WEBVTT 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:39.440 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:40.400 I am Cory J. 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:42.720 Mahler. And I'm Wo. 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:46.960 In this episode, we will be discussing Scripture qua scripture, which is 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:52.000 to say Scripture as the inerrant, plenarily, verbally inspired Word of God 00:00:52.560 --> 00:01:01.440 which Christians must read, believe, and defend, and which Satan ceaselessly attacks. 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:05.520 If I am not convinced by the testimonies of Scripture and clear 00:01:05.600 --> 00:01:10.080 rational arguments, for I believe neither the Pope nor the councils alone, 00:01:10.080 --> 00:01:13.040 since it is a fact that they have often erred and contradicted 00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:17.040 themselves, then I am by the passages of the Holy Scriptures, which 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:20.720 I have cited, overcome in my conscience and held captive to the 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:21.760 Word of God. 00:01:21.760 --> 00:01:25.840 Therefore I can and will retract nothing, because it is neither safe 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:29.040 nor healthful to do anything against conscience. 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:31.680 Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:33.760 God help me, amen. 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:37.440 This was Martin Luther's testimony to the Die of Arms in April 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:38.880 fifteen twenty one. 00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:42.640 I wanted to open with that statement because um it's one of 00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:46.560 the most famous things that Luther said that's known you know within 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:47.920 Lutheran Lutheranism. 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:52.800 It's not known across uh Protestantism Protestantism ism at large. 00:01:52.800 --> 00:01:55.760 And I think probably a lot of people know the phrase here 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:59.280 I stand somewhat famously even if they don't know where it came 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:02.080 from. Uh the reason I wanted to open with that in particular 00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:05.520 is that there are a couple points in there that Luther makes 00:02:05.520 --> 00:02:11.040 about appealing directly to scripture and about plain reason that although modern 00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:16.160 Lutherans believe that those words are our inheritance and the Luther's spirit 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:20.240 and those words is our spirit, in fact it's pretty normal within 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:25.520 our churches today to go in the opposite direction, to obfuscate scripture 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:29.040 and to try to think make things more complicated than they are, 00:02:29.040 --> 00:02:33.280 and to either ignore rational arguments or perhaps even to say that 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:36.720 reason has no place in the faith. 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:41.840 And as a result, when someone, especially a layman, points to scripture, 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:47.680 we're frequently shouted down or mocked or belittled uh or reprimanded as 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:49.840 though we have done something wrong. 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:54.560 And so this episode today we're talking about scriptural inerrancy, about the 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:58.320 plain reading of scripture, about the plain words of scripture, and why 00:02:58.320 --> 00:03:01.200 that's actually true, whether it is true that scripture is plain. 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:06.240 I've made a point in numerous past episodes, virtually all of them, 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:08.480 and I'll probably say it in every episode. 00:03:08.480 --> 00:03:10.160 Scripture is clear. 00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:14.400 And when I've been saying that, it is a very deliberate needle 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:17.680 driven into the eyes of these men who think the scripture's not 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:21.520 clear, who think that when we read these words on the page 00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:26.080 that are given to us by God, transmitted through time miraculously, and 00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:28.640 by human hands at the same time. 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:30.880 We can't really be sure what we're reading. 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:35.840 And so to say scripture is clear about anything is defiance against 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:36.880 that spirit. 00:03:36.880 --> 00:03:41.280 Um before we get into the the nature of reading scripture, I 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:44.640 think it's important to begin with uh the point in time where 00:03:44.640 --> 00:03:48.000 the lady was actually first able to read scripture because one of 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:51.040 the things that was lost in the Western Church was access to 00:03:51.040 --> 00:03:55.360 the Word of God as uh as Rome continued to preserve Latin 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:58.640 as the sole language, people didn't speak Latin anymore. 00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:03.120 And so only the very educated would know Latin and the books 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:05.120 themselves were incredibly expensive 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:07.920 because they were all handwritten. 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:11.520 So it was really a breakthrough for the first time, particularly in 00:04:11.520 --> 00:04:15.040 English, when the Word of God was translated into English. 00:04:15.040 --> 00:04:16.800 And so we're going to begin there. 00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:17.440 And so 00:04:17.520 --> 00:04:20.000 of course if we begin there we have to begin with really 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:24.400 three men, that would be Wycliffe, Huss, and Tyndale. 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:28.560 Two of them, the latter two, were executed for their efforts. 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:32.560 Uh Wycliffe did actually manage to live out his life And the 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:37.360 things for which the Roman Church persecuted these men, yes, they had 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:40.160 disagreements theologically, but that was not the core of it. 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:43.920 The core was that these men wanted the scriptures to be accessible 00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:46.000 to the laity, which is to say they wanted it to be 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:47.360 in the vernacular. 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:51.280 Because as mentioned, having it in Latin when no one speaks Latin 00:04:51.280 --> 00:04:56.640 anymore, except for the tiny upper educated crust of society, is not 00:04:56.640 --> 00:04:59.760 making the Word of God accessible to 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:04.000 the common people of your nation, and scripture is very clear. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:07.280 You are supposed to study and discuss and think about the Word 00:05:07.280 --> 00:05:10.000 of God when you rise, when you go to bed, as you 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:13.200 walk by the way, at dinner, all of these times you are 00:05:13.200 --> 00:05:18.160 supposed to discuss these things, you cannot do that if you don't 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:21.200 have the scriptures in a language who understand. 00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:24.480 And so in the case of Wycliffe, who has one of the 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:28.800 first English translations of the Bible, and he translated it. 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:32.000 He his associates may have translated the Old Testament, but he certainly 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:34.400 translated the New Testament. 00:05:34.400 --> 00:05:38.240 And so the Roman Catholic Church didn't manage to kill him as 00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:40.160 mentioned previously. 00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:42.320 He managed to die a natural death. 00:05:42.320 --> 00:05:47.200 However, just to show the vindictiveness and the spitefulness of the Roman 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:51.040 Church, they dug up his bones, burned them, and then tossed the 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:54.160 ashes into the river, in order to make a statement about their 00:05:54.160 --> 00:05:58.160 disagreement with him, which is to say that they did not want 00:05:58.400 --> 00:06:00.960 the common people to have the scriptures in their hands in a 00:06:00.960 --> 00:06:06.480 way they could understand them, because that challenged the power of Rome. 00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:10.480 If the scriptures aren't a language that only those associated with Rome, 00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:13.360 which at the time would have essentially been only priests would have 00:06:13.360 --> 00:06:16.640 known Latin, or the handful of men who were highly educated at 00:06:16.960 --> 00:06:19.680 universities reading texts in Latin. 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:23.760 Rome could have exercised a great deal of control then, and in 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:29.040 addition, Rome objected to any attempts to produce the Bible, really at 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:29.280 all. 00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:34.320 It wasn't just producing the Bible in a language that was understood 00:06:34.320 --> 00:06:36.160 by the common people in the vernacular. 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:39.440 If you attempted to print and master distribute the Bible in Latin, 00:06:39.440 --> 00:06:41.280 they still would have killed you for that. 00:06:41.280 --> 00:06:44.560 Because you would have been making it accessible not to the common 00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:47.360 man, but outside of Rome's control. 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:51.520 And it's that it's that control that Rome wanted to exercise. 00:06:51.520 --> 00:06:53.920 And that's basically sacerdotalism. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:01.280 It's the belief that the priesthood, in the Roman sense here, they 00:07:01.280 --> 00:07:05.040 act as a go-between for the laity and God. 00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:06.080 The only way you can get two god 00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:08.240 is through your priest. 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:11.600 That's basically the view of Rome at the time. 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:14.560 It's still somewhat the view of Rome today, of course it's complicated 00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:16.480 by the fact that Rome also seems to think that you can 00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:19.520 go through Mary or the Saints, but that is a separate issue. 00:07:19.760 --> 00:07:24.240 But it's this sacerdotalism that lies at the core of the problems 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:26.720 that we will be discussing today. 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:31.920 Because when you have pastors or priests or even theologians who are 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:37.120 arguing No the common man, no you cannot understand the scriptures, you 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:40.880 cannot read them for yourself, and understand what they mean I have 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:43.120 to do it for you. 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:46.960 All of that falls under the umbrella of sacerdotalism. 00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:47.200 There 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:50.720 was a there's a fantastic quote that we found uh from one 00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:55.040 of Wycliffe's opponents who they in their hand wringing way they stated 00:07:55.280 --> 00:07:58.880 the jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity. 00:07:58.880 --> 00:08:01.040 They're referring to scripture there. 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:04.880 God's word, which was the jewel of the clergy, meaning them, had 00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:06.720 become the toy of the laity. 00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:12.320 They were so terrified of the idea of the common Christian abusing 00:08:12.320 --> 00:08:16.240 or misusing scripture that they were willing to kill men to keep 00:08:16.240 --> 00:08:17.120 them away from 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:18.560 it. Well, 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:20.800 and of course they were, because even if you had it in 00:08:20.800 --> 00:08:23.680 Latin, particularly if you had it in the vernacular, but even if 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:27.040 you had it in Latin, then educated man could start reading the 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:31.680 scriptures and start think seeing things like say 2 Timothy 316. 00:08:31.680 --> 00:08:34.880 All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for 00:08:34.880 --> 00:08:37.600 reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. 00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:40.640 If you start reading these things that are all throughout Scripture, it's 00:08:40.560 --> 00:08:43.760 not in just one place or a handful, it's everywhere, beginning to 00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:45.680 end, Genesis to Revelation. 00:08:45.680 --> 00:08:49.840 If you start seeing these things, these men will start asking questions 00:08:50.560 --> 00:08:53.840 Why have we restricted this from the laity? 00:08:53.840 --> 00:08:55.920 Why do they not have access to this? 00:08:55.920 --> 00:08:58.800 Why do the priests not want me to read the Word of 00:08:58.800 --> 00:09:01.760 God? If the Word of God is telling me to read the 00:09:01.760 --> 00:09:03.520 Word of God. 00:09:03.520 --> 00:09:08.080 And it's because Rome wanted to maintain that authority, because the authority 00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:13.760 of Rome is built on a handful of claims, one of which 00:09:13.760 --> 00:09:17.280 being that the Pope essentially is Christ on earth, and they will 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:21.040 actually literally use those words from time to time. 00:09:21.040 --> 00:09:26.320 And so if Scripture is the Word of God, God speaking directly 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:32.400 to whomever is reading or listening, Then you don't need this go-between. 00:09:32.400 --> 00:09:34.240 You don't need the Pope. 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:37.120 And then you can start to question the Pope's power, which is 00:09:37.200 --> 00:09:39.760 exactly what Rome, of course, did not want. 