes punishes us indirectly.
Like a sin has a direct correlation to a punishment.
So if you have a child out of wedlock, you're already punished.
You know, if you commit mortification and you get some kind of disease, there's like an inherent punishment.
So I don't think God will necessarily go beyond the inherent punishment of that sin.
And so like in a sense like you take these wives and it's not the right decision.
But he's not going to punish you on top of that.
Your punishment is that you have multiple wives.
Your punishment is that you're going to have a bunch of kids that are just a train wreck because it's not a healthy family situation.
And show me an example where we have these mixed families and all the brothers like each other and it's a real happy situation.
It's usually cutthroat, the wives hate each other, the brethren hate each other.
I think there's all the inherent consequences from these bad actions.
And so, again, he's like, "Hey, you want all these wives? Have it."
Think about in the wilderness, they wanted that quail or they wanted that meat, that bird meat.
And he's like, "I'm going to fill you to the nostrils."
So he gives it to them, but it's not necessarily what he wanted.
Didn't he give the children of Israel a king? But he didn't want to give them a king.
His perfect will was for them to remain under the judges.
But you could also say he accurately, like he still gave them a king, even though that wasn't his idyllic will.
It's kind of his permissive will.
So it's like it's ideal for David to be married to one wife, but in his permissive will, he may allow him to have multiple wives.
Yet he's going to suffer through that as the consequences of that inherent sin.
I don't know if that kind of answers your question.
Completely, yeah. So the gave is more like I let you have.
Right.
Kind of like I let you take that. I let you, like I allowed for that to happen.
Sure.
More than I blessed you with these wives because it wasn't really a blessing.
Right.
Okay. That totally answers my question.
And it makes sense when you look at everybody's story, even how Joseph and what the brothers did to him.
And just you see it so many times in the Bible. So yeah, totally makes sense.
Thank you so much for answering that.
Yeah. And again, obviously I don't believe that multiple wives is biblical.
I think it's wrong and that it's ultimately a punishment to yourself.
But there is a certain aspect that is a benefit and that's obviously what God is maybe alluding to.
Whatever benefit you thought you were going to have from multiple wives, I allowed you to have that and that still wasn't satisfactory.
I mean, the Bible is clear not to multiply wives, not to go down to Egypt.
We see the kings doing these type of things and you could argue that God gave them in a sense or allowed it, but it's not necessarily that God wants that.
Do you have a follow-up there, Ben? Do you have a different idea?
No, I think it's important to look at that passage in the right way.
You know, the Bible talks about rightly dividing the word of truth and understanding that words can have different meanings depending on the context.
And to me, I've always looked at that passage as God permitting David to have all those wives rather than perhaps striking him dead or striking all the wives dead or something like that.
He permitted that to occur, and as Pastor alluded to, that still wasn't satisfactory for him.
He went and had to go and commit adultery and also murder Uriah, the husband at the time of Bathsheba.
So I think that is what the passage is trying to communicate.
Thank you guys so much. That completely answers my question.
Thanks Joanna. Thanks for your question. God bless. Have a good night.
Alright, we got the, I don't know if we have any other callers. I want to make sure I'm kind of bouncing between.
Yeah, there's also chat room. There's always chat room questions if you want to.
Okay, let's do another chat question and then we've got another guy, we've got another speaker in the spaces as well.
So go ahead and queue up another question.
You want me to go to a question from the chat?
Yeah, let's do one of those again.
So from the chat room, this one is from Jordan Baptist.
He says, "What are some of your top verses to prove to stubborn people
that the Holy Spirit is in fact a person and not some 'force'?
I ask because I've come across people who think this junk."
So the Holy Spirit as a person rather than a nebulous force.
That's a good one. Do you have anything that you can think of kind of off the top of your head there
that you would point to in the scripture that would imply that the Holy Spirit is a person rather than just a force of some sort?
Well, I think, you know, if you just look at John, I think it's like John 15, 16, maybe even 14.
That's where it really elaborates on the Holy Ghost probably the most.
