Larson: The first question gentlemen, good
morning. The first question is about the sovereign
work of God for awakening, but shouldn't we also heed the command to wake up? For example, Revelation 3, the church in Sardis. Thomas: We are commanded in Scripture to do
what we cannot do. So, we are commanded to repent and believe
when we don't have the ability to repent and believe. "I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He
moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior true; no,
I was found of thee." So yes, there is a command and an imperative
to awake and be awakened. I think the context of the letters in Revelation
are a little different. I think they are letters corporately to a
church to be awakened, perhaps more than an individual. But there is this dilemma in Scripture that
we are commanded to do what we are unable to do, and part of that is God forcing us
into a position where we cry, "Lord, do what I cannot do. I believe, and help my unbelief." Larson: What guidance would you give us
in searching for a church home in light of finding so many evangelical churches focused
on entertainment in worship and a watered-down gospel? Nichols: I've heard R.C. answer this question
before, similar question, and he would say, "Do whatever it takes to get your family in
a church where the Word of God is preached. If that means you have to drive far to be
in a church where the Word of God is preached, that you get up early and you drive far. If that means you have to move your family
so that you can be in a church where the Word of God is preached, then you move so that
you can be in a church where the Word of God is preached." And, that's the importance. Larson: Do you think that demons still
manifest themselves in humans today? Mohler: Yes, yes, I mean, the devil's greatest
guile and victory is to lead us to deny his existence. The New Testament is clear about the reality
of Satan and the demonic, but we are prone to make two really big mistakes. One is to sensationalize this, as if we have
the ability to see what isn't given to us to see and thus to go around diagnosing demonic
activity when biblically, according to a biblical theology, we know the source of evil. We know how evil works. We know that the tempter, the accuser, the
liar is very active. So when we see lying, when we see evil, we
know that in some sense. I was asked one time on a national news program,
"Is [blank] demonic?" and the question was actually about Islam. My answer was anything, according to Scripture,
that draws persons from Christ is rightly described as demonic. That does not mean that I'm about to make
a movie of it. And the second thing is, Christians should
not worry in the sense that once we are united with Christ, there is no such creature in
the Scripture as a demon-possessed Christian. That is a non-existent entity. Those who are united with Christ, filled with
the Spirit, there is nothing in Scripture to suggest any such thing as a rite of exorcism,
nor the necessity of this. So, that's a kind of fair question. It's a fair question. It deserves a brief answer because it's in
the affirmative in the way that the New Testament would balance our understanding of these things. We are not told that we are to be preoccupied
in any way or fascinated by evil and the personification of evil and Satan, but we certainly can't
deny, are not to deny. We are to be aware he is, as I preached just
this week, "roaming to and fro seeking whom he may devour." Christians are not amongst those whom he may
devour. Larson: I pastor a Pentecostal church,
but God has awakened our hearts to Reformed theology. Many families have left, but many have joined. What do you recommend I do as a pastor, leave
or stay? Mohler: I'll just jump into this one, why
not? I'm not sure we can give an answer, leave
or stay, because there are a couple of questions that are unanswered. Is this church a part of a denomination, or
is it more of an independent congregation? If it's a more independent congregation, then
by the preaching of the Word we can pray that the reformation will continue, and it can
be a marvelous demonstration of reformation. I think you're going to have to change the
name of your church, but even that can be a part of your witness. And it will come with turmoil. As you might expect, there will be coming
and there will be going, and you'll expect that. I think one has to be careful about, I'm just
going to say this strongly as it comes to me, kind of false advertising. If you're presenting the church as a Pentecostal
church in a family of Pentecostal churches, knowing what that means, I think it's going
to be very difficult to continue that kind of identification. So I don't know which, if it's the situation
of the first condition or the second condition, but God bless you for preaching the gospel. Keep preaching the gospel either in that congregation
or in one to which it gives reformation birth. Larson: Why is our salvation based on the
blood of Christ? Why was the shedding of blood necessary to
redeem us? Couldn't God have forgiven us another way? It's just supposed to be one question and
