Bible Q&A with Steve Gregg, August 1, 2020

okay so as you know i think i think everybody here has been to one of our meetings before at least so i don't have to explain what we do for a q a uh did anyone come with a question in hand yes mark i'm going to start teaching a book of judges this wednesday night i doubt if anybody asks me this question but just in case i'm going to ask you to hear your answer okay in the old testament when there's all this violence when they when they can completely destroy a.i and i'm gonna sound like they're wiped out the women yeah um that's just it's a problematic thing i mean it could be i uh just giving your view on how you would answer that if somebody and let's see maybe two ways to answer one of my christians that might ask me that but then because sometimes you'll get non-christians will just say okay so the question is about the book of joshua and the fact that joshua and the israelites when they conquered kanan uh were they under instructions to actually annihilate everybody there men women and children um and in some cases it says that they did so other times it doesn't say they did so and we know that overall they didn't do that for everybody in canaan because they left a lot of canaanites in the land after after moses and joshua were gone and sometimes it became a problem to them just like god said it would god told them if they left any canaanites in the land it would be a stumbling block to them a snare because the canaanites were very corrupt they worshipped demonic gods who required infant sacrifice and um it's and and yet their their uh their religions were very sensual and a lot of sex a lot of drinking a lot of partying involved in the worship of their pagan gods and god knew that israel was you know made up of people of flesh who would be perhaps drawn just like pagans are to those kinds of things and so he had told them to eliminate all the traces of canaanite society and civilization when they come into the land and god said he'd help them do that which he did help them but they didn't really carry it out completely apparently because i guess they got enough of the land subdued to feel like well they're okay with that they can settle in now and they're kind of dominant so they're not gonna have any problems and whenever people don't obey god completely of course there's there's reasons he commands and there's problems that arise for not obeying those commands but the question is the the command itself because it did god did command them to wipe out men and women and children now frankly even wiping out all the men is troublesome to our sensitivities or we understand that men could be you know combatants against them and that would be perhaps a rational for getting rid of them but not all men are combatants at least not all of them would be much of a combat they'd be very old men uh invalids and things like that that would not be an issue in terms of the safety of israel going in but then when we think of wiping out women and children this is very very disturbing and part of that well most of that is because of our christian sensitivities i mean uh frankly christianity has civilized our minds and renewed our minds we might think all this barbarian slaughter you read about the bible that that's a very unusually uh cruel behavior for human beings to be involved in actually it's kind of about par for the course for human beings it's the reason we have sensitivity to it is because christianity has influenced our culture to the degree that we we don't like violence we don't like even killing enemies uh that was simply not a sensitivity that other cultures had before christ's time so it's it's frankly christian influence more than anything else that even makes us ask why would that be okay to do that kind of thing and of course we have to realize that this was not a normal war this was um and it wasn't a jihad it wasn't like you know sometimes people say well it's like how's that any different than jihad the jihad of islam is to convert infidels and if they won't convert kill them but the idea is to convert them to islam israel is not trying to convert the canaanites to to jewish religion god didn't ask them to do that this was not an evangelistic crusade this was a judgment of god upon those nations now it's interesting that after the canaanites were wiped out uh there were no other wars where israel was instructed to annihilate people there had been before the the amalekites and that got it had been wiped out and they got wiped out later in saul's day but um but they're really it wasn't god's instruction to israel to just go around annihilating heathen uh and of course atheists others sometimes misrepresent god you know he's he just wants everyone who's an unbeliever to be killed that's not true uh there are unbelievers throughout israel and there are unbelievers around israel but there were certain societies particular societies very few actually but canaanite and amalekite is the only ones we really have that were so corrupt that god said it's time to wipe them off the face of the earth it's time for this society to go now uh the whole society would include men women and children animals and all of that and that's of course what what israel was told to do with candidates before we think too horrified about this we have to realize that god had himself taken it a hand to do the same thing to certain societies previously uh sodom and gomorrah being one example without israelite swords god wiped out every man woman and child in sodom and gomorrah as thoroughly as he told israel to do the canines and before that in the time of the flood god wiped out every man woman and child on earth except for those in the ark so god as the judge of the universe is the one who considers himself to have the prerogative and rightly so of deciding when a society has outlived its you know tolerance level you know i mean god is very tolerant before the canaanites were wiped out he gave them 400 years that's what he told abraham he said i've been canaanites you have to wipe them all out but i'm going to give them 400 years because the iniquity of the amorites is not yet full so four centuries more of sacrificing your babies to demons because god is so reluctant to judge even before the flood he announced he's gonna do it 120 years beforehand of course that was only part of a lifetime in those days but still that's a long time to get people to repent uh the idea is that god even when he knows he's gonna have to wipe him out is reluctant and he puts it off in the case of the flood interestingly enough when methuselah was born a few generations before the flood the sort of enoch his name was prophetic enoch was a prophet and the name of his son means when he is dead it will be sinned and methuselah died in the year of the flood so obviously when methuselah was born god prophesied that the judgment would come and it would come in the year that this child would die and yet god extended that man's life longer than any other known person in history because of his reluctance he had already committed himself when this guy's dead i got to do it so i think i'll just stretch out his life as long and long long as i can so i mean god's whole disposition towards sinners is not that he wants to judge them but he has to if he's going to maintain moral order in the universe and also make a safe environment for people who want to live godly now israel god had decided to give them the land of canaan because the present inhabitants were simply unworthy to exist any longer as a society and because it was a good land nice mediterranean climate like california and it had a lot of pluses it was a land flowing of milk and honey and it's just i mean the whole earth is god so i'm going to give my people this parcel here and that's going to require removing those who are there now it's interesting that god would have allowed the canaanites to live if they just moved he told israel to drive them out of the land now of course the candidates were not eager to give up their land any more than we would be and therefore they stayed and fought and and died and uh i told him don't don't leave any of them alive there though anyone who died had another option they could have taken and that was get out of the out of canaan it's not the easiest thing in the world to do but i think i'd choose it over dying myself if i were them and it was an option now why why is it okay to kill women uh we have much more chivalrous you know instincts than too i mean i would never want to strike a woman or hurt a woman you know we've been taught to honor womanhood at least until feminism came in then they kind of want us to stop doing that so much but but the truth is that women have always been held as special objects of protection by men at least culturally that's the way i've always seen it and yet when it comes to being sinful and deserving god's judgment i suppose there will be as many women in hell as men i mean women can be as bad as men or or as good as men there's not really any moral dividing line between men and women and when a society is being wiped out for its sinfulness as likely to be as many women as men and who are sinful and if the whole society's been sinful now of course the children were not sinful children are innocent um and so we'd have to ask okay if god's gonna have both parents of all the children wiped out what's what are the objects or what are the uh options i should say that he could have for the children he could have the israelites adopt them all and therefore they could become just a huge canaanite orphanage uh which was not really the plan that god had for israel god had other plans for israel it wasn't to be a canaanite