Ferguson, MacArthur, Sproul, and Sproul Jr.: Questions and Answers #3

with someone give a simple definition if possible of the glory of God that's an interesting question and as much as at least three of us did defining that we trace the roots of kavod weightiness and heaviness the other adjectives that tend to be used with respect to the glory of God are his augustness which incidentally was one of the things that provoked problems for the Christians in the early church because they would not use the title August 4 the emperor of Rome they believed that that belonged to God and God alone because there is a transcendent majesty that is unique to him and that's what we're talking about the majesty of God the greatness of God that's I can't get any simpler anybody want to add anything or should we leave it right there succinct the majesty and the greatness of God all right we'll move ahead RC jr. a number of questions how would you advise a parent who concludes one or more of their children are not among the elect how can your children be warriors if you don't know if they've been drafted yet chosen is a way the writer put it is it presumptive regeneration baptize children of believers - is it presumptive for us to think that all covenant children will come to saving knowledge of Christ as Savior so that whole area and the first question is the easiest what do you do if you conclude that one of your children is an elect what you do is you repent election is a beautiful comforting powerful biblical doctrine about God's secret decrees and because it's God's secret decrees you can you can certainly in some sense know that your elect thats the issue of assurance although we need to be careful very careful as reform people we get so distorted on this often thinking that that we're justified by our election when the truth of the matter is were justified by Christ no one gets into heaven if you go up to the throne of God God says why should I let you into my kingdom and if you and you say well God look look down in your book and you'll see my name there your name's not in there you plead the work of Christ on your behalf and that's all because of that we don't know who's not elect we do know if someone dies screaming blasphemies against God that that person wasn't elect and that and how we deal with that is there's a another question but if your children are breathing then you don't know that they're not elect and so what you do when you're when you you can know maybe that they're not in the kingdom at this point certainly and what do you do then you pray and you preach that's what you do as you do with anybody else who's lost you pray with the course with great fervor now the question of how can our children acquirers this is the question and this this is a question of where we're going to have a division not only out there but up here the question is how do we see our children what I'm not saying is that we know our children are elect what I am saying is that we know that God's covenant faithfulness operates in this way that it is his common pattern that as we seek in obedience to his word to raise our children and the nurture and admonition of the Lord that he will be a God to not only to us but to our children and how does that happen it happens only when our children embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ not only do we not make it by justification no justification by election there's also no as it's not my baptism say God has no grandchildren I agree with that wholeheartedly God has two one at a time and give life to those who are his elect however again and again and again and again we see in the scripture God dealing with family so what I'm suggesting is is that when I look at my children I believe God's covenant promises I act on those covenant promises and I treat my children as warriors and I do and I treat them the same way I treat my whole congregation imploring all of us all the time to believe the gospel but what I don't do is look at my children and wait for some sort of big powerful emotional specific conversion experience I've got two children with me right here and if you were to ask them do you trust in the finished work of Christ alone every but whatever they're two of only only two them here both of them would say yes and if you ask them when did you start doing that they would say but I don't know because I can tell you this that from the moment my wife and I find out we're pregnant we pray that God would change their hearts then knowing that even in the womb our children are sinners in need of the grace of God but also knowing I'm not being very succinct what very quickly also knowing that God who has the power to raise us from the dead has the power to give in the womb a dead child new life and that's how I pray that God does for all of my children anybody want to I'm still wrestling whether my children are elected that's no way to talk about sherry why did you think you'd divide this stage up here with it well dr. MacArthur who is just a incredible godly man my son is probably more excited about seeing dr. MacArthur everybody else here and he gets that from his dad would tend toward what would agree I think that got worse it got tends to be covenant Allah faithful but I would think would tend to be less less eager shall we say certainly less eager to place upon God's covenant children the mark of that covenant or would see the mark of that covenant differently but I don't want to have a debate with