Ask Me Anything - Dr. Frank Turek & Dr. Chip Bennett

how is everybody oh come on we can do a little better than that right we're getting to getting to do getting to do something fun this evening are you excited a little bit all right so uh a couple of real quick things before we get started um if you do want to ask questions you will have to ask them in the chat um on the youtube channel if you don't know where that's at you can search on the search just type in dr chip bennett it's a youtube channel that we have here and uh you can just write in your questions i've got people a bunch of people that are com sort of putting all the questions together because there's so many that come in because this is also being streamed live there will be thousands upon thousands of people that will be sending in stuff and so um if you want to get a question put it in the chat and then what i've got is several people that are looking at those questions and they're putting them into different groups and they're sending them to me live here so that we can we can answer those so please please please if you want to get a question asked go there you can also scan the qr code here i'm on your phone it'll take you right there to the channel channel itself so several years ago we decided we wanted to do what were called academic nights here at grace community church and the the idea was is that i wanted to bring sort of scholarship to the local church and many of you all have been to these before and you know what they're like we bring in professors we bring in all kinds of people to do different things and talk about different issues next month we're bringing in john walton he is a genesis scholar he teaches at wheaton he'll be in talking about genesis in genesis 1 and creation you will not want to miss that we'll give you all the information but this this evening we have dr frank turekin and this has been a popular evening at grace it's also been a hugely popular thing online where people just get to ask questions and one of the things i know as a pastor is that people specifically under 35 make the statements that churches do not allow for tough questions and i just want to say here at grace we are completely open-handed we we we have no problem with any question being asked we will do our best to answer those questions um and we want to create spaces and places for people to ask those tough questions because we know that they that they are out here so um all that being said um this is done here at grace but this is sort of a special academic night so anything that frank says that you don't like blame him all the good stuff uh love me as your is your pastor i'm just kidding but uh let's let's pray real quick and then we'll get frank out here and we will get to it father we thank you so much for this opportunity we ask lord that you had blessed this evening pray that you would use it for your glory lord i pray that those who have questions that are are deeply profound to them or stroke they struggle with i pray that somehow we might be able to give some some light to those things i pray that you would allow us all to be very open-minded i pray lord that we would all be cordial and we would do this with wisdom but we would also do this with love and grace and we thank you for what you're going to do we thank you for a lot of the questions that will be answered and we thank you for it in christ's name and everybody said amen so we have the pleasure um i think he's probably the best it what he does there are some really really good apologists out there but i don't know that anybody does it in a way that doesn't like frank so uh could you please give a very very warm welcome to dr frank turek come on man thanks brother and my friend yes sir sir you ready to get after it let's do it howdy everyone you got a warmer hand than i did i want you to know that that's okay though so uh um here we go right out of the bat this is great here we go what is your view of hell are you a eternal damnation a universalist or an annihilationist i think we're out of time okay [Laughter] i think i agree with you because you just wrote an article on this actually in a four year musical an ivp is an academic book that will be coming out forthcoming and so you know how those books are they never come out but they're going to come out so i agree with the traditional view that hell is eternal conscious torment because that's what the lord actually says i think in matthew 25 if hell is described as eternal conscious torment not torture by the way if it's eternal conscious torment and yet it's annihilation it ends then that would seem that heaven would end too because it's described with the same word eternal no i'm not a greek scholar i know you are if you see any wiggle room in that no my thought would be that if god is infinitely holy the only just recompense for an offense against somebody that is infinitely holy would be an infinitely eternal punishment and i say that i don't think that it's like the dante-esque thing i think right i think it's just a place where people who have turned away from god and we see this is obviously this pastor all the time people that have turned away from god they they sort of almost dehumanize in so many ways you know so uh it's just a it's an ugly place it's all i can say but i don't believe that people are annihilated and i don't believe that everybody gets to heaven right i think there's a couple of misunderstandings too when it comes to hell and one is people think well that would be unjust for god to have someone be tormented and torment is more internally generated than externally generated that would be torture they see they think it's somehow unjust but by definition since god is the standard of justice whatever happens in the afterlife can't be unjust that's right it has to be just and people are also concerned you mentioned well why would god punish someone for eternity for a temporal sin what i think is often forgotten is the length of the crime or the length it took to commit a crime is not to measure it to measure it with the penalty one pays for the crime it could take you two seconds to murder someone but you don't earn a two-second sentence in prison it's obviously much longer and also i think the idea that hell is a place where people continue to sin also make sense that the punishment would go on yeah i think that at the end of the day i think what we want to do is is we want to remove the dante-esque view that there's like these pitch works and all of this stuff and you know the bible talks about being darkness it talks about fire it talks about it's an unpleasant place it's a gnawing you know but i don't think it's literal flames it's not a barbecue you know it's not florida yeah that's correct so um yeah amen a literal flame i don't know it's like living on the face of the sun what i would tell you if you want a better a better view ivp is getting ready to release um you know chris date and paul copeland i believe both of you so they're the editors it's going to be a view on hell it's a bunch of people take a view of annihilationism a bunch of people take a view of eternal um conscious torment and you'll be able to look through and it's all kinds of scholars that are writing into this and um so i would tell you to get that book if you're really interested that might be um better so for those christians that are now reunited with christ in heaven what is your perspective on whether or not they can see our daily activities or understand our struggles that's speculation jesus does say in what does not appear to be a parable but it's like a parable as you know in luke 16 where he's got the rich man and lazarus the rich man is in hades and lazarus is in abraham's bosom and he talks about there is a great gulf fixed between the two places it would seem that the people in heaven don't know what's going on in in hades uh and technically i know it's gonna sound weird but heaven hasn't really been created yet in the sense as to where people are going when you die now you're absent from the body present with the lord but your physical body stays in the grave and it heaven and earth are going to be created new heaven new earth are going to be created at the end of time and we're going to have physical bodies that's going to be our final state but it won't be the kind of physical bodies we have now they won't degrade like now you get dresser disease that's when your chest falls into your drawers that's not going to happen anymore uh in the final heaven right now you're absent from the body present with the lord so it's kind of an intermediate state and whether or not people can observe what's going on here i think it's speculative what do you think you know i i do know that hebrews in chapter 12 says that we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses you know and i don't i don't know that we know enough about what that means right um you know i i think that unfortunately there's a passage that comes to mind deuteronomy 29 29 says the uh the secret things belong to the lord and the things that he's revealed belong to us um i think there's just some things we don't know and the answer to that is i'm not sure that we fully know right that it wouldn't surprise me either way but you know i mean like my mother passed away and she never got to see this you know i hope she's getting to see this but she may not whatever it is it will be just right because god is a just god um it's a good one why is there so much death and violence initiated by god in the old testament yeah that's an excellent question a lot of people think that the god of the old testament is different from the god of the new testament because there seems to be much more judgment in the old testament i think one of the things we forget if you look at the old testament the old testament covers thousands of years of history the new testament covers about 62. there's a lot of time to mess up in thousands of years right not a lot of time to mess up in 62. although and why i say 62 because generally it goes from jesus's birth to 62 a.d because i think that's the time that luke completes the book of acts no later than 62 a.d so of course revelation is later it seems later but with regard to history what it's covering it's covering from jesus's birth to about 62 a.d and um the old testament does have judgment but the new testament has judgment as well because jesus says to caiaphas when he's on trial are you the messiah the son of the blessed one and jesus said i am and you will see the son of man coming with power on the clouds which is a reference to judgment coming on jerusalem and he said this to caiaphas when did he say that he said that in about 30 a.d or 33 a.d and that happened in 70 a.d so that was during the lifetime of caiaphas that there was judgment that was brought down on israel and it was judgment that jesus predicted jesus also talks a lot more about hell in the new testament than the old testament talks about it so there's much judgment in the new testament as well now we could go into specifics of old testament judgment if you want to talk about the canaanites or those kinds or or noah even sure but those are judgments based on the idea that people have sinned and it's up to god when god judges people look if christianity's true people don't die they just change location they go from this life to the next life and it's up to god when that happens god is not arbitrary in the old testament let's take the canaanites for example why does god kill the canaanites he gives them over 400 years of warnings to move out of the land and stop their detestable practices but their practices kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point where they were literally sacrificing their children on the molten hot idol known as molek even solomon did this by the way that they would put their babies on the arms of this idol and watch their babies sizzle to death in fact plutarch who's a greek writer not a