Q&A Session with Dr. R. C. Sproul - 1

and to be able to hear you minister to us through singing it was in 1987 that I walked into a classroom that RC sproule was teaching Vesta came in on his side and I intentionally went to reform Theological Seminary and Jackson because I had read a book the holiness of God and that book did something to me and God did something to me and as I considered how to be prepared for ministry I wanted to be wherever this man was teaching and to be under his influence I walked into that classroom very rough around the edges a young man who knew far more than what his maturity or giftedness should have allowed him to minister and in that classroom it was sanctified magic for me every sentence every thought was used by the Lord to influence me that was however many years ago 23 years ago I continue to carry that influence in my heart and in my ministry I in one way or another I think virtually every day so many things that even my parents my mother and father had tried to instill in me as I was in that classroom God used dr. Sproul to finally get certain points across and to polish a very rough diamond that was in need of much sanctifying grace and so I will always be thankful for that influence in my life I think we all know who dr. Sproul is we know that he is the founder of Ligonier ministries and that he has been mightily used by God around the world in this generation I think more than anyone else to bring about the resurgence of the Reformed faith and a god-centered message for the church in this hour and so it is with a deep sense of gratitude that he is here that I want to bring up now dr. RC scroll which you please join me in welcoming let me say one last thing would ask that no pictures be made with flashes dr. scroll had a stroke a few years ago and there are effects of vertigo that he deals with and as he says when flashes go off in his eyes it makes him our minion and it really makes him wacky so for the sake of the body of Christ around the world and for the cause of the evangelical faith please no flash bulbs no pictures just your affirmation now what we would like to do we have these two microphones I'm going to be seated these are open mics if you would keep your question to the point this is not a time for group therapy for you come to the microphone and start when you were a child and work all the way up to your question just ask the question and you can say an encouraging word to dr. Sproul as well that if you will be brief with the question we will have more time for the answer and we will have more time for other questions as well so the mics are open the ball is in play so who would like to come first the game is afoot again yes yes sir before we take the first question I had to mention that one of my good friends and colleagues dr. Peter Jones yes who has done some magnificent work exposing the influence of neo Gnosticism in the culture particularly with new-age thinking and I can't wait to talk to him and tell him about hearing a Southern Baptist minister talked about sanctified magic ha I think that diamond still needs a little more polish yeah I receive that in the spirit and which is given the adjective is more important than the noun in that here we go over here if it on is it on I've been here for this is my fourth year I'll try to keep this brief it's been very encouraging each year there's been such a a high honor of preaching and the sacredness of the pulpit and the message tonight talking about the the the giftedness of the preacher and the just the Highness of the offer that the office the the gravity of it with this in mind could you share some thoughts on the whole concept of lay preaching do you see it as legitimate and I'm not talking about bi-vocational pastors that that see themselves as called to preach see their their gift of Shep shepherding God's people and have a passion for doing that but they're working in other ways to provide for their family I'm talking about the one who feels called to plump to be a plumber or a CPA or a lawyer and they just preach on the side do you see that as legitimate if so how does lay preaching demonstrate itself in the local church and is the nature of preaching attached to the pastoral office itself and do you see a difference between Caruso and younger leads oh I know that's a lot of things I promise to keep it brief about two related first of all I have a bias in favor of lay preaching because my father was involved in that as you mentioned accountants he was a CPA but from time to find he would preach in the local Methodist Church in Pittsburgh where I was first baptized after I made my profession of faith at six months of age I was one of those precocious kids you know but my father did that joyfully and out of a sense of serving the Lord in a capacity other than his primary vocation which was in the field of the combing and I'm in favor of that but you know we have an expression goes all the way back to the Old Testament the difference between the false prophet and the true prophet of Israel that some were sent and some went and so you do have that class of lay preachers who have never been called by a church or under the authority of no Christian body but they just go on and do their thing and that has very dangerous repercussions to it i I like involving laypeople in preaching but I think it should be done in the context of the church and under the jurisdiction of the church that would be my simple answer to that and have a race run that you may obtain the prize I would just ask as one of