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:46.480 And Rome hated the the fact that the scriptures had been translated 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:51.760 into the vernacular, that when they executed John Huss, they actually used 00:09:51.760 --> 00:09:56.240 Wycliffe's Bible as kindling on his pyre for his stake. 00:09:56.640 --> 00:10:00.960 That's they they burn the Bible to murder a man for preaching 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.760 and speaking from a Bible that they didn't want people to have 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:04.960 access to. 00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:10.160 And if you look at these men in history, Wycliffe, Huss, and 00:10:10.160 --> 00:10:14.640 Tyndale, they did make doctrinal errors. 00:10:14.640 --> 00:10:19.520 We're not saying that Rome was wrong about the errors that these 00:10:19.520 --> 00:10:22.880 men made, but I think that that's actually part of the point 00:10:22.880 --> 00:10:28.000 of why it's so important that scripture be accessible to everyone. 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:32.240 Because for these men, prior to the Reformation, you know, uh, Wycliffe 00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:34.400 was in the the mid-1300s 00:10:35.520 --> 00:10:42.080 When they undertook translating scripture into the vernacular, they ceased to be, 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:43.840 they they became outlaws. 00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:48.000 They effectively became outside of the church, which meant that they didn't 00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:52.800 have the support of other Christians in the establishment and that's not 00:10:52.800 --> 00:10:55.920 normal. Christians are not supposed to be solo. 00:10:55.920 --> 00:11:01.040 W when we talk about scriptural inerrancy and about the fact that 00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:05.920 the word is fruitful for these things, it does not follow that 00:11:05.920 --> 00:11:09.120 we want every man sitting under a tree by himself reading his 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:12.720 Bible and never having any contact with other Christians. 00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:14.880 These things are meant to be discussed. 00:11:14.880 --> 00:11:16.800 God says that iron sharpens iron. 00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:20.080 That's talking about doctrine as much as anything. 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:23.760 And there are numerous places in scripture where it says, particularly in 00:11:23.760 --> 00:11:26.800 the New Testament, there must be disagreements among you, so that the 00:11:26.800 --> 00:11:28.560 truth may be known. 00:11:28.560 --> 00:11:35.760 So when doctrine is reasoned out properly and argued from Scripture, that 00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:37.440 is what God wants of us. 00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:41.200 He wants us to have Scripture, to read Scripture to discuss it 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:45.200 and to argue to figure out who is right. 00:11:45.200 --> 00:11:47.680 And the the what we're going to get to in the second 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:51.840 half of this episode is the one of the main attacks today. 00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:56.160 for a while the attack was well, scripture's not real or it's 00:11:56.160 --> 00:11:57.840 true, but it's not accurate. 00:11:57.840 --> 00:12:02.240 And there's some of that today, but it's sort of morphing into 00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:06.560 a thing where you can just say, uh, you that's that's your 00:12:06.560 --> 00:12:10.080 interpretation. you have your Bible and I have mine, and we can 00:12:10.080 --> 00:12:10.960 just believe what we want. 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:13.760 And as long as we confess Jesus in our heart, it's all 00:12:13.760 --> 00:12:14.880 good, man. 00:12:14.880 --> 00:12:19.600 And that's when the when the papists and others repeat the the 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:23.280 silly lie that there are 30,000 denominations today. 00:12:23.520 --> 00:12:25.280 it's pure nonsense for one thing. 00:12:25.280 --> 00:12:27.440 There may be a couple dozen branches 00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:34.080 that have discernible, very particular beliefs that differ from each other, and 00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:38.320 all the rest is basically just flavors of Baptist and one or 00:12:38.320 --> 00:12:38.720 two others. 00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:42.480 We should also point out that the claims from Rome and the 00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:47.280 East when it comes to unity are complete fabrications out of whole 00:12:47.280 --> 00:12:49.520 cloth. They are not unified. 00:12:49.520 --> 00:12:53.840 You have various groups within each of those umbrella church to use 00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:57.600 the term loosely bodies That don't agree with each other. 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:02.080 They have categorical disagreements on doctrine from, in the case of the 00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:07.840 Eastern Orthodox, one national church to another, or even one body within 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:09.360 a single nation to another. 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:13.680 And so the unity they supposedly have and they try to make 00:13:13.680 --> 00:13:17.520 as an argument against Protestants is just complete nonsense. 00:13:17.520 --> 00:13:19.440 The facts do not bear it out. 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:23.040 We can throw in the for the show notes the the picture 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:27.440 showing the relationship of the various Eastern Orthodox churches who are and 00:13:27.440 --> 00:13:30.800 are not in communion with un one another over various things. 00:13:30.800 --> 00:13:34.320 It's as complicated as the org chart for any large international corporation, 00:13:34.320 --> 00:13:35.280 if not more so. 00:13:35.680 --> 00:13:38.160 Some of them are near are some are not in communion with 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:38.480 each other. 00:13:39.360 --> 00:13:42.480 they don't anathise each other, but they say, Yeah, we're we're not 00:13:42.480 --> 00:13:43.840 even of the same belief. 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:48.080 So and that falls just under the umbrella of quote unquote orthodoxy. 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:51.840 Yes. And you've got the same thing going on in Rome with 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:55.200 those I it depends on how far you're willing to extend the 00:13:55.200 --> 00:13:58.400 umbrella. Are those who think the seat of Peter is vacant still 00:13:58.400 --> 00:13:59.360 Roman Catholic? 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:00.480 Are they not? 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:03.920 Are the Jesuits and the Dominicans the same it's just it's never 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:07.280 ending. So their their claims of unity are complete nonsense. 00:14:07.280 --> 00:14:13.040 But you mentioned the word solo versus say perhaps sola. 00:14:13.040 --> 00:14:16.800 It does bring up the the issue of most people don't even 00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:21.280 understand what sola scriptura means anymore. 00:14:21.280 --> 00:14:24.320 Because no one knows Latin, which is funny that we're talking about 00:14:24.320 --> 00:14:28.960 translating things into the vernacular and we discover a problem related to 00:14:28.960 --> 00:14:32.000 people not knowing Latin, but it is what it is. 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.440 People look at sola scriptura and they they won't know the term 00:14:35.600 --> 00:14:37.600 because people aren't taught even English anymore. 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:41.520 They think it's the nominative, and so they think it's scripture alone. 00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:42.640 But that's not what it is. 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:43.760 It's in the ablative. 00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:45.280 It is by scripture alone. 00:14:45.280 --> 00:14:49.840 And what we mean when we say sola scriptura is that scripture 00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:51.920 is the norming norm. 00:14:51.920 --> 00:14:53.520 It is the norma Normands. 00:14:53.440 --> 00:14:57.600 it is the standard by which all doctrine is tested. 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:02.960 It does not mean that we take only scripture. 00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:06.160 We still look to our fathers in the faith, we still look 00:15:06.160 --> 00:15:09.440 to tradition, we look to all of these good things that have 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:12.240 been preserved by the grace of God. 00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:15.120 They are just not the ultimate authority. 00:15:15.120 --> 00:15:18.720 And so when you said that these men were separated from the 00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:19.040 church 00:15:20.080 --> 00:15:23.760 That's true and that is exactly as you said, unnatural. 00:15:23.760 --> 00:15:28.400 Christians are supposed to live within the context of the Church, in 00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:33.200 a Christian society, in a Christian nation, in Christian families, and part 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:36.640 of that is you have to have the word. 00:15:36.640 --> 00:15:40.080 Because we're going right back to headship as we always do. 00:15:40.080 --> 00:15:43.440 It is incumbent on the master of the house, which is to 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:47.040 say the father, the the oldest man in the house typically. 00:15:47.040 --> 00:15:50.400 It is incumbent on him to know the word, and to see 00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:53.440 that those in his house are instructed in it. 00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:57.920 And that's why you have the the admonitions in the small catechism, 00:15:57.920 --> 00:16:01.280 as the father of the house is supposed to teach. 00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:05.680 And also, he is supposed to question those in his household and 00:16:05.680 --> 00:16:08.720 see if they are actually learning this material, because one day the 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:12.080 father is going to stand before his father in heaven and have 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:15.360 to answer for what he did or did not do with regard 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:18.800 to the authority he was given on earth. 00:16:18.800 --> 00:16:23.600 And the reason the the discussion of scriptural inerrancy and its suitableness 00:16:23.600 --> 00:16:28.240 for teaching is so important is that particularly for for new believers 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:31.760 coming to the faith or even so for someone who's not a 00:16:31.760 --> 00:16:34.880 Christian yet, but they think they want to be a Christian and 00:16:34.880 --> 00:16:36.640 they want to know what does that mean? 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:43.200 You look at this enormous menu of fighting, bickering, angering, angry, in 00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:47.520 many cases killing each other for fifteen hundred years or more, groups 00:16:47.520 --> 00:16:50.560 that all call themselves Christian and every single one of 'em says 00:16:50.560 --> 00:16:51.840 that all the others are wrong. 00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:55.280 How is anyone to know how to make sense of that? 00:16:55.280 --> 00:16:58.560 And the easy thing for people to do is to throw up 00:16:58.560 --> 00:17:02.320 their hands and say, either to pick one, which is one of 00:17:02.320 --> 00:17:06.000 the reasons that that I started I mentioned last week that I 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:09.280 I had rebranded and started talking a lot more about my faith 00:17:09.440 --> 00:17:11.680 and particularly about being a Lutheran. 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:14.560 I did so because I saw more and more of men the 00:17:14.560 --> 00:17:19.040 men on Men on the right of the political sphere being attracted 00:17:19.040 --> 00:17:22.400 to Christianity and not and having there's a very problem. 00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:25.360 They see all the bickering, they see all the options, they don't 00:17:25.280 --> 00:17:27.040 know what to do, and 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:32.480 they're either not Christian or they're barely Christian, and so they don't 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:38.080 have any frame of reference for evaluating scriptural or doctrinal claims. 00:17:38.080 --> 00:17:41.040 All they can do is sort of look at the food superficial 00:17:41.040 --> 00:17:45.680 aspects of things and what I saw years ago and what's continuing 00:17:45.680 --> 00:17:50.000 to this day is that a great many men who want to 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.280 become Christian because they see, even if they don't understand God, they 00:17:53.280 --> 00:17:57.520 don't understand Jesus and justification, they understand that Satan's real. 00:17:57.520 --> 00:18:01.040 They understand that evil is a real thing and that it is 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:05.040 supernatural. It's not just that there are bad people, some of which 00:18:05.040 --> 00:18:08.560 are in some ethnic groups, but they're bad people in general. 00:18:08.560 --> 00:18:14.160 It's that they see that those people cannot solely be bad because 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:17.120 they had bad parents or they had a bad religion or a 00:18:17.120 --> 00:18:19.120 bad upbringing. 00:18:19.120 --> 00:18:23.440 There's an animating spirit that is clear in the world. 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:26.560 And in many cases, it's only clear to unbelievers. 00:18:26.560 --> 00:18:29.280 Christians don't even see it anymore because we just say, oh, well, 00:18:29.280 --> 00:18:30.160 we're all sinners. 00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:33.680 Unbelievers can see more clearly than us that this is a spiritual 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:35.840 war that we are in the midst of. 00:18:35.840 --> 00:18:38.400 And so these men who don't know Jesus, but they do know 00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:41.680 that Satan is has to be a real thing, they look at 00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:42.320 the churches. 00:18:42.320 --> 00:18:45.440 And so one of the tests is, Well, which one's biggest? 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:46.640 The answer is Rome. 00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:50.240 Rome has more than a billion adherents worldwide, so obviously I mean, 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:52.640 they're the winner by default, clearly. 00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:55.440 I mean if that's the that's the churchiest church you can go 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:58.960 for. And then when you actually look at Rome, they have smells 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:02.800 and bells, they have great optics, you know, they have they have 00:19:02.800 --> 00:19:10.320 vestments, they have beautiful buildings, they have history, they have historic claims, 00:19:10.320 --> 00:19:13.600 some of which are actually true, many are not, but you know, 00:19:13.600 --> 00:19:17.280 again, even if some of their historical claims are not true, if 00:19:17.280 --> 00:19:21.280 someone is coming to the church as a blank slate, they're gonna 00:19:21.280 --> 00:19:24.000 go for whichever one has more historical claims. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:26.960 And so it it appeals to them that Rome and that the 00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:30.560 East will say, we're older than those other guys, that Protestant stuff, 00:19:30.560 --> 00:19:31.280 that's new. 00:19:31.520 --> 00:19:34.640 that started in in the fifteen hundreds. 00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:38.240 And the reason I started talking about my f my Lutheran faith 00:19:38.240 --> 00:19:42.880 was to say, hey, the reformation was just that. 00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:44.800 It was not a revolution. 00:19:44.800 --> 00:19:48.080 It was not an overthrow of the church to replace it. 00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:52.720 It was a reformation of the church as she had been centuries 00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:58.480 prior, and a restoration of beliefs which had been once held within 00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:03.040 the church and then were lost precisely because the people were prohibited 00:20:03.040 --> 00:20:04.640 from having access to scripture. 00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:08.080 And that's actually what happened to Luther, although he was a scholar. 00:20:08.320 --> 00:20:12.000 was he was reading the word, But it wasn't until he actually 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:17.040 went back and actually really read Romans and Galatians that he had 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:20.960 the breakthrough that what he had been taught in his own churches 00:20:21.120 --> 00:20:23.760 and what he'd been teaching as a as a teacher in the 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:25.200 church was actually false. 00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:26.960 It was contrary to scripture. 00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:31.440 And so the Reformation didn't begin in in a fever dream of 00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:36.400 Luther or in his desire to be a revolutionary. 00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:38.960 It became it began in the Word of God. 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:43.440 It began in a man reading scripture for the first time clearly 00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:47.840 and saying, hey, this isn't what what God told us. 00:20:47.840 --> 00:20:51.120 And if that's the case, then something has to be done. 00:20:51.120 --> 00:20:53.120 And we're in a similar situation today. 00:20:53.120 --> 00:20:56.560 And so we're talking about why scripture but is both inerrant and 00:20:56.560 --> 00:20:58.160 why it's accessible. 00:20:58.160 --> 00:21:00.320 It's not a mystery to us. 00:21:00.320 --> 00:21:03.520 And it's very important that we combat anyone who says, Oh, it's 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:07.440 it's really confusing because when people are coming into the church and 00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:11.920 they're looking for a church, if they see us making those claims, 00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:14.800 A, they're not going to be interested in us because we're we're 00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:19.520 equivocating. We're saying we're saying that truth is unknowable, that it's just 00:21:19.520 --> 00:21:21.840 all up for grabs and whatever you feel, man. 00:21:21.840 --> 00:21:24.880 And And they know that that is a worldly thing. 00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:28.080 We have ceased to recognize that we again, and we talked about 00:21:28.080 --> 00:21:30.320 the genealog genealogy of ideas. 00:21:30.320 --> 00:21:33.280 A pagan can look at the when at the way Christians talk 00:21:33.280 --> 00:21:36.080 in our churches and see that a lot of it can't be 00:21:36.080 --> 00:21:37.840 Christian because it's modern. 00:21:37.840 --> 00:21:39.280 It's a modern ethos. 00:21:39.280 --> 00:21:42.000 It's a modern philosophical approach to 00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:48.640 something that, if the claims are true, is ancient, is is originated 00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:49.200 from God. 00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:51.520 It's originated from a supernatural source. 00:21:51.520 --> 00:21:54.080 And so it's not going to be buffeted by the whims of 00:21:54.080 --> 00:21:57.360 philosophy as it evolves over the centuries. 00:21:57.360 --> 00:22:02.240 And so having these discussions and talking about the clarity of scripture 00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:05.840 is not just about it's not about winning arguments on the internet. 00:22:05.840 --> 00:22:08.480 It's not about seeing who's going to be more right. 00:22:08.480 --> 00:22:11.520 It's about reaching souls that are lost and are 00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:16.720 groping in the darkness towards God in a way that as Christians, 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:19.040 Scripture says that's clearly that's possible. 00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:22.160 That it is possible for to for people to grope their way 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:23.040 towards God. 00:22:23.360 --> 00:22:24.640 You can't save yourself. 00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:27.760 You're not going to come to faith because you try really hard 00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:29.120 or because you think about it. 00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:33.040 Faith is given as a gift through the hearing of the word, 00:22:33.040 --> 00:22:34.720 which is scripture. 00:22:34.720 --> 00:22:39.920 So pointing to scripture is the way to save souls, and denying 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:44.560 scripture outright or denying access to scripture is a way to damn 00:22:44.560 --> 00:22:47.920 souls, and that's why this conversation is important. 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:52.640 It's worth actually emphasizing what you said about Luther. 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:56.400 Luther was a monk, and he still did not have access to 00:22:56.400 --> 00:22:59.680 scripture, not ready access until he had been a monk for a 00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:05.040 while, because even from those who were in the church being trained 00:23:05.040 --> 00:23:10.160 to teach in the church, they were largely using secondary and tertiary 00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:13.120 materials instead of scripture. 00:23:13.120 --> 00:23:17.120 That's how far Rome had corrupted things by the time of the 00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:21.520 Reformation, and why the Reformation was absolutely necessary. 00:23:23.120 --> 00:23:23.360 And 00:23:23.360 --> 00:23:26.560 that's something that's just that's unfathomable to us today. 00:23:26.880 --> 00:23:29.280 we can't even understand not having the Bible. 00:23:29.280 --> 00:23:31.440 Because like I have I don't know I probably have a dozen 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:32.560 Bibles in my house and I've done 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:36.320 Yeah. And I have the Bible on every one of my devices 00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:41.040 too in in numerous translations and you know it's w we're so 00:23:41.120 --> 00:23:44.160 buried in scripture that we we take it for granted 00:23:45.280 --> 00:23:46.400 that Yeah. 00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:49.680 But it in that day it was something the men literally died 00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:52.080 to get their hands on, as they should. 00:23:52.080 --> 00:23:55.520 It was worth dying to get their hands on a single Bible. 00:23:55.920 --> 00:23:56.160 For 00:23:56.160 --> 00:23:58.560 the the common man, the only time you would see a Bible 00:23:58.560 --> 00:24:02.160 is if there happened to be an altar bible in your church. 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:03.600 And it would be in Latin, 00:24:03.600 --> 00:24:04.880 so it would be of no use to them. 00:24:05.120 --> 00:24:07.360 Yeah, it would it would be in ornate Latin. 00:24:07.360 --> 00:24:10.320 You wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near it, so even if you 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:13.680 had been able to get near it, it would have been useless 00:24:13.680 --> 00:24:14.320 to you. 00:24:14.320 --> 00:24:17.120 But you were allowed to view it from afar at best. 00:24:17.120 --> 00:24:19.840 And now you know I have logos open here in the background 00:24:19.840 --> 00:24:23.840 on my computer with however many probably a hundred different translations and 00:24:23.840 --> 00:24:29.280 various languages and diglots and triglots and interlinears and the wealth of 00:24:29.280 --> 00:24:30.880 materials we have today. 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:34.480 And it it reminds me of a a comment from Luther about 00:24:35.200 --> 00:24:39.040 men in his day, how little of an excuse the pastorate teachers 00:24:39.040 --> 00:24:43.600 had for neglecting it's from the large catechism how little excuse they 00:24:43.600 --> 00:24:47.200 had for neglecting their duties and properly learning and studying the word 00:24:47.360 --> 00:24:49.840 considering what they had at their disposal. 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:55.760 Now imagine what we have at our disposal, and how little fathers 00:24:55.920 --> 00:25:01.120 and even pastors, and if we have any theologians, bother to learn 00:25:01.120 --> 00:25:06.320 about these things, despite the immense wealth of material that we have 00:25:06.320 --> 00:25:08.320 on hand. 00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:10.880 it's really just unforgivable. 00:25:11.360 --> 00:25:13.040 It is a tragedy. 00:25:13.760 --> 00:25:18.320 And so as we start talking specifically about the issue, uh I 00:25:18.320 --> 00:25:22.960 wanna begin with a particular word that's used very often in these 00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:25.680 discussions. And that word is interpret. 00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:30.880 So if I'm talking about something from scripture and I talk to 00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:34.000 you and you have a different idea and I don't agree with 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:37.600 your idea and we trade you know proof text back and forth. 00:25:37.600 --> 00:25:40.080 At some point one of us is probably gonna say if we're 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:42.880 taking cheap shots, you and I, Corey, wouldn't do this, but it's 00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:46.080 very common in Christian discourse for somebody to say, well, that's just 00:25:46.080 --> 00:25:47.840 your interpretation. 00:25:47.840 --> 00:25:48.160 And 00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:51.760 that's a word that's incredibly dangerous. 00:25:51.760 --> 00:25:54.880 And so I want to begin by focusing on what does the 00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:58.880 word interpret or interpretation mean in scripture? 00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:02.000 What does it mean today and where did it come into the 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:02.880 English language? 00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:05.680 So we're going to start in the middle with the definition of 00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:07.600 the word and the etymology. 00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:11.520 Interpret one of the one of the proper definitions of it is 00:26:11.520 --> 00:26:15.680 to expound the meaning of to render clear or explicit and it 00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:20.560 came to us via old French from Latin uh interpretare meaning to 00:26:20.560 --> 00:26:23.360 explain, to expound, and to understand. 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:27.440 Now, when you say interpret in terms of Christian dialogue, in in 00:26:27.760 --> 00:26:32.480 view of the Latin root of the word, that's entirely fair. 00:26:32.480 --> 00:26:35.680 The problem is that no one knows the Latin root, and that's 00:26:35.680 --> 00:26:37.920 not what they're actually talking about. 00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:42.880 Uh the the word when we say interpretation today is much closer 00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:44.960 to the word that's actually in scripture. 00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:50.560 And so when you look in scripture for where interpreter interpretation is 00:26:50.560 --> 00:26:53.600 translated in in English, it's also correctly translated. 00:26:53.600 --> 00:26:57.120 Now I'm not trying to set the modern word against the scriptural 00:26:57.120 --> 00:27:02.400 word because they're it's a good translation, but it's important to note 00:27:02.720 --> 00:27:07.280 that when interpretation is discussed in scripture, it's never used the way 00:27:07.280 --> 00:27:08.960 we use it today, ever. 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:12.960 There are four things that are impr interpreted in scripture. 00:27:13.280 --> 00:27:17.120 The first is visions and dreams, as in the case of Joseph 00:27:17.200 --> 00:27:20.240 when he was translating the dreams for his master. 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:24.400 Uh the second is signs and wonders, as in the case where 00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:30.560 Daniel translated for Balth Balthazar, what Mene Mene Tekl Uparasan meant. 00:27:30.560 --> 00:27:33.600 The third is prophecies, which are 00:27:34.560 --> 00:27:39.600 interpreted by a prophet before before they come to fruition. 00:27:39.600 --> 00:27:43.360 And prophecy is an interesting case because once a prophecy has been 00:27:43.360 --> 00:27:46.080 fulfilled, it is generally accessible. 00:27:46.320 --> 00:27:50.000 the plain reading of the prophecy is going to match up with 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:51.360 what was prophesied. 00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:54.640 But in But until such a time as God makes manifest his 00:27:54.880 --> 00:27:59.200 will described in that prophecy, you aren't necessarily going to know what 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:00.880 it's going to look like. 00:28:00.880 --> 00:28:03.440 And we talked that about that in the previous episode where we 00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:08.000 talked about Genesis 3:15 and the promise of the Messiah, and how 00:28:08.800 --> 00:28:12.240 that was a less fleshed-out version of that promise than was found 00:28:12.240 --> 00:28:15.440 in Isaiah, where he talked about be her the Messiah being born 00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:18.560 of being born of a virgin, and of us being healed by 00:28:18.560 --> 00:28:19.520 his stripes. 00:28:19.520 --> 00:28:24.560 Those were also prophecies, but they were much more explicit prophecies, both 00:28:24.560 --> 00:28:29.760 fleshing out the earlier one and pointing to the ultimate fruition. 00:28:29.760 --> 00:28:34.560 So So prophecy is interpreted in advance. 00:28:34.560 --> 00:28:37.920 It's not it interpreted in arrears. 00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:41.440 the last one is interpretation of foreign languages. 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:45.600 This is seen most often in the New Testament, where at Pentecost 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:48.560 and also in the churches where some were given the gift of 00:28:48.560 --> 00:28:53.680 tongues, others were giving the given the gift of interpretation. 