Assorted Topics

[0:00] Well, I'm not completely certain what we're going to be doing today because we looked at, I think, about all of the subjects that you guys handed in on the 3x5 cards.

[0:13] We have not treated any of them as exhaustively as they might have been, but I trust that they were treated adequately so that you got some insight to it. So I would ask you, even now, is there some leftover that you want to address, or is there a subject that has a bead in your bonnet and you want to talk about it or ask questions about it?

[0:36] I want to give you an opportunity to do that, and we'll pool our ignorance and see what we can come up with. But I don't want anybody to feel obligated to do that, but I want you to know you have an opportunity.

[0:51] Does anybody want to take advantage of it? Is there something you want to kick around, something that's bugging you, or what, Roger? The seven churches in the Revelation, are they to come, or are they to come after the rapture or into tribulation?

[1:08] Okay. How do they fit in? The seven churches in the Revelation that are located in Asia Minor, which is the present-day Turkey, interestingly enough, none of those exist today.

[1:26] They are, the ruins of a few of them are available. But since that time in the first century, when those churches were addressed, Asia Minor, which is, for all practical purposes, Turkey, has been completely taken over by Islam.

[1:52] And Christians in Turkey today represent a very, very small minority. And I know some folks who are serving as, I guess you would say, kind of undercover missionaries in Turkey.

[2:11] They are there as educational specialists. And they cannot be otherwise, that is, open and above board about their Christianity because they would be given exit visas right away and not allowed to continue there.

[2:29] So that's what's going on in Turkey now. Those seven churches, in my estimation, still remain one of the most, what shall I say, unsatisfying concepts in the New Testament for me personally.

[2:51] I've read, I think, just about every position that can be taken regarding their identity from at least a half a dozen different authors. None of which I have found to be completely satisfying.

[3:06] So for me, personally, the jury is still out. I'll just run by you a couple of things. But you can't put an anchor on any of these. At least I can't.

[3:17] And it seems rather apparent as you read the text. We're talking about the first three chapters in the book of Revelation. And it seems rather obvious that they would have to have been churches that had an actual physical existence at the time those letters were addressed.

[3:41] And the content that is found in each of the letters spells out regarding the specifics of each of those churches, virtually all of which had some complaint registered against them.

[3:54] And there is also a viewpoint that says the seven churches actually represent seven different periods in church history, beginning with the first century up to the present day.

[4:14] And it concludes with the church of Laodicea, which is the one that has left its first love and so on. And that they represent different periods of history and they can be plotted on the calendar as you go from the first century up to the present time.

[4:33] That's a popular view also. And then there is another that says the seven churches are representative of seven different kinds of churches that have existed and still do exist in the world today.

[4:53] And each one of them is a description of a different kind of church that has always been in existence from the first century to the present. So you have to ask yourself which of those churches is represented by your church, if any.

[5:12] But like I said, the jury is still out and I've never found a really satisfying answer to the question. And I'm sorry that I can't give you a better answer. But that's all I can do for now.

[5:24] Anybody want to add to that? Joe? Is there a part, I think I've read in Revelations, after a certain chapter, there is absolutely no more mention of churches, the body of church at all.

[5:41] No more mention of it at all after a certain chapter in the Revelation. That'd be after chapter three. Okay. There's no more mention of it, period. Yeah. When you get into chapter four, that's when the description is given to the riders and the four horses and the four horsemen and so on.

[5:59] And I think that if you take your eschatology seriously, the doctrine of last things, as I do, what Joe has said about there being no mention of the church could well be because the church isn't here to be mentioned.

[6:19] The church has been raptured. The church is gone. The church has been removed, a la 1 Thessalonians chapter four, in the raptor, the catching away.

[6:33] And that which is the body of Christ, the church, has been removed from the scene. And what is taking place in the Revelation has to do with tribulation content for which the church is absent.

[6:49] But there will be, of course, enormous amount of conflict and so on taking place then. So that's perhaps the best take on it that I understand. The church will be gone by that time.

[7:01] Which also means, given what is taking place today in our culture and not only in the U.S. of A., but in the world at large, it makes you wonder just how close we might be not to the undertaker but to the upper taker.