dr. MacArthur on baptism certainly not in front of all of you which is why I tried to do it delicately but thank you Paul for bringing that back up I wondered sure however a comment because I think people probably are still out there saying though then then he must believe that his children are I believe that my children are saved of course I do of course that's the same yeah but I don't but I don't believe it in the sense that that it's an absolute guaranteed thing I believe in the sense that I believe my wife is saved in the sense that I believe that you were saved in the sense that I believe dr. MacArthur is saved which you know in the last year I've seen some pretty scary things about people I had great confidence in people who've made professions people who had worked in the ministry who have proven themselves to be outside the kingdom at this point anyway so nobody gets a guarantee there nobody gets a card from Tetzel Singh no matter what happens you're going to heaven so the question is not a question of what we can know the questions how do we treat our children do we treat them as potential converts or do we treat them as holy as the Bible describes them but I don't want to provoke a debate no it just when you're a plenary speaker you get put on the spot because everyone hears you and they are interested to know the the however and everybody that out there that would share dr. MacArthur's view on the issue of the sacrament that we're talking about here would certainly hear me and say oh he's he's he's talking about baptismal regeneration or he's he's he's thinking it's some sort of magic thing and it's not and I'm not saying that and of course when I hear Baptists talk about this I'm saying well why don't these people have confidence in God's covenant faithfulness well there's a real disagreement but we don't have to paint each other as as far apart as we possibly can and that's why I don't I don't mean to put you on the spot I see that I heard you putting your dad on the spot on the radio last week on one Lord one faith one baptism so I thought one good turn deserves another I've never heard you saying boy you're really getting me in trouble now you're really great thank you for speaking what you mean there Sinclair let me read this let's see it seems the church in the UK is seen as small but deep and the church in the United States is seen but large as large but shallow is this true which is worse do you see signs of change and either or both well that's how it's seen you're agreeing with the Zen precinct enough so you're saying it's true I can take the point as well as the next man I think people often see that and it it is it's a mixture of several things one I think is it's it's really a mixture of the way in which the two different cultures look at each other dear I see it most Americans of any taste I have ever met I appreciate the things about the United Kingdom that have historical depth to them you know I remember somebody taking me in the southern states to to see these Antebellum mansions and making the mistake of asking which belem we're talking about here because they were historic monuments and you know I'm every day of the week in a building order Lamont and it's relatively recent there's only 200 years or so that there is a cultural thing there it's also true tragically true in the United Kingdom that Ann and this is part of the whole European psyche about the United States that that people see what they regard as noise and superficiality if we know anything about American Christianity it it is the zany spooky things that we've seen exposed on television and often they don't know that there are many many churches both large and small in the United States whether it's very solid biblical preaching even I think even more significant weather is very solid church life and the thing that's true I think particularly about our country in Scotland is that our there are many places in Scotland where there is very solid biblical preaching there are very few places in Scotland where there is very solid church life where the Word of God has not only had the freedom to be uttered from the pulpit but had the freedom to be released into the inner disciplining de cycling and structuring of the life of the church and as somebody who knows both of those societies I would love to bring many people over to the United States and and indicate to them what Reformed churches can really be like because we have a relatively few of them in the United Kingdom so I think as you move from one side of the Atlantic to the other you're I think you're bound to say that because we belong to the one body of Christ there's a tremendous amount that we can learn from each other but Americans should not demean themselves I know that as much that it's scary and wrong but there there is much singular blessing of God on the church in the United States and two years in Scotland would teach a lot two weeks and Scotland would probably teach a lot thank you John the question is asked will you complete your New Testament commentary series that's something only the Lord knows I think if I live and have my sanity for another ten years that I'll be able to finish at the pace I'm going now I'm preaching through Luke in chapter 9 which means I probably have about five years left in Luke maybe four and then I have mark to do and and then when I've done mark I will have preached through the entire New Testament and that's that's necessary for me then to take that basic material