But it typically, it's going to give you a lot of personal pronouns to describe the Holy Ghost.
The Bible also says, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." That's emotion.
I think that I preached an entire sermon on this where I talked about the aspects of what a person is
and then how all three, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have those.
So you have personal pronouns, you have emotion, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit."
He does not speak of himself that tells us that he has consciousness and he's capable of speaking.
The Bible also says that he'll guide us into all truth.
So he's a teacher, he has consciousness, he speaks, he has emotions, he's a comforter, as the Bible describes him.
I think you would just have to go to a lot of these passages and say, "I don't see how you could attribute this to wind."
To me, wind's a force. Now, the Holy Ghost is compared to wind, but it's more of the fact that you can't really see the wind, but you can feel it.
But it's not accurate to say that the Holy Spirit is wind. Just like the Lord Jesus Christ is compared to a dove when he descends.
I'm sorry, the Holy Ghost is compared to a dove when he descends on the Lord Jesus Christ. But he's not a dove, he's not wind.
And a lot of the Catholics will say he's a dove or picture him as a dove. A lot of people picture him as a force.
I believe that he's a person and I believe that you have scriptures that say let us make man in our image after our likeness.
I believe that's in reference to the Trinity. I believe that the Holy Ghost is obviously a spirit.
That he's going to have some likeness of the Father and the Son.
And that there's a lot of references about all the characteristics that we would think of as a person and not a force.
Wind isn't grieved. Wind doesn't have consciousness. Wind doesn't speak.
Obviously you can use metaphors to say like, "I feel like the wind was saying this to me."
But you're not like saying it in a literal sense. But I believe that the Holy Ghost does.
The Bible also tells us that in Romans chapter number 8, that the Holy Ghost makes utterances for us.
The intercedes with groanings which cannot be uttered, is what it says in Romans chapter number 8.
So I think that there's a lot of verses there. I think if you showed them all these verses and they still...
It says Romans 8 verse 26, "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought,
but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."
So the Spirit is able to communicate, the Spirit guides us in all truth, he brings all things into remembrance.
Well spake the Holy Ghost, I mean that's like a quote from scripture multiple times about the Holy Ghost speaking.
He's a comforter, he was sent from God the Father, he dwells inside of us, we don't want to grieve him, it's a he and a him.
So I don't know, do you have another thought there, do you have another verse, Ben?
Well one of my favorite passages is in John chapter 16 and I know that you had already mentioned this,
but I'll read the scripture just to provide some more context where Jesus Christ said,
"Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth,
for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak,
and he will guide you, I'm sorry, he will show you things to come."
So that appears to be in reference to a person.
A person is one who guides and teaches, etc.
But beyond that, I think another dimension to this topic is the idea that
if the Holy Spirit is nothing more than a force,
then it almost seems like you're attacking the deity of the Holy Spirit.
And we know that many attack the deity of Christ often,
but we don't normally talk much about the deity of the Holy Spirit.
Well, hey, that's obviously an important doctrine as well.
He is 100% God, and when you turn him into an impersonal force,
that's almost implying that he isn't actually God at all.
And so, obviously, 1 John 5, 7,
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost."
These three are one.
That is one of the go-to scriptures you can show to prove that, in fact,
hey, the Holy Spirit is God.
And also in Acts chapter 5, verse 4, the Bible says--
Yeah, put it on the screen. I've got the verse pulled up.
Wow, we were thinking of the same thing.
Well, I have to shout out to Bro. J. Stu, because he put it in the chat.
I didn't even realize that. That's three people.
The Holy Ghost is like, "Hey, I've got some verses for you guys."
Acts 5, verse 3, "But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled thine heart
to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land?
Whilst it remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold,
was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart?
Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God, referring to the Holy Ghost as God.
Yeah. I think that's a really powerful verse.
And, you know, even just the Great Commission,
baptizing the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost,
it's weird that that would be a force.
He has a name. The name is in representative authority, power.