[7:21] Things could be ramping up pretty quick. And I'll tell you this, of this much I'm certain, that when these last day events begin to happen, what we would call tribulational content, it's going to happen with great rapidity, with great speed.

[7:43] And I wonder if what we are seeing taking place in our culture today isn't a precursor to that, in that it seems like every month that goes by there is a new kind of really weird, out of this world idea or philosophy that starts circulating.

[8:07] And you just wonder, can you believe how crazy things are? Now we've got this sex change stuff for children, reputable, reputable surgeons, medical degrees, performing surgery on five and six year old children to try and alter their sex?

[8:34] Are you kidding me? That is as bizarre as it can get. And yet, that seems to be what's taking place.

[8:44] And you just wonder, what's the insanity of the month of May going to bring? Because it just seems like there's a new one every time. And it's just getting absolutely crazy.

[8:57] What, Joe? And another thing that would seem crazy, when you read the Bible 30 years ago, 40 years ago, in Revelations, it talks about the two witnesses during the tribulation.

[9:12] Two witnesses will be in Jerusalem. These were God's witnesses to the world type of thing. And they're in Jerusalem. And they're going to be killed.

[9:25] They're going to be martyred, killed in Jerusalem. And the Bible says the whole world is going to see it. The whole world. Now, if you lived like I did 40 years ago, some of you did 50 years ago, and read that, you'd say, no way!

[9:43] How can the whole world see that happen at one time? Well, now you know it's possible. Everybody could be tuned in to Jerusalem through the right technology we have now.

[9:56] And so what was then said in the Bible is true. And back then, you couldn't possibly believe it. How can everybody in the world see these two guys killed in Jerusalem?

[10:09] I mean, it's a fairy tale. You know, you have to look at it as a fairy tale. But now, it was no fairy tale at all. Well, nowadays, with the technology, there isn't any place in the world that can escape the TV.

[10:24] You know, with the satellites and all of this, you know, it's just... And those two witnesses he talked about, they're still not identified. We don't know really who they are.

[10:35] But we do know that they are endowed with an invulnerability that makes them impervious to destruction.

[10:47] That they simply cannot be eliminated, although there are apparent efforts to do so, until the Antichrist or Satan is released.

[10:59] And the Antichrist succeeds in taking out these two witnesses. And their dead bodies are lying there in the street in Jerusalem.

[11:11] And the text tells us in Revelation that the whole world is rejoicing over their death. The two witnesses were bearing a very unpleasant, unwelcome testimony to the people who remained.

[11:27] And when their death occurred, everybody was rejoicing and thankful that they had gotten rid of those two witnesses. And they lay that way for three days in the streets so that everybody could admire the victory that had been accomplished over them and witness their dead bodies.

[11:47] And then, lo and behold, those two witnesses come to life. Are you kidding me? And by the way, guys, we are talking about, excuse me, we are talking about tribulation content.

[12:06] And one of the most dramatic things that accompanies tribulation content is the miraculous signs that are so abundant.

[12:18] Both positive and negative. And it is going to be, Katie, bar the door. These things are going to be commonplace. So these two witnesses that have been lying there, exposed to the world for three days, causing everybody, not everybody, but causing a lot of people.

[12:39] If you can imagine this, people send gifts to one another for special occasions. Can you imagine people actually sending and giving gifts to one another in thanks and honor for the fact that those two witnesses are dead?

[12:56] Celebrating their death. And then it's as if God has the last laugh. Those two witnesses come alive, physically alive, and ascend right before the world's eyes.

[13:15] Ascend to heaven. And we look at that and we say, oh, come on now. And that's so difficult for us to absorb something like that, because that's not this world.

[13:28] That's not the way this world operates. But guys, that's the way that world is going to operate. And you've got to keep in mind the fact that the miraculous has been literally sustained since Christ's return.

[13:45] When he was here on earth, the major way that he established his credentials was by his miracles.

[13:56] It wasn't primarily by his teaching. His teaching was outstanding, and it was different than anything they'd ever heard. But it was the miracles that got everybody's attention. And it is striking to me that his miracles were never contested.

[14:13] No indication that anybody ever doubted him. The only thing that was doubted was the source of power behind them. And it was the Pharisees who said, well, yeah, he does miracles.