and off of that to write the commentaries I think I'm 21 volumes in 10 volumes to go so if I can preach through two books in 10 years and write a commentary a year for 10 years which I think I can do it could be done in 10 years can I weigh in on what RC jr. was saying a minute ago sure I just want to tell you this I just want to say this I just want you to know that the thing I appreciate about you and deeply respect about you is the passion with which you expose your children to the gospel whatever may be the theological stuff going on behind that that is what a parent but I believe before God is called to do and is the greatest expression of one's parental responsibility is to pour the truth of the gospel relentlessly into the hearts and souls of our children and you're a model of that okay right he was waiting for however but our see all the messages during the conference have been an incredible blessing however it makes however it also makes God seem untouchable or unapproachable how do you encourage and strengthen your congregation into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior they must feel that the emphasis has been on more the transcendency of God then as you're reading the question Paul I was thinking I could hear almost here the theologians of the other side of the worship wars critique of our position on worship that what we have succumbed to is a one-sided understanding of God in which we exalt his holiness and his transcendence and have eclipsed by that emphasis on transcendence his eminence the sense in which he is near us and of course you're asking me how I do that in the in the church and everything when I hear that criticism quite frankly I understand the theological terms I know what imminence means and I know what transcendence means and all that but I'm baffled by it existentially baffled by I don't see how I could possibly over exalt the majesty of God and I don't see how exalting the majesty of God and the greatness of God in any way diminishes the sweetness of his presence to which we have access one of the things that you know we haven't looked at in great detail here is that we've time een when John talks about how we come to Christ and the gospel and that we cry a wretched man that I am and it's never been better communicated in hymnody than by toplady Rock of Ages nothing in my hand I bring I mean my own conversion experience was exactly that a sense of the naked that fleeted to him for dress file I do the fountain fly wash me Savior or I die and I feel that way every day Paul that I have no hope in life and death except in the gospel and except in the work of Christ has been performed in my behalf but what I tried and I tried to communicate that to our people in the church but at the same time I try to tell them what are the fruits of our justification what are the consequences of our justification and the first two fruits of our justification are one we have peace with God and what let's get this antiphonal preaching going here John we have peace with God and Oh gee-whiz strong blow that why I threw that right down the middle you know hanging curveball and swinging a mess and access you read that book I know you did access into his presence see that's the difference of what we've been talking about we don't go anymore to Sinai to a mountain that that where there's a wall around it and you're gonna get shot with an arrow if your dog runs over there and touches the mountain but the wall of partition has been broken the temple curtain has been rent and we are now assured what have we been talking about this whole time into the very presence of Christ into the presence of God into the presence of the Saints and the General Assembly in heaven that's imminence that's nearness but again as I said as close as we can come into the presence of our Lord and of God we come with boldness but never with arrogance never with presumption always remembering the majesty of our king in whose presence we are invited we come to his very table were adopted into his very family you don't get any more eminent to that last week I got to say this one last week I'm walking out of the kitchen and there's this little piece of paper on the on the table and I just glanced down it and the first words on that piece of paper I read were and the sound of an gavel echoed through the courtroom what's that the sound of a gavel echoed through the courtroom at which moment the judge declared that I was now adopted into the DIC family as their son who wrote that mikey wrote at 14 years old he's talking about gavels echoing in the courtroom because he was asked to write an essay for this junior high about some momentous experience of his life and he wrote about his adoption I'm not talking I'm preaching okay now but I mean the adopted the adopted ones of the transcendent God are invited into his immediate presence I emphasize that every time we come to Lord's table that'll provide us to but I really believe in the in the real presence of Christ not physically but I believe in the real true presence of Jesus Christ at the Lord's Supper and that the sacrament is a real means of grace and that when we come there we're coming straight on into the immediate imminent presence of Jesus Christ at his table and I can't get over that I cannot get over that that we're allowed in the sea I don't think the questioner was critiquing know how I but I like you talk about the other side a little bit more like yeah you've been doing right yeah okay