00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:56.080 Now it's important to low note that in all four of these 00:28:56.080 --> 00:29:01.600 cases, what is being interpreted, it's not the way we talk about 00:29:01.600 --> 00:29:02.960 interpreting scripture. 00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:07.840 It's top talking about interpreting something that's unknowable to the observer or 00:29:07.840 --> 00:29:09.040 to the reader. 00:29:09.040 --> 00:29:12.000 When you have a vision vision or dream, the reason that the 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:16.400 prophets who were given the gift of interpreting those visions and dreams 00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:19.760 had to do so is that it was symbolic language. 00:29:19.760 --> 00:29:22.560 When you have the seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows 00:29:22.720 --> 00:29:24.320 and who knows what it meant. 00:29:24.320 --> 00:29:29.040 It's it wasn't a it wasn't accessible via reason to interpret that 00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:32.960 dream. It was a gift of God that the gift of the 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:37.680 vision was interpreted by the gift of interpretation. 00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:41.120 So in scripture, and that's a that's again the case in signs 00:29:41.120 --> 00:29:45.520 and wonders and the foreign languages and prophecy, it is a gift 00:29:45.520 --> 00:29:50.960 from God to interpret the unknowable into something knowable. 00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:54.240 And so when we look in scripture, we see well, this is 00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:56.320 what interpretation means. 00:29:56.320 --> 00:30:00.560 And in our own minds, I think that sort of becomes rooted. 00:30:00.560 --> 00:30:05.200 And then when we say to each other, Well, that's your interpretation, 00:30:05.200 --> 00:30:10.480 even if we're not necessarily thinking it, fundamentally, that's what's actually coming 00:30:10.480 --> 00:30:14.880 out of our mouths is that well you're you're scrying in the 00:30:14.880 --> 00:30:18.560 guts of scripture and you have some you have this pile of 00:30:18.560 --> 00:30:22.320 stuff and you've turned it into something that you think, but when 00:30:22.320 --> 00:30:25.200 I ri rifle through those guts, I find something different. 00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:27.200 I find another interpretation. 00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:31.680 And that's simply not what the word means today when we're talking 00:30:31.680 --> 00:30:35.040 about it's it's not a good word to use in Christian discourse. 00:30:35.040 --> 00:30:37.680 You know, if if I were had a book in front of 00:30:37.680 --> 00:30:40.320 me and we were sitting side by side and I handed you 00:30:40.320 --> 00:30:43.760 the book or you know, the a comic book even, and I 00:30:43.760 --> 00:30:46.080 said, like, can you interpret this for me? 00:30:46.080 --> 00:30:48.320 And you looked at it and it was English, you'd stare at 00:30:48.320 --> 00:30:50.240 me and laugh, like, what are you talking about? 00:30:50.720 --> 00:30:52.640 why do you need me to interpret it? 00:30:52.640 --> 00:30:56.400 So we instinctively know that interpret doesn't mean what it meant in 00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:59.280 Latin. It doesn't mean to explain or expound any more. 00:30:59.280 --> 00:31:03.760 When we say interpret, we're saying we're beginning with something unknowable and 00:31:03.760 --> 00:31:05.600 turning it into something knowable. 00:31:05.600 --> 00:31:09.200 And that's the real danger when we're addressing scripture because 00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:14.480 one of the common attacks on scripture itself is the denial that 00:31:14.480 --> 00:31:15.520 it's clear. 00:31:15.520 --> 00:31:18.160 The denial that what the words that you have in front of 00:31:18.160 --> 00:31:23.280 you can possibly be understood, either unless you're a pastor or unless 00:31:23.280 --> 00:31:28.000 you know the original languages, or maybe they can't be understood at 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:32.480 all. Maybe the only possible fruit of having access to scripture is 00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:38.400 numerous conflicting interpretations with no tiebreaker, with no one to say, this 00:31:38.400 --> 00:31:40.400 is right and this is wrong. 00:31:40.400 --> 00:31:43.120 And that's why it's so important to make sure that we're speaking 00:31:43.440 --> 00:31:48.000 clearly when we're talking about scripture because when we talk about scripture 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:50.720 on this podcast, we're not interpreting anything. 00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:52.160 You know, unless we translate. 00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:54.960 So for example, the the quote that I gave began with from 00:31:54.960 --> 00:31:58.800 Luther, Corey, you translated that from the original German, 'cause the version 00:31:58.800 --> 00:32:00.480 I had wasn't a meme. 00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:02.640 And I don't want to I don't want to make claims from 00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:05.200 memes even you know, it was a pretty good translation, but you 00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:09.120 gave one that's probably a little less common that's what's typically quoted, 00:32:09.120 --> 00:32:13.360 but is a faithful interpretation of Luther's original words. 00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:14.800 That was an interpretation. 00:32:14.800 --> 00:32:17.760 Because you started in German, which I can't read, and I didn't 00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:21.120 have access to the source material readily, and you gave me something 00:32:21.120 --> 00:32:21.920 in English. 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:23.280 That is interpretation. 00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:27.920 But us discussing what's in scripture, we're not interpreting, we're using reason. 00:32:28.080 --> 00:32:31.840 Yeah, we do actually retain the Latin sense because we do still 00:32:31.840 --> 00:32:33.360 have the word interpreter. 00:32:33.360 --> 00:32:35.120 So we retain it there. 00:32:35.120 --> 00:32:37.680 Because when you use an interpreter, it literally means someone who is 00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:41.040 translating from an language you do not know into a language you 00:32:41.040 --> 00:32:42.080 do know. 00:32:42.080 --> 00:32:42.640 And so 00:32:43.840 --> 00:32:47.120 if we think about it, we do still have the sense of 00:32:47.120 --> 00:32:51.680 the term, but when people use interpretation, what they really mean when 00:32:51.680 --> 00:32:56.560 it comes to scripture and things like that is personal interpretation, which 00:32:56.560 --> 00:33:00.400 leads us into personal truth, which is not a thing. 00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:02.160 Something is true or false. 00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:04.720 These are basic laws of logic. 00:33:04.720 --> 00:33:09.200 It is not a personal truth, because truth is not personal. 00:33:09.200 --> 00:33:10.560 Truth is truth. 00:33:10.560 --> 00:33:14.560 A statement is true or false, and it is so for everyone, 00:33:14.560 --> 00:33:19.920 at all times in all places, or else it's not true. 00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:21.840 And additionally here 00:33:23.760 --> 00:33:28.240 we we have the issue of when it comes to truth, let's 00:33:28.240 --> 00:33:30.160 look at translation. 00:33:30.560 --> 00:33:35.680 the famous part of that Luther quote is Hirste is Ischkanist Andes. 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:39.520 If I were to interpret that as Luther saying, I would like 00:33:39.520 --> 00:33:41.920 an orange juice, please. 00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:44.960 That's not an interpretation, that's just wrong. 00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:48.400 And so there is an actual truth content there. 00:33:48.400 --> 00:33:49.520 It means something. 00:33:49.520 --> 00:33:53.520 And if you translate it accurately, you are relaying that truth, you 00:33:53.520 --> 00:33:55.280 are properly interpreting it. 00:33:55.280 --> 00:34:00.800 But if you mistranslate it, you aren't interpreting, you are misleading. 00:34:00.800 --> 00:34:05.520 But there is another source of this idea of personal truth or 00:34:05.520 --> 00:34:10.480 personal interpretation Particularly in the American context, although there are also some 00:34:10.480 --> 00:34:14.480 cults, supposedly Christian cults in Europe and other places that engage in 00:34:14.480 --> 00:34:16.880 the same behavior, it's Pentecostalism. 00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:18.240 It's enthusiasm. 00:34:18.240 --> 00:34:20.880 It's the belief that if I just 00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:24.480 do whatever, at least they're using the word, which is better than 00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:27.600 they are sometimes, but if I just stare at the word, I 00:34:27.600 --> 00:34:32.640 will suddenly be given this personal insight into the secret meaning of 00:34:33.200 --> 00:34:34.560 the word. 00:34:34.560 --> 00:34:40.160 Now, it's careful, it is important to carefully divide here the difference 00:34:40.160 --> 00:34:45.280 between a regenerate Christian will have the Holy Spirit, and so will 00:34:45.360 --> 00:34:50.000 be able to read and understand scripture, which is a very important 00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:53.680 point for what we are discussing today. 00:34:53.680 --> 00:34:56.880 Versus those who say that they will be given some sort of 00:34:56.880 --> 00:35:01.360 Gnostic special insight into the Into the real meaning that everyone else 00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:02.240 has gotten wrong. 00:35:02.240 --> 00:35:06.880 Those people, that is a cult practice, that is not Christian. 00:35:06.880 --> 00:35:10.800 And that's another source of this personal interpretation, and it's it's of 00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:16.560 a kind with people who gibber in nonsense, supposed languages, in church 00:35:16.720 --> 00:35:18.400 and say that's speaking in tongues. 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:19.040 It's not. 00:35:19.040 --> 00:35:20.560 Scripture's very clear. 00:35:20.560 --> 00:35:24.880 There should be an interpreter because tongues are human tongues. 00:35:24.880 --> 00:35:27.360 The point of that gift of the Spirit is so that you 00:35:27.360 --> 00:35:30.000 can talk to someone who does not speak your language. 00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:33.840 Less important today given technology and the fact that again we have 00:35:33.840 --> 00:35:36.800 this wealth of material for learning languages. 00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:42.480 Back in biblical times, it would have been impossible, basically, for a 00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:45.680 common man to learn a foreign language from a country that was 00:35:45.680 --> 00:35:47.600 three hundred miles away even. 00:35:47.600 --> 00:35:51.360 And so those gifts were more important back then. 00:35:51.760 --> 00:35:55.680 But there was another point I wanted to add here quickly. 00:35:55.680 --> 00:36:00.720 There are two terms that we should mention because they're the typical 00:36:00.720 --> 00:36:03.600 terms you hear when well one is the typical term you hear 00:36:03.680 --> 00:36:05.520 one is a mistake, but they're the typical terms you hear when 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:11.440 discussing this issue perspicuous or perspicacity, perspicuity. 00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:14.320 Two different terms there perspicacity versus perspicuity. 00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:17.840 Perspicuity is what we're talking about, which is that scripture is clearly 00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:20.080 expressed and easily understood. 00:36:20.080 --> 00:36:22.960 Perspicacity is a term some people mistake. 00:36:22.960 --> 00:36:26.240 That's a quality of having already insight into things. 00:36:26.240 --> 00:36:30.240 So a person has perspicacity, scripture has perspicuity. 00:36:30.240 --> 00:36:33.440 You can also say perspicuousness, but that one's awkward. 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:34.960 That's what we're talking about here. 00:36:34.960 --> 00:36:36.640 Scripture is clear. 00:36:36.640 --> 00:36:41.840 Scripture can be understood by the average man if he reads it. 00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:45.200 But again, for the regenerate Christian, you will also have the Holy 00:36:45.200 --> 00:36:46.320 Spirit there guiding you. 00:36:46.320 --> 00:36:48.560 So if there are people who say that scripture isn't clear, you 00:36:48.560 --> 00:36:53.360 can't understand scripture, it's dark and it's incomprehensible and penetrable, they're actually 00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:55.200 calling God a liar. 00:36:55.200 --> 00:36:58.480 Because God says that He will help you to understand these things, 00:36:58.480 --> 00:37:02.320 and scripture also throughout says that it is clear. 00:37:02.320 --> 00:37:05.600 I have a quote here from Luther in a book that the 00:37:05.600 --> 00:37:08.480 Reformed happened to love, The Bondage of the will. 00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:11.520 But he he threads the needle here when it comes to the 00:37:11.520 --> 00:37:14.320 fact that yes, there are some parts of Scripture that are still 00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:16.640 confusing. There are. 00:37:16.640 --> 00:37:21.520 But the core doctrines, the core truths of scripture, the overwhelming majority 00:37:21.520 --> 00:37:25.680 of Scripture, is clear and easily understood, so here's the quote from 00:37:25.680 --> 00:37:32.160 Luther. The subject matter of the scriptures, therefore, is all quite accessible, 00:37:32.160 --> 00:37:35.760 even though some texts are still obscure owing to our ignorance of 00:37:35.760 --> 00:37:40.000 their terms, truly it is stupid and impious when we know that 00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:43.360 the subject matter of scripture has all been placed in the clearest 00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:46.960 light, to call it obscure on account of a few obscure words. 00:37:47.520 --> 00:37:50.400 If the words are obscure in one place, yet they are plain 00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:53.760 in another, and it is one and the same theme, published quite 00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:57.600 openly to the whole world, which in the scriptures is sometimes expressed 00:37:57.600 --> 00:38:00.240 in plain words and sometimes in Sometimes lies as yet hidden at 00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:01.440 obscure words. 00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:04.800 Now, when the thing signified is in the light, it does not 00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:07.600 matter if this or that sign of it is in darkness, since 00:38:07.600 --> 00:38:11.120 many other signs of the same thing are meanwhile in the light. 00:38:11.120 --> 00:38:14.400 Who will say that a public fountain is not in the light, 00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:16.800 because those who are in a narrow side street do not see 00:38:16.800 --> 00:38:20.640 it, whereas all who are in the marketplace do see it? 00:38:20.800 --> 00:38:24.720 Your reference to the Corsean cave, therefore, is irrelevant. 00:38:24.720 --> 00:38:27.120 That is not how things are in the Scriptures. 00:38:27.120 --> 00:38:30.800 Matters of the highest majesty and the profoundest mysteries are no longer 00:38:30.800 --> 00:38:34.800 hidden away, but have been brought out and are openly displayed before 00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:36.160 the very doors. 