So it's in the power of the Holy Ghost.
Praying in the power of the Holy Ghost, I think, is also in Jude.
So we got a lot of verses there.
Hopefully that can help a little bit.
Maybe you can chat or note down a couple of those.
It looks like we got a regular here on Spaces, Bayou Jarrett.
Let's go ahead and have him come on and give us a question that he's got.
Hi, good evening.
I had a question about Colossians chapter one, verse 21 through 23, as it relates to once saved, always saved.
So if you look in verse 21, it says, "In view that were sometime alienated in enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled."
So he's speaking to saved individuals.
And he says, "Yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight,
if you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard,
and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, and made a minister."
So it seems like he's saying, you know, these people have been reconciled,
and they will be presented holy and unblamable if they continue in the faith
and if they're not moved away from the hope of the gospel.
So how would you view that in life, Dave, perspective?
Well, one comment that I would say is, obviously I think in the sense of being presented in front of God the Father
that everyone will be considered spotless because of the blood of the Lamb.
There is another concept though that's brought up in 1st John about not being ashamed before him at his coming.
And I believe that there's still a coming of Jesus Christ where we're going to be judged
according to our works as 1st Corinthians chapter number 3 brings up.
And the Bible even talks about the person having no work suffering.
So I think that there's still a admonition to continue in the faith and to be unreprovable
in his sight and to not be ashamed at his coming.
And so, you know, in this particular context, it seems to be alluding to the father and
to the idea of escaping the great right thrown judgment.
But, I guess to me, you know, the context of verse number 22 of being holy, unblameable
and unreprovable is potentially in the context of doing what's right and basically not being
ashamed at his coming.
I don't know if you have a follow-up there, Ben.
Yeah, I view this as having multiple parts.
So, if we look at verse 21, the Bible says, "In you that were sometimes alienated and
enemies in your mind, by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled."
So, you're reconciled.
You're saved spiritually.
You have salvation.
"In the body of his flesh through death, to present you, holy and unblameable and
unreprovable in his sight."
So, in my mind, verse 22 is trying to communicate to us that we were saved in order to be holy,
in order to be unblameable, in order to be unreprovable in his sight.
That is the goal.
That's what God wants for us.
And in order for us to achieve that, we have to walk in the Spirit.
This is very similar to how in Ephesians chapter 2, the Bible says, "For by grace are you
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest
any man should boast."
But then verse 10 says, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which
God had before ordained, that we should walk in them."
The Bible talks about in Ezekiel chapter 36 that God will put His Spirit in His people
and cause them to walk in His statutes, etc.
God did not just save us so that we can go to heaven and then just sit on our rear ends
and eat Cheetos all day and do nothing for Him.
One of the very important aspects of salvation is the fact that we've been given the Holy
Spirit and the Holy Spirit, if we walk in Him through our own agency, enables us to
be unreprovable.
Because, think about it, if I'm walking in the Spirit, then the Bible says against such
there is no law.
I'm obviously keeping the law while I'm walking in the Spirit.
I'm obviously keeping the law and I'm unreprovable and I'm unblameable when I'm walking in the
Spirit and exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit.
So in my mind, the reconciliation of salvation and then all the other verbiage about being
presented as holy and unreprovable, etc., that is the struggle that we go through in
this life and it is what occurs when you walk in the Spirit.
When you walk in the Spirit, you're holy.
When you walk in the Spirit, you're unreprovable, etc.
And I do believe that if we do that more than walk in the flesh, that that is exactly how
we'll be presented after this life is over and when we hit the judgment seat of Christ.
So that's my view.
You know, another thought here, why you're saying that, is in Philippians chapter 2,
it says in verse 14, "Do all things without murmurings and disputings, that you may be
blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse
nation among whom you shine as lights in the world."
So of course there's this admonition to also remain without rebuke while on this earth.
And perhaps another idea of this context of Colossians chapter number one is not so much
the judgment seat, but even just while we're on earth.