biblical writer he's writing about in the first century and he even talks about this and he said that the drummers around this sacrifice would play their drums more loudly so the parents couldn't hear the screams of their own children on every college campus i go to there is some someone some atheist will stand up and say if there is a good god why doesn't he stop all the evil in the world well here's a situation in the old testament where god says that's it we got to stop this and the atheists are complaining about it so god says it's time to judge this nation these people and he does so it's judgment it's not arbitrary he doesn't wake up like some sort of mob boss one one morning and say canaanites i want him dead no that's not the way it works he is gracious and he is long-suffering and he knew to get the promised people in the promised land to bring forth the promised messiah at some point he's going to have to have israel move those people out of the land and that's exactly what happened that's good what would you say to those uh um people who say that you know when you look at god in the old testament he he seems to be a different god from the god that you see in the new testament you know because they they try to wedge that um hitchens probably did that one that you would say no i again i think the key to that is understanding that the god of the old testament is covering thousands of years of history whereas the god of the new testament is covering 62 but as we just pointed out the god of the new testament is also a god of judgment not just a god of what is called love in fact there's a yale professor by the name of mirosof wolf i think he's originally from serbia and uh when he lived in serbia he saw so many atrocities that before he went through these these atrocities he said i can't believe in a god that would judge people like this after he went through those atrocities he said i can't believe in a god who wouldn't judge this kind of thing that judgment is actually an expression of god's judgment his justice but also his love that love and justice go together uh someone that loves you if they don't ever seek justice in your life if they allow you to do whatever you want to do without any consequence particularly someone who has authority over you they're not loving they're unloving justice is something that needs to be done and god ensures it gets done okay can we hold the unsaved to the same standards as christians or are we being tolerant of sin i guess it depends on the context of that question the unsaved obviously the christians are called to a higher standard than say just the general public but if you're talking about big issues like thou shall not murder i think yes obviously and i i think unfortunately i see some people talking about the fact they might say in a church service well if you're a christian this applies to you but it doesn't apply to you if you're not a christian it depends on what they're talking about at that point but it almost seems like some people are trying to say there are no moral standards for non-christians if that's the case then how is any non-christian guilty how is any non-christian how does any non-christian need salvation if they are not held to some sort of standard they are held to certain standards but christians are held to even higher standards and so it depends on what the moral issue is i would i would say okay so here's here's a here's a tough one i'm glad you're answering the questions um and i'm just here to smile um but this is this is this is good because this is this is today's stuff and this is this is as tough as it gets but let's let's go there and you all you say that a lot of churches will not deal with these issues but we're not going to run from them what are the main arguments to saying as a christian that homosexuality and transgenderism is right or wrong the main arguments from a christian perspective or from a natural law perspective or we're told what are the main arguments to use it appears that a christian is asking the question i think again you don't know it's not like their face comes through and i can see them i'm just sort of interpreting here it looks like they're asking how can i best say to someone whether or not homosexuality or transgenderism is right or wrong yeah and they want a two-minute answer see that's the problem that's a long discussion it starts with purpose because if some of you may have been here on sunday when we're talking about the moral argument you can't have something be the right way to live or the wrong way to live unless you know what the purpose of life is right just like we talked about you couldn't know that your quarterback throwing a touchdown is better than your quarterback throwing an interception unless you know what the purpose of the game is so the question is what is the purpose of life why are we here and i think jesus tells us what the purpose of life is the purpose of life as he talks about when he's praying for us in john chapter 16 his high priestly prayer he says this is eternal life that day meaning us because he's praying for us that they may know you god the father and jesus christ whom you've sent the purpose of life is to know god not just intellectually even the demons know that god exists according to james who wrote that little book in the new testament called you guys are sharp tonight but to know him personally churchill pastor yeah very sharp very sharp to know him personally that's why we're here and one of the things he's tasked us to do is to procreate and other things he's tasked us to do is to cultivate the culture that's where the word culture comes from and if you read through the bible the bible is a book built on man women relationships it's built on procreation and obviously when you have relationships that either don't do that or do that in a way that can bring a lot of pain and suffering whether it's polygamy whether it's adultery whether it's fornication the bible is going to come out against that because it goes against the purpose as to why we're here now our founding fathers would even make natural law arguments against such behavior and again in our culture people think that if you're making an argument against the behavior that somehow you're making an argument against the person because in our culture people say that your identity is whatever you do sexually that's not a biblical concept your identity for the christian is in christ but even if you're not a christian your identity is not what you do sexually if it were that would mean when you couldn't perform sexually you no longer had an identity or if you changed your sexual preference for whatever reason which happens that your identity has now changed i know this is a very touchy issue and christians need to have compassion for people that are dealing with sexual issues and by the way that's all of us aren't we right we all deal with some sort of sexual dysfunction in the sense that we we we tend to want to wander from what god wants us to do whether it's monogamy or marriage or whatever it is we want to do our own thing so it's not just people that have same-sex attraction that has to deal with this everyone has to deal with it so you have to go to purpose and from a natural law perspective when you look at the the man and the women together obviously men and women are put together to procreate the only thing a man and a woman can't do alone is procreate we need one another in order to procreate so the bible and even natural law points to the fact that nature or nature points to the fact that the man woman a relationship is the ideal now obviously you can go into the scriptures any of us can go into the scriptures and look at what the scriptures say about it but i think one of the things we really need to point out is that without god there are no rights to anything so if someone is going to say i have a right to such and such a sexual behavior they would have to appeal to god to say it's a right they can't appeal to government why because what if the government changes and people in the government decide to take that away do they no longer have that right no rights only come from god so i always ask people why do you think it's a right where does this idea of rights come from it doesn't come from nature there are no rights from nature if there's no god nature's read with tooth and claw rights come from our creator as our declaration of independence says now one quick thing about transgenderism if we could this again is a very sensitive issue but i think that if you really think about it transgenderism presupposes fixed genders why because if i'm a man biologically but i think i'm a woman mentally then i have to have some idea of what a man is and some idea what a woman is to know there's a difference know there's a mismatch and i also have to have some idea what a man is and some idea what a woman is to want to make the so-called transition because if gender is completely fluid transgenderism would make no sense at all do you see the point and one of the issues in the lgbtq community right now is there's a bit of an eternal war going on between the l the g the b and the t y because if if the t has its way if the t's have their way there are no genders then the l the g and the b don't exist because how can you be gay lesbian or bisexual if there are no genders that presupposes genders uh in fact even the feminists are concerned about this white because if there are no genders there are no women and if there are no women there are no women's rights which is why jk rowling the author of the harry potter series is sticking to her position that if you're gonna say gender is fluid you've just ruled women out of existence and she won't stand for that guess what she's right so if you look at this logically not emotionally there are a lot of issues in fact uh dr paul mchugh from uh john hopkins university he's a psychiatrist likened transgenderism to anorexia he says if there is a mismatch between your mind and your body which is what happens in gender dysphoria and what also happens in anorexia we don't try and affirm the person's psychological state we tell them that their psychological state doesn't align with reality we try and fix them psychologically we don't try and fix them with surgery we would never say to an anorexic you know you're right you're overweight let me give you liposuction we would say no that would be harmful if there is a mismatch between your mind and your body you fix that problem with psychiatry you don't fix a a mental issue with surgery yet that is what many in our culture want to do and it's even getting into the government now which is scary i'm not trying to be political here i just want to tell you what came out about two months ago in in what was called trans visibility day dubai administration put out a memo called gender affirming care you can look this up i'm not making this up gender affirming care means that in order to help somebody who has gender dysphoria you need to affirm them in that dysphoria you need to try and get them either puberty blockers if they're children or even recommend surgery for them you should not try and talk them out of their gender dysphoria and this memo actually said this applies to children as young as three to five years old it also said that the government particularly health and human services from which this memo came would be very careful about removing children from the family if this gender affirming care was not provided by the parents do you see what they're doing here they're setting it up they're setting up a situation a scenario where the federal government can come into your house if your three-year-old boy says she's a girl he's a girl and you say no that's not true you won't give that boy gender affirming care you might not care about this right now ladies and gentlemen but pretty soon you're going to be made to care that's where we are in our culture i'm just telling you can look it up don't