if not the preeminent theologians of America my opinion would you speak to what you see as the some of the biggest challenges to the visible Church in America and or reformed theology in particular well there's so many challenges to the church in our age Jim Boyce used to say that the great danger that he saw in the church today was the temptation to do the Lord's work in the world's way to be seduced by technique and by methodology for that reason I wish every faster in America could have heard the message that we just heard a few moments ago about particularly about the the gravity of what we're about here and that we are to be delivering the Word of God it's only been the last 13 years or so of my life and ministry that I've had a full-time position as a preacher on a Sunday morning in a local church before that I was strictly in the educational aspect of ministry is a professor in college and Seminary and that sort of thing but I would go and preach here and there and everywhere at various opportunities in various venues and but whenever I had to take on the responsibility to teach to the same or preach to the same congregation week in and week out it was a completely different experience and I remember back when I was teaching in seminary where a student came to me and asked me a question knowing that I had spent two years in a church where I preached before I went into this there before I went into the academic world full-time and the fellow said to me what's it like for you now and what was it like for you then when you were just a pastor and I've always said that there's no such thing as a stupid question and I resolved as a professor to treat every student's question as if it were the first time I've heard it even if I've heard it a thousand times because it was new to the student and was important to the student and so I never wanted to be sarcastic or cynical about any question was raised but when i yang man said to me what was it like when you were just the pastor I could not contain myself I was angry yes what do you mean just a pastor but you understand there's no higher calling in this whole world than that calling the reason I'm not a full-time pastor is that I don't have the gifts and abilities at this stage of my life to do that God had one son and he made him a preacher but what we heard of Steve's message tonight is something that the Apostle Paul reiterates again and again in the New Testament that if we are pleasing men we cannot possibly please Christ as he said to the Galatians and the great temptation in the church today is to redo church to reimagine church to reconstitute church we're just simple things the simple things that I look at that scare me to death I'll walk into a church and I'll say and maybe I don't want to step on a town but if I do you know they're here that's I'm sure this has to be true of some of your churches if I walk in your church and I see a Plexiglas pulpit up there in the front of the church I want to run for my life because all forms are art forms and all art forms communicate something and what communicates to me when I see a Plexiglas bolt but is that the pulpit is portable it's not permanent it's not substantive it's something we can do without now there may be other reasons to justify a portable pulpit and I don't want to get into a big argument about that but I just when I see that I wonder how much thought has gone into this you realize what kind of a message you're giving the people where's the gravity in a Plexiglas pulpit there is none that's wood hay and stubble now obviously the size and the shape and the texture of this pulpit doesn't make the preacher and doesn't make the truth any more true or any less true I understand that but it's a it's a symbol of what's happening we want to communicate to the seeker as if pagans were seeking after God and designed worship on Sunday morning for the unbeliever what when did God ever establish corporate worship for unbelievers in the Old Testament and in the New Testament the primary function of course of corporate worship was the assembling together of the Saints of believers that they may give themselves to the teaching of the apostle of to prayer and to fellowship and to worship but whenever we design our worship to accommodate the unbeliever we've lost sight of what our mission is we're not doing it now as stewards of the word of God for God's people there's a time and a place for evangelism I understand that but corporate worship involves much more than evangelism its proclaiming the whole counsel of God and I would used to submit started this by saying you know when I used to go around the preach here there and everywhere where if I wasn't preaching on a given Sunday and I would visit various churches and I came in and sat there as a participant in the worship service you know what I wanted more than anything else my soul longed to hear a word from God that's what I wanted I mean I've studied the things of God all my life and was a professor of theology but what I want on Sunday morning is to hear a word from God I didn't want to hear the preachers latest hobby or his therapeutic sermon or his pop theology I wanted to hear the Word of God being expounded from the scripture but now I'm Tricia well I had the much the same question actually and I wanted to know besides the sanctified magic in Southern Baptists what was the most alarming development that she saw and I heard that answered very well and secondly I wanted to say that I never had the opportunity go to seminary I started off as a free