00:38:36.160 --> 00:38:38.960 For Christ has opened our minds, so that we may understand the 00:38:38.960 --> 00:38:43.280 scriptures, Luke twenty-four forty-five, and the gospel is preached to the whole 00:38:43.280 --> 00:38:45.360 creation, Mark sixteen fifteen. 00:38:45.360 --> 00:38:48.720 Their voice is gone out to all the earth, Romans ten eighteen, 00:38:48.720 --> 00:38:52.800 and whatever was written was written for our instruction, Romans fifteen four. 00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:57.520 Also, all scripture inspired by God is profitable for teaching second Timothy 00:38:57.520 --> 00:38:58.720 three sixteen. 00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:02.400 See then, whether you and all the sophists can produce any single 00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:06.160 mystery that is still abstruse in the scriptures. 00:39:06.160 --> 00:39:10.640 Luther is of course responding to Erasmus who had argued essentially that 00:39:10.640 --> 00:39:14.000 Scripture was impenetrable. 00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:14.240 And 00:39:14.240 --> 00:39:17.120 this is something that we emphasized in a previous episode when we 00:39:17.120 --> 00:39:17.920 were talking about election. 00:39:18.480 --> 00:39:24.960 We specifically pointed out the destin predestination versus a so-called double predestination 00:39:25.200 --> 00:39:30.720 or the hypostatic union of Christ or the Trinity or the Eucharist, 00:39:30.720 --> 00:39:36.720 these are a few places where scripture is clear, but reason is 00:39:36.720 --> 00:39:37.440 not clear. 00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:39.760 And that's a very limited set. 00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:43.280 So it's a trick that the devil plays on us and that 00:39:43.280 --> 00:39:46.560 we are all too willing to play on ourselves and on each 00:39:46.560 --> 00:39:52.160 other to say that, well, this verse seems to contradict this verse, 00:39:52.240 --> 00:39:54.720 so I'm going to pick the one that I like the most. 00:39:54.720 --> 00:39:58.400 And And uh the reason that I began with that quote in 00:39:58.400 --> 00:40:03.360 part was that uh again, Luther refers both to the testimonies of 00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:07.040 scripture and to clear rational arguments. 00:40:07.120 --> 00:40:09.360 I mentioned that the reason is something that 00:40:10.480 --> 00:40:11.680 Christians are 00:40:13.120 --> 00:40:16.560 either used too much of, as in the case of some denominations 00:40:16.720 --> 00:40:20.960 where reason is used in the magisterial sense, where r all of 00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:24.800 their beliefs beliefs must be in submission to their own reason. 00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:28.880 As Lutherans, we advocate the ministerial use of reason, where we do 00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:33.280 our best with what we have, and where our reason fails us, 00:40:33.280 --> 00:40:36.720 we look at the plain words of Scripture and where we don't 00:40:36.640 --> 00:40:38.560 understand them, we still confess them. 00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:40.720 That is what faith means. 00:40:40.720 --> 00:40:46.000 But reason has a very precious place in the church. 00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:48.560 And this is found in scripture itself. 00:40:48.720 --> 00:40:50.320 When you look uh 00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:55.520 there are seventeen or sorry, thirteen places in the New Testament where 00:40:55.520 --> 00:41:00.320 the Greek word dia legomi is used, that word means to converse 00:41:00.320 --> 00:41:04.880 or address, to lecture, to argue, or to reason. 00:41:04.880 --> 00:41:08.720 Now, when it appears in the New Testament, almost all the uses 00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:14.160 are in the term in the sense of dialectical reason, of arguments, 00:41:14.160 --> 00:41:17.600 not in a you know knockdown drag out argument, but making a 00:41:17.600 --> 00:41:21.040 series of logical propositions to reach a conclusion. 00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:23.520 And they're done principally by Paul. 00:41:23.520 --> 00:41:28.880 Uh in Acts 17, uh he repeatedly reasoned with the scriptures from 00:41:28.880 --> 00:41:31.600 the scriptures with both the Jew and Greek. 00:41:31.600 --> 00:41:34.320 Uh says the same thing in in Acts 18. 00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:37.120 Uh it says three times in 17 and 18 that he reasoned, 00:41:37.120 --> 00:41:37.760 sorry, four times. 00:41:37.760 --> 00:41:39.760 I'm just scrolling through here, five times. 00:41:39.760 --> 00:41:40.640 It just keeps going. 00:41:41.040 --> 00:41:42.320 Over and over. 00:41:42.320 --> 00:41:45.920 Paul is going to the synagogues and to the public places and 00:41:45.920 --> 00:41:48.000 he is reasoning from scripture. 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:49.040 Now, Paul 00:41:50.960 --> 00:41:57.200 had revelations directly from God, and his writings to us are the 00:41:57.200 --> 00:41:59.360 revelation of God. 00:41:59.360 --> 00:42:04.080 But when he spoke to his fellow Jews and he spoke to 00:42:04.080 --> 00:42:09.360 the Gentiles, There were there were cases where he would reveal something 00:42:09.360 --> 00:42:13.440 prophetic, but his go-to was to reason from the scriptures. 00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:16.800 Now, the scripture that they had in that day was the entirety 00:42:16.800 --> 00:42:18.720 of the Old Testament, the Tanakh. 00:42:18.720 --> 00:42:21.920 They didn't have the New Testament yet because Paul hadn't written it, 00:42:21.920 --> 00:42:24.640 and and the few other authors who contribute to what we call 00:42:24.640 --> 00:42:26.320 the New Testament today. 00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:29.920 But when he reasoned with them, he was obeying God. 00:42:29.920 --> 00:42:34.240 He was saying, look, here we have the prophecy in Genesis and 00:42:34.240 --> 00:42:38.320 Isaiah and elsewhere that there would be a Messiah, and now I 00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:40.640 point to you to Jesus and to his life and to his 00:42:40.720 --> 00:42:44.800 preaching and his ministry and his death and his resurrection, as a 00:42:44.800 --> 00:42:48.480 testimony to the fulfillment of those prophecies. 00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:53.600 Paul was using reason to explicate prophecy. 00:42:53.600 --> 00:42:58.560 See again, he didn't have to use special revelation from God to 00:42:58.560 --> 00:43:02.640 explain the prophecy because it was in the review mirror, both the 00:43:02.640 --> 00:43:05.520 prophecy itself and its fulfillment. 00:43:05.520 --> 00:43:09.280 What Paul had to do was to use a plain reason from 00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:12.880 the plain words that were given to the Hebrews in the Old 00:43:12.880 --> 00:43:16.800 Testament and to all of us to say, look, God said this 00:43:16.960 --> 00:43:18.240 and then God did this. 00:43:18.240 --> 00:43:21.760 What God said and what God did look exactly the same. 00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:23.200 That's reason. 00:43:23.200 --> 00:43:28.160 It takes faith for us to believe it, but just as a 00:43:28.240 --> 00:43:31.920 as a jurist, as someone particularly at the time who, you know, 00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:34.960 just having access to the facts and not after having access to 00:43:34.960 --> 00:43:37.440 faith, could potentially believe that too. 00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:41.120 Now it may not be salvific without faith, but they would reach 00:43:41.120 --> 00:43:44.640 the same conclusions by virtue of reason. 00:43:44.640 --> 00:43:47.760 Now, to be clear, we're not saying here that reason can save 00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:48.960 you. That's never the point. 00:43:49.040 --> 00:43:51.840 It is faith that saves and faith alone. 00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:55.760 But reason is a gift of God that is given to every 00:43:55.760 --> 00:43:58.000 man, although not an equal measure. 00:43:58.000 --> 00:44:02.000 Some men are apparently entirely bereft of reason, and some men seem 00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:04.800 to have too much of it because they can't shut it off. 00:44:04.800 --> 00:44:08.160 But reason is a gift that is given to us by God 00:44:08.480 --> 00:44:11.600 to help make sense of the things that God has also given 00:44:11.600 --> 00:44:12.160 to us. 00:44:12.160 --> 00:44:14.480 And scripture is what God has given to us. 00:44:14.480 --> 00:44:16.000 God has not given us tradition. 00:44:16.560 --> 00:44:19.920 Tradition is what has been passed down for our benefit. 00:44:19.920 --> 00:44:23.920 But I want to quote um Luther's works volume one, where he's 00:44:23.920 --> 00:44:25.440 talking about Genesis. 00:44:25.440 --> 00:44:27.760 Uh and we're going to get into in a minute one of 00:44:27.760 --> 00:44:30.720 the reasons we're talking about this is This is that recently on 00:44:30.720 --> 00:44:33.760 the internet there have been people who call themselves Lutherans and call 00:44:33.760 --> 00:44:38.080 themselves Christians who are directly in opening attacking Genesis. 00:44:38.800 --> 00:44:42.480 Again, they're saying, well, yeah, it's true, but I'm not gonna go 00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:43.600 along with it being factual. 00:44:44.160 --> 00:44:46.400 that's a bridge too far. 00:44:46.400 --> 00:44:49.360 And one of the appeals that that these men actually made was 00:44:49.360 --> 00:44:54.160 to the church fathers who disagreed in some cases with Genesis being 00:44:54.160 --> 00:44:58.640 a narrative, particularly the first nine books, which are considered you know 00:44:58.800 --> 00:45:02.560 more metaphorical, kind of kind of a a narrative but not a 00:45:02.560 --> 00:45:04.240 factual recounting. 00:45:04.240 --> 00:45:06.480 Here's what Luther had to say. 00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:09.520 Whenever we see that the opinions of the fathers are not in 00:45:09.520 --> 00:45:14.720 agreement with Scripture, we respectfully we respectfully bear with them and acknowledge 00:45:14.720 --> 00:45:18.880 them as our forefathers, but we do not on account, on their 00:45:18.880 --> 00:45:22.400 account, give up the escort the authority The authority of Scripture. 00:45:22.400 --> 00:45:26.480 Aristotle's statement in the first book of his ethics is well put 00:45:26.480 --> 00:45:27.600 and true. 00:45:27.600 --> 00:45:30.960 Better it is to defend the truth than to be too much 00:45:30.960 --> 00:45:34.480 devoted to those who are our friends and our relatives. 00:45:34.640 --> 00:45:38.080 And this is above all the proper attitude for a philosopher, for 00:45:38.080 --> 00:45:42.000 although both truth and friends are dear to us, preference must be 00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:43.200 given to truth. 00:45:43.200 --> 00:45:46.400 If a pagan maintains that this must be the attitude in their 00:45:46.400 --> 00:45:50.640 secular discourses, how much more must it be in our attitude in 00:45:50.640 --> 00:45:54.400 those which involve the clear witness of Scripture that we dare not 00:45:54.400 --> 00:45:57.920 give preference to the authority of men over that scripture? 00:45:57.920 --> 00:46:00.960 Human beings can err, but the word of God is the very 00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:04.880 wisdom of God and the absolutely infallible truth. 00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:07.680 So that's what Luther had to say about his forefathers in the 00:46:07.680 --> 00:46:12.320 faith, the the church fathers, disagreeing with with Genesis. 00:46:12.560 --> 00:46:14.640 And that's what we're talking about here. 00:46:14.640 --> 00:46:17.440 It is possible for anyone to err. 00:46:17.440 --> 00:46:20.480 It is not possible for a man to err and to be 00:46:20.480 --> 00:46:22.000 faithful to Scripture. 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:26.400 And so the reason that these are arguments and discussions must be 00:46:26.400 --> 00:46:29.280 had and must be had in public is so that it can 00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:35.840 be plain to all where the scriptural revelation ends and where man's 00:46:35.840 --> 00:46:37.840 additions to it begin. 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:41.360 Because reason can go f too far and there are some denominations 00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:43.360 that take reason too far. 00:46:43.360 --> 00:46:46.800 But reason can also be neglected. 00:46:46.800 --> 00:46:50.720 And so y it's a it's very dangerous for anyone to advocate, 00:46:50.720 --> 00:46:52.320 well, we can't know what that means. 00:46:52.320 --> 00:46:52.720 Well 00:46:54.720 --> 00:46:58.320 yes, it is theoretically possible that you can read something in scripture 00:46:58.320 --> 00:47:01.440 that you cannot understand, but it's incredibly unlikely. 00:47:01.440 --> 00:47:04.480 And those things have already been identified in the past by all 00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:07.120 of the other men who for thousands of years have struggled with 00:47:07.120 --> 00:47:08.400 these same questions. 00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:12.080 So we don't need to come in blind and and mindless to 00:47:12.080 --> 00:47:15.920 scripture. We can look to what the fathers have said, but we 00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:19.920 can only look to them in the light of scripture and not 00:47:19.920 --> 00:47:21.040 the other way around. 00:47:21.040 --> 00:47:25.280 As Corey, as you mentioned, that when Luther was was first accessing 00:47:25.280 --> 00:47:28.080 Scripture even as a monk, it was through the eyes of other 00:47:28.080 --> 00:47:29.840 men and through the words of other men. 00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:34.000 And his revelation was was he when he finally read scripture itself 00:47:34.160 --> 00:47:38.560 and realized that what he had been handed through tradition didn't add 00:47:38.560 --> 00:47:40.560 up. It wasn't what was scriptural. 00:47:40.560 --> 00:47:44.240 And so reason has a very crucial place in the life of 00:47:44.240 --> 00:47:50.800 a Christian, again, subordinated to faith, but used wherever possible to make 00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:55.760 clear that which can be made clear from scripture. 00:47:56.080 --> 00:47:56.240 And 00:47:56.240 --> 00:48:00.160 I would just want to pose a question to those men who 00:48:00.160 --> 00:48:04.880 say that you know we cannot use reason in order to interpret 00:48:05.520 --> 00:48:08.800 or in order to exegete would be a better term, really. 00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:11.760 What are they using? 00:48:11.760 --> 00:48:14.400 What are they doing when they are reading scripture? 00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:16.880 How is it that they are teaching? 00:48:16.880 --> 00:48:22.080 Because you will hear this from certain pastors and teachers that well 00:48:22.160 --> 00:48:25.200 you can't use reason in order to understand these things or they 00:48:25.200 --> 00:48:27.360 aren't clear or any of these. 00:48:27.360 --> 00:48:32.400 What is it they are doing that these other men cannot do? 00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:34.400 And why is it that we should believe them? 00:48:34.400 --> 00:48:38.560 Of course we know what they're actually doing, it's a cartel. 00:48:38.560 --> 00:48:40.720 Is what it really is. 00:48:40.720 --> 00:48:46.080 They have the exclusive authority to interpret scripture because they got a 00:48:46.080 --> 00:48:48.880 little stamp on a piece of paper piece of paper saying that 00:48:49.120 --> 00:48:52.800 they're allowed to do it according to whatever group. 00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:56.480 If it's the Roman Church then it's according to the Pope. 00:48:56.480 --> 00:49:00.320 If it's some other church then typically it's according to some seminary. 00:49:00.480 --> 00:49:01.520 And that's not how it works. 