[14:24] You know how he does that. He does it by the power of the devil. He does it by the power of Beelzebub, which, of course, was blasphemy. But miracles that Christ performed were commonplace.

[14:35] Miracles were common then, not just what Jesus performed. They were common because he was here, and they were his calling card. They were his credentials. So, and by the way, guys, you need to understand that the thing that made the miracles necessary was Christ, in performing the miracles, was doing nothing more than reestablishing the normal.

[15:08] What was the normal? The normal was the way God created Adam and Eve and that first environment. It was very good.

[15:19] It was very good. And everything was great until sin entered the picture and then what was normal became abnormal.

[15:30] What's the first abnormality? Death. Death is an abnormality. Death does not belong to God's creation.

[15:42] Death has been inserted as a negative in response to God's will with disobedience. And the whole world succumbed to an abnormality.

[15:55] Everything was changed. Adam and Eve were changed. The whole animal creation was changed. Nature was changed. Everything was changed. Someone has said, even the brook babbled babbled in a minor key.

[16:09] Everything was upheat. And when Christ came, really what He did was He brought the abnormal which had become human blindness, human deafness, human death.

[16:28] He overcame all of that and in each of those cases He restored them to what was normal. Isn't that something?

[16:39] You realize that you are living and I am living in an abnormal body? We really are. When these bodies are glorified, when they undergo a transformation the likes of which we cannot imagine, but Philippians 3 tells us that the time is coming when our bodies of weakness and disease and death will be fashioned like unto the body of Jesus Christ when He came out of that tomb.

[17:11] What is that going to be like? I have no idea. But it will not be subject to death or disease or anything else. It will be a glorified body.

[17:24] And that's a far cry from what we've got now. What we do have now is we've got the down payment. We've got the down payment. We've got what's called the earnest of the Spirit.

[17:38] You know, the earnest literally means down payment. We who have the earnest of the Spirit. For those of you a little bit familiar with real estate, when somebody goes to buy a piece of property and they're going to buy a house and the house costs $200,000, they say, they tell a realtor, okay, we want this house, we'll buy the house, we'll give you your asking price, $200,000.

[18:09] And the realtor says, well, I will tell the owner and they'll be glad to hear that. And by the way, we will need some earnest money on that. What does that mean? That means in order to demonstrate your good faith, that you're serious about buying that house, you need to put up some bucks, whatever the percentage is, you need to put up a couple of thousand dollars as a kind of guarantee that you're going to complete the transaction.

[18:38] And the idea is, if you say you'll buy the house and you give them a couple thousand dollars as earnest money, and then you renege and decide you're not going to buy it after all, you change your mind, well, you forfeit the earnest money.

[18:52] You're out that money. Because, you create a hardship for the owner, they thought it was sold and now you've given them a, you know, so, that's the earnest money. The earnest money is the down payment that you're going to complete the transaction.

[19:06] So, when you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, the Spirit of God in a way that none of us understand, the Spirit of God came into your life.

[19:20] You may not have even been aware of it, you probably weren't. But the Spirit of God came into your life and regenerated you, made you a new person on the inside.

[19:34] Didn't change your body at all. And that Spirit that He put within you is God's down payment and guarantee that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

[19:54] The Spirit of God dwelling in you and if any man have not the Spirit of God, he is none of His, Romans 8 says. So, the Spirit of God bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God.

[20:10] That's the assurance and the comfort that comes from knowing Christ. So, God as much as put something down on you and that's the Holy Spirit and He indwells you and He is that which quickened or made alive your spirit which gave you a completely different outlook on life, different motives, different ideas, different interests, different everything.

[20:40] everything because if anyone is in Christ, He's a new creation. Old things have passed away. The old, all things have become new.

[20:52] That's typical for everyone who's a believer and it's a wonderful thing to contemplate. So, this miracle that takes place with inside, somebody wrote a song about that and I remember I can still hear Bev Shea singing it but when He saved my soul, cleansed and made me whole, it took a miracle of love and grace.

[21:17] Isn't that something? Boy, never gotten over it. Wow. So, anyway, that's, God will complete the deal and that's God's guarantee that He will finish what He has begun in you and the finishing part, the finishing part is He's already made you new on the inside but when you pass from this life and get that glorified body, the rest of you gets the redo also and that means the rest of you, not just your spirit, immaterial, but the physical body is going to be changed and our Lord demonstrated that in ways that just, and I don't know, I don't know if we're going to have the same, exactly the same kind of capability that He had but we know that He had an ability to be, call it what you will but it's, it's just supernatural.