will baptist through the writings of Charles Spurgeon John Calvin Martin Luther and RC sproule those things are deadly the freewill fight has been it has been it has been and but I feel like I've not been deprived I didn't get to go to seminary but through your teaching you have been much of my seminary and I thank you for that and you've been a great lot in my life and to my family and now my congregation and but I just want to ask what what do you believe is the most significant book that you've written I don't have all of your books and I say that for my wife's benefit she's in the crowd do not have all of your books yet but what do you believe is the most significant work you've written for the good of the church and the good of pastors like me and I'll sit down and thank you sir for everything mm-hmm you know people ask me that frequently and I'm not sure how to answer if I look at the response of people out there have read my books and the ones that have generated the most response of certainly the holiness of God and chosen by God those two seem to have been the ones that have made the largest impact through my writings I've often said my little children's book the priest for 30 clothes maybe the most significant thing I've ever written because it communicates the concept of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ so I love that little book you know Luther wrote over 50 volumes and somebody asked him that question what was your favorite book he ever wrote to know what his answer was it wasn't bondage of the will wasn't a catechism which is common theory on Galatians he called it his Katie Vaugn Bora and so and I feel that way about my commentary on Romans my explosion trachoma Terry in Romans I went on John I just can't pick one choose one I I enjoy not a chance the consequences of ideas like exposition the Westminster Confession truths we can fasten those all rank up there near the top it sorry hankie I can't be definitive on it let's go over here oh yes sir dr. scroll I just like to thank you first of all I've lived in three states in my life Michigan California and now Tennessee and you administered to me in all three of those states through the radio ministry oh and I want to thank you for that I think you probably ministered to many of the men and women in this room in that and related to that in and in reference to the earlier question on the influence of the world in our worship forms church and even bulbous structures do you think that the church has also been adversely affected by our primarily thinking of preaching as taking place within the walls of the church versus preaching which it primarily I think took place in the first few hundred years of huge history in the wider culture and among those non-believers so many times it seems like today most of our preaching and especially as pastors what we view as the preaching is something that's done to the church as opposed to the world around us and there seems to be in my view little preaching other than perhaps radio and some television to the wider culture and we've seen compartmentalized and kind of marginalized in the church because of that should we see our role as preachers as taking more preaching opportunities in the wider world as the New Testament church seem to well you know you talked about you look at the book of Acts and you see the Apostolic Church behaved Paul of course everywhere he went he went where did he go he went to the synagogue and he went to the Agora to the marketplace and he was engaging people both inside what we would call inside the church and outside the church and I think we should endeavor to do that and I think your concern is a valid one some of the greatest preachers that I've known in my lifetime not only preached in the church on Sunday morning but they also preached on the street cornelius van til the great philosophers theologian an apologist used to do streets street preaching in philadelphia my mentor john Gerstner would get up early on Sunday morning and go down to the Greyhound bus station and preach to people in that environment and so I've seen the value of that sort of thing however my bigger concern is the erosion of preaching inside the church where you know I talked to a fella not too long ago who it was trying to find a different church he wanted to move from his present church he had been in history at the same church for seven years and he wanted to move and I asked him why he said because he ran out of things to preach and I said he preached through the whole Bible in seven years so you know I like I can't imagine it and that guy was obviously a topical preacher he was not a biblical expositor and there's there's not a sin about being preaching topically I mean I know there's a place for that but the principal purpose of preaching is the set forth the Word of God then Luther's last sermon and some of you've heard me speak about this at various venues that Luther's last sermon that he preached in 1546 in February was that he talked about his concern that after the Reformation had brought the gospel back to light and that was being preached now on every pulpit in Germany he said the people are still now running the tree air and aching in places like that because they had a pair of Joseph's pants and one of these times and some straw from the manger at another reliquary there in Germany and and Luther said well you know people think that the power is in Joseph's pants we don't do that in the Evangelical Church today but we think the power is in the method where the place