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:04.160 I'm not saying that seminary education is bad. 00:49:04.160 --> 00:49:08.160 It certainly in our era has its problems. 00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:08.640 But 00:49:09.760 --> 00:49:14.240 just because you have an M-div does not mean that you are 00:49:14.240 --> 00:49:17.440 an expert in all things scripture. 00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:19.920 In fact, it may be a fairly good indication that you were 00:49:19.920 --> 00:49:24.080 not. One would hope that those with an MDiv would recognize that. 00:49:24.080 --> 00:49:29.840 Because in basically any other field, the higher you go in degrees 00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:34.480 and education that field, the more you realize how little you know, 00:49:34.480 --> 00:49:37.200 and of all places in which that should be true, it should 00:49:37.200 --> 00:49:40.640 certainly be true when it comes to scripture, because you're dealing with 00:49:40.640 --> 00:49:42.480 the word of an infinite God. 00:49:42.480 --> 00:49:45.840 You should absolutely know it forward and backward the things that can 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.040 be known. 00:49:47.040 --> 00:49:50.480 But you are going to realize that there is always more for 00:49:50.480 --> 00:49:51.280 you to learn. 00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:53.920 It's the same thing that is said in the small catechism. 00:49:53.920 --> 00:49:56.000 It's those who read it through once then throw it in the 00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:58.160 corner and think ah I've I've read that, I'm good enough, I'm 00:49:58.160 --> 00:50:02.560 done. No, you read it every day, because God will continue to 00:50:02.560 --> 00:50:05.760 teach you, and so you continue to read scripture because you will 00:50:05.760 --> 00:50:06.160 continue to 00:50:07.040 --> 00:50:10.480 learn. And so I just I would want to know what these 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:16.400 men are doing when they are somehow exegeting scripture, but without resorting 00:50:16.400 --> 00:50:18.560 to reason or and again, we know what they're doing. 00:50:18.560 --> 00:50:22.320 They're reading what others have written and just parroting it. 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:26.000 Which there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. 00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:29.760 Some very good teachers are simply we could call them a synthesis 00:50:29.760 --> 00:50:34.800 teacher. You're synthesizing materials from others who know more than you, and 00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:38.160 then teaching it to others who know less than you do. 00:50:38.160 --> 00:50:40.000 That's perfectly valid. 00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:42.880 You have scholars who do that as well, who synthesize quotes from 00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:46.720 various other authors, and Peeper did a lot of that. 00:50:46.720 --> 00:50:49.040 A good scholar in his own right, but a lot of what 00:50:49.040 --> 00:50:52.560 he did was corralling together quotes and things, and Volter did some 00:50:52.560 --> 00:50:53.520 of that as well. 00:50:53.520 --> 00:50:55.360 That's not a condemnation of those men. 00:50:55.360 --> 00:50:58.480 Sometimes that is what you need to do as a teacher. 00:50:58.480 --> 00:50:59.200 But But 00:51:00.400 --> 00:51:03.440 reason is a gift from God. 00:51:03.440 --> 00:51:06.640 It is a valid tool, but as you said, it's just something 00:51:06.800 --> 00:51:09.200 we do not put it on a throne. 00:51:09.200 --> 00:51:12.640 It's not the magisterial use of reason, it's the ministerial use. 00:51:12.640 --> 00:51:18.800 Reason is a servant we employ to help us understand Scripture. 00:51:18.800 --> 00:51:19.040 And 00:51:19.040 --> 00:51:24.640 Scripture itself testifies over and over again that it is complete, that 00:51:24.640 --> 00:51:27.440 it is from God, that it is inerrant, and that it is 00:51:27.920 --> 00:51:29.840 valuable for these purposes. 00:51:29.840 --> 00:51:33.440 I I mind a few verses I like to read now that 00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:37.680 just um from old and new testament that make clear how much 00:51:39.280 --> 00:51:43.760 God reinforces to the Christian that this stuff is vital. 00:51:43.760 --> 00:51:48.160 In Isaiah 8, God says himself, to the law and to the 00:51:48.160 --> 00:51:51.840 testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is 00:51:51.840 --> 00:51:54.880 because there is no light in them. 00:51:54.880 --> 00:51:59.040 In Matthew four Jesus said, but he answered, It is written, again 00:51:59.200 --> 00:52:02.800 quoting back to the Old Testament, man shall not live by bread 00:52:02.800 --> 00:52:06.640 alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. 00:52:06.640 --> 00:52:12.160 Now those who heard Jesus speaking in his earthly ministry were blessed 00:52:12.400 --> 00:52:15.520 that all of the many words that he spoke were direct from 00:52:15.520 --> 00:52:19.040 the mouth of God, which John records is more than could be 00:52:19.040 --> 00:52:21.920 written in all the books in the world. 00:52:21.920 --> 00:52:25.440 That statement is equally true of scripture, and that's one of the 00:52:25.440 --> 00:52:28.240 things that one of the attacks that Satan threw these through these 00:52:28.240 --> 00:52:32.080 vipers who live in our churches today will make is that they 00:52:32.080 --> 00:52:36.320 will try to subdivide scripture that we have before us, the Bible 00:52:36.320 --> 00:52:40.560 that you have in your hands, and say, well, this part, yeah, 00:52:40.560 --> 00:52:43.280 this part's definitely from God, but this part might yeah, it's a 00:52:43.280 --> 00:52:45.840 little a little sketchy, I'm not sure about that. 00:52:45.840 --> 00:52:48.240 Uh and a a couple episodes ago I 00:52:49.200 --> 00:52:53.040 uh exhorted people to to read the red letters in the New 00:52:53.120 --> 00:52:54.480 Testament for a very specific purpose. 00:52:55.120 --> 00:52:58.560 And I spent more time talking about how dangerous it was than 00:52:58.560 --> 00:53:01.440 I did about actually describing what you would have because of this 00:53:01.440 --> 00:53:02.480 very reason. 00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:05.600 That there are people again who will say, well if it's not 00:53:05.600 --> 00:53:08.160 in red, well maybe God didn't really say it. 00:53:08.160 --> 00:53:10.800 I actually heard Kanye say that this week in a in a 00:53:10.800 --> 00:53:13.920 quote and I was just shaking my head, like, please, Lord, don't 00:53:13.920 --> 00:53:16.800 put me in the same boat as him as a theologian. 00:53:16.800 --> 00:53:18.800 But it's important to 00:53:19.920 --> 00:53:24.480 remember that every word of scripture is from God and God Himself 00:53:24.480 --> 00:53:25.120 says it. 00:53:25.120 --> 00:53:28.400 And if you don't believe that, then you call God a liar 00:53:28.480 --> 00:53:30.960 and the truth is not in you and you do not have 00:53:30.960 --> 00:53:33.440 God. And that's where this stuff comes down to. 00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:39.040 when you when Corey and I fight for sound doctrine, for agreeing 00:53:39.040 --> 00:53:42.480 with scripture, even when we don't like it, there are things in 00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:45.040 scripture that I have a hard time with. 00:53:45.040 --> 00:53:48.320 Not because I don't believe them or that I don't want to 00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:53.200 obey God, but because they're hard to hear, because they condemn things 00:53:53.200 --> 00:53:56.000 that I have believed in the past, or the way I want 00:53:56.000 --> 00:53:58.320 to live in the future, or the things I like to do 00:53:58.960 --> 00:54:00.080 right now. 00:54:00.080 --> 00:54:03.360 Those are not reasons not to believe God. 00:54:03.360 --> 00:54:07.760 But there are hardened hearts and there are seared consciences in men 00:54:07.760 --> 00:54:13.120 who will gleefully say that these literalists like you and I, Corey, 00:54:13.120 --> 00:54:16.720 don't really have access to scripture because we're so dumb and we're 00:54:16.720 --> 00:54:19.920 such hayseeds that we just read the Bible and believe it. 00:54:19.920 --> 00:54:23.920 And that's just that's really dangerous and it's embarrassing and Christians should 00:54:23.920 --> 00:54:25.440 be better than that. 00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:27.920 That's not what God says. 00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:33.680 In Matthew five, Jesus reiterates what was said in Isaiah. 00:54:33.680 --> 00:54:36.880 He says for truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, 00:54:36.880 --> 00:54:40.320 not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen will 00:54:40.320 --> 00:54:44.240 by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. 00:54:44.240 --> 00:54:46.960 Now this in the King James is the famous jot and Tittle 00:54:47.120 --> 00:54:50.160 quote. I think here I actually used NIV because I liked how 00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:52.320 it worked best with the Greek. 00:54:52.320 --> 00:54:52.640 But 00:54:53.600 --> 00:54:58.560 the smallest stroke of a pen and the smallest letter refers to 00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:02.640 the fact that there's no part of scripture, there's no corner that 00:55:02.640 --> 00:55:05.920 you can find, there's no piece of a letter that you can 00:55:05.920 --> 00:55:09.760 find that is so insignificant that you can leave it out and 00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:11.680 still have God. 00:55:11.680 --> 00:55:14.160 And there there's a word in there that I want to highlight 00:55:14.240 --> 00:55:18.480 because Jesus said, will by any means disappear from the law. 00:55:18.880 --> 00:55:21.200 Now one of the games that these vipers will play is they'll 00:55:21.200 --> 00:55:24.880 say, well the law, that's the Torah, that's the first five books, 00:55:24.880 --> 00:55:26.240 that that's the Pentateuch. 00:55:26.480 --> 00:55:28.640 that's the book that's the law of Moses. 00:55:28.640 --> 00:55:31.600 That's just that's a tiny portion of the Old Testament. 00:55:31.600 --> 00:55:33.440 He's not talking about the whole thing. 00:55:33.440 --> 00:55:38.320 Nonsense. Jesus, who is the Word, knows what the Word is. 00:55:38.320 --> 00:55:41.760 He knows what was revealed to Moses and to the other prophets 00:55:41.920 --> 00:55:44.320 because he's the one who revealed it. 00:55:44.320 --> 00:55:47.600 So when these men try to say, Well, Jesus isn't really talking 00:55:47.600 --> 00:55:50.800 about the whole thing, they're trying to devalue souls. 00:55:50.800 --> 00:55:54.880 And that's why fighting over inerrancy and fighting fighting over the whole 00:55:54.880 --> 00:55:58.560 of scripture being vital is so Is so important. 00:55:58.720 --> 00:56:01.600 Really, it's it's the same thing that we run into again and 00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:04.080 again and again and again. 00:56:04.080 --> 00:56:10.400 Satan has changed his tactics over the centuries because he has done 00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:14.240 certain things and the church has responded and dealt with the issue, 00:56:14.240 --> 00:56:16.080 and so he does something else. 00:56:16.080 --> 00:56:18.000 We've mentioned that 00:56:18.960 --> 00:56:24.160 the Church handled with the Reformation Article IV justification. 00:56:24.160 --> 00:56:26.160 We handled that problem. 00:56:26.160 --> 00:56:30.560 Yes, there are still cults, sects that do not get it right, 00:56:30.560 --> 00:56:36.560 but the church handled the problem of the denial of by grace 00:56:36.560 --> 00:56:39.520 through faith. 00:56:39.600 --> 00:56:41.120 And so what did Satan do? 00:56:41.120 --> 00:56:42.320 Well he switched gears. 00:56:42.320 --> 00:56:46.000 He's going to attack the first article of the Creed, creation, ontology, 00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:49.760 the nature of things, instead of attacking justification. 00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:52.400 It's the same thing that's happening here. 00:56:52.400 --> 00:56:56.320 If Satan cannot keep the scriptures out of the hands of the 00:56:56.320 --> 00:57:00.800 laity, which he can no longer do, because good luck putting that 00:57:00.800 --> 00:57:02.480 back in the bottle at this point. 00:57:02.480 --> 00:57:06.000 Everyone who wants to have a Bible can have a Bible. 00:57:06.000 --> 00:57:08.160 Everyone can have the Word of God. 00:57:08.160 --> 00:57:13.280 Anyone with a smartphone has access to a wealth of information that 00:57:13.280 --> 00:57:18.560 would make the wealthiest scholar in human history envious in comparison. 00:57:18.560 --> 00:57:23.120 Kings had libraries the likes of which don't even hold a candle 00:57:23.120 --> 00:57:25.360 to what we have today. 00:57:25.360 --> 00:57:29.040 And so Satan isn't going to attack that because he can no 00:57:29.040 --> 00:57:30.320 longer keep it out of your hands. 00:57:30.320 --> 00:57:33.520 He cannot make it so it's just in Latin and you don't 00:57:33.440 --> 00:57:34.960 know Latin. 00:57:34.960 --> 00:57:40.000 But what he can do is he can have false teachers, wolves, 00:57:40.240 --> 00:57:43.200 snakes, he can send them out and they'll tell you Is that 00:57:43.200 --> 00:57:44.240 what God really said? 00:57:44.240 --> 00:57:46.960 So of course he's not really changing his tactics that much from 00:57:46.960 --> 00:57:48.560 the beginning. 00:57:48.560 --> 00:57:51.360 But the goal now is to make you think that scripture is 00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:56.960 unclear. That scripture is difficult to understand that you cannot just read 00:57:56.960 --> 00:58:01.280 Scripture as a layman and understand it and get something out of 00:58:01.280 --> 00:58:03.760 it, and that's not what Scripture says. 00:58:03.760 --> 00:58:08.400 Because the goal as ever is to get you to willingly or 00:58:08.400 --> 00:58:12.960 unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly, call God a liar. 00:58:12.960 --> 00:58:18.400 That's what happens with the denial of certain aspects of creation, it's 00:58:18.400 --> 00:58:22.160 what happens with the denial of ontology, it's what happens when you 00:58:22.160 --> 00:58:25.200 say that scripture is unclear. 00:58:25.200 --> 00:58:27.120 Because God says it is clear. 00:58:29.360 --> 00:58:29.520 In 00:58:29.840 --> 00:58:33.360 Hebrews four it is written, For the word of God is living 00:58:33.360 --> 00:58:37.760 and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing the division of 00:58:37.760 --> 00:58:41.520 soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, in discerning the thoughts and 00:58:41.520 --> 00:58:43.200 intentions of the heart. 00:58:43.600 --> 00:58:47.600 And one of my favorite quotes I found was from Isaiah fifty-five. 00:58:48.080 --> 00:58:52.080 says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways 00:58:52.080 --> 00:58:54.000 my ways, declares the Lord. 00:58:54.160 --> 00:58:56.800 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my 00:58:56.800 --> 00:59:00.640 ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 00:59:00.640 --> 00:59:03.360 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and 00:59:03.360 --> 00:59:06.960 do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth 00:59:06.960 --> 00:59:11.040 and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 00:59:11.040 --> 00:59:15.280 so shall my word be that goes for goes forth from my 00:59:15.280 --> 00:59:19.440 mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish 00:59:19.440 --> 00:59:22.480 that which per which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing 00:59:22.480 --> 00:59:24.960 for which I sent it. 00:59:24.960 --> 00:59:30.560 God gave us these words for our clarity, for our comfort, and 00:59:30.560 --> 00:59:36.800 for our salvation, and any time Satan through his servants on this 00:59:36.800 --> 00:59:40.720 planet gets you to doubt, even a tiny bit of it. 00:59:40.720 --> 00:59:45.280 That is the whole armor of God having a chink put in 00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:47.920 it. That is a place where now Satan can get through the 00:59:47.920 --> 00:59:52.080 armor and can get to your flesh, where God is no longer 00:59:52.080 --> 00:59:54.880 protecting you because you're no longer believing God. 00:59:54.880 --> 00:59:56.960 It's not that God has lost his power. 