[22:23] There's a, there's a scientific term called molecular displacement whereby a solid object is able to pass through a solid object which we don't know how that happens now but, but scientifically I guess it's been demonstrated that it can be done and you wonder if our Lord with that glorified body, I think I related this to you not long ago when, when the disciples after the resurrection they were all huddled together because they were, they were thinking that the, the authorities that were responsible for handing over Jesus and His crucifixion they were going to be coming after them next and all of these apostles were gathered together in this room and, and the text very deliberately says, and the door was locked and the next thing you know it says Jesus appeared in the midst of them and it would have been a lot easier to understand if, if it had said that Jesus knocked on the door and somebody went to the door and opened the door like when Peter knocked on the door after he was miraculously released from prison and a little lady named Rhoda went to the door and opened the door and saw that it was Peter but he had to knock the door he didn't just float in

[23:45] Jesus went through that locked door and appeared in their midst how did he do that he had a physical body glorified that possessed some kind of properties that our bodies do not have and it indicates that we're going to have a body like that and it will be one that is not subject to distance or material barriers we just cannot imagine what that's going to be like but it will be common for everyone who is in Christ and it's going to be you know Jesus with that glorified body invited the apostles there in the last couple of chapters of John to get their boat to shore and come up and join him for breakfast and he had prepared a fish dinner and Jesus with a glorified body ate the fish and served them with the fish

[24:59] I don't know guys but we're in for something that's you see we are so locked in to this world and its limitations we tend to think of this as normal well this has become are normal but this isn't God's normal God's normal is described in in Matthew 16 where the Lord said that he was going to build his church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it the gates of Hades speaks of the power of death and it is going to be stripped of its power when that time comes that Christ institutes and builds his church and by the way

[26:03] I just want to throw this out for you because I know it's going to sound weird and it will give you something to think about and when you leave here this morning you're going to be saying to yourself I wonder what in the world he was talking about but when Jesus said in Matthew 16 that I will build my church gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom he said he would build his church and that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it well gates in the Bible often speaks of a place of authority and it goes all the way back to Genesis when Lot who had positioned himself as a resident in the city of Sodom you'll recall and we are told that he obviously had established himself to such a degree that he sat with the elders at the gate the gate of the city of Sodom and the gate was the place where official business for the city was transacted we would call it city hall it was at the gate and the gate was the place of entrance and exit for the city and that's where official business was conducted and Lot served there he obviously had risen to a position of authority responsibility he was one of the leaders and he was at the gate so that is an expression that's used a number of other places in the Bible as well and I think it's in the book of Ruth too when they had their little meeting about Boaz and Ruth and so on so the gates of Hades represents the authority of death and it is going to be stripped of its authority when Christ builds his church and the question that

[28:13] I have is whether that church has ever been built and I don't think it has and I know that that sounds really quite weird because we all consider ourselves a member of the church a member of the body of Christ in Ephesians 3 and so on and so we are but you know fellas the Bible reflects many different churches and in fact if you were to go to the Septuagint which is which is a Greek translation of Old Testament Hebrew and it was produced in about the year 70 about the same year that Jerusalem was destroyed a group of scholars produced the Septuagint and even the name the Septuagint comes from the Latin word Sept S-E-P-T seven and it was

[29:14] I lost my train of thought it was in connection it was in connection with the maybe this will bring your mind back the church means an assembly of like believers that's what it means in one of those languages or something it's not our church specifically you can have a church across the street we can call ourselves a church right here we're a assembly of like believers that's what a church is defining thank you Joe thank you actually in the Septuagint which I mentioned earlier it's a Greek translation of the Hebrew and the reason they translated it translated the Hebrew into Greek was because there were so many Jews that had been scattered all throughout the Mediterranean and they had adopted the ways in the languages of the people where they were living and Greek at the time was considered the universal language kind of like