And I think this is kind of to what you were speaking about, that basically we now also
need to strive for holiness and be unblameable and unreprovable right now while he's looking
down from heaven and observing our actions.
And that's why you have contexts like 1 John chapter number two that bring up that we don't
want to be ashamed that it's coming.
We also have the apostle Paul talking about he doesn't want to be a castaway.
And so it's kind of like he doesn't want to be in the wrong standing of God.
I just don't see how, again, I already know that you can't lose your salvation.
So it's more about just trying to interpret some of these more difficult passages.
Well, again, I think when you're walking in the Spirit, then you would meet those categories.
If I'm in the Spirit, I'm going to be behaving in a holy way.
I'm going to be un-reprovable, etc.
So it's possible.
It's just that you have to walk in the Spirit through your free will.
When you're walking in the flesh, obviously you cannot be presented to the Father as holy.
Well, and they've already been reconciled.
That was a good point.
Yeah, they're already reconciled.
So that's done.
Salvation's over.
Oh, you know, another verse is Romans chapter 8.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which walk according to the Spirit."
Exactly.
So it's not, I'm sorry, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ
Jesus who walk not out of the flesh but out of the Spirit."
So again, you can't lose your salvation, but you could still have some level of punishment
or be not in God's favor on this earth when you're not walking in the Spirit.
Exactly right, yeah.
And if you're in the flesh or you could be an enemy of God even, even if you're saved.
I think of King Saul, I believe he was saved, but yet he's an enemy of God a couple of places
in Scripture.
James 4.4 refers to friends of the world as being enemies of God.
Yeah, so I think that's the context and that's kind of how we could explain that.
What do you think about that, Jarrett?
Yeah, I think that's pretty much how I kind of anticipated it might be interpreted from
a once saved always saved perspective, but maybe just as a quick follow-up.
So would it be accurate to say that you believe that someone who has been reconciled and doesn't
continue in the faith and has moved away from the hope of the gospel is still saved?
I guess we just have to understand what that means because from my perspective, as long
as someone trusted in Christ, I don't think that they're going to really lose that faith.
So if they didn't have that faith, to me, I would think that they never had it in the
first place.
But I do think that somebody like Demas, you know, the Bible talks about, "Demas hath
forsaken me, having loved this present world and has departed unto Thessalonica."
I think that that person is still saved even though they may not be serving God.
Our 1st Timothy chapter 5 brings up the widow that she's dead while she lives in pleasure.
So I think these are examples of James chapter 2, like faith without works is dead.
I think that there's many Christians who have a dead faith, but I do believe that dead faith
is still saving them because faith is without works.
I'm sorry, salvation is without work.
So faith in Jesus Christ without works is still good enough to save someone and even
though they should be walking in newness of life, they should be listening to the prompting
of the Holy Spirit, they should be producing fruit.
And I think that's why there's so many admonitions in the Bible telling us to do these things,
to walk in the spirit, to produce fruit, to no longer be servants of sin, to no longer
walk in the flesh, to no longer have the same mindset, but renew our minds and to read
the scripture and go to church and be around like-minded believers to be encouraged to
do the right thing.
I think that it's easy to do nothing and it takes effort and energy and willpower to do
the right thing.
And I think that God still gives us free will after salvation and that while we should
and we're enabled and empowered to do good works, that someone could fall short of the
good works God would wish for them to do and ultimately even accomplish nothing potentially.
I think the 1st Corinthians 3 example or the Romans 4 or 5 example are examples of people
who pretty much got there by the skin of their teeth like the thief on the cross, I don't
know.
Or the nine.
Where are the nine?
I think that there's a lot of examples of people who were probably saved by grace and
nothing more because they didn't have anything else anyways.
They can't even believe in works because they don't have any works to believe in.
I don't know.
I guess I don't know if you agree with us on that or not.
I think he might be asking about the idea that it's talking about continuing the faith
and the hope of the gospel.
And so perhaps the thought is, well, that's clearly in reference to just purely salvation.