00:59:56.960 --> 01:00:00.320 It's that you have set aside his word, even by the smallest 01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:05.680 degree. And when we do that, we're we're a terrible risk. 01:00:05.920 --> 01:00:08.240 One of the reasons that that we did this episode this week 01:00:08.240 --> 01:00:11.120 was that for the last few days there's been a a stink, 01:00:11.120 --> 01:00:13.200 and I'm not gonna go into the drama because we've we've been 01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:16.640 talking enough about Enough about Twitter, but there are those who claim 01:00:16.640 --> 01:00:16.960 that 01:00:18.080 --> 01:00:24.800 the six days of creation are they're true, but they're not literal. 01:00:24.800 --> 01:00:27.920 In other words, God has revealed something that's true in the in 01:00:27.920 --> 01:00:31.760 the narrative sense, but not in the factual sense. 01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:38.800 And one of the attacks that this man, Limenstein, on Twitter made, 01:00:38.800 --> 01:00:42.800 was to was to mock the six days of creation where in 01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:47.760 Genesis one and two God reveals that in the beginning 01:00:48.800 --> 01:00:52.640 God said, Let there be light, and there was light. 01:00:52.640 --> 01:00:56.320 That was day one and it wasn't until later that he created 01:00:56.320 --> 01:00:58.640 the sun and the stars. 01:00:58.640 --> 01:01:04.160 And so these mockers, these scoffers will say, Well, the six days 01:01:04.160 --> 01:01:08.080 of creation can't be literal because how can God say that there 01:01:08.080 --> 01:01:11.200 was light on day one when there was no source of light 01:01:11.360 --> 01:01:12.800 until later days? 01:01:12.800 --> 01:01:16.160 Because as the big brained ratitor, these guys all know through their 01:01:16.160 --> 01:01:20.080 material knowledge of the world, that in order for there to be 01:01:20.080 --> 01:01:26.240 light, you need an unbounded nuclear reactor in the sky emitting photons. 01:01:26.240 --> 01:01:28.720 That's how science gives us light, right? 01:01:28.720 --> 01:01:30.160 That that's what stars do. 01:01:30.480 --> 01:01:32.640 Stars give light. 01:01:33.200 --> 01:01:37.200 Now we're not gonna make the the scientific case for creation, even 01:01:37.200 --> 01:01:40.480 though there is one, and the more we learn about the first 01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:45.520 moments of creation, the more we see how clearly scripture, the the 01:01:45.520 --> 01:01:49.360 Genesis account of creation is literal. 01:01:49.360 --> 01:01:49.680 Um 01:01:51.440 --> 01:01:54.400 God says let there be light and there was light. 01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:56.320 Now that's God speaking. 01:01:56.320 --> 01:01:57.680 That is a voice. 01:01:57.680 --> 01:02:01.360 That is a sound, and then light occurs from it. 01:02:01.360 --> 01:02:04.800 The Redditor mocks and says, Well that's stupid, that's utterly impossible. 01:02:04.800 --> 01:02:07.040 Everyone knows that can't happen. 01:02:07.040 --> 01:02:11.280 Except in the seventies or sorry, in the thirties, they some German 01:02:11.280 --> 01:02:18.400 scientists discovered sonoluminescence, where it is literally possible to create light from 01:02:18.400 --> 01:02:22.560 sound. It turns out that if you emit a particular type of 01:02:22.560 --> 01:02:27.200 sound into a liquid, it will cause a bubble to appear and 01:02:27.200 --> 01:02:33.520 collapse. And in that collapse, you get intensely high uh temperatures on 01:02:33.520 --> 01:02:37.040 the order of tens of thousands of Kelvin degrees Kelvin. 01:02:37.040 --> 01:02:40.320 When the bubble collapses, there's a flash of light. 01:02:40.320 --> 01:02:43.520 You can have a fluid where light appears by virtue of a 01:02:43.520 --> 01:02:46.000 sound being passed through it. 01:02:46.000 --> 01:02:48.800 Now what does the liquid have to do with this? 01:02:48.800 --> 01:02:53.760 Well also in the Genesis account, the spirit of God hovered over 01:02:53.760 --> 01:02:55.600 the water waters. 01:02:55.600 --> 01:03:01.360 Now the man who lock mocks the literalist reading Genesis will say, 01:03:01.360 --> 01:03:05.040 well, as is a material expert, as a scientist, I know that 01:03:05.520 --> 01:03:07.440 water is H2O. 01:03:07.440 --> 01:03:09.920 It's two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. 01:03:09.920 --> 01:03:12.720 There was no water because God hadn't created the waters yet. 01:03:12.720 --> 01:03:13.920 So what's this water stuff? 01:03:13.920 --> 01:03:15.440 It must be a metaphor. 01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:22.960 Well, again, just in the last couple decades As particle physicists 01:03:23.280 --> 01:03:29.120 and other scientists have unwound the big bang to based on the 01:03:29.120 --> 01:03:33.360 physical evidence in found in in the universe to try to figure 01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:37.760 out the very earliest moments of they don't call it creation, but 01:03:37.760 --> 01:03:39.280 it's clearly creation. 01:03:39.280 --> 01:03:42.000 What do they find before there was matter? 01:03:42.000 --> 01:03:45.440 They call it quark gluon plasma. 01:03:45.440 --> 01:03:49.440 Now you can Google that and you can read about the theoretical 01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:52.960 aspects and then the physical experiments they've done. 01:03:52.960 --> 01:03:56.960 Every scientist will describe describe quark gluon plasma 01:03:57.920 --> 01:04:00.640 as the most perfect liquid. 01:04:00.640 --> 01:04:03.520 It is a liquid that is more liquid than any liquid that 01:04:03.520 --> 01:04:03.840 we have. 01:04:03.840 --> 01:04:07.440 It's more liquid than water in terms of its liquid properties. 01:04:07.600 --> 01:04:10.560 The reason they were excited is they expected a gas. 01:04:10.560 --> 01:04:13.840 Because when they were doing their simulations and their thought experiments to 01:04:13.840 --> 01:04:17.920 try to find what was there before the big bang, they thought, 01:04:17.920 --> 01:04:19.200 well it must be a gas. 01:04:19.200 --> 01:04:20.240 They found a liquid. 01:04:20.480 --> 01:04:22.240 They found waters. 01:04:22.240 --> 01:04:28.000 Now, why would God speak to Moses when he gave him the 01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:29.920 narrative of Genesis? 01:04:29.920 --> 01:04:31.760 Why would he say water? 01:04:31.760 --> 01:04:35.840 Well, Moses didn't know anything about particle physics. 01:04:35.840 --> 01:04:40.560 He didn't know anything about uh string theory, but it was also 01:04:40.560 --> 01:04:42.640 true. It literally happened. 01:04:42.640 --> 01:04:46.080 God hovered over the face of the waters, and the scientists have 01:04:46.080 --> 01:04:48.480 now simulated those very waters. 01:04:48.480 --> 01:04:50.960 These are men who deny they deny God. 01:04:50.960 --> 01:04:53.600 They're trying to find something so that they can say that we 01:04:53.600 --> 01:04:54.480 didn't need God. 01:04:54.480 --> 01:04:56.320 Here's what we found instead. 01:04:56.320 --> 01:04:59.200 The more that they dig, the more that they find the first 01:04:59.200 --> 01:05:02.640 two chapters of Genesis revealed in their experiments. 01:05:02.640 --> 01:05:05.200 Now they'll never see it because their eyes are closed and their 01:05:05.200 --> 01:05:08.480 hearts are hardened, they don't have faith, and they hate God, and 01:05:08.480 --> 01:05:10.480 they don't know God at the same time. 01:05:10.480 --> 01:05:12.400 But as Christians, we don't need to be afraid 01:05:13.360 --> 01:05:18.240 of science looking to scripture as we look to scripture because they're 01:05:18.240 --> 01:05:20.080 saying the same thing. 01:05:20.080 --> 01:05:22.960 Now when I mention the big bang, you're gonna think, oh well 01:05:23.040 --> 01:05:25.600 he thinks that the you know he he's not a young earth 01:05:25.600 --> 01:05:30.000 creationist. I absolutely am, and that's the point of this discussion. 01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:35.440 When God created the universe, how old was it? 01:05:35.440 --> 01:05:37.680 That's what they're trying to answer. 01:05:37.680 --> 01:05:41.040 There's a separate question that's a little more accessible to us. 01:05:41.040 --> 01:05:46.080 When God created man, when God created Adam, how old was he? 01:05:46.080 --> 01:05:47.760 Was he zero? 01:05:47.760 --> 01:05:51.440 Well, he hadn't lived a day, but God created a man, a 01:05:51.440 --> 01:05:57.040 fully formed, sexually mature man is who stood in the garden with 01:05:57.040 --> 01:06:01.680 God. So God didn't make a je fetus that gestated in a 01:06:01.680 --> 01:06:04.080 box. He made a fully grown man. 01:06:04.080 --> 01:06:06.800 Adam had an age. 01:06:06.800 --> 01:06:10.320 My personal theory, which is it's not a belief, it's just something 01:06:10.400 --> 01:06:15.360 I as I was reading scripture, I noticed Adam died after 930 01:06:15.360 --> 01:06:20.400 years. Methuselah, who's the oldest lived man in scripture, lived nine hundred 01:06:20.400 --> 01:06:21.680 and sixty nine years. 01:06:21.680 --> 01:06:24.480 And my brain did the math and said, Well, that means that 01:06:24.640 --> 01:06:28.720 Methuselah lived thirty nine years longer than Adam. 01:06:28.720 --> 01:06:32.960 That's a conspicuous number if you're familiar with numerology and scripture because 01:06:32.960 --> 01:06:34.800 forty is a significant number. 01:06:34.800 --> 01:06:37.360 It usually signifies trial. 01:06:37.360 --> 01:06:40.080 But I thought and that's what made me think, well, how old 01:06:40.080 --> 01:06:41.280 was Adam? 01:06:41.280 --> 01:06:45.520 Personally, I think he was probably created as a 40-year-old because that 01:06:45.520 --> 01:06:49.360 would make him the force firstborn man in creation, the oldest man 01:06:49.360 --> 01:06:50.240 in creation. 01:06:50.240 --> 01:06:52.480 He was the only man who was ever perfect. 01:06:52.480 --> 01:06:55.040 He was the only man who ever walked sinlessly with God. 01:06:55.040 --> 01:06:56.560 And so my personal theory. 01:06:56.560 --> 01:06:58.880 Again, this is not I'm not adding to scripture. 01:06:58.880 --> 01:07:02.480 It's not a matter of faith or salvation. 01:07:02.480 --> 01:07:03.600 It's just a theory. 01:07:03.600 --> 01:07:05.040 When I die, I'll find out. 01:07:05.040 --> 01:07:07.760 And God will say, either, yeah, good guess, or no, you made 01:07:07.760 --> 01:07:08.400 a mess of this. 01:07:08.400 --> 01:07:09.360 Here's what really happened. 01:07:09.440 --> 01:07:12.320 So no faith hinges on this and there's no there's no belief 01:07:12.320 --> 01:07:15.760 downstream from it, but I I think that Adam had to have 01:07:15.760 --> 01:07:16.720 an age. 01:07:16.720 --> 01:07:19.600 Maybe he was fifteen, maybe he was twenty, maybe he was a 01:07:19.600 --> 01:07:23.600 hundred. Forty seems to work, but he has an age, and so 01:07:23.600 --> 01:07:27.120 when we look to the age of the universe, how old was 01:07:27.120 --> 01:07:28.880 the universe that God created? 01:07:28.880 --> 01:07:32.000 It was 13.77 billion years old. 01:07:32.000 --> 01:07:36.320 God didn't create a universe from scratch and then set it in 01:07:36.320 --> 01:07:38.560 motion from the beginning. 01:07:38.560 --> 01:07:41.680 He set it in motion as though it had been in motion 01:07:41.680 --> 01:07:42.960 for billions of years. 01:07:42.960 --> 01:07:44.640 And that's what we see today. 01:07:44.640 --> 01:07:48.960 That's why the starlight that comes to our eyes is older than 01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:56.560 creation because God created those stars in those places in the universe 01:07:56.720 --> 01:08:01.520 with their light, with their photons already already streaming towards us according 01:08:01.520 --> 01:08:04.480 to the natural laws of the universe, in such a way that 01:08:04.480 --> 01:08:07.440 the whole thing makes sense and the whole things works. 01:08:07.440 --> 01:08:10.960 God wasn't making up something from whole cloth, well he was, but 01:08:10.960 --> 01:08:13.600 he wasn't making something that would be fictitious. 01:08:13.600 --> 01:08:16.960 He was making something that was a real whole machine. 01:08:16.960 --> 01:08:20.480 The machine of the universe is internally consistent. 01:08:20.480 --> 01:08:25.600 And so as Corey and I appeal to scientific understanding of these 01:08:25.600 --> 01:08:27.760 things, it's not an attack on faith. 01:08:27.760 --> 01:08:32.080 It is a confirmation of the faith that we find by virtue 01:08:32.080 --> 01:08:37.520 of literal, simple, plain readings of the scripture that's been revealed to 01:08:37.520 --> 01:08:39.120 us. And 01:08:39.120 --> 01:08:42.000 it's almost as if scripture somewhere says that it's the glory of 01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:45.920 God to conceal things and the glory of princes to reveal them. 01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:50.640 Princes, of course, don't necessarily just mean princes. 01:08:50.640 --> 01:08:54.000 And so we are able to use the things God has given 01:08:54.000 --> 01:08:59.040 us, which would be our intelligence, our wisdom, insight, whatever attribute it 01:08:59.040 --> 01:09:03.520 happens to be, in order to investigate the world, in order to 01:09:03.520 --> 01:09:07.200 investigate the things that He created into which he placed us as 01:09:07.200 --> 01:09:09.520 head. And so 01:09:10.720 --> 01:09:14.560 science properly understood, I don't want to get into the technicalities there 01:09:14.560 --> 01:09:17.120 of what science used to mean and what it means now, but 01:09:17.280 --> 01:09:19.040 it's just knowledge. 01:09:19.040 --> 01:09:23.120 Science is a way of going about things, obtaining knowledge. 01:09:23.120 --> 01:09:26.880 It's not contrary to scripture, it does not conflict with scripture, it's 01:09:26.880 --> 01:09:28.560 not anti-Christian. 01:09:28.560 --> 01:09:32.000 Most of the great men in these fields who made the major 01:09:31.840 --> 01:09:35.440 the major advances that really meant something were Christian. 01:09:35.440 --> 01:09:39.920 Some of them were monks, you have Mendel, but these were Christian 01:09:39.920 --> 01:09:43.520 men investigating creation. 01:09:43.520 --> 01:09:48.240 And that's part of why science really took off in Europe. 01:09:48.240 --> 01:09:53.440 Science, yes, in some parts of the ancient world advanced to a 01:09:53.440 --> 01:09:59.600 certain level beyond what Europe was at relatively at the time. 01:09:59.600 --> 01:10:05.280 But that all stopped many centuries ago, and Europe has been far 01:10:05.280 --> 01:10:09.760 and away in advance of others since then, because Europeans were looking 01:10:10.160 --> 01:10:12.880 at the world from a Christian perspective. 01:10:12.880 --> 01:10:16.720 We were looking at the world as something that is created by 01:10:16.720 --> 01:10:18.720 an intelligent and loving God 01:10:19.840 --> 01:10:22.480 in a way that is comprehensible to us. 01:10:22.480 --> 01:10:25.680 There are of course things that are beyond our comprehension. 01:10:25.680 --> 01:10:28.960 At the time they didn't know that because they couldn't delve down 01:10:28.960 --> 01:10:31.520 into the inner workings of the proton and start looking at it 01:10:31.520 --> 01:10:34.480 going this doesn't actually make sense to us. 01:10:34.480 --> 01:10:36.400 They couldn't do that. 01:10:36.400 --> 01:10:37.600 But they could certainly look at the 01:10:38.560 --> 01:10:43.200 grand scale of things, the macro scale, and realize: this is a 01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:46.000 world built by an intelligent God. 01:10:46.000 --> 01:10:50.240 We are placed in here, in his image, we have intelligence, we 01:10:50.240 --> 01:10:51.920 can understand the world. 01:10:51.920 --> 01:10:55.440 And so you can shore up what is said in Scripture with 01:10:55.440 --> 01:11:00.720 science. Yes, today you have scientists and others who attempt to undermine 01:11:00.720 --> 01:11:03.200 scripture using science. 