[30:19] English is today so they translated it into Greek and in the Greek the word ecclesia which is translated church in the King James and in most of other translations is the word for church it means a called out assembly for a specific purpose and there are some 40 times in the Greek Septuagint that the word ecclesia is used which means church and it never means what we think of as a church a local assembly or body of Christ so all I'm saying is we've been sold a bill of goods with the definition of terms and we've assumed things that we should not have assumed but it's natural to do that and by the way somebody pointed out to me a long time ago what happens when you assume you've heard that perhaps when you assume

[31:21] A-S-S-U-M-E when you assume it makes an A-S-S out of you and me the Bible is a wonderful book but it has been interpreted in so many ways with so many faulty assumptions an assumption is something that you consider and regard to be true but it isn't true at all it is like an anomaly it is like something that is commonly accepted as true only to discover that there's no truth to it at all and you know the last 100-200 years has just been an enormous breakthrough with all kinds of things that were proven to be untrue that we thought were true and you don't have to go back very far

[32:30] I remember this was a television thing I don't remember where I saw it but I do remember that the guy's name was Lister Dr. Lister and he was a pioneer but this was back in like the near the end of the 1800s early 1900s and he worked in this large hospital hospital and they were losing so many women who had come to the hospital to have their babies and so many of these women were dying from infection in connection with childbirth and the delivery and everything they couldn't figure out what was going on and this Dr. Lister was absolutely convinced that the reason these women all of these pregnant women came there for delivery were dying from infection was because of the doctors and nurses that were treating them and they were contaminating the patient because they would go from one patient to another and they didn't even bother to wash their hands or wear rubber gloves or anything like that and they were just spreading infection all over the place and this

[33:46] Dr. Lister took on a campaign where he was demanding and everybody scrubbed their hands real good and all the rest of the doctors and the nurses just laughed into scorn they were convinced that that was just a bunch of baloney and there wasn't anything to it at all and of course that too was a faulty assumption and they went on to find out that that was the very cause of these poor women expectant women dying from infection they were there to deliver the baby and they of course underwent all kinds of scrutiny and eventually got to it and the microscope discovered all kinds of contamination and everything that was being spread all over the place and now we all know how thorough a doctor undergoes what's called a surgical scrub they take a brush and they scrub and they do their fingernails and then they hold their hands up like this and then somebody slips the gloves on all because the germs that can kill are transmitted from one person to another so they have they are antiseptic and it is it's an ABC of the operating room for sure but you know when that was discovered late 1800s early 1900s what did it take us that long to figure that out and when you look at the inventions and things that have been discovered over the last hundred or so years you wonder and we're supposed to have been around for millions and millions you can forget that we've been around for 6,000 and we still show our ignorance in a whole lot of ways so who knows what yet remains out there to be discovered so many things that we assume and we take for granted and we say everybody knows that the church began in Acts chapter 2 no it didn't that was the church but it was strictly a Jewish church it was comprised of Jews only was it a church yes it was a church

[35:56] King James translated it that way in verse 47 but that's not there in the Greek it just simply says the Lord added to their number daily such as should be saved but the King James says the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved and it was a church but it was a Jewish church but it's not the same as the church in Ephesians 3 what's the difference world of difference world of difference because the church in Ephesians 3 is not just Jewish but it is Jew plus Gentile a concept totally unheard of but it's going to also be a church it is the church called the church which is his body and it is Jew and Gentile so it means that Gentiles have been grafted in to the same plant that was formerly strictly

[37:01] Jewish and now there is no difference between Jew or Gentile you are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ whether you're Jew or Gentile you're on the same footing and the same level with all the same blessings it's amazing so all I'm saying is there are distinctions that need to be made because the scriptures make them any comments or questions anybody yes yeah well you're talking about change I saw a thing on PBS the other night about AI yeah the computer read the New Testament in four seconds and then in 15 seconds give a 15 word summary of the New Testament and people talking about change and said in the next 10 years things are going to progress a thousand percent well you know when I was a kid

[38:14] I remember at my grandma's house taking the phone of course it didn't work but I mean the old phone that could crank oh yeah yeah and now you look at the phone and you can call oh yeah yeah different countries yeah and talk to the person in seconds yeah you can have the phone in your shirt pocket yeah yeah yeah these things are going to change they are a thousand percent they are it's going to be absolutely dramatic you know this AI thing is getting very big and there are some who are really concerned about the effect it's going to have it's artificial intelligence and sometimes you think well maybe maybe that would be a real boon because we know how many times human intelligence has failed us and so artificial intelligence but you know something guys with almost every with almost everything that comes along there's an upside and a downside very few things are just totally one way there's usually a negative and a positive connected with it yeah okay and they give it a