answer, but they snuck in three. Thomas: Scripture says that the blood is life,
and therefore if Jesus is to be our substitute, He must take the penalty of the curse, which
is death. So, there's that part of it. I'm always deeply suspicious of questions
that begin with, "Could God have … ?" and however that goes. And the answer is that we have Scripture,
and we must trust that what Scripture says is the only way that salvation can be possible. That God cannot just will salvation. There was a debate in actually in the 1700s
about whether God could simply have willed salvation, putting the will of God above the
justice of God. I just think those are questions that are
out of bounds. If God … how can you contemplate that in
the light of the fact that God chose instead to send His Son, and therefore the only acceptable
answer is there was no other way to satisfy divine justice. And I think that's why the Westminster Confession
in chapter 8, when it speaks about the atonement, actually puts that right up front, that the
purpose of the death of Jesus was to satisfy divine justice. That for God to be just and the justifier
of him who believes in Jesus, there was no other way but through the death and the shedding
of the blood, therefore, of Jesus. Moher: Could I bring B.B. Warfield into this? I appreciate exactly what you said, Derek,
and this is a situation, a question I face over and over again amongst people who are
curious in the wrong way theologically, and you hit that right up front. I love the way B.B. Warfield put this in his
little book on The Plan of Salvation. I am paraphrasing him here, but he basically
says that what Scripture reveals is that God has acted in the way that to the most infinite
extent displays His glory and His justice in the atonement accomplished by the Lord
Jesus Christ. Was there an external necessity that required
that it be this way? No, but God being absolutely sovereign, omnipotent,
omniscient, glorious, holy, and everything infinite in all His perfections acted in this
way. And thus, had He acted in any other way, He
would have violated His own being and His own perfection. So, as the redeemed creature, how dare we
ask, "Could God have done less than the perfection of what He has done." I love the way he ends it. Larson: Dr. Mohler, I love it when you
quote Presbyterians. Mohler: A now corrected Presbyterian. Larson: Can we say that the Holy Spirit
baptizes believers, or is it Jesus who baptizes believers with or in the Holy Spirit? Mohler: I'm not sure I understand the question
entirely. What I do know is that we are told to baptize
in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. It is a Trinitarian salvation. It was a Trinitarian creation. It's a Trinitarian church. It's a Trinitarian baptism. And we are baptized both by and in the Holy
Spirit, in some sense the prepositions found in the New Testament. I don't think it's an either/or. Instead, it's a reminder of the Triune act
of God in salvation, which is specified in terms of the will of the Father, the atonement
accomplished by the Son, and the application of that salvation by the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. Larson: God forgives our sins when we repent
of them. Does this mean we do not have to forgive the
person who has sinned against us until they repent? Thomas: This is an important question, and
it's a pastoral question. You hear these extraordinary, moving testimonies
of, and I think of one in particular, of a man in Belfast in Northern Ireland, whose
daughter had been bombed, and he was there. She died holding his hand in the rubble, and
so on. And then, there was a testimony on television
about a week later from the father, who was a believer, that he forgave the bombers. And there was a note in the paper, as I recall,
that the bombers sort of scoffed at this offer of forgiveness. I admire that, and I don't want to detract
from that, but the fact is that God doesn't forgive until you repent. So until we have a new heart we are children
of wrath, even as others. I would make a distinction, and have made,
between a willingness to forgive and actually conferring forgiveness, which I'm not sure
what that is, and sometimes that goes into the realm of some kind of mystical rite. I think we must always be ready to forgive. There must be no impediment on our side to
forgive, but I don't actually know what it is to say, "I forgive you," of someone who
hasn't actually repented. Because I still, as a pastor, I want to uphold
the fact that in many instances, they're also seeking justice. I think of a person at the minute whose mother
was raped, and she wants justice because this person hasn't been found. And it eats her up, and she doesn't want revenge;
she just wants justice. And does, say, "Forgive this person," help? And actually, I'm not sure that it does. But she must be ready to forgive. There must be no impediment on her part. Nichols: There's another side to this question. There's the one who forgives, but there's
also this sense in which sometimes we're a little insensitive to how we have offended,