orphanage not that god has any against canine orphans and that's just the point he doesn't i don't think god has anything against babies and innocents and therefore they've got nothing to fear from dying it's those who are not innocent that have something to fear from dying and uh in my opinion of course some christians don't hold this view but in my opinion uh an infant or a young child who dies before a certain age of accountability is is is quite innocent and someone who dies if god views them as innocent then there they die in good terms with god just like you or me and paul said for me to live his christ and to die is gain so there's a sense in which from the from the christian standpoint the children of canaan were better off dying in infancy than growing up to be demon worshipers and dying later and going to hell you know i mean there's a sense in which was that or being sacrificed yeah not everyone would be sacrificed but some of them would be subject to sacrifice um so you know it's it's god's thoughts are not our thoughts but god's thoughts are always right and they make sense when you think them through the problem is that a person uh most people including most christians don't share god's thoughts uh and certainly atheists don't i mean non-christians do not share god's sentiments and they they think that you should say well the infants went to heaven when they died that that's just a christian uh argument of convenience you know because it's a ugly an ugly uh scene in the bible and we're trying to find some way to sanitize it well of course i'd like to sanitize it who wouldn't but the point is i don't have to make anything up to sanitize it the very world view of the bible itself to my mind uh justifies the action because frankly whether a society is being wiped out altogether or only dying as individuals at different times in their lifetimes everyone dies and this is something that i think even christians don't think as often as they should about is that this life is short eternity is long and one thing that's common to all people men women and children is that they will die some children will die in infancy even if it's not in a war some will die to infancy because of diseases or because their parents kill them in the womb and you know there's many many ways a child can die and they're all very sad but at least we do believe that a child who dies dies on good terms with god whereas adults that's not always the case so god is not a monster to make such a decision and you know whenever someone says well i don't think it's right that god should have these children die this way this person died that way i think well how would you like them to die when did you want them to die everyone's going to die if god decides this is your time would you want to live a second longer i mean if god's done with me things like there's no he's got no purpose for here on earth why should i want to be here i have no interest in being on this earth except to fulfill god's purpose if this purpose with me is done i don't care if i'm 7 years old or 70 years old i'm ready to go now most adults are not but children whether they know it or not pretty much are and so you know we have to see that these are not ordinary wars and in deuteronomy when god told israel how to conduct ordinary wars he didn't allow annihilation he gave he gave these instructions detailed instructions for how to conduct ordinary wars where you would leave you know if the city uh surrenders to you you leave them all alive if they fight you you kill the men and you let the women and children live this is in deuteronomy and it basically is the typical rules for war but it always says that's for all the nations that are not very near to you this is not to apply to the canaanites those who have to take them all out you know so i mean it specifically says that so god is not um a jihadist he's not but he is a judge and he judges societies as well as individuals as perhaps we are seeing in our own society it's hard to know i mean i don't give prophetic interpretations of current events but i mean i wouldn't be surprised that when we die whatever we find out we're living at such a time for our society maybe not but we do know that he judged babylon he judged media person he judged the grecian empire he judged the roman empire he judged israel and uh and he judged the canaanites and although not all of these judgments ended in total annihilation during war all those societies have faced total annihilation in terms of the generations that were in battle times that is every last person who lived in bible times is dead now and been dead a long time i often think you know if if i had died at age seven or at or let's just say age four let us say or i die at age 80. what difference does it make in eternity i mean that's a difference of 76 years what is that even even when people live to be 900 years old a difference of 70 years would have been nothing but when you're living forever and ever and ever and ever and ever with the consequences of the choices you made in a short lifetime you might actually be glad that you had a shorter lifetime to make fewer mistakes you know it's hard to say but all i'm saying is in when this whenever this comes up i think how are we going to answer this to people who do not share a biblical worldview and i think i think if i talk to a non-christian or perhaps to a particularly abstinent christian who's not not willing to see it the way i just described it i would just say here's what the bible teaches us there is a controversy and a conflict between god and rebel humanity and god does some things that are displeasing to humans and even harsh on humans we have to decide whose side we're on in this war are we on god's side or on the sinner's side if we're on the sinner's side then god has to give us some answers to satisfies if on god's side we already have agreed god is good god is righteous god is smart god is always just and even if i don't know why he gave this commander that commander some other clan i don't i don't have to know that to know that god is just and to know that the command itself is more than justifiable if i only knew as much as he did in most cases i don't even have to know as much as he does i just have to know as much as he's revealed to us and that's usually enough but honestly an unbeliever who raises the issue i always will have to tell them this i have to preface it say you know i can give you a very long answer which i find very you know capable of being justified but you won't like it because everything in my answer presupposes a certain world view that you don't accept and nothing i say will make sense to you if you don't have the same worldview i do so why should i even give you an answer if you if you come to the point where you actually adopt the view i have that god is the ultimate source and authority and he is the ultimate standard of righteousness and man is very far removed from that in description of his character and his what he deserves and so forth uh if you're on my side you'll see that whatever god does he's probably not doing as bad as we deserve you know but if you're not accepting what i'm accepting there then you're on man's side in this conflict against god and i'm gonna have to defend god against your prejudices which i'm not willing to do i mean i would if i had all day and nothing better to do but frankly it's a fool's errand uh because most atheists are not atheists because they haven't gotten good explanations they're usually atheists because they hate god in many cases they don't even disbelieve in god they just say they do they're angry at god and you can't be angry at god if you don't believe he just exists but i mean there are true honest i think atheists who really just feel like i wouldn't mind believing in god but i just you know i'm just not i've had a hard time hard time believing that but the most vocal atheists are the ones who are obviously not unbelievers at all they're not christians they're haters of god not disbelievers in god and when you're dealing with the hater of god you know when jesus said don't catch your pearls before swine you know you don't always know if somebody's a swine but if you find a hater of god probably they're as close to being a swine in jesus imagery as anybody because haters of god do not want your answers they want to convince themselves that they've got you in a corner you can't get out of them they but they're ignorant they don't realize that no the christian worldview for 2000 years and much of it for 2000 years before that has been held by some of the smartest people in the world who have answers to all these things it's not you know these modern atheists aren't the first people to see violence in the bible and wonder what's up with that they they think we're the smartest generation they're the smartest of all they're the brights as richard dawkins called himself actually dawkins wanted to give a new label to atheists he said instead of calling them atheists we should call them the brights meaning intelligent but he has not shown himself to be of superior intelligence in my opinion anytime i've heard him debate anyone or anytime i've read him uh and so in other words they're delusional uh they think they're smarter than everybody who's ever lived who who figured that there are explanations to this coming from a world view that makes perfectly good sense from someone on the other side of the aisle the interesting thing is of course you can't prove a world view it's usually a set of assumptions that people already have it's not something they look at they look through it they look at everything through their worldview and very seldom do they examine it but