anybody else want to speak to that I was just gonna say it the phrase personal relationship with Jesus Christ bothers me a little bit I don't know how other people feel about that but I think it very often takes the place of a corporate relationship with Jesus Christ I can't I can't I don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in the sense that there's something about the relationship that I have with him that nobody else has I am a member of the body of Christ I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ I have a corporate relationship with Jesus Christ I don't even think of my I don't even think about Christ in personal terms I don't know if that makes sense I don't I don't think about Jesus in some some sense other than a biblical biblical understanding of who he is you know what I'm saying I only understand my God as he's been revealed and so there's always an attitude of transcendence toward God God never comes down to become anything less than transcendent to me that doesn't keep him at a distance that just makes my access all the more amazing and awesome and wonderful and I never think of Jesus Christ in any other sense than the full revelation of Christ in the gospel that unfolds his majesty and his glory so that I just sort of live my life content and at peace to know that this is my God and this is my Lord and he is ordering my life in perfect conformity to his will which is joyful to me if I submit to him I don't think the questioner was saying an exclusive relationship with Jesus Christ but well I'm just playing off the word a little sheep my name and there seems to be a lot of that type of personal biblical material yes but you get to the point you know where you're sort of into the Henry Blackaby thing and you're wandering around listen for the voice of the Lord and what's the Lord gonna say to me and and the Lord led me to do this and the Lord showed me this and told me this and I don't but see I think that's exactly what the questioner is asking though you can have all these extreme views but what is the view of this conference on the personal aspect or the imminence aspect because there are so many other things floating around there well from a theological viewpoint what imminence what I understand that the fullness of imminence to mean is that God is intimately personally involved in my life and that I enjoy the results of that powerful involvement it's it's not that I feel something it's not that I have access to some things with him that other people don't or there's some unique twist to our little relationship I just think it the idea is that he is far in the sense that he's as infinite as the limitless universe but he's near in the sense that he's I'm the Temple of the Spirit of God and he's active in my life it seems like the Spurgeon's the Luthor's the Calvin certainly wrote often of that what I would say the questioner is referring to as that personal aspect of their salvation so obviously God is a person and he's personal and we're personal so whatever the relationship has to be personal maybe what John's response to something I respond to is the jargon right people feel those they're evangelists whose names you would recognize what is the gospel and the answer I heard is this the gospel the good news is that you can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ now that's true but what that is not is it is not the gospel and and I think maybe that's what we're responding to the way that phraseology the way that jørgen has become a substitute for the objective content of the Word of God the gospel has to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ and how the benefits of that can be appropriated by us personally but you know the devil has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ it's a negative personal relationship it's an innocent but everybody has a personal relationship with Jesus in in the sense that he is the Lord of lords the King of Kings and you're in his domain whether you like it or not and about the its relationship you have is a personal enmity and personal estrangement if you're outside of Christ so I mean again this goes to that superficiality thing I think that's really what I'm saying I have a personal relationship with Christ in the sense that I am adopted as his child that he is his spirit lives in me that I possessed the life of God that I have been granted Grace and eternal life that I will be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ I will be a person I will be a glorified body as well as a glorified eternal spirit living in that body forever and ever known my name to my Lord and my god absolutely true I guess you know the word jargon is what I'm talking about it we have so many free-floating Christians today and all you ever hear and that's because that's what's preached you you can have this personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that's about as far as it ever gets you saw a sign in the church on last week driving past the church try Jesus that's not the gospel Paul well I think our questioner I think that is the first of all it sounded like the questioner was a pastor and probably he gets a critique of this conference by saying oh you're only going to get this transcendent how are you going to deal with your own people and so he's wanting to hear just what you've been talking about right here so I think that was a good response RC highly part of what was said and say it again in our church every week we come to