and maybe cultivating a little bit more awareness that we actually do repent and ask someone
for their forgiveness. So there's the one who has to give the forgiveness,
but there's also just an awareness for us, that for some of us, it's hard to acknowledge
that we've offended, and that we seek out a brother or sister in Christ, and say, "I
might've offended you. Would you please forgive me?" And have that repentance to them. Larson: When is it permissible to ask God
for a sign, and when is it considered testing Him? Nichols: Can I tell you a funny story here? So, R.C. was contemplating going up to Gordon
to teach, and literally in the middle of the night, he gets a phone call from this random
person. This person was a pilot for an airline and
was in some Midwestern city, and it's 2 a.m. And he says, "I don't know why I am doing
this? I have no reason to be doing this. I felt compelled to call you, to tell you
that whatever you're thinking about, you should do it." So the next morning, R.C. tells this to Gerstner,
and Gerstner says to R.C., "Even in the most austere of Calvinist households," I don't
growl like Gerstner, "the Holy Spirit shows up." So, I don't know what that means as the answer
to the question, but I just thought it was a great story. Parsons: I don't know if Scripture really
ever gives us warrant to ask God for a sign. Jesus, in quoting the Old Testament, says
that it's a wicked and perverse generation that asks for a sign. God has given us a sign, and I think we are
called to trust Him, and depend on Him, and to look to Him at all times. I think it's our immaturity and our sinful
nature that asks God to show me something, to demonstrate something, to show up, and
to give me a sign. It doesn't really show that sort of trust. We're called to ask, and to seek, and to knock,
and to continue to ask, and to seek, and to knock, to continue to go before Him. To continue to bend our knees, and to trust
Him in prayer and dependence, but not to ask for a sign or to demand a sign of the Lord,
but rather to look to the sign He has given us in Christ. And even in the ordinances of baptism and
the Lord's Supper to look to His Word, and to look to the counsel of His Word, and even
the wisdom of a multitude of counselors. And just a word briefly on that wisdom of
a multitude of counselors, too often what too many of us think that means is just a
lot of people. And that's not really the language there. In the Old Testament, it really is a multitude
of wise, experienced counselors. People that we can count on, people that have
demonstrated biblical wisdom that these are wise and holy men and women that we can trust,
that their lives demonstrate that sort of wisdom. And so, I think we're called to seek out that
wisdom, seek the counsel of our elders, seek the counsel of beloved friends, look to the
Word of God, and trust what He has already given us. Larson: Is there a place for women to teach,
guide Bible or book studies outside the pulpit on Sunday? Mohler: Well, the first thing is, it is outside
the pulpit on Sunday. If we believe in a biblically defined ministry,
and that's one of the crucial issues, of course, the church has faced for decades now. It's one of the central issues I've had to
face over against the claims that we can find a way around the New Testament teachings,
which consistently define the pastor, the teaching elder, as a man. Not just any man, but a man marked by the
qualifications of 1Timothy 3 and Titus 1. A man called of God, with that affirmed by
the congregation. But, is there a role for women to teach? I believe it has to be outside the assembly. I think, again, the Scripture is very clear
about that. So, it's outside the assembly. But the church has many different dimensions
of its life outside the assembly, and that would include what you also find in Titus,
older women teaching younger women. And so, women teaching women is a very important
aspect of the church's ministry, beyond the church gathered for Lord's Day worship. And then, there is an important role in teaching
children, and that's in the home, of course, but also within the fellowship of the church. And so, I'll just go ahead and get in all
the trouble I might get into on a Friday morning, and I'll just say that I think a careful church
will carefully model, in fullness, everything that is revealed as a rightly-ordered church,
which means there should be a move as a child gets older, to seeing the fullness of what
should be expected in the teaching ministry of the church. And I think this is particularly important
for boys to see and for girls to recognize, as boys move into manhood. So, I think, adolescence is extremely important,
and when that takes place, boys ought to be taught by men, and, I think that is a very
important issue, by the way, with multiple levels of biblical wisdom. So the answer is yes, and I thank God for
all the women who loved me and taught the Scripture to me, when I was a boy, when I
was a child. I'm thankful for my wife, who so carefully
has taught our children in the home as well. I'm thankful for women who teach women, and