once you begin to examine diverse worldviews you find that the biblical worldview actually has some some evidence in its favor it has what you say has philosophical consistency whereas take any other worldview because they're not true they're not self-consistent atheists for example don't believe i mean their worldview does not allow them to believe that god has made any moral standards for mankind and therefore if there's any morals at all they have to be made up by man but if they're made up by men then they're not absolute because any man who makes up a world standard another man can say well my moral stance is different i'm making it up i've got as much right as you do to make up a moral standard and i've got a different than you so there are no absolute moral standards unless there's someone above all people who sets those standards and without god you've got no one there so you really can't say if you're an atheist i mean you can say it but you can't be consistent with your worldview that adolf hitler was wrong to annihilate jews he's wrong in our opinion but was he absolutely wrong if so who says he thought he was doing a morally good thing he thought he was doing a good thing for the german race which was a good thing for the world he thought he was helping evolution along by eliminating the unfit just like we would when we're breeding animals we we get rid of the unfit and keep the strong ones that's what darwin explained his i mean that's what uh hitler explained his own actions as he's following darwin's uh scheme and and quite to my mind consistent with that world view but that shows how horrible that world view is how wrong it is because everybody knows that it's wrong to commit those kinds of acts against innocent people so i think what people that's a you might say could we have a shorter answer then uh yes if you're dealing with people who you can immediately decide they're not going to accept any answer so the answer is i can't tell you the answer until you will adopt some sensible aspects of the worldview that i'm coming from because although it's entirely sensible if you don't think it is we won't get anywhere past the first sentence so i won't waste the time but when i'm talking to christians i mean we wonder about that too you know but then when you think about it through the biblical lens everything makes sense even if it goes against our sensitivities but the bible says there's a way that seems right to a man but the end of it is the way of death that means our sensitivities our sentiments are not always trustworthy partly because we're not dealing with the big picture enough get the christian worldview solidly in place and you can pretty much i think make sense of just about everything in and out of the bible but you're dealing with a hard book for modern readers for any readers but former readers had more confidence at the outset that god is always right that the bible is true and things like that we live in a generation where even christians are not so sure about those things in many cases as you may find out because i was from that generation of christians that just figured god said and i believe that that settles it you know that's the word of god is true and therefore when i'd read something like that it you know sentimentally it troubled me because we've gotten past those kinds of behaviors in modern warfare and so forth and uh so my sentiments were you know crossed by it but i never had any problem believing well that's what god said whatever reasons that must be the right thing because i have a theology that says god can't ever be wrong or unjust so that's how i wrestle with those things it just seems like if we could see how evil those people were from god's eyes it's just like when you're watching a really good movie and there's a really evil evil person and you celebrate when the good guy gets him if we could see it more like that it wouldn't be so troubling but we just have a hard time leaving this whole group of people was like that but that was the case well you know yeah i mean for those who couldn't hear that dana said that you know when you watch a movie and it's many times these crime movies are are uh or are you know they depict a bad criminal as incredibly bla bad so that you're happy at the end when he when he's taken out and you're you'd be disappointed if he wasn't because that wouldn't be right you know that wouldn't be right for him to get away with all that stuff because he's so evil but we don't assume most people are as evil as those bad guys in the movies but there are some societies where the general society becomes as corrupt as can be and and when they are i mean she was in if we could see things like god does if we saw how evil they were uh you know we would have easier time sympathizing with it i mean when you see people on tv even now breaking windows of shops that aren't theirs and you know lighting things on fire looting and things like that and and beating innocent people up with two by fours when they come out to protest it and you know you think why don't some police show up and just take those people out i don't mean to necessarily kill them but if it came that if you couldn't stop them any other way that's what police are for you know someone's killing people you know the police are there to stop them if necessary with violence and you begin to think well what if a whole society was behaving that way instead of just the three percent of the people who use twitter you know uh what everyone in the society was about doing that kind of thing to everybody else i think well god you can't stop them soon enough for my tastes you know but he's got more patience than we do and he loves evil people too that's why he loved us yeah rocky we have our understanding of when somebody when you die you know you're with god how did the old testament people understand like adam and eve i mean how what do you think their idea was like they were thinking about death yeah yeah when god said adam and eve in the day you'll die what did they know about death you know what did they what did that mean to them did they have well i have to assume that it had some connection with a concept in their mind they they never experienced it but they must have known something about death from some sort now i guess one thing we asked is how did they know any language they were apparently created with language system intact which means that god made them with the ability to connect meaning with words enough to talk and to communicate uh we learned that very gradually from infancy as we grow up but adam you've just got it downloaded yeah just implanted factory installed and so i have to assume that the same way they knew the meaning of don't that they would have some mean meaning they would attach to death now i have my own private view i'm certainly not alone who holds it but i it's not what i grew up thinking so i'm not i think many christians don't hold it many people say that because in romans and in first corinthians romans 5 and 1st corinthians 15 paul said that death entered the world through adam and that because of adam all die and some have assumed that that means all death of all species and therefore they argue that before adam sinned even animals didn't die this is one argument that some evangelicals use against evolution which i disagree with evolution myself but but one of the arguments they use that i don't agree with is that oh evolution can't be true because that would mean that generations of animals would have lived and died before adam came along and sinned and the bible says sin enter the world throughout excuse me death enter the world through adam and so animals couldn't have died however i think that misunderstands paul's purpose and meaning in both romans and first corinthians he's talked about human life when he says that you know adam brought uh life and christ brought resurrection from uh i mean adam adam brought death christ brought life from the dead resurrection from the day he started human experience he did not talk about animals there's no no prediction of the animals be resurrected and so in the range of paul's interest in the passage he's talking about human experience we were in adam who was humans were not animals animals were not in adam humans were and so the death and life uh dichotomy that paul's discussing there is distinctly human death in human life and it does not say that had adam never sinned animals would have been immortal there's no suggestion that mosquitoes would be immortal or flies or cockroaches although they are but but i mean frankly if mice and rabbits were immortal we'd be swimming them you know the fact is some animals apparently were made to be predators and while it is true that the bible says that god made the plants for every man and for every beast to eat that means every beast could eat plants it doesn't mean they all ate only plants bears eat plants but they'll eat fish and meat too you know it could be that those animals that are many of them that are strictly carnivores now we're omnivores just like dogs and bears and things like our now we don't know we don't have enough information but we certainly can't argue that a god did not make some creatures to be part of a food chain if he didn't it certainly happened beautifully by accident you know but uh i mean if god didn't want some animals to be eaten why did he make him out of meat wonder that if he didn't want hawks to eat uh gophers why did he make gophers out of meat you know i mean that's it sounds like a silly question but it's quite a profound one to think about he could have made him out of dirt or i mean on rocks or something anyway the point here is that there's a good chance