that God has put the power is in the word and if we want to have a powerful ministry we have to be faithful to the word and we communicate the word and then get out of the way and let the power operate but the power is not in my abilities of rhetoric or eloquence none of that it's in how faithful and accurate I expound the Word of God in the church that has to happen yes this has to do with preaching and in our our call and our main focus I'm bombarded with requests and even being condemned because people are telling me that my duty is to rescue the culture and to to fight against the effects of darkness in our culture and I've always seen my duty to is to preach the gospel in the church and out of the church but primarily to preach if people don't get saved how do we we're not going to clean the culture it's not that I don't care about my country I do care and I'm just disturbed and troubled as what's going on as anybody else is but I don't think that we can rescue the culture simply by political means if if if men were saved then they would live differently and that's the that's the problem so so am I am I correct in resisting the the effort to rescue the culture of my community and concentrate on preaching the gospel or do people tell me what you can do both I don't know how you do both I don't know how you do that a couple of things first of all this country desperately needs a revival of the things of God but if we had a revival like the Great Awakening there's no guarantee that the culture would be changed we've been through revival Arthur revival to rule on the greatest revival in history of Chrisitan was in the 16th century Reformation and a part of that is that you go beyond revival revival means new life new converts regeneration quickening taking place but when you're born again you're spiritually a baby and babies don't change cultures revivals don't become Reformation until or unless those who are regenerate become adults in their understanding of the things of God and so it's not enough to evangelize people but that's why those who have been evangelized have to be nurtured and grounded in the things of God so that their minds change and that and that they get the cultural values out of their head and they're not conformed to this world but they're transformed and before we can have any impact on the culture we at that beef transformed ourselves I we believe that and then it happens I mean when the Apostle started their ministry they were working in one of the worst sewers of paganism the world had ever known in the Roman Empire it was decadence with a vengeance in one sense that perhaps wasn't as as decadent as our country because we've been inoculated to Christianity and we're no longer in neo-paganism were neo barbarianism in the American culture now let me add to that the church has not been given the same call as the state romans 13 tells us that the state is ordained by God I was invited to give the inaugural prayer breakfast address a governor of Florida a few years ago and I told him this is your ordination day because your task is ordained by God and you are a danger God and you are answerable to God you're not answerable of the church you're not answerable to me and I'm not asking the government to be the church but I'm asking the state to be the state as God has created it and throughout biblical history starting with the Old Testament prophets one of the tasks of the Prophet was to give what we call prophetic criticism to the government not to become the church but like in our day the great scandal of our culture I believe is abortion it's a spiritual and physical Holocaust in this country and when the church speaks against it right away we say we believe a separation of church and state but what the state is saying today is that they want the separation of the state from God the secular state has declared its its independence from God and claims autonomy and the primary raised on that the reason for the state and the first play primarily is to protect Maine and nurture human life and that's not happening so the culture is in real trouble and the government's are real children but I in the final analysis I agree with you and one of the things you know that Ligonier has to worry about is we have a lot of resources to take care of time people finances and so and if you're in charge of those things in your church you know with the primary task of the executive is the allocation of resources allocation of people of property of tools of finances and we also know that if I have a hundred dollars I can waste it and do five dollars worth of ministry and waste ninety five dollars but if I have a hundred dollars worth of money one thing I can't do is to 105 dollars or 110 dollars worth of ministry I'm limited by the resources I have and my task is to allocate those resources because I'd know if I spend five dollars here I can't spend it over here now you take that with respect to your time and your energy and your vocation I believe that your primary vocation is the preaching of the word of God to the congregation that God has put you in front of and as you equip them for ministry and as they grow in grace they're going to be touching up against people all around the culture but I think your investment should be overwhelmingly chiefly on the people of God to raise them up rather than to try to change the government's in the ring but I still think we have to exercise prophetic criticism of the state and that sort of thing but that's not our primary task paganism will always be with