[39:29] I don't remember what it was a theme to go by and then the computer printed out something and then they sit and reference four books to read to understand okay but they come to find out the four books were ghosts they were never published they were never written so you can't believe everything that you see oh yeah oh yeah well that how many times has that been I don't know who it was that said this but it was a quote that stuck in my mind I heard years ago and the quote was I'd rather know a few things for certain than a whole lot of things that aren't so yeah yeah a few years back my grandson was in school in seventh grade and had like a job fair talking to the students and the parents yeah you know what these kids are going to do when they graduate and things and the people leading this job fair said what these kids will be doing in their adult life hasn't even been invented yet yeah well that's that's that's that's amazing and you know speaking of inventions what reminds me of another interesting thing I saw

[40:56] I can't think of the guy's name but you could you could google it okay this guy this guy was the head he was the director of the United States patent office this is like back in 1910 1920 something like that he was the head of the United States patent office this is the this is the office that you apply to for a patent if you've invented something and he said that he was considering resigning as the head of the patent office and somebody said well why are you planning to resign he said well simply because everything that needs to be invented has been invented already so what's the point and he was even in favor of disbanding the patent office because everything has been invented there wasn't anything left oh my goodness now now a kid in the fifth grade would laugh at that you know because we it's it's amazing it is absolutely amazing just this is changing the subject

[42:01] Mark talked a while back about the doctors you know passing an infection and so forth you know well this book here had so many good things about health if it would be followed there would have been a lot more people who hadn't died as soon or even as much and the big one is everybody knows that Jews you know way back to the Israelites they couldn't eat pork remember no pork no pork and because of that and other health things that God gave the Israelites they grew into a huge nation millions there were millions of people who left Egypt went across the Red Sea they were tremendous they out populated any other nation around how did they do that well it was because of God's guidance telling them how to live longer and have more kids better and so forth but back to the pork thing does anybody here know why he told them not to eat pork why not eat pork well here's the reason pork pigs root in the ground they root in the ground and there's an organism called trichinosis which they would get in their body it's like a worm and then when you eat that meat or that pork you get that worm in you and it eats you and kills you it's called trichinosis and our scientists learned that long time after that

[43:19] I mean that was reasonable well you can defeat that by cooking it real good then you can kill that worm but if you eat it raw at all and you'll notice all your investors say just be aware hey if you don't cook if you eat raw meat or one and a half cooked or something you know you could die they tell you that now but that was one of the reasons that God said don't eat pork because you'll die if you eat it because they didn't know about cooking or he didn't tell them about things well thank you thank you Jim and you know what guys I still really like good pork chops but yeah I'll tell you what especially especially if you go to the Clark County Fair and get some of the pork chops out there it's great and but by the way you shrimp lovers and crab lovers that's off limits too you know and yeah what I got a crazy question Jeff yeah you know I'm getting back to Revelation with what kind of Roger was asking about of course

[44:20] I take the pre-trim and I hope it's that but if one fourth of the human population I think is going to be gone when the rapture comes or more I don't know the exact amount but I've heard that well how do people then when everyone's gone a fourth of the world population is going and we have this how do people still not believe and that just well that's that's that's a good question because those of us who are believers just can't fathom that but fellas I'll tell you what and this is something that you really need to keep in mind none of us myself included have any real appreciation of how deep and dark the human psyche really is and when it is compounded by the adversary throwing in his two cents I'm brought back to that passage in in second Corinthians four that says the God of this age that's none other than

[45:35] Satan the God of this age has blinded the minds now think of that not blinded the eyes blinded the minds that's your thinking ability your ability to assess data and make logical conclusions the thinking process we all know that we are mentally impaired as a result of the fall all of us are we are physically impaired we are mentally impaired we are emotionally impaired we are impaired in every way because when Adam and Eve fell they fell kerthunk I mean the whole nine yards and we are offspring of that so we live in a terribly fallen body and our psyche and our thinking processes are skewed that's where and how we come up with such absolutely weird ideas that we're seeing right now like defund the police and like if you don't want to be a boy you can be a girl and on and on it goes and