i think from the evidence we have that death was from the beginning going to be part of animal life just like plant life i don't i mean if you eat fruit you're killing its fruits it's cells when you digest them you know so plant and animal death i don't think had to await sin to happen i think they're built into the system and it may be if adam didn't sin very early on that adam you've already seen certain animals die maybe from predators or whatever but the word death they had some cons concept of it whether they had a something to compare it with or not i don't know um it may be that since they knew they came alive at a certain point and he said well if death means the opposite of being alive maybe they'd they would be unalive you know so rocky i don't know what they were thinking we have such a brief record of this whole story you know but we but i thought about all those things and i think many thinking people do i mean because there are ways to tie it all together and it with some interesting possibilities but we don't know the answer because we're not giving enough data did they have some concept of heaven in the old testament you're wondering about life after this life after death what did they think about the afterlife the pharisees and sadducees have been believed in resurrection so what's their understanding of when they die they will be so did you understand that if they would die they'd go to be with god other than that and other just old testament people i think some people i think some people knew it or believed it in the old testament times but there's no general outward revelation of the afterlife in the law of moses for example uh which was the only bible they had for a long time uh and i don't think i don't think you can really get it clearly from any place in the old testament of course when samuel was brought up by the witch some people think that's an evidence that you know they believed in uh you know the survival of the soul after death uh although it sounds to me from the way the story is told that it was more like samuel sounded like he was woken up and disturbed you know he said why have you disturbed me you know uh so maybe there isn't a teaching that he was alive but that he was kind of disturbed from the realm of death and came alive and kind of annoyed about it too um we there's a lot of but it's sort of like the other question is there's possibilities but we don't have an outright teaching you know if you are godly when you die you'll go to heaven and live forever there's nothing like that in the old testament there is one statement probably that stands out in the old testament which is the only statement in the old testament where you find the word eternal life the word eternal life was found one time in the old testament in daniel chapter 12. i think it's verse 2 when it talks about those who sleep in the dust shall arise some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt now it's possible that that would have been understood in terms like we understand eternal life like immortality of the soul or or perhaps only immortality after the resurrection but it's uh the truth is and i won't go into this but there are reasons that i have for believing he's not even talking about the resurrection the last day but he's using figurative language like when ezekiel's dry bones came and became human again and god said this is like the nation of israel which is dead it's they say our bones are dry you know there's no hope for us he says i'm going to arrest bring you up and take you to your land and restore the nation from the dead the idea of physical bodies coming back from the dead in ezekiel 37 is really an image of israel being restored from the dead and not not really a description of the final resurrection it's possible that daniel seuss of the term would have been understood in ways somehow like that too so again we have the new testament revelation to fill in a lot of things that weren't clear in the old testament and then we of course were familiar with the new testament more than we are with the old testament but by the time we read the old testament we're usually reading it through the grid of our new testament knowledge so when we see words that sound like they're affirming things that are very clear in the new testament we have to ask but were they clear or what you know would they have understood that as we are understanding you know paul said in first timothy i think it's jeff i don't want to give the verse because i don't remember the verse but paul said that jesus brought uh life and immortality to light through the gospel that's an interesting phrase he brought life and immortality to light and say he created immortality he brought it to light like it was maybe a reality that nobody knew about it was in the shadows it was not clear to anyone but jesus brought it to the light that is he spoke about it clearly and so forth so my my assumption from a statement like that is that before jesus came i'm not really sure that god had given any real clear revelation in the old testament it may well be that there are references to it for example when the psalmist said you will not leave my soul in shale neither will you let your holy one see corruption in psalm 16. peter understood that being a reference to the resurrection of jesus would other people have understood that before peter did i don't know i i don't know if they understood that way before um but it's clear that jesus opened the apostles understanding that they might understand the scriptures it says in luke 24 and if they had this new understanding they could see these meanings there that others couldn't see but but that's only to say those meanings really were there but doesn't mean anyone else ever saw him before that you know hit meanings that only jesus and his apostles saw for the first time so when i read the old testament i've come to place where i don't assume that these guys had a clear concept of heaven and hell uh the word hell properly isn't found in the old testament it is in some translations but it's always the word shale and shale in the hebrew is not what we think of as hell it's just the grave so it was a mistranslation in the king james to translate shield as hell second timothy 1 10 was the life of immortality brought into life thank you so in daniel then what would what would be um i know you didn't want to get into it necessarily explanation but what would it be depicting in daniel okay what would daniel 12 or 2 be depicting when it says that many who sleep in the dust shell uh awake some to everlasting life some everlasting contempt uh unlike many people i don't believe daniel 12 is talking about the end of the world i don't think that's the time frame you start with the end of the 70 weeks now the end of the 70 weeks to the dispensationalist is the end of the world it's the end of the trip future tribulation as far as i'm concerned as the 70th week hasn't happened yet but since the bible gives no evidence that that's the case i believe the 70 weeks ended pretty much when they should have ended 400 490 years after they began and that would have been in the time of christ now um but the 70 weeks also do mention the destruction of jerusalem for example it says you know after the 62 weeks the messiah shall be the messiah and then says in the prince of the people who shall come shall destroy the city in the sanctuary that's a reference to the romans destroying jerusalem in 70 a.d but the prophecy doesn't go any further beyond that and therefore in chapter 12 i don't think it's gone beyond 70 a.d i think it's gone as far as the prophecy of the 70 weeks goes and so what does it mean well it's as i said i believe it's using apocalyptic language which is not uncommon in daniel or revelation or books of that time and when he says many who sleep in the dust shall awake um when jesus was born simeon who met mary and joseph in the temple said of jesus this child is set for the rising and the fall of many in israel now jesus came so that in israel many would rise actually the word in the greek is anastasis which is resurrect uh and and many would fall now i don't think that resurrect is any more literal than falling is you know if if i drop something off this podium it'll fall i don't think that anyone's falling off cliffs or anything like that and i think he's talking about figuratively some will come to spiritual life some will come to a spiritual fall uh a disaster and i believe that what he's saying is that with the coming of jesus and john the baptist before him by the way too a division began to be made in israel between those who would rise to eternal life that is to be born again on the one hand and those that would face instead eternal shame and contempt which is the term that's used now it doesn't say eternal torment it says eternal shame and contempt and since eternal doesn't always mean literally unending just ongoing ongoing shaming attempt what's interesting about this is that it's the term contempt in daniel 12 2 is the same hebrew word that's in isaiah 66 24 and it's the only two places it's found in the bible isaiah 66 24 says and they shall go out and look upon those who have rebelled against me says the lord for their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched now of course jesus in mark 9 quoted that line twice or three times in a passage and he referred to gehenna gehenna is the place where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die jesus said he was quoting isaiah 66 24 which has in it the same word that is only elsewhere found in daniel 12 2 contempt shame and contempt now uh basically this is a little complicated i don't we don't even have our bibles open for me to say