But I do think that when the Bible talks about the hope of the gospel, it can also be heavenly
rewards that are associated with doing good works.
And of course the gospel, because if you didn't believe the gospel, you wouldn't go to heaven
to procure those rewards to begin with.
But a scripture I would point to is in 1 Peter chapter 1, where the Bible says, "Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath
begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
So there's a lively hope being described there.
And then it says, "to an inheritance," verse four, "to an inheritance, incorruptible
and not defiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you."
So there's an inheritance waiting for you in heaven.
But the thing is, is that if you don't do any works, if you're not walking in the Spirit,
then you're not going to receive rewards once you actually get to heaven.
And so in that way, by walking in the flesh, you're moved away from the hope, and part
of that hope are the rewards that are waiting for you in heaven.
Yeah, I think in another way, what is the hope of the gospel?
It's salvation itself, and that you're going to live eternally in heaven.
And so if I'm carnally minded, I'm not going to be really doing anything from an eternal
perspective.
So I've kind of been moved away from what was the whole point of after salvation.
The whole point of after salvation is to recognize that our life is now hidden in Christ, and
that we should strive to do things with a spiritual mindset, not a carnal mindset because
the carnal mindset is death and it doesn't bring us any benefit.
And of course, it's very easy for people to be moved away from spiritually minded sanctification
and holiness that we should all strive for.
That's probably more in vain with the question that you had.
Yeah, that explains a lot.
I am not persuaded by those answers, but it makes sense to me that it would be viewed
that way if you're trying to make it comport with a certain doctrine or systematic.
But hey, I had a question.
Are you guys broadcasting on YouTube or something right now?
Is there a chat that I'm not aware of?
It's in Rumble.
Rumble.
So we're trying to do spaces and Rumble simultaneously.
So if you go to the Rumble Baptist Bias, you can check it out on there too.
Okay.
Because you've been banned from YouTube.
Yes.
You got that right.
Hence the name.
Yeah.
Well, thanks for interacting with my question.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thanks for the question.
And thank you for asking your question and I feel like you've come on and you have challenged
us on a few things in the past and you've done so respectfully.
So I do appreciate that.
Let's go ahead and let's go back to some of the chat questions real quick and we're probably
going to wrap it up here at about 10 minutes or so.
Go ahead and give us another chat question here, Ben.
Oh, sure.
Well, the chat had an interesting point, Acts 2.31.
This isn't a question, but I just wanted to make the point here.
It says to present you holy and unblemable and unapprovable in a sight because Satan
accuses us before the Lord one saved always saved.
So I think that that is referring to being presented as unblemable and unapprovable on
this earth because, and this is a great point right here, the devil is accusing the brethren
all the time.
So you have that being counteracted by our good works.
So that was a good point right there.
So let's see, what else do we have here in the chat?
Let's look at this question, bad brand.
Did God forsake the Gentiles and the rest of the world during the OT times?
Are there any proof texts I can use to prove that God cared about people outside of Israel
during the OT times?
I feel like that kind of falls in line with what we talked about earlier, Pastor Shelley,
but if you want to take a stab at that.
I just want to throw in like one verse maybe.
Sure, maybe throw a verse in.
I think in the New Testament we have an example, I think it's the Apostle Paul who, and maybe
you can help me with this.
I'm trying to think of where this is at.
There's a part of the Bible where it's saying, "Did Elias go to any of the widows of Jerusalem?"
This is Jesus speaking.
Yeah, it's Jesus speaking.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yes, let me see.
Okay, here we go.
Luke chapter 4, "But I tell you the truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of
Elias when the heaven was shut up three years and six months when great famine was throughout
all the land.
But unto none of them was Elias sent save unto Serepta, a city of Zidon, unto a woman
that was a widow.
And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elyseus the prophet and none of them was
cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.
So there's a couple of like direct examples of God caring about non quote Hebrews or
non of the 12 tribes of Israel.
But I mean just look at the law.