shoot the messenger in fact i'll even send pastor chip the the link if if you want to see this it's very scary all right um we'll move on to another uh no let's get let's get more controversial um do mormons have salvation i even think some baptists have salvation do you okay i do i agree yeah yeah i agree it's it it's not where you go to church as to whether or not you're saved uh it's whether or not you've accepted the free gift of salvation now i i know of people that go to their lds but they understand grace and they've accepted what christ has done would i recommend going to an lds church to do that no because if they teach lds theology lds theology is such that they're actually polytheists as man uh as as god how does the phraseology go as uh someone's got it i can't think of it right now as god wants what was man now is in other words they believe that if you're a faithful mormon man one day you are going to graduate become a god and get your own planet i'm again i'm not making this up now this doesn't this doesn't mean every mormon believes this but that is official mormon doctrine and so i would have to to answer that question chip it we'd have to have a conversation with the specific person to see if they have accepted the free gift of salvation that christ has provided i'd also be wary because i know and you know this better than i do chip you're teaching through galatians as i am but there's a spot where paul in galatians says if you rely on circumcision christ is of no value to you in other words if you rely on works of the law christ is of no value to you so i'm very wary of people who might say yeah if i've accepted the free gift of salvation but i also have to do this what's your thought on that well you know i think that you know we we want to be careful in the way that we expose people to christianity because if we make it too difficult for people to get into the kingdom of god then we are we're basically saying that there's a a barrier that some people who maybe don't have the aptitude or they can't fully understand or they don't do it i mean i think somebody who is truly um committed themselves the fact that jesus did die for their sins and he rose again on the third day it would be hard for me to say they're they're not a christian until they started maybe giving me other things after that um that would maybe point me to the fact that maybe they don't fully understand what it is that they they said but you know when i think of the thief on the cross it's an interesting passage because theologically he's incorrect he says will you remember me when you come into your kingdom he's seeing the kingdom as a future event so he's theologically incorrect but he got jesus right he made it to heaven you follow and so i think that we want to be careful at making the hoops of theology um you know i do think that what we do have in a lot of christians is we have christians who are saved who don't understand exactly what jesus did for them and they think that they're on a hamster will and they're not experiencing the freedom of salvation that they should be experiencing because they think that they're still in this performance you know in in our world today you have to do something to be something mark phelps had to jump into the pool and do his swimming to become a gold medal swimmer and i think most christians think the same thing dooby dooby dooby doo you know it's just it's you know you've got to do to be do to be when in reality christianity starts off with what christ has done and it's not what we do it's what he's done and we are already the things that he says that we are and sometimes i think people don't understand that and paul's writing to a church that has been compromised because you know you've had judaizers men from james have come in and told them that they got to keep the law they got to do this they got to do that which we do the same thing we tell christians all the time well you're saved but you got to do this you got to see things this way you got to see this issue you got to vote that way you got to do this stuff here or you can't be a christian when in reality that may not have anything to do with whether or not they are a christian so for me i think that we we want to be careful in the way that we um explain because you know in the in the early church they didn't have a bible they didn't have a place like this they didn't have screams right you know they just were like hey did you hear the story about the carpenter guy he died in jerusalem he got up man like he got up really yeah you want you went in yeah i went in and i mean you know it was i mean that was some of the early evangelism you know and so i i think that we want to be careful but yeah i do think when somebody i think you're going to find people in the mormon church people in even the jehovah witness church that will will find their way into heaven because somehow god got them in there but i would say that i wouldn't i wouldn't feel comfortable putting somebody into those churches because i think that there's there's enough corrupt teaching that it makes it hard to understand the full gospel there's another that makes any sense there's one other line that might be helpful in this regard because a lot of christians think that they have to morally achieve in order to earn salvation which is what you're saying and galatians is saying is no that's not the case maybe saying it this way that what you don't gain by moral achievement you can't lose by moral failure you don't gain salvation by moral achievement therefore you can't lose it by moral failure i mean take a look at david this way if you can't gain your salvation by the works you do how can you lose your salvation by the works you don't do yeah there you go [Applause] i mean even in the old testament david had a lot of moral failure but he never lost the holy spirit other kings renounced yahweh and worshiped other gods and they were severely judged to the point that they were even put into exile but david had a lot of moral failure but he was still saved yeah i think that the difference though is when you look in the old testament people even the new testament people the people that are truly god's children are god's children and then there's people that aren't god's children and there's people that are not god's children that have never made that commitment to the lord that may go to church and may do good things and may serve and may be a part of stuff and look good on the on the outside until something happens and then they go why in the world did they walk away like what happened right i think that what we see in david is we see a true child of god and we see how you see an abraham a true child of god i mean abraham's story is not the faithfulness of abraham abraham's story is the faithfulness of god you know and i think that that's i think that's what we need to do i i say this and i'll say it again but in genesis 15 i think this is fundamental to understand if you're a christian is that when god decides to cut covenant with abraham and the way they did it in the old testament was they would cut animals apart this is before peta they would cut animals apart and they would put them in this thing and they would make this trench where all the intros were and in the blood and all of this stuff and two men would come and walk in between those and basically what they were saying is if you don't keep your part of the covenant you're going to be dead like these animals when god cuts covenant with abraham you can read this in genesis 15. god puts abraham to sleep and god walks alone through those animals why does he do that because he knows that abraham will not keep his part of the bargain he knows that with you and me he didn't save us because we're going to keep our part of the bargain he saved us by what jesus did it's not what we do that earns our salvation it's what jesus has done for you and me and that's the good news of the gospel that man i'm holding my own with frank turek man that's pretty good i mean i'm from a small town he's smarter than he's letting on um i uh small town in kentucky man i've come a long way um so uh let's see here um how let's see why no we've answered some of these um let me get here next page here how do you reconcile the differences found in the two genealogies of christ listed in matthew 1 and luke 3. i think one is following joseph and the others following mary and there's a book that you can get for some of these bible difficulties it's called the big book of bible difficulties written by my co-author dr norman geisler which is a very helpful book it goes through 800 of these kinds of questions that you might want to avail yourself for that book jim i mean is there is there another view on that do you know of chip uh no i don't you know i think that uh um they each are doing something different i think matthew has a as all the writers and this is i think this is a lengthy thing okay i think it would take too long to get into the genealogies um but i think matthew has a just to suffice matthew is basically showing you that um when you take from israel to david which was the great king david's fall took them right back to babylon which is where they came from so from babylon to david was 14 generations from david back to babylon was 14 generations but from babylon to the christ was 14 generations what matthew's saying is is that jesus is the true king of israel and so he's got a reason for what he's doing luke has a whole other reason for what he's doing and i think that a lot of times it comes down to what was the writer's intent i think those are real difficult but i don't there's no like inconsistencies we we do that to the bible all the time we try to make the bible do things that the bible's not trying to do and then we get mad when it doesn't do what we want it to do you know um which is you know not not good um is it a sin for a christian couple who are not who are oh who are engaged so is it a descent for a christian couple who are engaged who are not fornicating to live together who's doing that come on nobody's doing that no no they're doing it they are they're doing it they're doing that yeah but not that yeah it's right it's a good yeah that's it don't even have the appearance of evil all right you you wanna you want answers we we we gotta be the ones you like um dr frank turek i like that they have like official scientists be able to find natural causes for design in the origin of the universe well the way the evidence is pointing right now that space matter and time had a beginning out of nothing would mean that whatever created space matter and time can't be made of space matter and time it must be something that transcends space matter and time so you're never going to find a natural cause for all of nature it seems that the ultimate cause of nature is something beyond nature something we would call super nature supernatural in fact i had this situation once at the university of oakland in michigan where a young man who used to be a christian became an atheist and i had gone through the evidence that the universe had a beginning out of nothing and uh he said uh that's a god of the gaps argument we're going to find a natural cause for all of nature and uh i said to him john we're never gonna find a natural cause for all of nature he said no we will if you just give science more time we're gonna figure it out and i said john you're never gonna do it he said no we will just give science more time i said okay first of all john that sounds a lot like faith right we haven't found it yet but we will but doesn't that it's a youtube song too well we still haven't found what we're doing we're looking for that's right by the way have you have you seen pastor chip play guitar oh don't even come on man come on he's like an 80s rocker he puts a wig on he could play with van halen i'm telling you i would need a wig at this point my kids ask me they say daddy when you go get your hair cut why do