look here and look like so i'm sure they're going to lose much i said i didn't want to get into it the the fact is i believe the evidence is good that jesus used the word gehenna to mean exactly what the greek word gehenna means the valley of henon the it's translated hell in every english translation gehenna but the word gehenna does not mean hell it has an actual translation it's a it's a greek word as an actual meaning gay henna gay means land of or valium henna is is a grecian form of uh hidden uh gehenna the valley of hinnom is right outside jerusalem and and in jeremiah's day it's where the babylonians threw the corpses of the jews when they destroyed jerusalem they cast them into gehen and jeremiah predicted this he says that the valley of gehenna or the valley of hinnom he said is going to stop being called tophit which was another nickname part which means the drum for some reason and it's going to be called the valley of slaughter the valley of the sons of hinnom he says it's going to be called the valley of slaughter because of the abundance of the corpses that'll be thrown in now that's in 586 bc when the babylonians destroyed jerusalem they heaped corpses of the dead jews outside the sea walls in the valley of hinnom where you can go today i've walked in in ghana myself it's right outside jerusalem to the southwest just outside the wall it's all grassy and nice now but in those days according to many reports it was a garbage dump and continual burnings were there and so forth but instead of giving these people decent barrels they just throw in a mass grave of the valley of hit him and that's that's their shame i mean a shame-based culture to not be given a decent burial yeah pretty well fertilized so so here's what i'm saying jesus told his generation that they had two choices one was to come into his kingdom which they could do immediately because he was there bringing the kingdom the other is they can go to gehenna or the valley of henon now he was predicting i believe 70 a.d just as the babylonians cast the slaughter corpses of the jews when they destroyed jerusalem into valiant the romans were coming soon afterwards she said in this generation they would come and they're going to do the same thing throw your corpses into gehenna now there's this is problematic and there are verses by gehenna that some people have a hard time fitting into that paradigm there's also verses that fit into heart hardly fit into the word uh making gehenna hell but difficulties are not insurmountable but i just can't go deeper and deeper and deeper into the subject about losing everyone here i may have lost you already but the point is that i i believe that gehenna when jesus is referring to the valley of hinam and where the the lost slain were thrown by the romans when the city was destroyed now jesus in speaking about again i said that's where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die borrowing from isaiah 66 24 where that phrase comes from which is where the wicked are now they're not in hell in isaiah because the righteous will go out and look upon them what in heaven are we going to go looking at people in hell i don't think so it's talking about um it's a war scene and it's the you know the dead bodies are heaped there now since jesus identified that phrase with gehenna in 1870 i think isaiah has talked about 70 a.d and when he talks about eternal contempt which is also what daniel talks about when he says some will rise to eternal life to eternal contempt what daniel i believe is same same thing as isaiah is that those who don't receive eternal life who don't come into the kingdom of god who don't follow christ of that generation were facing the alternative and that was to face the holocaust of ad70 and have their bodies you know dishonored in a mass grave outside the city rather so the short answer is daniel 12 is talking about 70 70 i think yes but i mean we've got people watching who want some uh explanation all right charlie um rocky rock her name is raquel but we call it rob yeah okay you know i mean i'm thinking that a lot happening we know that the pharisees absolutely believed in a resurrection now i assume that there is a resurrection we'll talk about maybe christ hadn't come in the advent of christ but they didn't believe in a resurrection yeah the pharisees did believe in our resurrection and they they did pick it up during the intertesting period you're right and the jews of course the old testament doesn't mention it does not have any very unambiguous references to resurrection though there are passages that we can read it into and maybe properly can but whether they would have seen it clearly without the new testament grid is hard to say but we oh i was gonna say but during the inter-testament period there was a very clear doctrine of the resurrection that developed now it developed among the uh diaspora jews who had not gone back to israel after the time of ezra nehemiah and zerubbabel and they had remained in the lands of persia and egypt especially alexandria egypt and interestingly both of those cultures hi grace how you doing hi ron hi nori good to see you guys come on in i'll leave those back chairs along we're using them to space the chairs when we put them back how we found them okay so just some chairs up this way um so i was gonna say is that the jews who are of the diaspora who remained in persia and and egypt after the after zerubbabel and those guys went back and rebuilt the temple they picked up some of the culture and both persian religion which was zoroastrian and egyptian religion both had very um strong theology of the afterlife and and in the case of zoroastrianism of resurrection too and uh so the pharisees i think remember the pharisees they they believed in the scriptures but they also believe in the traditions of the elders which is where they differ from jesus um jesus believed in the scriptures but not the traditions of the elders the traditions the elders were based on things that came up like the book of enoch in the inter-testamental period enoch was probably between one and two hundred years before christ the book and it it incorporated greek persian egyptian ideas the egyptian book of the dead uh has has uh features of the afterlife in it that are very similar to the greeks of course the egyptians and the greeks had cross-pollinated in the time of cleopatra and anthony and so forth but um there the greeks and the egyptians had views about the afterlife that resembled many of the views that christians now hold of uh many christians hold the view that after you die uh or at least in the in old testament times when people died they either went to a good or a bad part of of hades that the good people went to a good part and the bad people went to a bad part and um you know that that world view is kind of reflected in jesus parable of the uh lazarus and the rich man and that's that's a view that the greeks had but the old testament never taught um and the egyptians had it too and i it would appear that it came into rabbinic judaism through these cultural influences where this diaspora jews were remained after after the return yes mark in the passage it doesn't seem to me that it would be the new testament but from job chapter 19 1925 as i'm reading from new america sure as for me i know that my redeemer lives and at the last he will take a stand on the earth even after my skin is flayed yet without my flesh i shall see god whom my ship myself shall behold and whom i shall see not another yeah right right job job did say that and people often quote that verse to point out that he believed in the resurrection and he might have we have to remember job didn't even have a bible so he didn't get it from the bible job lived before abraham or not i'm sorry not before anybody but before moses he lived between the time of abraham and moses and therefore none of the scripture was written prior to the book of job joel was probably the oldest book of the bible because of that and therefore whatever job may have believed about god about the afterlife and things like that we don't know where he got it he may have gone by direct revelation from god and maybe that he got it from god and he may he may have known about the resurrection or he may have formulated it from his own thinking because there are pagan religions that have come up with the idea of resurrection which frankly resurrection makes kind of good sense uh morally and and so forth i mean when we realize that we know that justice isn't always done in this world some very bad people come to an easy end and never seem to be punished for their badness and some very good people live miserably and die horribly and never seem to be rewarded for their righteousness i think that's been observed forever that's why the hindus have karma and reincarnation because they really some you know it doesn't all get settled here in one life it must be settled somewhere else but other religions like zoroastrianism held the view that it settled in a resurrection now i'm not saying that the idea of resurrection is zoroastrian it's jesus taught it the bible teaches it in the new testament the question is is that with job who had no new testament or even an old testament where did he get his ideas from it may be that his own people had some idea of a resurrection that influenced him we can't believe that job although he's a godly man serving yahweh whom he called the almighty more often than not we can't assume that he had a complete even old testament theology certainly not a new testament failure so we don't know all that he believed or or where he got it but i will say about that statement it is a great statement in the old testament to support the