The law is just smashes this point very quickly because any stranger that wanted to join the
nation of Israel and wanted to keep the Passover was accepted in the nation as one born in
the land.
So that's just case closed that God cares very much about the stranger and cares very
much about all the Gentiles and wanted them to join the nation of Israel.
Israel's be a light to lighten the Gentiles and the fact that they even lost their nation
was because they weren't producing fruit in the Gentiles and God was upset with them
and disappointed and so he took away their nation so the Gentiles could be saved because
God does care about the Gentiles.
He does care about the heathen and he's not a respecter of persons.
The Bible says that over and over so I think those would be a few points that I would
bring up.
I think there's probably actually a lot that would explain that.
It's a whole sermon.
It's a good point though.
Yeah.
I appreciate the question.
I think that people get confused about this.
I mean I had someone, a family member tell me one time like, "Well if I was in the Old
Testament God wouldn't even care about me because I'm not a Hebrew."
And it's just like, that's just a weird mentality.
Not so sure about that one.
Yeah.
There's another question.
In fact this guy has been waiting a while to have this one answered so I'd like to
get to him.
Let's do it.
And since 2016 he asks this, "What does the Bible mean when it says a soul is cut off
from Israel?"
And if you don't mind, I want to try first and see if you agree with me.
Go for it.
Yeah.
I personally just think, so people talk about like, "Oh, you know, I'm cut off from my
family."
And that basically just means you have no relationship with them.
So I just think it's a general term that means that the individual is banished from the land.
I do think it could mean death, depending on the context, but in general, it's simply
stating that this person has been cut off from the rest of the congregation, meaning
they no longer have any kind of relationship with them, they're banished, they're just
to be set apart and just, you know, in exile.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think that I think it's a banishment, an exile.
I would agree.
I'm looking at some of these verses.
It's like eating leaven on a feast when you're not supposed to have leaven, especially the
Passover that you'd be cut off.
And of course the Passover is significance of like salvation.
So I think it's showing that that Old Testament picture of the New Testament doctrine that
we have about the separation from the saved and the unsaved and how we're not supposed
to have fellowship with unbelievers.
And so it's a fellowship relational situation, not a physical thing.
You know, there's like a New Testament where it says I wish that they were cut off in Galatians
and then they say like they should emasculate themselves in the modern virgins.
It's like it's not about a physical cutting.
It's about it's about like distancing yourself from them, either physically or relational
like in a relationship setting, I believe.
So I agree with you.
Great.
What else do we have here?
This person says Matthew 5 7 and James 2 13 imply that believers will be judged according
to how merciful they've been.
When we enter into the Millennium in our glorified state in what sense will we be judged?
I don't know if I completely understand the context of this question.
Is this person saying like, how will I be judged post the Millennial reign judgment?
Or is he saying at the judgment of the Millennial reign, do you think?
I think he's referring to probably the judgment seat of Christ, if I had to guess, because
he says when we enter the Millennium.
Matthew 5-7 says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they should obtain mercy."
I don't think that that's necessarily just Millennial, I think that's like mostly just
our lives here.
I don't know that that's necessarily the Millennium that much.
James 2-13.
Okay, he's saying, "How can a glorified believer experience different degrees of mercy or judgment?
Can we suffer in the Kingdom?"
Well, I believe that when we die, as soon as we die, we can't sin because the Apostle
Paul says, "It's no longer I that sin it, but sin that dwells in me."
So I believe that as soon as we shed this flesh, we're incapable of sinning in any
way.
So I think that we'll be kind of perfect.
And so therefore, I don't know that there's judgment that is applied to us post our judgment
seat of Christ.
I think that the judgment seat of Christ are going to be judged for the works that we did
in our flesh, whether they were good or bad, what we did in the body, whether they were
good or bad.
And after that, there's no more judgment.
That's why there's so much emphasis on doing work now, because if you didn't do the works
now, you don't have like a makeup day and I don't believe that there's any more punishment.
So I guess we're just perfectly obedient.