the Lord's table it's our conviction of course you know I write a column for Table Talk called quorum down which means before the face of God which I try to remind our readers that all of our lives are lived in the presence of God and then we heard during this conference about when we come to worship we come to the heavenly Zion it's a three-three shape just like the temple that we live always in the presence of God we come to Mount Zion and become more more profoundly into the presence of God God hasn't moved but he's begun to remove the layers of the veils from our eyes so that we now see where we are and then when we come to the table not only are we coming in a sense closer or having more veils removed but we're coming with a divine pronouncement of peace when we celebrate the Lord's Supper we say together the sursum Corda which has been part of the history of the church in the beginning where we lift up our hearts to the Lord where we recognize him we were being brought up high and there's nothing more imminent imminence is not bringing God down it's lifting us up into his presence and we talked about children and how we view these children I've got a five-year-old daughter who likely will never be able to speak and profession of her faith and I believe that there's only one gospel which means the only way she's gonna make it into heaven is if she trusts in the finished work of Christ alone and I believe that she does even though she can't say it and I bring that girl she can't take the Lord's Supper because she can't say it but we come in our church forward and take together as families and I bring my daughter with me and when we're there I'm holding her we have six children we have to carry many of them and and I love all my children the same but there's a rule that I hope Shannon and while I'm holding her there at the Lord's table I'm whispering in her ear two things Shannon Jesus loves you and Jesus is here she knows about the imminence of God because she goes to his table every week even though she doesn't get to eat she gets to sit with him wonderful illustration thank you artists Lee st. Claire following right along on this the question came you talked about being in heaven when we worship the questioner says do you mean literally being in heaven or it was like heaven or you experienced a glimpse of heaven or something else or all of the above well you know I mean the first thing I think you know how bad thing begins is dogmatix by saying the first thing you've got to say about theology as mystery and you know we all sitting up here recognized that our mysteries beyond our ability to articulate but I think there are several things that in that question back up into the last question they're related I think yeah maybe I can put a slightly different twist on what has being said here not to deny it or to change it but to just put a slightly different way transcendence and imminence are not attributes of God transcendence and imminence are not attributes of God God just is transcendence and imminence are ways in which we describe our consciousness of God our awareness of God he doesn't have a transcendent part and an imminent part he isn't actually sometimes transcendent and sometimes imminent His Eminence is not a prisoner of his transcendence and his transcendence is not a prisoner of his M&R God simply is and where God is is heaven so wherever we experience what we describe as the eminence of God the God we are experiencing the God with whom we have communion is the God of the heavenly presence so we call him our Father in Heaven if I'm speaking here and now to our Father in Heaven even although from one point of view obviously body soul I'm here on the earth if I'm engaging in communion with him then my categories and I recognize the legitimacy of those categories for the systematizing of our theology but those categories of transcendence and imminence are not categories in which I'm describing where God is or really how it is that I am communing with him I am communing imminently to me was the one who is always transcendent and in his transcendence is always imminent even although I'm not always conscious of that so wherever I have communion with God I have communion with God in the only place God is from that point of view I think we also need to understand that God is not a prisoner in His heaven from which he sometimes escapes in order to make himself known on the earth heaven and out do not call alas in that kind of way and we've we don't seem to have yet I doubt that we can have the categories that enable us conceptually to put together the ideas of heaven on earth without limitation on the way we're doing theology now having said that the second thing to say is that the kind of teaching Paul gives at the beginning and end of Ephesians is helpful to put this into the context of the whole of our Christian life we've been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world all spiritual blessings have been poured out upon us now what is the sphere in which those blessings have been poured out upon us where where are we to get them in the heavenlies as we engage in a church and spiritual warfare where are we engaging in that spiritual warfare in the heavenlies so that is the strand of thought in the New Testament alongside other strands of thought that that helps us to understand all of our communion with God is in heaven when it comes down more narrowly as both the rcs senior and junior have been seeing to the kind of