they cut out this part what question were we talking oh yeah the creation of the universe out of nothing like the creation out of hair out of nothing right um the creation of the universe out of nothing i said you're never going to find a natural cause for all of nature because if nature had a beginning by definition nature can't be the cause i mean for you to say that if you give science more time you're going to figure out a natural cause for all of nature would be like me saying if you just give me more time i'm going to figure out one day that i gave birth to my own mother right it's not going to happen in principle space matter and time had a beginning and by the way natural laws are laws where do laws come from they come from law givers you know there's an agnostic astronomer by the name of paul davies he teaches at arizona state university in 2006 he put an article an op-ed in the new york times and in this article he the title of it was i think taking science on faith and what he tried to say in there was a lot of christians just taken on faith that god is the ultimate cause of everything but he said we scientists take on faith that natural laws are the cause of everything and so he asked the question in the article where did the natural laws come from and davey said i got you would not believe my email box i was i was just pummeled with vitriol from scientists saying don't ask questions like that they're just there those laws stop asking questions nobody knows because if you think about it look either at the end of the day there's only two world views and these are the two world views either mind gave rise to matter or matter gave rise to mind those are your only two options well can matter is is matter ultimate reality or is mind ultimate reality well we know matter left to itself first of all is dumb it doesn't do anything secondly it's composed so if it's composed somebody must have composed it thirdly it's not eternal fourthly it's running down ultimately matter this whole universe is going to go to heat death so the best explanation for ultimate reality is mind mind gave rise to matter not matter gave rise to mind that's what philosophy shows that's what the science shows so if that's the case we're never going to find a natural cause for all of nature good can you be baptized by a woman pastor is that biblical we are out of time aren't we yeah it's uh i think the bible's talking about the senior pastor so why couldn't you be baptized by a woman pastor i don't see in the world why you wouldn't i mean i i'm totally fine with it okay but you know um if you have a different view that's fine too this is the beautiful thing christians can can here i have no idea what this is i'm not a scientist like you do this stuff for a living um what is a counter argument against the simulation theory oh the simulation theory the idea that we're all in the matrix is that is that what that is i don't know i didn't ask the question okay and i'm not keanu reeves all right so are we in the matrix could we be in the matrix you know what the answer is yes we could be in the matrix right now can we disprove that no why because to know you're in the matrix you have to get outside the matrix right it's like to know you're having a dream what has to happen to you you got to wake up and go oh that was just a dream if we're all in a dream right now there's no way of us knowing that until we get out of the dream so can we disprove the simulation theory no do i choose to believe the simulation theory no because it's stupid yeah okay i love it um oh you're gonna eat this one up just please folks um frank is from new jersey so um just just know when he's strong he's strong um how do you respond to professing christians who say we're not to call out anyone's sin but rather just love your neighbor well it's it's what i may have mentioned on sunday that does love require approval i think the answer is no every parent knows that if you approve of everything your kid wants to do you're not loving you're unloving if you don't stand in the way of evil you're not loving and so if you want to help your neighbor you need to help your neighbor by telling your neighbor the truth in as nice a way as you can you don't have to be a fire and brimstone preacher to warn your neighbor who's about to go off a cliff right but you do want to help your neighbor by telling your neighbor the truth and jesus said that men love darkness rather than light so many people will resist that paul said we will suppress the truth and unrighteousness romans chapter 1 because we want to go our own way we want to go that way but god says go this way so people will get all annoyed at you for doing this and when they do i simply ask this question i say if christianity were true would you become a christian i've had atheists stand in front of the microphone in front of hundreds of people in on a college campus i ask that question and they say no no how's that reasonable how's that rational it's not the problem isn't here the problem's here they don't want it to be true they don't want there to be a god why because they want to be god of their own lives they're not on a truth quest they're on a happiness quest and they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy now here's the problem you could make yourself happy over the short term doing a lot of fun things but over the long term it's a disaster and everyone in this room who's over 40 years old knows what i'm talking about because many of us have tried it ourselves right i'm going to do it my way and it doesn't work out ultimately no if you want true contentment you have to go straight through truth and jesus is the truth so always ask the question if christianity were true would you become a christian if the person hesitates or says no the problem's not intellectual the problem is volitional or moral unfortunately many people are looking for god like a criminal is looking for a cop they're not interested now what can you do with somebody who expresses they're not interested what you can do is love them which means you can be in their lives you can plant seeds every now and then water seeds that kind of thing and then you can wait because tragedy strikes all of us at some point and when that tragedy happens chances are if the person's open at all your phone is going to ring and that person's going to be on the other end they're not going to call their atheist friend when things go bad what's the atheist going to say stuff just happens there's no rhyme or reason to this no they're going to call you a person of spiritual depth because you can actually offer something they need at that point when the student's ready the teacher will appear and maybe we ought not get frustrated at people who aren't where we are spiritually people always ask me how do you go on a college campus and you have some 20 year old kid who's really annoyed with you how can you be patient with them i i say why would i expect this 20 year old kid to agree with me when i was 20 i didn't agree with me i didn't agree with my 60 year old self when i was 20 right everybody is at a different place in their spiritual development you didn't agree with you 10 years ago did you so we just got to be patient what did paul say about this uh chip when he said something like i i'm the worst of all sinners i was an insolent and arrogant man but heath of sinners yeah but but but jesus showed me grace and mercy so we've got to show that to people we shouldn't expect them to agree with us yeah i think i think that there's a misnomer between grace and mercy and truth and and the the problem is is we can't we can't do both very well we we tend to go to the pendulum on one side or the other yeah you're right and so um and i think too um one of the things that saddens me is for christians in america is i think we've learned how to bifurcate the two great commandments which is love god with all your heart but also love your neighbor as yourself we've learned to hate our neighbor but act like we're loving god and doing it you know by saying oh i'm telling them the truth i'm telling them this and i'm giving it to them but there still is a sense of giving some grace and mercy to people and sometimes people who are in rampant sin don't necessarily need to be told they're in rampant sin they sometimes they need somebody to love them and pray for them and i think that's that's where for me just and this is just chip bennett here that's where i think when the bible says that you're to be led and we're to be led by the spirit of god i think that's what we really need to to really try to focus on as believers is god lead me like you know a lot of times we see somebody we i'm gonna get them maybe we should say god help me to say the right words help me before i open my mouth to to see this person as you see them um i know for me that has helped a lot because sometimes what i wanted to say was what i didn't say and and sometimes what i didn't think i was gonna say is what i said but you know because i'm i'm thinking god just help me to say the right thing but you know i think these are these are complicated we're never gonna solve these issues we're never gonna solve all these problems but we need to be people of grace and truth that's what john said jesus was he just but i but i will say that it was grace and truth it wasn't truth and grace i think i think you got to start with the grace and then come with the truth because people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care you know i i wonder too that a question you might ask somebody now that i think about it you might ask somebody that you love and you're trying to gently correct you might ask them hey if you saw me going down the wrong road would you love me enough to tell me a person's gonna say well of course well can i do that to you right now yeah i think that's a much better posture than let me tell you how you're going to split hell wide open you know um turner burn heretic get right or get left eat the bread of life or your toast [Laughter] i grew i grew up in that tradition man i i learned them all yeah um they met us at church with fire um you know things and had signs to turn or burn you know so anyway um so why did god require a human sacrifice in the form of jesus in order to forgive our sins how's any better than the pagan gods that also required human sacrifice say the second part of that again i'll read it again and see why did god require a human sacrifice in the form of jesus in order to forgive our sins how is he any better than the pagan gods that also required human sacrifice well first of all the pagan gods aren't true they don't exist but god may have used them to point to the ultimate god the ultimate truth uh secondly jesus is our representative and in order for god to remain just and to justify sinners he has to punish sin but if he punishes us then we're punished and we can't receive grace he has to find someone who is an innocent substitute for us that way god can remain just and be the justifier of the one who has faith in jesus this is romans 3 26 it's not arbitrary when jesus says i'm the only way he's not just making stuff up going since i'm god i'm the only way you have to listen to me no he's pointing out that there that god is caught between two of his infinite attributes his justice and his love he knows he has to punish all of us due to his justice but his love wants not to punish us so what does he do to remain just and still love us he actually punishes himself in our place that's what he does [Applause] good all right here's this one this this person's adamant no one will answer this so if i'm assuming this is online um we are so this you just said no one will answer here we go if god is all-knowing he knew lucifer would rebel before he created him um first of all though in isaiah 14 i don't believe isaiah 14 is referring to the devil i think it's referring to the to the king and so son of the dawn is not lucifer because actually