01:11:03.200 --> 01:11:06.320 The problem is most of the people who get high up in 01:11:06.320 --> 01:11:09.200 these fields wind up confirming the things that are in scripture, and 01:11:09.200 --> 01:11:13.600 some of them wind up converting, particularly geneticists and men like that. 01:11:15.360 --> 01:11:20.800 And God says in scripture, he created the universe to testify to 01:11:20.800 --> 01:11:22.160 his own glory. 01:11:22.160 --> 01:11:26.000 And that is the reason that Christians delve into these subjects, not 01:11:26.000 --> 01:11:30.240 to try to second guess God, but to try to find God's 01:11:30.240 --> 01:11:32.000 glory in his creation. 01:11:32.000 --> 01:11:34.000 Because it testifies to it. 01:11:34.000 --> 01:11:39.200 Everyone, Christian, pagan alike, when they look up at the stars, humans 01:11:39.200 --> 01:11:40.560 are mesmerized. 01:11:40.560 --> 01:11:43.520 It's something that has always captivated the human spirit. 01:11:44.640 --> 01:11:50.320 And the Christian, frankly, the Christian, I think, has forgotten why today. 01:11:50.320 --> 01:11:52.720 Maybe we may look up and think, oh, well, that's nice. 01:11:52.720 --> 01:11:56.640 And honestly, the I think the way that most Christians today think 01:11:56.640 --> 01:11:58.640 is oh look what God did for me. 01:11:58.640 --> 01:12:01.120 Look how beautiful God made the universe for me. 01:12:01.120 --> 01:12:03.760 Look at all the things that God's doing for me. 01:12:03.760 --> 01:12:05.680 That's not what Scripture says. 01:12:05.680 --> 01:12:09.760 Scripture talks about the heavens testifying to God's glory, not to man's 01:12:09.760 --> 01:12:13.360 glory, not to man's entertainment, but to God. 01:12:13.360 --> 01:12:18.080 The angels in heaven, before they proclaim the greatness of God for 01:12:18.080 --> 01:12:22.640 his salvation of man, they proclaim his greatness as creator. 01:12:22.640 --> 01:12:25.120 And that's why we keep talking about the first article because a 01:12:25.120 --> 01:12:27.920 lot of this stuff is bound up, the first article of the 01:12:27.920 --> 01:12:31.440 creeds, that God created the heavens and the earth. 01:12:31.440 --> 01:12:36.480 Because this attack that Satan is under is undertaking today is an 01:12:36.480 --> 01:12:43.040 attack on the belief that creation, that material, that humans, that us 01:12:43.040 --> 01:12:47.600 as individuals in the world came from Came from God. 01:12:47.600 --> 01:12:50.080 Because if as long as you set stuff in motion, you can 01:12:50.080 --> 01:12:53.840 say, Well, yeah, there's another explanation for that, you can delete God. 01:12:53.840 --> 01:12:54.960 And that's what these men do. 01:12:54.960 --> 01:12:57.760 And they say, Well, no, there wasn't actually a six twenty-four-hour day 01:12:57.760 --> 01:13:01.200 creation. That doesn't make sense because you know, you got lights coming 01:13:01.200 --> 01:13:02.000 before stars. 01:13:02.000 --> 01:13:03.760 Clearly it's kind of made up. 01:13:03.760 --> 01:13:08.320 No. the and the appeal to science is not to say, look, 01:13:08.320 --> 01:13:11.760 you should believe Genesis now because science confirms it. 01:13:11.760 --> 01:13:17.120 Believe scripture literally, and then when the scientists agree, give praise to 01:13:17.120 --> 01:13:20.480 God for his revelation because we knew it first. 01:13:20.480 --> 01:13:25.840 Moses knew about quark gluon plasma before the scientists who discovered it. 01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:29.040 He didn't know the name, he didn't care because it wasn't about 01:13:29.040 --> 01:13:31.040 introspecting matter. 01:13:31.040 --> 01:13:33.600 It was about testifying to God's glory. 01:13:33.600 --> 01:13:36.320 And that is what the Christian life needs to be about. 01:13:36.320 --> 01:13:39.760 When we talk about these material things, when we talk about race, 01:13:39.760 --> 01:13:43.040 and we talk about other things that are in the world, it 01:13:43.040 --> 01:13:46.640 is not to replace God, it is not to denigrate or to 01:13:46.640 --> 01:13:49.920 doubt God, it is to say, look at the glory of what 01:13:49.920 --> 01:13:50.880 God made. 01:13:50.880 --> 01:13:55.760 Because the bottom line is this: everything in in creation testifies to 01:13:55.760 --> 01:13:59.520 God's glory, including the diversity of mankind. 01:13:59.520 --> 01:14:04.000 So when we do the episodes on race, that is testifying to 01:14:04.000 --> 01:14:09.360 the beauty of God, to the magnificence of our Creator, that men 01:14:09.360 --> 01:14:11.840 can live at the North Pole and they can live at the 01:14:11.840 --> 01:14:13.760 equator. That's insane. 01:14:14.080 --> 01:14:16.400 there's no other species that can pull that off. 01:14:16.400 --> 01:14:20.560 We can We can because within our genes, God gave us the 01:14:20.560 --> 01:14:25.600 ability to evolve in 6,000 years, not evolving from a monkey, but 01:14:25.600 --> 01:14:30.320 to change in short periods of time in response to the environment. 01:14:30.320 --> 01:14:34.240 And some of the evolution, some of the genetic changes was which 01:14:34.240 --> 01:14:36.640 is what it really is, it's just gene expression. 01:14:36.640 --> 01:14:41.120 Some of those are beneficial, and some of those are degradation because 01:14:41.120 --> 01:14:43.040 the fall is also in play. 01:14:43.040 --> 01:14:47.280 Once creation fell, our gene Our genome began to corrupt. 01:14:47.280 --> 01:14:49.200 Things started going wrong. 01:14:49.200 --> 01:14:49.520 So 01:14:50.560 --> 01:14:52.240 looking to scripture 01:14:53.200 --> 01:14:58.240 is about finding where what God says is made clear for his 01:14:58.320 --> 01:15:01.520 glory. And that should always be the motivation. 01:15:01.520 --> 01:15:04.480 Um we're not probably not even going to get into the flood 01:15:04.480 --> 01:15:06.400 thing, but I'll just point out that there are these places like 01:15:06.400 --> 01:15:10.800 the six-day creation and the flood where guys say, oh, well, maybe 01:15:10.800 --> 01:15:12.240 it was a localized flood. 01:15:12.240 --> 01:15:16.320 And then we find the same flood strata all over the world. 01:15:16.320 --> 01:15:17.840 And then they make up other lies. 01:15:17.920 --> 01:15:21.120 Say, oh well, maybe maybe there was a global flood, but then 01:15:21.120 --> 01:15:23.760 all the water evaporated and all the bones were left lying around. 01:15:23.760 --> 01:15:25.440 Like it was it was a big mess and it was really 01:15:25.440 --> 01:15:29.200 depressing and poor poor No Noah, no no wonder he got drunk. 01:15:29.200 --> 01:15:33.760 Um you can't read scripture and just make stuff up and 01:15:34.720 --> 01:15:36.640 so when yeah I I want to point out that when I 01:15:36.640 --> 01:15:40.400 when I said the thing about Adam maybe being forty years old, 01:15:40.400 --> 01:15:44.240 that's a pious speculation, but it never goes any further. 01:15:44.240 --> 01:15:46.160 I would never pin anything on it. 01:15:46.160 --> 01:15:48.400 And that's where a lot of this stuff goes wrong is that 01:15:48.400 --> 01:15:52.720 there are other men who will make up something that's consistent for 01:15:52.720 --> 01:15:55.520 scripture. It doesn't disagree with it, but then they say, Look what 01:15:55.520 --> 01:15:58.560 I've discovered, look what I've found, let me build up a whole 01:15:58.560 --> 01:16:00.240 religion around this thing. 01:16:00.240 --> 01:16:03.600 Uh they're they're modern scholars who do that. 01:16:03.600 --> 01:16:07.680 They find some little thing, they piously speculate, at least to begin 01:16:07.680 --> 01:16:10.320 with, and then they build a whole pantheon of lies on top 01:16:10.320 --> 01:16:12.400 of it and say, Look, you gotta believe all this stuff, 'cause 01:16:12.480 --> 01:16:14.880 this is what naturally froze flows from scripture. 01:16:14.880 --> 01:16:17.520 No. There's no proof of what age Adam was. 01:16:17.520 --> 01:16:18.160 I have no idea. 01:16:18.160 --> 01:16:19.280 I could be completely wrong. 01:16:19.280 --> 01:16:20.640 You shouldn't believe it because I said it. 01:16:20.640 --> 01:16:23.120 It's just an interesting thing to think about. 01:16:23.120 --> 01:16:27.600 But it's interesting in the context of God setting the universe in 01:16:27.600 --> 01:16:30.320 motion not from infancy. 01:16:30.320 --> 01:16:33.760 You know, it's the the chicken and egg joke is answered in 01:16:33.760 --> 01:16:36.880 scripture. God tells us the chicken came first. 01:16:36.880 --> 01:16:38.160 Adam came first. 01:16:38.160 --> 01:16:42.720 The entire universe was set in motion as it is today, and 01:16:42.720 --> 01:16:47.520 then it continued as God had created it to evolve, to expand, 01:16:47.520 --> 01:16:51.520 to change, and ultimately to proclaim his glory as it goes through 01:16:51.520 --> 01:16:57.920 the motions of the incredibly unfathomably complex machinery that could only have 01:16:57.920 --> 01:16:59.680 been conceived of in God's mind. 01:16:59.680 --> 01:17:01.520 And that's why it testifies to his glory. 01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:03.280 It's not just about entertaining us. 01:17:03.280 --> 01:17:08.720 We're mesmerized because it is a natural revelation of the infinite creator 01:17:08.880 --> 01:17:12.080 who also died on the cross for us as a man and 01:17:12.080 --> 01:17:16.880 as God, because he loved us in our own place and time 01:17:17.440 --> 01:17:22.320 even in the when he's also maintaining this not infinite universe, but 01:17:22.320 --> 01:17:24.960 it seems like it from our tiny perspective. 01:17:24.960 --> 01:17:29.680 The same God that knows about every quark inside every atom in 01:17:29.680 --> 01:17:32.000 the universe, and he knows their count, and he knows where they 01:17:32.000 --> 01:17:34.240 are, and he knows what they're doing right now. 01:17:34.240 --> 01:17:38.480 He also knows us individually, and he knows our troubles, and he 01:17:38.480 --> 01:17:42.160 knows our sins, and he knows our doubts and our fears, and 01:17:42.160 --> 01:17:43.360 he knows our names. 01:17:43.360 --> 01:17:46.400 And the elect had their names written in the book of life. 01:17:46.400 --> 01:17:48.960 God's a very busy God, and he has time for all of 01:17:49.280 --> 01:17:52.400 because he's more powerful than we can possibly comprehend. 01:17:52.400 --> 01:17:57.760 And these discussions should ultimately focus on how wonderful it is that 01:17:57.760 --> 01:18:04.080 a God so infinite and so magisterial made sure that scripture, a 01:18:04.080 --> 01:18:07.600 book that you can hold in your hand, can be transmitted through 01:18:07.600 --> 01:18:11.520 time and be accessible to us today in a way that anyone 01:18:11.520 --> 01:18:15.920 can understand and can come to faith and be saved. 01:18:15.920 --> 01:18:16.080 And 01:18:16.080 --> 01:18:19.200 that actually raises a point that I want to reiterate from an 01:18:19.200 --> 01:18:24.560 earlier episode because people get this backward all the time. 01:18:25.920 --> 01:18:31.680 We do not trust God because we trust Scripture. 01:18:31.680 --> 01:18:36.560 We trust Scripture because we trust God. 01:18:36.560 --> 01:18:40.880 If you look at things the first way, which is incorrect, that's 01:18:40.880 --> 01:18:44.640 when you're going to come up with things like the JDEP theory 01:18:44.960 --> 01:18:49.440 and the idea of the day-age theory and all of these various 01:18:49.440 --> 01:18:50.640 things that are ways 01:18:51.520 --> 01:18:55.520 to get around perceived problems in Scripture. 01:18:55.520 --> 01:18:59.040 Because if you are justifying your belief in God on the basis 01:18:59.040 --> 01:19:03.840 of Scripture, then what you are going to do is you are 01:19:03.840 --> 01:19:06.960 going to try and explain away anything in Scripture that you cannot 01:19:06.960 --> 01:19:10.800 understand, because you're really basing everything on your reason. 01:19:10.800 --> 01:19:14.960 But if you trust Scripture because Scripture is the Word of God, 01:19:14.960 --> 01:19:19.520 then any of these perceived issues aren't a problem. 01:19:19.520 --> 01:19:21.200 Because it's from God. 01:19:21.200 --> 01:19:23.840 God is perfectly trustworthy. 01:19:23.840 --> 01:19:26.560 God literally is truth. 01:19:26.560 --> 01:19:26.880 God 01:19:27.840 --> 01:19:30.800 cannot lie is a sufficient way to say it is not technically 01:19:30.880 --> 01:19:33.360 accurate but we'll go into that another time. 01:19:33.360 --> 01:19:36.960 And so you trust Scripture because it is the word of God, 01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:40.960 and you trust it because God is perfectly trustworthy. 01:19:40.960 --> 01:19:45.920 And so that order matters, which one you trust and why. 01:19:45.920 --> 01:19:48.160 And there are just a couple of things that I'll make sure 01:19:48.160 --> 01:19:51.440 I add to the show notes for us this time. 01:19:51.440 --> 01:19:56.080 Saint Basil has writings on the hexameron, the hexameron just meeting the 01:19:56.080 --> 01:20:00.720 the six day creation Hex six hemer day. 01:20:00.720 --> 01:20:02.800 And I think we can also link to a couple of things 01:20:02.800 --> 01:20:03.680 about the flood. 01:20:03.680 --> 01:20:06.320 We have some materials on that that aren't behind a paywall. 01:20:07.360 --> 01:20:11.760 Which is another problem in and of itself, but for another day. 01:20:11.760 --> 01:20:12.560 Yeah. 01:20:13.040 --> 01:20:13.280 And 01:20:13.280 --> 01:20:16.880 again, we're the point is not to make a defense of oh 01:20:16.960 --> 01:20:19.600 well look how scripture accords with science. 01:20:19.600 --> 01:20:20.560 It's what you just said. 01:20:20.800 --> 01:20:23.040 Scripture accords with God. 01:20:23.040 --> 01:20:27.120 Scripture is from God, and it is in God we trust, God 01:20:27.360 --> 01:20:31.280 who made heaven and earth and gave us his word through all 01:20:31.280 --> 01:20:33.600 time for our edification. 01:20:34.640 --> 01:20:38.800 If he can speak the universe into existence, he can do anything. 01:20:38.800 --> 01:20:43.120 And these men who cast doubt on, oh, well, maybe God really 01:20:43.200 --> 01:20:45.440 really didn't mean that, maybe God didn't do that. 01:20:45.440 --> 01:20:47.920 I don't think God could have done that because the math doesn't 01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:48.560 add up. 01:20:49.040 --> 01:20:50.320 They don't have God. 01:20:50.320 --> 01:20:51.440 They don't believe in God. 01:20:51.440 --> 01:20:52.800 They don't trust in God. 01:20:52.800 --> 01:20:54.000 They deny him. 01:20:54.000 --> 01:20:56.960 And if you deny the Father, you deny the Son. 01:20:56.960 --> 01:21:00.160 If you deny the Son, you have no salvation. 01:21:00.160 --> 01:21:07.520 And so it's not just about doubts or speculation about scientific things. 01:21:07.520 --> 01:21:11.920 It's fundamentally about the root of faith itself and whether it's rooted 01:21:11.920 --> 01:21:16.320 in God through scripture or r whether it's rooted in our own 01:21:16.320 --> 01:21:19.920 reason and our ability to make sense of things and then hopefully 01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:22.240 we can bolt God on so that that makes it okay in 01:21:22.240 --> 01:21:22.800 the end. 01:21:22.800 --> 01:21:26.640 That's not the Christian life, and flee from any man who even 01:21:26.640 --> 01:21:29.440 suggests otherwise. 01:21:29.440 --> 01:21:34.480 God has two books, as Christians used to say, and should say 01:21:34.480 --> 01:21:39.840 again. Scripture is one, creation is the other. 01:21:39.840 --> 01:21:44.080 God is consistent as an author. 01:21:44.080 --> 01:21:48.720 We will close with a quote from 2 Timothy 3. 01:21:48.720 --> 01:21:52.320 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus 01:21:52.320 --> 01:21:55.920 will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from 01:21:55.920 --> 01:21:59.040 bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 01:21:59.040 --> 01:22:02.160 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have 01:22:02.160 --> 01:22:06.320 firmly believed Knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood 01:22:06.320 --> 01:22:09.520 you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to 01:22:09.520 --> 01:22:13.280 make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 01:22:13.280 --> 01:22:17.440 All scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for 01:22:17.440 --> 01:22:22.400 reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of 01:22:22.400 --> 01:22:26.480 God may be complete, equipped for every good work.