us if you read Jonathan Edwards in the middle of the 18th century in 1750 before the Revolutionary War you know what his biggest concern is in some of his writings the erosion of Christianity in the colonies the early Puritans and pilgrims came of the Mayflower contract in 1620 by 1700 thirty years later that culture was basically secular and we're still arguing about whether the founding fathers of the Republic were Christians and so on it was already post Christian before George Washington ever you know took the oath of office but so I mean we're always having to deal with the culture in which we are as Pilgrims and strangers and aliens yes douglasball yes it's good to see you and you look much younger than the picture here's here's my question how do we deal with application when we preach you know sometimes I feel if I emphasize the application it seems to me that what makes it difference with other religions you know there are a lot of moral teachings in Hinduism and Islam even in Buddhism so I think well in that case I should just just regard the application and just focus on the true meaning of the scripture and I even some of the professors in seminary they even taught us that you are not allowed to preach to the laypeople that they're to be David or they're to be Abraham because they are typology they are linked to Jesus and you are not allowed to apply and tell them that you should be like David or you should be like Abraham but on the other side and I feel well if I don't do application it's not well enough because if I just emphasize on the true meaning and the expository sermon only I mean why don't people just go to Google and you know buy books from Amazon and there's my tension and um do you get what I'm saying Joe I understand what you're saying and like I think we heard the answer that question tonight in the Steve's address and the first part of it where he distinguished between teaching and preaching that's always been a fuzzy thing for me because I tend to preach when I teach and teach when I preach but I do know the difference and when he talked about preaching is more than just communicating the information it's more than doing the exegesis you should do all of that you need to understand the content of the text that you're preaching and you need to expound that text but with that exposition comes comforting admonishment and that's that's all part of the application is you have to help people see what the significance for their life is of what they've just heard from the Word of God the Puritans were great at that Edwards was a master of that he would give this been fantastic exposition of the text for so long and then they didn't always end with the application I'm not very good of it good frankly because I spent too many years as a teacher most of my preaching is just unfolding the text and then I remember I got a explain to this apply this text to these people but but no we should do we should try to apply it but we can't there are those who want to just exegete and that's not preaching and there are other preachers that all they want to do is give application and and there's no biblical content so that's not preaching either so it has to be both the content and the application the content of the lives of the people okay in light of what we've heard tonight on the gravity of preaching and and the dearth of you know good expository preaching the famine of the word and of hearing the word and in light of that there seems to be what I've noticed in some churches anyway an unwritten rule that you know if you're not saying the benediction by noon then you know you need to shorten your sermon up or or do something different in light of the significance importance of preaching how do we address that kind of attitude in the congregation and is there a an ideal length for a sermon you know they tell us a nice church growth things that with the advent of television and sound bites and that the people's attention span is 12 minutes or 15 minutes or so if you're going to communicate with them you have to limit your sound bites to what people can take and then they'll go to a stadium and sit there for three hours and gross the watching the football game you know they don't they don't do professional football with sound bites or with impressions I mean you've got a good on the other hand I used to tell my students and in the seminary if Steve heard me say this you got to earn the right to preach for 45 minutes because not too many people can do it and it's a sin to bore people and so I try to do my sermons in 30 to 35 minutes on Sunday mornings 50 minutes on Sunday night and and I'm going to tape say that's very candidly the next person who complains to me that I am preaching too long will be the first one in 13 years of my preaching of st. Andrews now that doesn't mean that there aren't people out there in the congregation who don't believe that I preach too long sure there are people who said that they've just never said that to me and I've never heard that complaint either third-hand or whatever and yet I've had scores of people complain to me that my sermons are too short what a great situation to be in but when I was in the eighth grade our supervising principal came through our school he was in charge of supervising four different schools in the district and I we had our grades going up to eighth grade then you went on to high school and at the only eighth grade all the schools were coming together to have a school picnic at the end of our graduation and we were on the student council