what a godly pattern that is from the New Testament until now. I think the word "preaching" should be avoided,
lest there be any confusion. And I think the church must make very clear
that it is seeking in fullness to obey everything that Christ has commanded. And the apostles on these issues are very
clear. One final note, any church that will find
its way around the clear teachings of Scripture on the question of gender will eventually
find its way, with the same hermeneutical pattern, around the Bible's teachings on sexuality,
and marriage, and gender identity. It's the same pattern. Larson: How do I share the gospel with
knowing the risk of losing my job? Nichols: I think this calls for a great deal
of wisdom. If we are called to a certain profession then
we, I think, represent our Christian testimony and represent our being both in the image
of God as Creator and in the image of Christ as Redeemer, by doing our job, by applying
our self fully to our job. If we're using company time, as it were, to
literally steal from our employer when we should be doing our job and instead evangelizing,
then that's not necessarily a martyr's consequence or a noble thing to lose one's job for. Because while you're on the clock, you belong
to your employer, and you have the issue of integrity of your work. So I think there needs to be a call for wisdom
here in terms of how you show up at work, and how you work, and how the deportment,
and how you carry yourself, so that in those things. I think, let's go back to 1 Peter chapter
3. It's very interesting, 1 Peter chapter 3. It's as you are living your life in a certain
way, people will ask you what is the hope that is in you. We sort of come at apologetics, in our moment,
as if we need to create questions and sort of create avenues so that we can have a platform
then to share the gospel. But if you look at what's going on in 1 Peter
3:15, it's you are already living in such a way that the avenue is created, and they
come to you and ask you. So that's the first thing, I sort of try to
parse out some of that. What exactly is happening there with the time? How exactly is the gospel being presented? But, if it's a situation, where you are being
called upon through work to compromise your Christian ethic, then that's just a real decision
that you need to face and make. But I don't think we are called to steal time
from our employer to evangelize our coworkers. Larson: How do we defend truth on university
campuses, where the object of some seems to be to shut down conversation, or just intimidate,
suppress opposing views? Dr. Mohler, I mentioned our time at UCLA last
weekend. We were also at University of Louisville,
a few weeks before that. I know you've thought a lot about this as
well, but it does seem like conversation is just difficult to have for you to be able
to get to the point of sharing the gospel. How do we defend the faith in this context? Mohler: Wow! Well, first of all, it was exhilarating. And it was an incredible privilege for us
to be at UCLA just a week ago tonight, and the Lord allowed that to take place, and I
believe the Lord is honored at what took place there. But, what I was hoping to do in that, and
we're hoping to do together, is not to hold one event at UCLA and then just to leave,
but rather perhaps more than anything else, to encourage the Christians who were there. And by the way, the Lord has His people on
these campuses to encourage the Christians who are there to continue in this very same
mode, and to invite people to ask questions of believers, who are ready to give an answer
for the hope that is in them. I don't want to minimize in any way what's
going on on the college campuses. And I think we just need to understand, this
can be hard to do this in a short way, but time is fleeting. The academic world has always been the leading
edge of social and intellectual change. The social and intellectual change in our
country has been trending on campuses for more than two generations now in an aggressively
secular way. That is now at a velocity to where the liberals
and the hippies of the 1960s and 70s, and the baby boomers, who thought they were very
liberal, they are now scared of their own students, who are shutting down even people
who are on the left, because they're not on the left enough. This whole new doctrine of intersectionality
means that unless you are XYZ or X, Y, and Z, you have no right to speak to these things. And so, just even this week on a major college
campus, a conservative speaker was just shut down because they're saying it's harm to even
allow this speech to take place. So, we don't know how long we'll have any
kind of forum anywhere, but you know, just ask China how effective it is to shut down
personal conversation. And so, Christ's people have to find a way
to be available to answer questions and to be ready to give an answer and have to find
a way to continue these conversations, even if it's shutdown in the classroom and elsewhere. Parents and students need to understand exactly
what the toxic environment of higher education is becoming. How coercion and frankly indoctrination of