general resurrection job says i know my redeemer lives and in the end of days he will stand on the earth and i and i will see him you know i even in my flesh i think i think you're translating even without my flesh yeah i think the king james says in my flesh i will see him which is even more resurrection like if it was without my flesh it'd be like just the survival of the spirit in the other world before the resurrection but anyway whatever he meant there's a there is at least a possibility i don't i don't know if this is true or not there's a possibility that he's still thinking in terms of his earthly existence my when my flesh is declared i think you're you're transitioning my flesh is flayed um i think uh king james is something like when my flesh is decayed or something like that which kind of sounds like maybe he's dead and decayed all of that so that he'd be thinking of you know after i've been dead i'll come back but job could have been figuratively speaking of himself as dead as it were already his his putrid sores all over his body his flesh is pretty bad right there and he's he might be saying i really believe that in this life i'm gonna see vindication here i believe god he's my redeemer i'm gonna stand on the earth as he says and i'm gonna see god now seeing god for us means you know in heaven we see god with our eyes for him it might have been i'm going to see my rescuer i'm going to see him i'm going to see a change of circumstance that god brings about i i don't insist at all that people understand it this way but from my understanding of hebrew poetry um which job is it strikes me as a possibility um but you know by raising some people some people are not happy to have all these different possibilities raised i don't blame you it just gets kind of a little confusing at times but it doesn't have to be confusing unless we feel like we have to know if i have to know the answer then i'm going to be confused because there's several different possibilities i can't sort them out if i don't have to know that i don't be confused i just have to be undecided and that's not everyone has that mindset i have and so i i don't mind being undecided about a lot of things that i don't have to know some people you know i heard someone use the expression addicted to certainty people are addicted to certainty i want to be sure and i want to be sure now you know don't tell me there's other possibilities without resolving it for me you know and of course that's why we have such a small group because most people want a teacher say you know okay here's the options but this is the right one and these are all wrong and i can do that with some controversies but not all of them and the and the interesting thing here is what we're talking about with job and maybe some daniel and so forth is whether they are talking about the future resurrection they might be now that doesn't raise any question i mean whether there is a future resurrection up the new testament teaches it very plainly so i know there is one but whether that was understood in daniel and understood himself well i mean those verses kind of sound like it but those verses are capable of being understood more generally but i've i'm not trying to disabuse anyone some psalms that have similarities yes there are but they are also poetic so yeah you're right there's a lot of psalms uh my wife and i've been reading through the psalms again and we've noticed quite a few verses in the psalms well it's like did he know you know about heaven and hell and stuff like that because some things he says almost sounds like it but also it's it's evident in some psalms he says you know you'll deliver me out of shale or you'll deliver me for shale and yet in the context of it it's very clear that he's not meaning he's going to die and come out of shield but he's he's in danger of shield and god's going to save him from it he's not going to let him die and uh so it's there's more complexities in hebrew poetry than and and old testament theology than most of us probably assume um and that may discourage some people i i suppose there was a time it would have discouraged me but i've gotten used to it you know you just get used to it saying there's some things we really need to know and some things we don't and the things we don't need to know are sometimes a little intriguing from for a person like me at least it's intriguing for me to um you know sort it out a little bit work on it a little bit even if i can't figure it out um see my battery's low now this thing doesn't seem to be doing the job i'm not sure why well for you watching we may have to go offline because the battery's low on my phone and so goodbye if you're going but uh we'll see we're going to go a little longer here um so any other subjects we've had two subjects in an hour [Laughter] see time flies when you have fun or when your head's spinning real fast i have a question yes okay um there's a passage here i have a king james with me um it's from john white and i don't know maybe i can read a few verses sure john won john 1 43 the day following jesus would go forth into galilee and find it philip and sayeth unto him follow me now philip was of the seda the city of andrew and peter philippe find it nathanael and saith unto him we have found him with whom moses and the law and the prophets did right jesus the mouser of the son of joseph and nathanael said unto him can there anything any good thing come out of nazareth philip sayeth unto him come and see jesus saw nathanael coming to him and saith him behold an israelite indeed in whom there is no guile nathanael saith unto him once no once thou knowest me jesus answered and said unto him before that philip called thee when thou wasted under the fig tree i saw thee nathanael answered and saith unto him rabbi thou art the son of god thou art the king of israel jesus answered and said in him because i said unto thee i saw the end of the fig tree believeth thou thou shalt see greater things than means and he saith unto him verily verily i send it unto you hereafter you shall see heaven open in the images of god of sin and ascending and descending upon the son of man my question is um i've i went to a i was in a part of a bible study and uh the teacher there suggested that when jesus kind of comes right out and sees nathanael coming to him and says behold an israelite indeed and whom is no guile it's sort of like why it's kind of a non-sequitur like why would jesus be why would the first thing that comes out of jesus mouth be behold in israelite in whom there is no guile like i i i never really saw it or read it this way but it almost seems like jesus is reading the mind of nathanael who basically maybe in other words maybe nathanael since he's under the fig tree i guess it's under to be understood that he was in contemplation or thinking or reading that's like kind of an old testament understanding of what it's like an idiomatic thing for under the fig tree um it kind of almost seems like maybe nathaniel was studying or thinking or contemplating about jacob since jacob was the deceiver and you know classically understood that way so it kind of seems to me like jesus is uh perhaps kind of reading between the lines and maybe this is kind of a little speculation on the reader's part but it seems to me like jesus is reading defending his mind and that's why nathanael was so taken aback as opposed to just knowing that because i i've heard your explanation that maybe he was you know it was just jesus unbeknownst to nathanael how could how could jesus willing that i was even studying but to know the topic of the to know what he was actually thinking about because he's just saying this phrase behold an israelite whom there is no god like he's just saying that like the first like why would you like a normal natural conversation that wouldn't be the first thing many times the first thing jesus says to someone isn't the thing you'd say in normal conversation even in answering their questions yeah but that's how it was that's how it was explained to me and it kind of made it kind of made me wonder if that was something yeah there's there's been a lot of contemplation uh from teachers i've heard as to what was nathaniel doing under the fig tree before philip brought him to jesus and was jesus alluding to something that he was doing under the fig tree when he said behold in israel indeed and who has no guile and he said oh how how do you know me and he said well before philip called you when you're under the figure i saw you and that made a profound impression on him he said you're the son of god you're the you know king of israel and so forth um so was it something that nathaniel was doing specifically under the fig tree that jesus is referring to well it could be and i've heard different things i've heard people say they thought he was praying some thought he was doing you know was having bad thoughts some thought he was as you say contemplating you're suggesting maybe he's thinking about jacob because of the contrast between jacob who was not a man without guile and nathaniel who wasn't about to god i mean all of this is true speculation in the extreme we just don't know i mean it's always possible that something like that does lie behind jesus statement it's equally possible that jesus is simply saying presuming the fig tree was somewhere not anywhere near by i said i saw you sitting under a fig tree you know and the man said whoa how did you know i was sitting under a fig tree you weren't anywhere around there you know so it could just be um that jesus is saying i saw you even though i wasn't there kind of a thing but there's there could be deeper meaning in that and what you were doing i know