jesus is the son of the bright morning star so i didn't i would say the name lucifer really isn't the devil's name but that's that's a whole other issue but i think what i understand what he's trying to right um if god is all-knowing he knew that satan would rebel before he created him how was lucifer not created then to be damned how is lucifer not created satan would fall and yet he created him um how then was he not created to to fall it's you could say the same thing about human beings how why did god create someone who is an atheist and knew he would be an atheist in other words why did god create people he knew would go to hell you know what augustine said to that um no that was another thing augustine said i'm thinking of something different um there was a question once that augustine got oh we went like this where was god before he created the universe and augustine said he was creating hell for people that ask questions like that um the same thi this goes to the predestination free will issue okay and i'll just give you my view on they do okay they do they're predestined to disagree on um i don't think that because we're predestined that we don't have free will because knowledge does not imply causation let me give you an illustration of this suppose a a woman brings home a baby from the hospital her newborn she puts that baby down she knows at some point during the night that baby is going to wake up and want to eat but because she knows that is she causing that baby to wake up and eat no knowledge does not imply causation when god elected to create this universe he knew lucifer would sin he knew we would sin he knew billy graham would be a believer and say richard dawkins the most famous atheist in the world would not be a believer unless dawkins repents we can pray that he will okay but billy graham freely chose to be a believer and richard dawkins has freely chosen to be an atheist just because god knows what he's what what's going to happen doesn't mean he's causing it you say well why didn't god just create a universe where everyone believed that may be logically possible but not actually achievable with free creatures why because if people are really free then god can't force them to do what he wants maybe this is the universe where god saves the maximum number of people while allowing the minimum number of people to go their own way and rebel against him because there are many things an omnipotent god can't do he can't do contradictory things he can't force free creatures to love him that would be a contradiction because if we're free he has to allow us not to love him and if we're free that's the only way we could love him because if we have no free will then we're not really loving we're more like robots so god created this universe knowing lucifer would sin knowing we all would sin and knowing some would go to hell and some would go to heaven but we're all freely just doing what we're doing does that make any sense sure yeah um why does god hold us to a higher standard than he does for himself he asks us to forgive our enemies and turn the other cheek yet he kills the firstborn children of egypt first of all since god is the author of life god can take life whenever he wants and if you look and you you can speak to this bit much better than i can chip because the plagues of ancient on ancient egypt were really slams on their gods correct so when he is is judging egypt he's these aren't random plagues like i'm gonna i'm gonna turn the nile red why is he turning a nile red because they worship the nile um why is he sending frogs on them because they think frogs are somehow special or divine let me let me jump in go ahead in in was going to say in revelation 11 8 um we're told what the city that is going to be destroyed what it actually is but but it's referred to in two ways it's referred to as spiritually called sodom and spiritually called egypt reason that's important is because we were originally created to procreate okay sodom is the reversal of the original creation egypt is the reversal of the original creation because they worshipped the beasts and we were supposed to subdue them so the city that'll be destroyed which shocker by the way it says it was the city in which our lord was crucified that's a very very very clean reference to where the city the target city of revelation is the city where jesus was crucified which i think is important when you're reading that book but it's interesting that he says that sodom and egypt because what you're saying here is these plagues that they were god showing them that he's the god to be worshipped not all of these other things and so what we've done as humans is we want to constantly rework the way god created the world and we want to do it because we really want to be our own gods i mean at the end of the day that's what we all sort of want we've all gone astray and we've all done these things but yes you're correct and i would also say let's continue to deal with this question but um to me it's it's like god asking me to turn my cheek is completely different than god saying he's going to judge something he's the one who has the ability to do that he's god i'm not you know and somehow we we lose that i think in our christianity that god doesn't tell us to do the things he tells us to do to harm us he doesn't tell us to do the things that we do to hurt anything his his laws his commandments what he asked us to do are either to help show his glory to the world or for our benefit and sometimes they're both but sometimes they are mutually exclusive and and so you know to me when somebody says well you know god didn't do the same thing he holds us to a higher standard he's he's actually not holding us to a higher standard than he's holding himself because god turned the other cheek for you and me way more than we would have returned he put himself on jesus he is the one though that can judge we're not the ones that can do the eternal judgment you know tim keller has a good illustration on this he asks you when you buy a new car whatever it is you you get a manual and it tells you do this to the car if you want it to work well don't do these things nobody reads it yeah nope well they they do read them i'll tell you what we're here in a minute but do these things don't do these things does anyone get mad at hyundai or audi or ford or wherever you get your car when when it says don't do these things no we go okay we get it yeah you're the designer you know how these things work when god gives us a manual though and it says do these things and don't do these things why are we suddenly mad that god has said don't do these things and he's as chip just said he it's for our benefit not his i know it's going to sound weird but do you realize that you don't help god by praising him and you don't hurt god by cursing him he's an infinite being you can't add to him you can't take him away you can't take anything away from him why does god people say oh god's a cosmic ego oh really why is god asking for your praise well he he he does deserve it but it's not for his benefit it's for your benefit you're meant to run on him we're the ones that get the benefit of praise and we're the ones who get the detriment of cursing when we do it it's for our benefit but we don't get mad at at hyundai when they tell us don't do these things why do we get mad at god when he says don't do these things and by the way just like the bible a lot of us only read it when we're in trouble that's when we get the car emanuel out when something goes wrong right or when they tell us that they won't cover it under a warrant yeah then we go grab it to figure out why they're not and then we go oh i should have read that um so uh so i also want to do this we have a microphone that is live for those of you all that are here and we have a camera so those online can see that if you do have a question that you would like to ask publicly you can come down to the microphone we'll try to answer you as well because we if you have something like that maybe you didn't have a phone maybe you didn't have whatever feel free to come down um and uh we will uh we'll do that too um why has god allowed so many kids to die i don't know what the reference of the kid's dying is to but um why does he allow so many kids to die yeah this is a hard question and i wish the person asking it was here because i would ask why you asking that question because there are two answers one is the philosophical answer and the second is the pastoral answer so if the person up at the microphone or asking the question is asking just because they're intellectually curious then there's the philosophical answer but if their baby just died they don't need me they need a pastor no philosophical answer is going to resonate at that point it might it would be like trying to go into uvalde now and try and explain why god allowed this to happen they don't need answers at this point they need somebody to cry with them they need somebody around them so um it's it's let me give uh as short as answer as i can give because we could spend a lot of time on this when somebody asks why do why do why does god let babies die for example i'll say i know why god allows babies to die in general because we live in a fallen world i mean imagine if everyone lived until 70 years old you were indestructible until you were 70. but that changed the way we lived yeah totally we would probably just live for ourselves until 69 and a half and then maybe figure out i notice people are starting to drop at 70. i better do something you know so we do live in a fallen world but if you're going to ask me why did god allow that baby to die i don't know why but i know why i don't know why i'm stuck in time but god can see the end from the beginning there's something known as the ripple effect and the ripple effect says that everything that happens ripples forward into the future to affect trillions of other events and billions of people maybe a baby dying today ripples forward into the future through a series of causes that helps bring forth the great evangelist 500 years from now who saves millions of people can we trace all those ripples ourselves no we can't but god can in fact we see this ripple effect in a short story in the old testament with joseph and his brothers right joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers and long story short after he goes through a lot of pain and suffering in egypt he rises to the third highest administrator there he puts a bunch of grain aside uh because he thinks a famine may come and a famine does come and then his own family that sold him into slavery leave israel to come to egypt to escape the famine and as soon as joseph sees them he's in a position of power he can help him or he can slam him what does he say to him he says you dirty rats you're gonna pay for what you did to me no he doesn't say that he says what you meant for evil god meant for good the saving of many lives here's a situation where the evil done by the perpetrator ripples forward to help them later you can see it in the story most of the time we can't see the ripple effect but there you can this is why we can trust god we know we're not promised 80 years of health people die and get sick all the time what we are promised is is that things are going to work together for good to those that love god and are called according to his purpose yes yes and we're and specifically contextually the all things that are working together for good goes back to verse 18 of romans 8 which is that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed god is working through the sufferings and the problems of this world in such a way that he will bring forth good and that's just a position of trust and faith we have questions down here fire away my name is rich hey rachel what is the value why is blood so important throughout the old and new testament why is it the blood whether it being sacrificed drank and paganism shed for sin