specificity of our communion with Jesus Christ or the Lord's Supper that's why we say lift up your hearts because what we believe takes place this is the kind of thing that Calvin says and the Institute's although in a very distinctive kind of way what we believe we are experiencing there in a very intense focused form is our communion with Jesus Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father and therefore I if I'm going to have communion with Jesus Christ as as Calvin says in in a mysterious way the Spirit bridges the gap between heaven and earth so that we have in the preaching of the word in the administration of the sacraments a genuine communion with the only Jesus Christ there is and he is the Jesus Christ who is in heaven backing up if since I've got the microphone and you're not stopping me yet and so I'll probably not get another chance to answer a question backing up again then into the nature of our of our communion with God with Christ through the Spirit Jesus taught us to say Holy Father and that is what we call transcendence and imminence in one but is it the adjectives or is it the noun that expresses transcendence and is it the adjective and isn't the noun that expresses eminence well that's a false dichotomy and I think that's the thing that though that we are trying to communicate that when God is the eminence of God is the eminence of the Holy One the transcendence of God as the transcendence of the Father and if I can finally just kind of give an illustration that may be of no help to anybody but because the illustration involves a man I loved dearly and has meant a lot to me you might as well have it for free when I was a when I was a student my my minister in Aberdeen some of you will know his name William still to whom I all more than any mortal living or dead spiritually apart from my wife poured himself into me just poured himself into me and the I mean the amazing thing the godly thing is that he was doing missed a whole bunch of other guys he was a bachelor and he had the time to do it but when he poured himself into you you thought you were the only person in the world who was getting it and in that sense it was a godly relationship and I used to leave his his man's having spent sometimes two three or four hours with him it was only later I realized what a privilege I was having and I used to leave his house and once we'd wave goodbye I used to run down the street as a teenager and as I was running down the street I never knew whether I was running so fast because of the sense of unworthiness I had or because of the intensity of the love that he had for me I sometimes didn't know whether I was running for joy or running to get away from from the intensity of the probing of his ministry to me and since I regarded him as a godly man I I began to to see through that to an illustration of what it means to go into the presence of God we always want to have one or the other but with God you can't have one or the other the intensity of his presence is the end the fearfulness of his presence the fearfulness of the intensity of his love and the intensity of his loud is the fearfulness and ecstatic joy of the presence of His Holiness and there is no other God we're stuck with it let me try to get one final question and we'll let that be the final word on that question we have four minutes left in light John in light of John's new book the battle for the beginning what are the boundaries of biblical views of creation what must be held to to be Orthodox well you have to hold to the gospel to be Orthodox in the sense of being within the framework of salvation so you know we're not talking about the gospel we're talking about a view of Genesis but I would say faithful faithful understanding of what the Bible says is Orthodox with regard to to Genesis that is to say reading nothing into the text from science philosophy worldviews but as in every case in dealing with the word of God letting the Bible say exactly what it says to me that is critical in the book of Genesis it's critical everywhere in Scripture but certainly critical in the book of Genesis one of the things that we've been talking about the glory of God one of the things that rings throughout the pages of Scripture old and new Testament is the glory of God the Creator I mean I read that this morning the one who said the light should shine out of darkness is the one who has shined in our hearts to give the light of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ if you diminish the fact that it was God who ex nihilo instantly brought light out of darkness then you diminish the meaning of the text itself when it relates to the gospel the implications of tampering with Genesis stretch throughout the whole of the scripture I think it is only right that you take Genesis at its face value which is a 6 24 hour day or 23 points something treatment of the text there's nothing about evolution in there there's nothing about day ages in there there is nothing other than a straightforward presentation of what we have in Genesis at its most simple reading 6 24-hour days this discussed as a period of light in a period of dark there was morning and there was evening it was this day and it was morning and there was evening in this day so I think you have also an exodus as as the Lord created for 6 days and rested on the seventh so you work and rest on the seventh and the implications are massive and not just for what is said in Scripture but for how you interpret