[46:40] Romans chapter 1 talks about they did as they would not retain God in their knowledge think of that they would not retain they would not make room for God in their knowledge God gave them over and it says and and fellas and their foolish hearts were darkened were dark what does that mean that means light light doesn't get through there's a darkness a moral spiritual darkness there and guys we're dealing with this right now in our culture big time and it is becoming more and more obvious how great that darkness is when you hear some of the absolutely harebrained ideas and things that are going on now and I don't know that there's a crazier one than defund the police and all of that kind of nonsense that's going on it's just just absurd yeah well to give you an example when Moses led the people out of Egypt what he brought them out and they said he brought us out here to die in the wilderness and they saw all those miracles the plagues and stuff and departed to see and and they didn't believe yeah well they were reasoning also with the fallen intellect just like we are you know we

[48:15] Christians Christians are not devoid of a fallen intellect we've got we're part of the human race and we've got a we've got a fallen intellect like everything else but we have something that can correct it and adjust it and that's where the word of God comes in the Bible gives us the real scoop it gives us God's viewpoint on things as opposed to our viewpoint for the natural man does not receive the things of God for they are foolishness to him you're telling me the world was created in six days oh such hogwash who could believe that you're telling me that Jesus came back from the dead after being dead for three days baloney they you know and Paul talks about that when he writes to the Corinthians he says I know I got a hard sell with the gospel I know that it's a hard sell because the Greeks consider this gospel thing foolish the word is moronic you mean to tell me that somebody that wasn't smart enough to keep himself from getting crucified died on the cross for the sins of the whole wide world why that's the most moronic thing I've ever heard and you know what 2000 years later most of the world still considers that moronic and to the

[49:39] Jew Paul says it's a stumbling block what that means is for the Jewish people to assign to the Jewish people a supposed Messiah deliverer rescuer for them who died as a criminal on a Roman cross and you assign that to the Jewish people frankly that is embarrassing that is embarrassing to be connected with a situation like that the Jew just falls all over it you know and well what does he apply to it he applies human fallen logic to the concept and it comes up to him with just an embarrassment that he will not own and the Greek the Greeks who were so smart so super intelligent as to provide for us

[50:40] Aristotle Socrates Plato and by the way these guys were in basic disagreements with each other but they represented the finest thinking acute minds that existed then and Paul said and these people these so educated enlightened people still had the statue of a false god on just about every street corner with a name under him and they even had one in case they left him out to the unknown god and this this represented the intellectual elite of the day the Greek philosophers are you kidding me fellas that's just another example of the fallen mind the fallen intellect the darkened mind Don we know through the Bible and Jesus our way through heaven but each religion somewhere comes along with their way to get to heaven

[51:46] Muslims they go to heaven one way or another it seems like everybody gets confused with this sort of thing if you think of it and look at it you wonder which is right well you know it's right but I mean each one has their own way of interpreting oh yeah absolutely and you know what all that is a result of that too is a result of human thinking and fallen reasoning and so on and this is this is one of many reasons why we have the scriptures is to give us the entrance of thy word gives light and fellas you won't get it any place else so and and you're right there are a lot of different beliefs and ideas and Islam is just one of them and Judaism is another and Confucius is another and so on and each of them have commendable things about them because let me tell you something fellas Satan is so smart he much prefers a half truth with a half lie rather than a whole lie too many people will not believe a whole lie but they'll believe a half truth and he goes with that and he makes hay with it and it's evidence today hey again breakfast is here and I can't compete with tell you what I want to do though next week

[53:11] I want to begin a series unless you have something else that you want to talk about I want to begin a series on what happened to you when you came to faith in Christ that you didn't even know about at the time and you probably still don't and Dr.

[53:29] Louis Fair Chafer who was the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary wrote a paper on this that I was very impressed with and it was called 33 Things 33 Things that took place instantly in your life when you came to faith in Christ and they are enumerated and I've got them in print and I'm anxious to share them with you because fellas I'm telling you none of us really realize how rich we are how blessed we are in Christ and it will be an eye opener so I'm looking forward to sharing that with you and we'll do that we'll begin it next week thank you enjoy your breakfast