the most extreme forms are now routine, and anyone who is out of bounds is an intellectual
outlaw. It's hard to exaggerate how, what the stakes
are. But not all is yet lost, because in this country
there is a reflex towards free expression that I think still is very powerful amongst
the people. And I think we if we are winsome and kind,
we may be able to have conversations that less winsome, less kind will not be able to
have. And you know what, if a Christian is ready
to speak as a Christian in any context, if we are shut down and denied a voice, it then
becomes a matter of Christ vindicating His gospel by some other means. Christ is not defeated by a speech code on
a college campus. Larson: Can a Christian struggle with homosexuality? Thomas: Yes, of course, Christians can struggle
with anything. Anything in this fallen, cursed world can
be something a Christian can struggle with. I guess the question needs a little more nuancing
as to whether this is a struggle that is biological, or genetic, or one that can be remedied in
some way and cured in some way, but that wasn't the question. The question, "Can a Christian struggle with
homosexuality?" I know dozens of them who struggle with it
every day, and it's the cross that they carry. It's the sin that they daily must repent of,
and it's an enormous burden for them. And there is power in the gospel to overcome
this desire, and I've seen it. And it is an extraordinary power of the Holy
Spirit, but it's not easy, and for some it's a lifelong struggle, and for some, the solution
is celibacy, and for others it's a different solution. Larson: People with a loved one who has
recently died are often given to questioning how a loving God, if a loving God would send
this person, who gave no indication of being a believer in Jesus, to hell. New books that are out teach Jesus is love,
not wrath. What is the best way to discuss this without
losing the relationship with the questioning loved one? What is the best way? Parsons: We deal with two very significant
heresies in the church today. One of them is justification by association,
which is basically if I can get someone to like me, and be kind of okay with the church,
kind of okay with God, kind of okay with Jesus, and they don't really say anything against
me, or Jesus, or God, or the church, well then, they're going to be okay. They're going to make it to heaven. That's justification by association. So if someone is associated with me that I
know, that I like, that doesn't particularly offend me, doesn't particularly castigate
Jesus or the church, then they're going to make it. That's one of the most pernicious heresies
that is rampant in the church today. The second, I think, is justification by death,
and it's everywhere. It's in our churches. People believe, essentially, that if this
friend of mine -- it's usually a relative, it's usually a father, a mother, a grandmother,
a grandfather, a son, a daughter, that if they were not in any significant way against
the church, or against Christ, or against Christianity, and if you ever heard anything
in their lives about being a person of faith, a man of faith, a woman of faith, or if they
ever attended church at all at any time, well then, they're good to go. And this is absolutely pernicious, and it's
absolutely one of the most sad states of affairs in the church today because people who believe
the gospel, people who even claim to understand Reformed soteriology, a Reformed doctrine
of salvation, who claim to understand God's sovereignty in salvation, who claim to understand
that we are we are justified by faith alone in Christ alone by the grace of God alone. People who claim to believe these things are
still some of the same people asking this question, "Can my, you know, can I have assurance,
or can I know that my father or my mother is in heaven? I believe they are." What we'll oftentimes hear is, "Well, I don't
know their heart," and that's true, we don't know their hearts. We can't judge their hearts. Could it be that there is a deathbed confession? It could have been. Could it have been that this person really
did trust the Lord Jesus Christ for his or her salvation? It could've been. But if the person was not living a life of
worshiping Jesus Christ, if the person was not living a life connected to the people
of God, if the person was not living a life of repentance and faith, if you didn't hear
this person talk about Christ, talk about their love for Christ, talk about the gospel
of Jesus Christ, if this wasn't on their lips, then the reality of the situation, nine times
out of ten, is that this person didn't know Jesus Christ. This person is not headed for heaven, that
this person is headed for eternal condemnation. And we need to be very, very clear and very,
very careful that we do not give a pass to all those who simply die and are good people,
as if they are justified by being good or connected to us. So getting now really at the question, how
do we counsel these people? How do we counsel our friends, and how we
counsel our loved ones? How do we counsel our fellow church members,
who believe these things? We have to remind them of the gospel. We have to remind them of the depravity of