Scripture if you can play fast and loose with Genesis and say that it doesn't mean what it says you know when does it start meaning what it says you know when do you kick in Genesis 3 5 9 Exodus you know where do you start saying okay now we can take it for what it says and I think what I tried to do in the in the series that I did on Genesis I preached on Genesis 1 to 4 I don't know months and months the condensed in the book but the series that I did the actual preaching series which is available was in much more detail was to take the scripture and just exegete it at face value and then bring to bear on it true science and see if if in fact true science didn't reflect the accuracy of the creation account that was so stunning to me that it did and I forayed into a field that's completely alien to me the field of science and it was a it was a tremendously a thrilling thing to see that true science was in perfect accord with what Genesis says as we would assume it would be since it is an accurate divine record of what actually happened so I think that is where you should be there's no reason in Genesis 1 and 2 to take any other view Dage views all those evolutionary views theistic evolution progressive creationism whatever they are have to be imported and they are always imported from outside the biblical text they are always imported from the modern scientific worldview which i think is unnecessary obviously so we can take Genesis at its face value and it will stand every test so that's basically where you would put the the line of Orthodoxy I think an orthodox treatment of Genesis 1 & 2 is to come out with a 6 24-hour day creation just as Genesis says depending on what you mean by Orthodox I mean but that would be in my estimation the purest truest representation of what those verses are saying and they're really not saying anything else so any other view is imported in I think that was the intent of the question what must be held to anybody else wanna well he just say Paul that when I was in graduate school and in other ones was when I first encountered the framework hypothesis from the pen of Nicholas Ritter boss not the more famous Herman Ritter boss and I remember at that time saying well here that it's possible it would seem to me for somebody to hold to the inerrancy of the Bible and from a hermeneutic perspective actually believe that there's a literary structure here in the creation account that was never intended to indicate a 6 24-hour day period but rather that this was sort of like stanzas in a hymn or scenes in a drama where the phrase morning and evening second day was like act 1 act 2 act 3 and so on and I remember I think what was driving that at the time was of course scientific considerations the antiquity of the earth and so on and I also have to say that I believe that I've said many times the church has got egg on its face by taking positions against science because the church thought they were speaking biblically when they weren't because the church had imported into the old biblical understanding an older scientific perspective like geo centricity and because the Bible speaks about the heavens moving as the Sun moving across the sky does not mean that this that the Bible is teaching that the earth is the center of the solar that was an assumption brought from the scientific community of Copernicus I mean be proved the Ptolemaic view into the scriptures and the church got itself in big trouble because I believe the Bible teaches that not only does the Bible give us the infallible revelation of God but also nature reveals God and so we have to I'd listen when the scientific community might give me information that corrects my understanding of scriptures never going to correct the scripture and so for many years I held I didn't hold to the framework hypothesis but I held to the possible legitimacy of it till I read Doug Kelley's book where he's wrote the whole thing was on an exegetical study of Genesis and when it comes right down to it if we clearly understand what that's what the text is saying then that's what the truth is you know and so I've been persuaded that that the documentary hypothesis is not a sound exegetical approach to Genesis some were drawn is on this point anybody else wanna is a corollary of that something akin to Usher's dates yes yeah first time I taught in a Christian college freshman class of Old Testament introduction look I go to 250 students in the classroom and the classes are big got to teach it in a chapel and I go up there to the there's a pulpit Bible on a first page at the top of the page it says creation 4004 BC and I said you got whole generations of Christians fighting to the death to defend that date of creation as if it were in the text of Scripture you know I had to say let's get started well we're gonna start on Genesis 1 let's start off with Genesis not with Archbishop Mosher's calculations because that's I don't have to thank God as an apologist I don't have to defend usher but I do at the fed Genesis they're not the same but but you would hold for a young earth and somewhat like Asher's dates somewhat like Usher statement you know but I think we missed it by two or three years

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Keywords: glory of God, covenant family solidarity, infant baptism, transcendence, immanence, heaven, worship, creationism, apologetcs, atonement, ORL03

Id: uxWprWSJg5U

Length: 50min 46sec (3046 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2013