and we were trying to plan that event and we had a debate as to how long we should have this picnic and the supervisor said to us that day you know you always want to finish when the people want more then finishing when I've had too much and that stuck with me you know I I've made application of that sermon through what happens Sunday morning but you need to be your own best critic how long can I really preach effectively and hold people's interest you know the Puritans would preach for an hour two hours but that was expected on Sunday morning here you're not accommodating the culture but you you're really swimming against the stream one Pete when you expect people to sit there for an hour two hours to listen to you preach and so you have to fit you have to make that self evaluation can I really communicate effectively for longer than 30 minutes if you can do it you can't don't you know I hear so many sermons that would have been so much better had they stopped 15 minutes before they did okay yeah as men studying preparing and leading our churches in worship after we have led our church and preaching through worship the response that follows for I'm a younger pastor and of course we see what the contemporary church is doing following the worship they're preaching but I would like to know what you do maybe at st. Andrews I've read some of Calvin's prayers following his preaching through worship which are incredible and I think that is a good conclusion to the preaching through worship but following that what would you recommend or have you believe leads and continues the spirit of worship before a benediction is given at the end of a service you know a few years ago I spoke at the Christian bookstores Association on their Sunday morning they were like 7,000 people there and that was maybe the fourth or fifth time I'd done that so he's got to be old hat but they came up to me they explained that how long the service was going to be and they said we're gonna have 45 minutes of worship and then we're going to have your sermon and so we had a praise band and we had all that stuff for 45 minutes and that was the worship segment of the service and I said am i from another planet what is is the sermon not integral to worship is the pastoral prayer not part of worship is the taking up with the tithes and offerings not part of worship where did we get this idea that the songs were the worship and the rest of the stuff wasn't now that when you ask that question not he disappeared I don't know where you went but whoever it was that asked that question there you go you said when we're leading worship did everybody hear him say that you know we've heard this admonishment an expectation tonight from Steve that we'd be faithful to the gift of preaching if you have a gift of preaching let him preach but let me tell you what else you're in charge of you're the preacher you're in charge of worship we got nah we have churches all the places we have the worship minister and the and the minister what what what is that I mean these worship guys have they gone all this time to seminary and study the Word of God like like you are supposed to be prepared for this ministry you're in charge of the worship and let me tell you who else is not in charge the worship the people you're the pastor of the flock to the to the sheep come up to the Shepherd and say now here's what we would like to eat the sacrament and here's what here's the kind of music we really do do you love me feed my sheep don't poison my sheep feed my sheep don't starve my sheep they're his sheep and worship is to be designed as preaching was the goal of preaching you just said was what the glory of God oh and we need to have a hard look at that we do that regularly at st. Andrews you asked me about that saying we have a worship committee of the church and we look at every single thing we do on Sunday morning and we say is this biblical is this to the glory of God or is this a cultural chrétien is it just something we're trying to do to be popular and and I think we need to criticize ourselves on that because the temptation is overwhelming to give the sheep whatever the sheep are buying for you know we're poor little steep you gotta you gotta care about the sheep care enough about the Sheep to feed them what they need okay yeah first of all dr. cruel many thanks and praise us to God for you and your ministry echo heartily what's already been offered this evening and I personally think but you're not going to stand there and cry about it like Stevie I'm not gonna cry like Stevie that's right and there's no such thing as sanctified magic I want to go on record as saying but my question it take just made an enemy that'll take just a moment to develop but I read an article this week and it was praising this new microprocessor technology that's been released by IBM I think and the technology is based upon the principles of quantum mechanics in the article is extolling all of the the magic that's associated with quantum mechanics and in the article actually talks about the Heisenberg principle and the electron is in more places than one is in multiple places there's not any more places than one it's here and not there at the same time just an illusion that's right but that's not what the article said if the article said in more places than one and where I'm going with that is it seems that our culture swallows down anything that science would say even when science speaks absurdly what impact is that having on our congregations because that's sort of you know in the