man. We have to remind them of the standard and
the righteousness and the holiness of God. We have to remind them of why Christ came. We have to remind them of the importance of
preaching the gospel, that all may hear, that sinners might come to the Lord Jesus Christ,
and console them in the fact that our only hope is in Christ alone. Not in wishful thinking that all nice people,
and all good people, and all people who don't directly oppose Christ go to heaven. Larson: What is the difference between
the Roman Catholic understanding of infused grace and the Reformed understanding of imputed
grace? Nichols: So the way I like to describe it,
infused is like getting a shot, you know, so you get almost as it were, an injection
of grace, and now you, the person, having this grace are able to do things, and in this
case we're talking about meritorious things that will earn righteousness, that will then
earn a right standing before God. So, it's a cooperative. It is, as the Council of Trent declares, it
is an assent and a cooperation. That's infusion. Imputation is the exact opposite of that. Imputation is entirely, it is an accounting
term, and so it is to take a credit that you did not earn, and it is put on your account. It is the opposite of assent and cooperation. It is, as we say, monergistic, the work of
one not co-opera. Opera is of course, what you like to listen
to, but for the rest of us it's hard work to listen to. So, co-opera literally means "work together,"
and monergistic means "the work of one." This is the heart of the gospel. This is the heart of the gospel. You cannot have the doctrine of justification
without imputation. We are not Protestants, we are imputationists. Mohler: Can I just say one affirming word
there? And Dr. Nichols laid that out exactly right. I want to make it shorter. What's the difference? The difference is whether or not we are saved. Because infusion does not lead to salvation,
imputation does. Larson: When or how do you know if singleness
is God's will for your life, even if you want to be married? Nichols: Did you say sinlessness is God's
will for your life? Mohler: That's what I thought he said, yeah. Larson: Singleness. Nichols: I honestly, I thought you said sinlessness. Singleness was not God's will for my life. Thomas: I was deeply moved by the biography
of John Stott. John Stott was the instrument that brought
me to Christ, his book. He persevered to the end, and as far as I
know there are no blemishes on John Stott's character. He was a remarkable man, but in every picture
of him, there's always his personal secretary. I knew her. She came to Belfast every summer for a month
and worshiped in our congregation and stayed with another lady who was single. The book makes it, I think fairly clear, that
John Stott and this woman did fall in love at some point, but he made a vow to be single,
and I think he kept it as pure as the driven snow. And every time I see those pictures, and she's
always there. She's mentioned in every book that he's ever
written as the person who has helped him edit this book, and so on. It was an incredible vow to make, but once
he had made that vow, he kept it to the very end. I don't know how you make that vow. That's not in my experience. I couldn't have made that vow, but I respect
those who make it, and those are vows that are made, not likely in order, I think in
his case that he could devote his life, unhindered to the gospel, and God bless him for having
made that vow and for having kept it. Parsons: This is something, of course, we
deal within the church regularly, and it's not an easy question to answer, and much could
be said on this. I simply want to give a word of encouragement
because I have many friends who are single, both younger and older, those who have been
divorced and asking similar questions. Those who are widowed or widowers and asking
a similar question. What I would say to you is this, if you believe
that God wants you to be married, if you believe that you ought to be married, if it is on
your heart, if it is a passion that God has given you, don't give up and don't stop praying. Don't stop asking and seeking and knocking. I meet too many individuals who just give
up. They give up asking. They give up seeking. They give up knocking, no matter what it's
for. Don't stop getting on your knees and asking
the Lord to give you the spouse that He would desire for you. Larson: Do the gifts of signs and miracles
have a place in the present day New Testament church? There's also a parenthetical illustration
of tongues, healing, prophecy, etc. Parsons: Well, firstly, we need to separate
those from those signs that are listed there in the parentheses and miracles. That language of miracles is not actually
used in the New Testament, signs and wonders. But of course we, I think, can rightly refer
to these things as miracles in general, appropriately. But we need to distinguish between those. The signs, the special signs of tongues and
healings that were given to particular individuals at a particular time, and you're speaking