what is the blood why is it so important to god it does say life is in the blood chip why don't you take that one i think that's i think that's the real issue is that that you the the blood is where life is at in in the the point is is that what what what is required for a just penalty for sin is is death and so the the sacrifices which to us seems to be so heinous and so crazy in the old testament all these sacrifices that they're ultimately you know god met a group of people in a barbaric state and if he would have said i'm going to move you from here all the way to here it doesn't work it takes time so god is showing over long periods of time to us what is required to really atone for sin and so all those people that had to go all those years and offer all those animals and all of those things are being reminded every year i gotta show back up man every year i gotta do this again which is why the writer to hebrews in chapter 10 he says that when jesus offered himself as a sacrifice for sin he sat down once and for all there's no more sacrifices that are needed so the life is in the blood the the idea is that sin requires a penalty and the penalty of sin is death and so what we're being shown in the you know i can't speak to the pagan gods and all the other stuff they had all their reasons for doing what they were doing but god he was over time really helping people learn that there needed to be a sacrifice for their sins and in doing so those were the reasons for the sacrifices hope that helped some thank you yeah cooper what's up so um i'm very grateful for the very clear articulation of the gospel earlier in the presentation and um that we're saved by faith alone ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 through 9 says for it is by grace through faith that you have been saved this is not of your own doing this is not of works this is um this is my grace so about no me may both sorry i'm keeping my words mixed up here um but some catholic friends have pointed out to me james chapter 2 verse 24 which says we are not justified by faith alone we are justified by our works so how do you reconcile ephesians 2 8 and 9 with james chapter 2 verse 24 and what is the relationship between works uh and faith i think if you look at james james is talking about showing your faith to other people he says i will show you my faith by my works in other words the works are evidence of the faith but the works are not what saves you i don't know if it was martin luther who said this or not it might be uh where he said that you're you're saved by faith alone but your faith is not alone in other words it's going to bring forth fruit it's going to bring forth works now the fruit comes from the tree the tree doesn't come from the fruit so you're saved by grace but you're saved as you pointed out ephesians 2 8 to 10 you're saved to do good work so your faith shouldn't be alone it should result in good works and that's what james is talking about james is talking about how you demonstrate the fact that you're saved where paul in ephesians is pointing out how you're saved i think i think too let me jump in on this paul is talking about the fact that our justification has been brought from the end of time into the now because of what jesus has done james is more referring to at the end of of life where there will be a justification by works that a christian that is saved will have works that this is just part of being a christian but the works are not the root of our salvation they're the fruit of our salvation and and even in ephesians 2 which you rightly have said grace you've been safety of faith and that's not your own doing it's the gift of god not a result of works so that no one may boast people forget the very next verse we are his workmanship created in christ jesus for good works which god prepared beforehand that we should walk in them that the idea is is that a true believer will have fruit it may not be as good as the person to your left or the person to your right but there will be something in eternity that god can say i did in you and these are the works that you did that will show the justification of the fact that you were saved by faith alone so would it be fair to say that every other world view is kind of the other way around you know it works and then you get saved but christianity is you're saved and then thus it produces good works yeah in fact i think you can put all you could say there's really only two religions in the world those that try to work their way to god and those where god works his way to you christianity is the only religion that says you cannot do what you need to do to appease the deity all the other religions say here's what you got to do you got to cut yourself you got to do this you got to do that you got to pray this you got to do that you got to do this christianity says you have to come to jesus alone by faith alone and receive what he gave to you alone and and based on that if it's genuine and you really are a child of god there will be things in your life that god does amen thank you guys thank you appreciate it yes sir hi i'm bernie thank you for your ministry really appreciate been following you for a long time um i attended church here locally that's been around for like 50 60 years and we have stained glass windows in our church like a lot of churches do of jesus and one in the baptistery of him with a dove over his head and the one in the foyer with him welcoming people and all of a sudden we got i got a new uh staff member and this has been going on for probably about 10 years and it's coming up now that and we're in a process of debating talking amongst one another whether or not these are graven images as in exodus 20 um the second commandment and um people are concerned that and our pastors made some statements also that possibly that like the painting and the children's department with jesus welcoming the kids images and books our pastor said he doesn't like movies that depict jesus because we don't know what he looks like and it's a graven image and it's becoming almost a possible you know some deterrence possibly splitting in our church it's the outcome and 90 of the people in the church are like i haven't even given it's artwork and haven't even given a second thought it's stained glass it's artwork and that's where i am what do you feel well it's not a graven image to draw a picture of jesus after all he was 100 percent human in addition to being 100 divine you're not drawing his divine nature you can't it only draws human nature reminds me that story little kid was drawn says what are you drawing he said jesus she goes we don't know what he looked like because we are now so i would just i would i would reject the premise that you can't draw i mean some of the greatest paintings ever right are including jesus yeah but he because he had a human nature so you're not you're it's not a graven image he he was a a real guy right does that make sense yeah yeah that's pretty much what we're all arriving at just as long as you don't worry tell them to stop fighting in church and go preach the gospel exactly thank you thank you thank you thank you hey hey hi uh thanks for doing this guys absolutely um so my question is about an honest person who is seriously seeking the faith seeking you know the existence of god but doesn't see enough evidence for god or the christian faith um and shows humility and says i i don't know if it's true um isn't that humble honest agnosticism worth celebrating worth what celebrating this is going to sound harsh but i'm from new jersey [Applause] i think we have a great capacity to deceive ourselves by saying oh i'm really humble and i'm really looking for the truth i would ask that person how many books have you read how much prayer have you done have you even read the bible have you ever have you sought counsel from people that are further down the road and ask their opinion on why they think christianity is true because i find that a lot of people say they're seeking but they're really not now maybe that maybe this person's the exception and if they are the exception if they truly are seeking we just go with the lord's words keep seeking keep knocking the door will be opened at some point but i might also warn um someone that is not finding enough evidence or psychologically can't get there to not trust your psychology because your psychology may not tell you the truth uh for example a lot of people can't fly in an airplane because psychologically they're freaked out by it they think they're going to go down they think there's going to be an accident of course there's always the possibility of that but flying in an airplane is literally the safest way to get anywhere it's safer than driving amen in sarasota amen in sarasota absolutely the diamond intersection man yeah at noon after two glasses of wine and cheesecake by some of these people they're like you know and so but the point is is that people are allowing their psychology to overcome the evidence you know your psychology will not tell you what's true outside of your skull the evidence will and a lot of times uh i ask people how many people let me ask right now how many people in here sometimes doubt that what you believe about god is true look if you don't have your hand up right now you're probably not thinking very much right i wake up sometimes in the morning go i don't even know if this is true right and i've written books on it but then i start thinking about the evidence and i realize the evidence for christianity is really good and if i'm having a good day everything's fine bad day don't know good day fine bad day don't know good day fine bad day dog what's changing me or the evidence me i'm psychologically going up and down the psychology will not tell you the truth the evidence will so concentrate on your psychology in fact a reminder to c.s lewis who famously said sometimes when i was an atheist this christianity thing looked just so plausible and then sometimes now that i'm a christian sometimes it doesn't look plausible at all and he says that's what faith is for that's what you tell your emotions to get off the evidence is there if you want the evidence it's there if you don't want the evidence then you can go your own way that's why god gives us enough evidence to trust in him to know he exists but also enough ambiguity to allow us to go our own way if we don't want him but for those who do everything that you said right that that honestly seek that honestly look to people like chip go to school read have a library in their house every day are looking for the truth um psychologically recognizing that they could be tricked all the time and being aware of that my question is is for those sorts of people though ultimately at the end of the day if they're taken too soon do you think that that honest seeking for the truth where they did not land on the truth that we're talking about here in this room do you think that ultimately that leads to them being damned by god i'm reminded of an answer that william lane craig give gave to a fire that took out a bunch of young people many of them were not christians someone asked him why wouldn't why did god do that why did he allow that and craig i think rightfully said if god knew that someone would become a believer later in life he would have enabled them to live through that because god wants people to be saved more than we do we forget that god wants all people to be saved he loves us more than we love one another and so if there is any way god can save someone he will but god allows us to go our own way and i think a lot of people do want to go their own way chip you have something on this you wanna yeah you know um i i i sympathize with the fact that you know you say if somebody has really tried hard and whatever i as a human being i get that the the problem is is that i don't know all the mechanics of what went on behind everything and all of that what i do know is this i do know that in