that too you know and i'm commenting on it right now just so you know i don't uh maybe maybe but uh i mean i certainly couldn't disprove it or even have any intention of doing so i would just say i don't think we can establish it from the little we have the reason jesus said in israel in whom is no guile in my opinion is that he's saying this is one of the few who are part of a faithful remnant guile is hypocrisy the pharisees were full of hypocrisy people who followed the pharisees learned hypocrisy as a feature of their religious practice pretend to be more than you are righteous and so forth but here's the guy who wasn't making any pretenses this is a guy this is an honest israelite this is not like most of them and by that see i believe jesus came to call the faithful remnant of israel to himself to be his disciples and he's saying you're one of them now what's interesting is that in revelation 14 when it talks about the 144 000 who i i take to be the faithful uh remnant of israel actually in jesus time although most people take it to be in the end times but i have my reasons the point is that when it talks about the 144 000 or the remnant of israel and isa in revelation 14 it says they in their mouth is no guile it says they follow the lamb wherever he goes and in their mouth is no guile now so the christian followers the jewish followers of jesus were are described generally by revelation as once in whose mouth is no guile now and nathanael was one individual jesus there's no guile in him you know i think he's saying here in israel there's there's righteous honest people seeking god and there's people who are just pretending to be seeking god this one is a real deal i think that's what jesus is identifying about him it uh i mean again there could have been something specific nathanael's doing in the fig tree and jesus could have had some nuance that uh adjusted but if that was an important thing i think that would be included in the narrative the fact that it's not i think leaves us either to speculate or leave it alone you know but to me it makes enough sense without the speculation he might have been sleeping he might have been sleeping under victory in the shade i don't know but especially it was the middle of the day but whatever he may have been doing i think uh the the the reference in being without guile is not necessarily a reference to anything that was going on before in my opinion all right anyone else i got through that one in 10 minutes you have another another question um in the same class we're going through john and red letter versions of the bible have john 3 16 yeah and in red but if you read the paragraph it kind of sounds like for chica for god so loved the world was john's commentary rather than out of the website i tend to think that too do you believe that i tend to the the problem is in the greek text we don't have punctuation marks so there's no quotation marks now john the author tends to speak a lot like jesus speaks in john's gospel that is the style of speaking of jesus in john sounds very much like john's own style of narration so it's sometimes hard to tell because he'll he'll have like the story begins with nicodemus and a conversation two ways but after a few verses nicodemus is not even the picture it's just one long theological discussion and is it jesus going on like this and there's it never closes out what nicodemus did i mean he's never mentioned again until chapter seven in another setting but is it like jesus is going on like he just kind of once once nicodemus said how can these things be jesus just filibustered for the rest of the chapter and we don't read what happened to nicknames or did jesus give him an answer which is briefly recorded up to verse 15 and then john gives commentary now there's a real possibility of that twice in john 3 one is that part and the other is the second story in john chapter 3 is when john the baptist disciples came and said do you know that the one you baptized in the jordan that he's over there baptizing people and more people are coming to him than to you and he said a man can receive only what is given to him from god uh i said i was not the messiah you know it's the bridegroom who gets the bride not the bridegroom's friend the bridegroom's friend rejoices to see the bride come to the bridegroom but he's not the bridegroom i must decrease and he must increase now there's more but i suspect that john the baptist stopped speaking at that last line i must decrease he must increase and then i think the gospel writer is making his commentary the rest of the chapter which kind of jumps from what john said into a deeper theological discussion and i i think that that maybe is what john is doing here now you're right the red letter editions they have the red letters go a lot further in the start in the in the nicodemus story but the last thing jesus says in john 3 15 is that as moses raised up the serpent in the wilderness so shall the son of man be lifted up that whosoever may believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life that's the words of jesus and then that john might jump in and say speaking of which let me let me give you some background here god so loved the world that he said his only begotten son whosoever believes him shall not perish but have everlasting life for god did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but you know and so forth it should be saved so we have john kind of expounding on what jesus said in my opinion now it could go the other way again there are no quotation marks to close the quote in the greek text and there are some translations that do close the quote there and some that do not the red letters in your king james are going to go further than that yeah so that's something in john 3 especially now you see it in other chapters too where it's more obvious you know where where jesus says say something and john will say this he said to talk about this you know i mean so john is not only a uh not only a a biographer he's a commentator you know he's writing the most theological gospel of the form after all he starts with that whole prologue at the beginning that's entirely theological you know and uh so john is the theological gospel i believe and uh because of it he picks snippets from the life and conversations of jesus and then he explains and kind of develops them for the reader to get more depth out of it i mean when john in chapter 2 when when jesus says destroy this temple in three days i'll raise it up again john then says now they thought he was talking about the temple that was standing there but he was talking about the temple of his body and john always wants to talk about what jesus said not just not just mention what jesus said it can go either way obviously the translators or the editors of that one think differently about it right what matters is what was said yeah as far as i'm sure if john said or g said it's all the same because john is an apostle that jesus appointed to speak for him so it's all good you guys got anything in mind just came to listen that's okay that's tony how you doing no no i mean i i didn't know this was gonna be a question oh you didn't i didn't like it no um there was just something somewhere along the line that i thought was very very uh it's compelling i think as a dispensationalist uh which i'm not i think as a dispensationalist uh you look back and you're looking forward to the rapture and it's a beautiful thing that's getting ready to happen uh and if we were coming to the end of the world the same name but beautiful it's something that's so which i who knows i have no idea well they believe they'll leave before it gets ugly yeah yeah yeah yeah but you know it seems like it's getting pretty ugly now and i don't see anybody leaving just yet but and it's been ugly for two thousand years from a lot of people yeah i mean wicked and that jeremiah change but we are living in times that i've never seen from uh you know when i was young and it's on my mind a lot because of my grandchildren and children and you know my heart aches um but yet you know god brought his judgment socrates he brought it all through you know you he didn't know the world and so i think people want to look at this period of time and say we've come to the end of the world i don't know there have been a great number of societies that lasted longer than america has yeah and when they ended no doubt the locals and contemporaries thought it's the end of the world it seemed like it to them you know and that was true when babylon fell it was probably true when egypt felt probably true and rome fell to the roman empire you know but the barbarians came and took him out so i think that america could fall and maybe western civilization itself could fall without it necessarily being the end of the world right i mean things have have shattered to pieces that had lasted very long time and and then you know out of the smoke arose something that continued yeah you know i i have to say that it's it because of modern technology we are living in times very different than any of these other times we've mentioned and you know it is much more conceivable than it ever was that you know there could be an annihilation or or that even all the countries of the world could be controlled by one power or whatever you know that wasn't really seriously possible in earlier times and that's one reason why i think christians often have a much more uh a greater tendency i myself have a greater tendency to think you know things are going bad this could be the last time you know uh this could be the last time i don't know but yes but but do you know revivals sometimes follow appearance like this um and if if a revival comes