I don't understand how that works because we're in the flesh and so it's so easy to
make mistakes.
I guess I always try to think of it in a few different contexts.
I think of like you know whenever you're like a child you kind of have like unlimited energy
and you never want to go to bed and when you've just eaten and you're really satisfied you
like you're not hungry in that moment or you know so like we have temporary moments where
we don't want to go to sleep or we don't have a necessarily a feeling or need to eat and
so like I kind of relate those in the idea of somehow I just have no desire for sin
I can't even want to so I'm just not going to just like you're not going to convince
me to eat vomit you're not going to convince me to do weird things because I just have
like no desire for them yeah and so perhaps in our glorified state we just we just kind
of have like no desire for disobedience and so it's just not even a reality I don't I
don't know what do you think about that Ben well to me I understand it this way I have
zero desire for sins that fall outside of regular sin nature so reprobate sins if you
want to call it that zero desire and so when I die and then I'm revived again in my glorified
state the sins that I have no desire for well that gets extended to all sin so in the same
way that right now I have absolutely zero desire for the unnatural sins when I'm in
my glorified state the sins I have no desire for will just be all of them I think that's
the best way to try to understand it and going back to the question about being cut off this
is a very quick follow-up he's asking they couldn't come back ever so he's saying those
who are banished from the nation of Israel because they were cut off could they actually
return to the land and I do think there's provision for them to come back if they repent
where just I'm just from an idealistic perspective meaning that if somebody is not I think is
a permanent ban but if somebody's not for example because it's a spiritual picture it's
like a spiritual picture of like transgressing the gospel and how you're permanently cut
off from God so I think that it was probably a permanent being cut off you'd have to show
me a verse that contradicts that for me to change my mind here of of someone being cut
off for that specific issue I guess I mean obviously there's times when people have to
be without the camp for a disease or whatever and it's a temporary status but I I don't
know that I could see like you'd have to show me an example where it says literally
cut this person off and then it's like this person's restored but I think the the spiritual
picture at least in the past setting was that it's a permanent band in Leviticus chapter
seven the Bible says moreover the soul that shall touch any unclean thing as the uncleanness
of man or any unclean beast or any abominable unclean thing and either the flesh of the
sacrifice of peace offerings which pertain unto the Lord even that soul shall be cut
off from his people so I mean that sounds permanent but I mean couldn't you if you
repent though come back in like I kind of just view it as a picture of I don't think
so because again I don't think I think these are like these are pictures of the gospel
and so the cutoff is a picture of just being like cut out all right but I could be wrong
doesn't really matter we can it really doesn't matter to disagree on that that's do you
have one more quick question or we should we just wrap up well how about revelation
twenty two fourteen blessed are they this is a red is lab he says blessed are they that
do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through
the gates into the city I imagine he's referring to like this kind of sounds like work salvation
here do you have any thoughts on revelation twenty two fourteen is there a question sounds
like just a statement you know what here's a reward he's yeah he's referring to rewards
okay yeah let's we'll wrap it up thanks so much guys for joining us calling in putting
in your chats we had like over 200 people in the stream we had several people join into
our spaces thank you guys to join us on spaces of course you can catch our show Tuesdays
8 p.m. we also have a email list so if you'd like to join us baptistbias.com/join we have
an email list that you can join us on you can check me out on twitter at band pastor
you can also check out ben the baptist on twitter follow them we like to do some different
shows every once in a while we've still got several episodes for the rest of the season
and we're planning on doing an election stream this year again as well so you'll want to
check out that any other thoughts you had brother ben did i put on a trump hat for that
election stream or whatever you think you can do whatever you want um no i don't really
have anything else to say other than just thank you thank you to the people who asked
questions in the chat room and the x spaces on our call in line as well we appreciate
your participation obviously we wouldn't have been able to do this show without you guys
yep some great questions of course the most important thing is going to heaven check out
the by way to heaven on sbckjv.com check out our website baptistbias.com and look everybody
everyone's got a perspective but you need to get the baptist bias.