romans 1 and it's a very uncomfortable passage for most people paul says that people have enough knowledge about god that they are without excuse and people always ask well what about the person on this what romans 1 addresses that that god has made clear to them enough that they are without excuse in other words they are worthy of being separated from god for all of eternity because what can be known about god has been made clear to them and they are without excuse what i can't do is say you know the person who tried or didn't i don't know the mechanics of the person behind that yes is humility is study is trying to look for truth are those good things of course they are nobody nobody would say they're not good but but i don't know that we should then raise that to the level of well that person's better than the other person because i think that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god and i think all of us need jesus so i you know i know that's not the perfect answer and probably what frank said isn't either but but i i think that at the end of the day um it's one of those things where we can't affirm that people who are trying to come to the truth that's a good thing it's a positive thing what we also can't do is know exactly are they really looking for those things inside that helps i appreciate you guys thank you very much thanks come on hi good evening my name is luis um luis by the way thank you oh thank you uh frank dr frank turk um you were pivotal in me coming to christianity coming to the bible thank you thank you seven years ago you john lennox ravi zacharias which you know he did a lot of good despite everything so i just wanted to thank you guys thank you um so um my question is a cosmological question um we were taught in school in public school here in united states that we came from the big bang right the sun formed and then the earth formed after but then i'm getting into the bible and i'm reading genesis and it's completely the opposite god created the earth first then the firmament the sun the moon the stars in six days so which one is it is it 4.7 billion years or is it six days and um i and i will you know i i don't want to get you know sound dumb here but i came to you through the flat earth movement it made me think speaking of truth what is the truth um i know the devil's here to deceive us right it's public school deceiving us and like misguiding us and getting us away from the bible because my my parents were were christians and i became an atheist through high school college and kind of came back onto this road so my question is which one is it is it the bible or is it the yeah they taught us on discovery channel um absolutely convinced that the universe is at least 60 years old okay actually it's at least 84. because that's that's all my mom is all right actually but when you look at genesis i think genesis is a polemic and actually pastor chip can explain this better than i are you are you local in sarasota uh tampa i actually came for the first time that sunday um next next month i'm having john walton in john walton is it probably the leading genesis scholar teaches at wheaton um and he will be talking about creation um you know i i think that what i would say is is that obviously this is a very dense subject um you know uh but but but i i i don't think that you you have to affirm that the earth is 6 000 years old to be a christian um i don't think you have to affirm the earth is 4.7 billion billion years old to be a christian there are ways in which genesis can be looked at and scholars do disagree on genesis is to so is the is the real question for you you're just wanting to know the truth of like how the world was created or is it is it like help me to understand the question i want to know the truth is the truth that is the bible the truth well of course the bible is the truth yes then then the 4.7 billion years is alive and no it's not true because genesis doesn't have to be read that way the augustine didn't read that augustine didn't read um the the the genesis story is that a yom which is a hebrew word for day is also used as day of the lord which is a period of time of judgment so so what i'm saying is is i i think what i would say is is don't allow a certain hermeneutic to wedge you out of believing in the bible because i don't know that genesis has to be read as it is a 24 7 creation and it may very well be we were just talking right before i said if i get to heaven and god says if the earth was six thousand years old i'm gonna be like i don't care if he says if he says if it was 4.7 years old billion i don't care because what what i believe what's fundamental about genesis and you want to know what's true is that god created the heavens and the earth that's what's important right the time frame is not that important yeah i guess i guess uh the reason it it's a personal matter to me because it's what led me to the bible yes again i i was i was taught christianity as a kid i just didn't believe it because it's like what do you mean god created the earth in seven days that's ridiculous but then it makes sense if if if that's what's happened if he created you know everything in six days sure then what we're what we observe is based on is is is the bible is a flatter document i guess hey luis just just for in the interest of time you mentioned john lennox get john lennox's book seven days that divide the world okay on this topic get that book okay all right see me after come next month i mean we're going to spend time in genesis and you might you might see things a little differently when john teaches because he's really good at what he does i'm not saying he's right perfectly but you know he's pretty good yeah you know what he does i mean you know um thank you it's hard to say you know it's great great question thank you guys thank you very well god bless thank you hi i'm david so i have a little different type of question how in your guys lives have you gotten the bounce between like intellectual knowledge of god versus knowing god and personally having a relationship with him can i can answer your first yeah please my biggest concern as a christian is that i know a lot about god but don't know him personally yeah well with nothing i'm being honest is an intellectual yes is an academic as a scholar as a professor but but i do know jesus i mean and i but but you're right it it there is a balance there what i would tell you is is that as much as i would love for everybody to be a scholar as much as i would love for everybody to know languages as much as i would love for all that stuff can i tell you something what i've learned as a pastor is what i love more than anything is a lady or a man who will just come in here and pray and seek god and maybe doesn't know sometimes exactly everything knowing god is far more important than than the other things but yeah you don't need to convince me of that i'm i'm talking about more in the pursuit of you'll never have balance in your life how do you bounce it you'll never have balance in your life is my answer that's my answer you'll never have it yeah it's a myth you will yeah you will for you'll you'll never know enough about god he is the he is the only perpetual novelty because he's an infinite being so none of us are ever going to make a complete uh have complete knowledge of god in fact and there there's you've mentioned deuteronomy 29 29 before the secret things are of the lord it would be strange if an infinite god wasn't strange to us right so i i know you're trying to get at how do you go from the belief that to belief in is that where you're going with this david yeah yeah one of my favorite quotes is a god that i can fit inside my head is not worthy of my worst correction i agree i completely agree with you guys yeah i'm just talking about having a personal relationship with him while pursuing to know more about him and obviously you're not going to know i'm finite he's in my finite um i mean i used to know be involved in a good church no seriously being involved in your church have accountability people around you who'll say hey you're being a nerd rather than being a jesus follower you're studying more about doctrine and you're not really doing enough to to share the gospel have people in your life that'll keep you accountable and just know and give yourself the grace that none of us really ever arrive in this world we're all in process i mean my wife looks at me sometimes and goes how do you know the bible so well and yet you don't do it david one one other thing i i think uh that when you meditate on the attributes of god it goes from head knowledge to heart knowledge because by doing that you realize the kind of awesome and i only use the word awesome when i'm referring to god or the heavens because that's what the bible does unfortunately we use the word awesome for anything awesome shot dude awesome tick tock video no stop that okay if you study the heavens for example the heavens declare the glory of god when you look at the heavens for example we did this here last year the number of stars in the universe are about equivalent to the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on all the earth times 100 000 and to go from one star to another star just in our galaxy if you could go five miles a second which is space shuttle speed it would take you over 200 000 years to do it and the bible says the heavens declare the glory of god it says as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love to those that fear him how high are the heavens above the earth stars equivalent to sand grains on a hundred thousand earths over 200 000 years at five miles a second between those stars infinite when you can meditate on that then you go i want to know this god thank you guys all right welcome hello my name is jeremy um so we have like the calvinist and the armenian like free will kind of camps throughout church history i'm curious about like what is the legitimacy of maybe the kind of a third way which is starting more popular nowadays which is that sort of christian universalism kind of concept where um god might save everybody in time like it says in you know first corinthians 15 22 where it says god will actually reconcile all people to himself or like and adam all die and so in christ all will be made safe or be made alive i'm just wondering is that like a legitimate interpretation of scripture it's kind of been historically considered somewhat heretical but nowadays i'm like thomas talbot came out with a book recently about it and i'm just wondering what your thoughts were on that interpretation of scripture robin perry did too he wrote it under him evangelical universalist you have anything you want to say the only thing i was going to say was the third way is is not uh is not universalism it's molanism which is the idea that god knows all counter factuals so any universe he creates he knows how it's going to turn out that's what i was talking about before but there's one theism and there's christian universalism yeah and then there's universalism in general yeah theological all those are theological constructs um romans five paul is not saying that is in adam all died in christ all will be made alive he's making the point that he's using adam and christ but his point is is that you have to believe so he's not saying everybody's going to be saved in romans 5. there'll be just a bad you know um the the idea that i mean even c.s lewis postulated that the doors of hell could be locked from you know um the answer is that and and i'll i'll just be i'm i'll take this um here here's what i would say to you what we what we know is that scripture is overwhelming in the fact that today is the day of salvation it is overwhelming in saying you need to tell people about jesus once you open the door to christian universalism what you do is you take away any of the urgency of getting the gospel and so to me let's assume that somehow god worked everything out in a way