there of the New Testament gifts, we need to speak also about the signs and wonders
that God has given to His people throughout history, at certain epochal times where God
gave new revelation through His prophets, through His apostles. He testified to the truths that He was giving
His people by signs and wonders. And He did that throughout history at different
times, at different redemptive epochs. And in the New Testament as these signs were
given, they were are given at a particular time for a particular season, during the time
when God was giving new revelation to testify to the words, to testify to the truths, to
say these truths are the truths of God, and He is testifying to those truths by these
signs and wonders. This is sort of a short answer here, but really
when it comes to those signs and wonders, to testify to those truths they were given
for a time, and they came to an end of themselves. They came to a natural end. And so, we're not looking for those signs
and wonders to be demonstrated today. We don't need them, because we no longer have
new revelation. Now we could go into defining what we mean
by tongues and what we don't mean by tongues, how tongues were used in both Acts and Corinthians
and how Paul addresses it there in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 and other places, but I think
that's a sufficient answer for the time being. Larson: Last question. This one is addressed to Dr. Mohler if possible,
please. How do you see technology affecting the future
of communication of the gospel, and will it be a help or a hindrance to future awakenings
or revivals? Mohler: Yes, it will. Modern people, including modern Christians,
tend to have a reflexive naïveté about technology. We live in an age of technological marvels,
where things are happening so fast that we tend to forget that throughout even most of
Christian history, there was no printing press. We live in an age in which when we're talking
about technology, especially communication technology, we have no idea what we will be
talking about eighteen months from now. But that naïveté is to assume that technology
can, in any case, be value neutral. Of course the biblical worldview with Genesis
3 reminding us constantly of the pervasiveness of sin, will remind us there is no opportunity
that does not come without an opportunity for sin. And so, we have to understand that every technology
we have is a stewardship. By the way, there are some technologies that
are just evil. And so, there are technologies that have a
greater danger of evil and a lesser danger of evil. So someone right now, I hope by the thousands,
others will be live streaming the events of this conference. That's a part of the expansion by technology
of what will take place here, but someone else on the next computer could be live streaming
something very different, toxic and evil. The same technology carries it. The same roads could carry persons with good
intent and evil intent. Radio, when it first emerged, had some of
the best and some of the worst from the very beginning, and television and the rest. Of course, one of the things you learn from
technology is that the bad tends to crowd out the good, which is a major problem right
now. Just ask the biggest social media companies,
who are feeling the pressure of the bad overwhelming even the good. So, we are stripped of that naïveté that
there's such a reality as a neutral technology, a morally neutral technology. Jacques Ellul, a very significant French Christian
philosopher of the last century, you know, just pointed out that a part of our essential
Christian stewardship is an understanding of how our use of technology reveals our souls
and shapes our souls. That's a very good word, but without hesitation
we use these technologies to proclaim the gospel. Right now theological education, just to give
you an example, theological education has jumped over the great firewall of China. There are people right now who are able to
avail themselves. There are people who otherwise would never
be able to have access to the teaching, either of Ligonier Ministries, or of Southern Seminary,
or all of our churches and institutions. And no firewall can effectively keep them
out. So, there's something to appreciate here,
a stewardship to exercise. But we can never be technophiles. We can never be those who love technology
for technology's sake, nor are naïve about what technology can bring. And so, I think this is pretty much where
the Apostle Paul was. He went in Acts 17 to Mars Hill, where there
was constant idolatrous nonsense. We are told that those who were there wanted
nothing but to hear something new every day. And Paul didn't say, "Well, I'm not going
to go there, because the next speaker could get up and espouse idolatry." Because the next speaker undoubtedly did,
but the Apostle Paul went, and he preached Christ. I think that's a good example to us, but he
didn't pitch his tent at the Areopagus. He never mistook the technology for the church,
and I think that's the most important thing. We use technology, but we are a part of the
church. Larson: Amen. We do thank our panelists. Thank you.