educational channel coming up and then how do we as pastors address that in our preaching in our teaching that goes on inside the church there's some good news and some bad news associated that recently was at the Wall Street Journal whatever had that major article from Stephen Hawking where Stephen Hawking was declaring that we don't need to be looking at creation anymore because the laws of physics quantum mechanics and all that sort of thing now we know that the universe came into being through spontaneous generation through self-creation right and people take him seriously they take him seriously and here's a man who's an educated man a brilliant man making nonsense statements nothing ever created itself to create itself would have to be before it was it had to be it not be at the same time same relationship and the difficulties of the mysteries of the Heisenberg mechanics principle give now people people with the license to speak absurdities without being challenged get away with it never a boat bell Prize winning physicist out at Stanford a few years ago wrote an essay in which he said the days of proclaiming spontaneous generation are over now we know in contemporary scientific caught ideas that the Enlightenment principle the spontaneous generation is no longer a tenable idea nothing can come into being spontaneously by itself it takes time stop me if I'm lying and so he says what we have to do is change the paradigm listen to this I'm not making this up gradual spontaneous generation the idea is you can't get something from nothing quickly goodness sakes now here's how Christians will respond to that and what has happened is our congregation are filled with people who have now been taught with the categories of rationality no longer apply to the seeking of truth and the truth can be contradictory in fact the more contradictory it is the more likely it is that it's really truth see that is insanity it really is insanity and but we have people thinking in those categories and what I hear well-meaning teachers saying and pre you're saying is that the way in which people learn has been dramatically impacted by television and other electronic media to such a degree that the Constituent nature of man has changed so if you want to get to the heart you don't need to worry about getting through the mind let me give you something since the creates the dawn of creation the Constituent nature of human beings has not changed one iota the way in which God created you was that the Avenue to the heart is through the mind always that's why we seek to persuade men with a careful proclamation of the gospel and we try to get that information into their heads and we know it can get into the heads and never go anywhere else and that's no good but if you try to get into their hearts without getting their heads that's not faith it's superstition and you're not really being faithful to the Word of God so we have to disavow ourselves of that myth that the nature of mankind has changed I still address the mind of people I still seek to be logical in my presentation and then people say wow I never thought about it like that before no see that's a great idea Wow guys you'll be up first for the Q&A tomorrow okay just you come up first and we'll take it from there we need to wrap the evening up Keith would you come and lead us and soldiers of Christ arise and then John and Abnett will dismiss us dr. Sproul will be preaching first thing in the morning on the holiness of God you're going to want to be here early and to get a good seat and he'll be speaking on the wrath of God tomorrow afternoon and we have another QA yeah exactly so Keith would you come if you've got your program you'll see the words to Christ arise let's lift up our voice let's stand up now and sing to the Lord you in the street which gods the strength of Jesus trust standard it always and take you all today you Oh well please remain standing and once again I look forward to seeing all of you in the morning at 7:30 for breakfast and the first session beginning at 9:00 let's bow in a word of Prayer Heavenly Father it is in the name above all names that we bow before you tonight we do not come to you in the name of a man we do not come before your throne tonight in the name of a church we come to you tonight in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and father we thank you for you and for who you are not just for what comes from your hand but God for the privilege of being able to behold your glory and to have the relationship with you in and through your son and our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ and father we thank you tonight for the gifts you have given to the body of Christ in and through these men and for their ministries and for their churches and father I pray that in this evening and tomorrow throughout the hours of the day that we as Christ Fellowship Baptist Church may be able to love on them and encourage them and through the teaching and preaching of dr. Sproul and dr. Lawson equipped them that they may go back and boldly proclaim the truth of your word whether I pray as we go our separate way tonight that you would be with us may your hedge of protection be around us and may all that we do be pleasing in your sight for your glory and for our good in Christ's name Amen everyone just soul you have me okay

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Keywords: RC, Sproul, Questions, and, Answers, Christian, Expositors, Conference

Id: 56B_0iKfjxw

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2011