that we didn't know that he was going to do it that the bottom line is is that there's nothing in scripture that would lead me to believe that that's the way i should adopt the posture of my life all right thank you hey guys hey dr chad hey dr frank i want to thank you both for taking my question so my question is um i've been through different denominations over the years and i guess i've seen kind of movements more recently about people operating in prophecy or this kind of supernatural sign in one signs and wonders i've always considered myself kind of middle of the road and kind of understanding arminianism and calvinism and kind of more modernism kind of blending of the two for me um where does prophecy sit in in today's church and i know i have a western perspective but i'm trying to understand it and not prejudge people saying oh you're you guys are just blowing hot air i want to make sure that i'm i'm rightly judging someone who claims to be in the position or having sort of authority or title what what would be your uh advice for that i think prophecy meant to speak the word of truth into someone's life not necessarily to predict the future uh i mean it may mean that in the bible but i don't think people are telling us the future today although this is an area where christians are going to differ theologically and there's a website that covers these issues i think fairly well you might not agree with everything they say but it's also an app it's called got questions have you seen this okay so if you type in prophecy into god questions or sign gifts for today you'll get a number of articles and a number of scripture references and then you can make the call as to where where you think they are right and where they think they might be wrong chip yeah i just there's two ways prophecies used in the bible forth telling and foretelling fourth fourth telling is hey you're in sin for foretelling is talking about what may happen in the future all i can say is is that when a prophet says something that doesn't come true they're called a false prophet and most of the people that i know running around saying that their prophets usually are wrong on about eight to ten things that they're saying and so it it really begs the question do i think god can speak through somebody and tell the future man i'm never gonna say god can't do anything but what i will tell you is is we're told in hebrews that god has spoken to us through his son i think that he's already spoken to us in his word and what we what we want to do is we want to circumvent that and have some dude or some lady tell us what we need to do rather than going to the bible and working it out that's what i push away as a pastor is this idea come down front i'll tell you your whole life that's like sooth saying that's like a fortune teller you know down on 41. god has already spoken like you want to know what god says read his word he tells you you know that's that's my you know that's my thing not saying god can't do something to somebody not saying he can't do big things because he can but i just i think that when that becomes the norm in the church we're really redefining christianity at that point and just i don't want to take any more time but with that when people say they operate in gifts of healing and whatnot where should i align my my understanding of that with they're going down to sarasota memorial and walking through the rooms and healing people they got the gift of healing that's a very good point thank you guys so much thank you i'm all in if they're doing that you know but you agree oh sure absolutely go ahead man hey um i have a ten-year-old daughter at home and i just i really want her to be a critical thinker i've been listening to quite a few apologetic podcasts and reading books and just trying to do the best i can there so here is my question uh are there any warnings you'd give to parents who are encouraging their kids to think critically and apply apologetics are there any warnings right about getting involved in apologetics as a kid uh about the things i train her about right now the things that i teach her if are there like like the innocent bubble like when do you pop it and tell her like i want to tell her everything answer every question yeah i see i think there are some things that are obviously age appropriate and that's going to be your call because you know your child better than i know or the government knows so um [Music] so that's gonna that's gonna be up to you i will say this though my wife who's such a wonderful parent we had three sons they're all grown now we have a grandson and one on the way but um she would talk to our kids about any issue at any time if they came up to her and said mommy how are babies made she wouldn't go right she would just sit down with him and talk to him about it i think parents sometimes when you freak out over issues that you're you think i don't know if i can talk about this that's just going to shut that kid down and where are they going to go next when they have another question not to you they're going to go to the internet they're going to go to their friends i think you need to be very deliberate and very calm when you talk about these issues all right we have two more thank you we'll get everybody out here two more um hi i'm marissa um and thank you guys for just taking the time to do this um i have two questions actually one for my friend and one for me um but she asked if we fall back into sin and fall away from our walk with the lord do we have to be re-saved or repent again well we always have to repent of our sins but if we're saved we're saved it's we're not once saved always saved in my view so if you're saved you're saved again what you can't gain by moral success you don't lose by moral failure chip yeah i mean i i i i think if you are saved one day and not save the other you start playing the christian hokey pokey you know and and and the bible says john says i've written these things to you that you may know that you have eternal life so i think that you know um you could have a situation though where someone thought they were a christian retreated from their what they thought came to the lord and that time was a real come to the lord there's there's always nuance but you know i think that what we don't want to do is create a i i don't want to create eternal insecurity in anybody okay okay and then my question was um why do we think god sent jesus when he did and since jesus did die for our sins and were forgiven through his sacrifice what does that mean for the people that came before jesus sacrifice yeah great question paul talks about jesus coming in the fullness of time in fact i just gave a chip a book written by a friend of mine jay warner wallace it's called person of interest which is a fabulous book where jim points out the impact jesus has had even if you didn't know if you didn't even you didn't have a bible you could see the impact jesus has had just on what he's done for the culture and what he's done to so many areas of our culture and in this book he points out that a number of things lined up perfectly for jesus to come 2000 years ago there was a period of peace known as the pax romana where and the roman empire spread along across the known western world where people could converse with one another in a language coin a greek that was virtually universal across roman roads that had been built so it was the perfect uh time for jesus to come and that's probably why he came at that time and there are many other reasons too but those that obviously were uh saved before jesus were saved by jesus's sacrifice even though they didn't know the name for example paul says the gospel was preached to abraham abraham knew there had to be a redeemer coming he didn't know the redeemer's name but he knew the redeemer was coming and so they were saved by putting their faith in yahweh yeah i would just say people that are saved by jesus are saved in the same way we're either you're either looking forward to when he came or you're looking back to when he came because we're told in genesis 15 6 that abraham believed god and god credited to him righteousness which is what paul says is the same thing for you and me so so i think that i think that salvation has always been the same way that it's been through faith and one is just looking towards the future redeemer one is looking back to the fact that the redeemer came does it make sense yes thank you thank you and by the way on sunday during the services we're going to be talking about the evidence that jesus actually did rise from the dead how can we actually trust that this happened about 2 000 years ago so if you're interested in that hopefully you'll come back either what saturday it's saturday and then uh sunday here nine and eleven and at our bee ridge campus at at ten um frank's gonna be talking about uh the proof of the resurrection this be a great time to reach out to your friend or co-worker or maybe somebody that's uh on the on the edge um because uh be some really good stuff can i ask you did everybody enjoy the evening was this uh you know good um and i i you know i we we this is something that we try to do here at grace uh i realize not maybe every question gets answered perfectly um you know but the the reality is is we don't want anybody to feel like that there's something that you can't ask or something that is a taboo here we want you to feel comfortable and i i will definitely be up here if you would like to ask any questions i think frank would stay as well um you know for a little while if you have some personal questions that you maybe like to uh look frank's books are out there in the lobby as well um you can get pick those up if you'd like them um next next month it'll you'll we'll be broadcasting it we'll be having john walton in and we're going to deal with the genesis issue as the young man had said you know how do we interpret genesis how do we look at genesis i mean i'm bringing in john walton i mean he's as good as he gets um and that's why i'm bringing him in because i know this is an issue for many many christians and i want to try to help you as a pastor understand um how we can look at that particular thing so that being said um let's uh let's uh we'll close with a word of prayer and then frank and i'll hang out for a little while and ask you know answer any other questions that you may have father we thank you for this opportunity thank you for all those that watched via the internet those that were here live um lord it is a a wonderful thing that we get to do what we do we're so blessed so many people all across the world that wouldn't even know what to do to be able to gather in a room like this with ac with seats and ipads and phones and microphones that work we are a fortunate fortunate people and i pray that we would never ever forget that we're grateful and lord i pray that we would be reminded that to whom much is given much is required and uh we want to we want to be the best that we can be here at grace to really reach the unchurched by being intentional neighbors that reflect christ i pray for everyone here and those online pray that you would strengthen them encourage them help them and uh lord we thank you for this time and i pray that you would bless this weekend coming up that lord many people would hear the truths and the claims of the resurrection and it would build faith and christians but i pray lord that maybe you would bring lost people here to be found as well we thank you for everything in christ's name amen and just uh before you before you leave real quick um remember that getting your church on on wednesday night doesn't keep you from being at church on saturday or sunday on the on the weekends so god bless everybody have a fantastic night and we will see everybody soon god bless you

Channel: Cross Examined

Views: 44,635

Keywords:

Id: ESeqVAF5Hp0

Length: 103min 9sec (6189 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2022