all bets are off you know what god may do i mean our culture is just so spoiled in other countries in that movie we watched silence or silence when the japanese approved the christians and and they must have thought i thought it was the end if they knew anything about the at least in japanese christians yeah and all these countries cultures that have had such a horrible horrible abuse it might just be our turn you know and christianity is spreading much faster in china and sub-saharan africa and latin america than it is here or in western europe i mean we always think of western civilization that's the bastion of christianity if that goes down that's it's all over we could go down and christianity could you know dominate the world through chinese evangelists or korean evangelists or through latin american ones or whatever you know i mean just it's hard to know uh i it's just that chris cheney's had such a prevalence in western civilization for you know millennia now that it's it's hard to imagine that that went down that there could be time left you know for there'll be rise and fall of more civilizations after that but there could be and it may well be that even though it's not hard to imagine because of modern technology you know all the worst case scenarios happening globally instead just here or there uh that doesn't mean it'll happen it might but and it might happen someday maybe not anytime soon because it's possible that people will still be afraid to push the nuclear button and just because no one wants you know assured mutual destruction you know they might want to influence other ways uh it's so hard to know i don't i don't profess to know or and i don't really speculate yeah chris yeah i was just telling sabrina i was like i up all my questions but now i remember them oh good so um my first question would be uh in first corinthians three where uh paul talks about you know i thank you with milk now with solid food you're not ready for it in that sense of like the context that he's talking about is it more because of the divisiveness in the chapter that he's talking about or is it more or less because of all the carnal like you know things that they were doing that you know he had already kind of discipled in his first 18 months there right well there are many evidences of carnality in the corinthian church i mean to frame to say the church is carnal and babes uh could be justifiable on many evidences but he was there talking about their divisiveness he says as long as you were saying i'm of paul i'm of a or i'm of apollos are you not yet carnal and speaking as mere men so it is that particular manifestation of cardinality he's he's particularly irked at at that moment though he in the rest of the book he'll talk about other issues that are equally problematic but um yeah when he talks about them being babes it's it's in the context of first corinthians the first three chapters he he introduces the problem in chapter one that some say i'm of apollos some sort of paul some some of cephas and so forth and then he goes into uh well he discusses himself in apollos eventually yeah in fact even in chapter four he's still saying so who is paul who is apollos they're just messengers through whom you believe you know servants um in chapter three he says you know or actually chapter three he said that in chapter four he says i've spoken these things and applied them to apollos and myself uh so he's in chapter four he mentions that he's been talking about apollos in himself it's kind of interesting to see that first four chapters through that lens because in the first chapter he's saying i didn't come with enticing words of men's wisdom well apollos is apparently known to have done that kind of thing and whatever i mean that's how he's described in acts as a man who's a mighty in word and debate and so forth and what's interesting is we know that when paul had spent 18 months in corinth and left apollos came after him and ministered there for some time we don't follow apollo's ministry very far in acts but he must been there for a while and gone somewhere else and then when when when he was gone something i i like this apollo's better i like paul i'm i'm going to be his kind of christian and others saying hey wait a minute that's just well i'm going to stay with paul you know and somebody's going well i want to be with peter jesus said he's the rock didn't he and you know and i said i'm of christ so they're starting to have these divided loyalties and paul does not say a word against apollos directly in fact everything he says is trying to say we're on the same team i planted the seeds he watered the seeds god gave the increase we're both serving god in his field you know i laid the foundation others including apollos will come and lay build on that foundation but they said but let's be careful how he builds and i think that what he's suggesting there is that although he is saying that he and apollos are really on the same team and he doesn't want people lining up in loyalty to himself or to apollos but at the same time i think he's kind of subtly trying to say well when it comes down to it my way of doing things is better than policies you know i don't he doesn't come out to say because he doesn't want to be more divisive you know but he said remember i didn't come with enticing words of men's wisdom uh he said i do i do have words of wisdom to the mature he says that in chapter two verse six to the mature we speak the wisdom of god in a mystery but not to you babes i couldn't do that with you i had to give you milk and not meat yeah that was that's where i was going to go next so was more or less the milk that he was feeding them with does christ crucified and then the solid food in a sense would be more the theological understanding there'd be something more than that yeah yeah when he says at the beginning of chapter 2 i determined to know nothing among you except christ and him crucified well that's not much i mean i mean i when i say that i mean that's not much theology that's basically the gospel you tell somebody when you first evangelize that's a baby christian milk kind of thing you know it doesn't mean it's not highly important it's just not i mean if a christian never knows anything more than jesus was crucified he didn't even mention the resurrection there though in chapter 15 he says the gospel i preached you was that jesus died for our sins according to scripture he was buried and he rose again the third day according to scripture and he was seen so he did teach more than just christ him crucified he did at least include the resurrection but but he apparently didn't go much beyond that apparently he felt he says i had i fed you with milk and not with me because you were not able and even now he says you're not ill i still can't trust you with anything more than milk so we better figure that most of what's in first corinthians is still milk you know because he's writing to people he says he doesn't think they contain any more than that but he obviously has deeper things and as he says to the mature we speak the mystery of god or the wisdom of god in a mystery he says these are things that i has not seen he has not heard neither has entered the thoughts of men they're revealed by the spirit he says and so there's the mystery of course remember in in in ephesians and in colossians he talks about the mystery that he is privy to that was not made known to previous generations but is made known to the apostles prophets by the spirit i don't know if he's talking about that but if he is then then ephesians and colossians are the books they're going to have that meat that solid food in yeah and and no one denies that evasions and colossians present a real challenge in in plumbing the depths of the of the theological statements paul says there so yeah i would think that that you're going to find in the thessalonian epistles and the corinthian epistles mostly milk i say thessalonian epistles because paul was only about three weeks in thessalonica before he left and wrote i'm sorry so the oldest converts in thessalonica had been saved only a few weeks i can't imagine he got very far with them beyond milk so it's interesting mostly mostly eschatology that people who are into technology focus on are in first and second thessalonians which is probably just milk yeah that's for babes you know [Laughter] but uh and of course the resurrection of the dead all that theology is in first corinthians 15 which is i guess milk too i mean he said he preached it the resurrection of christ when he was with them and the resurrection of the dead because christ rose so yeah i think that they're what he's saying is you're not going to find much more than milk in first corinthians because they were not able to bear it he said remember jesus in the upper room in john 16 12-13 said to the disciples i have many more things to say to you but you cannot bear them yet so when the holy spirit comes he'll lead you into all truth so what paul tells the corinthians is there are things that go beyond the obvious and these are things that the holy spirit has revealed but i can't give them to you here i give them to the mature people he said so he's kind of shaming him a little bit all right well then why do we close i don't have to i don't have to talk all night just because i like to

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Keywords: Bible, Q&A, question, answer, the narrow path, Steve Gregg, 2020, August, Christian, Bible study, Christianity, Bible answers, Jesus, God, Holy Spirit, church, live, Facebook

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Length: 84min 55sec (5095 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020