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[0:00] world does that with faulty assumptions? A lot. Let me explain. God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure. While Eric Liddell's quote from the film, Chariots of Fire, describes delight only a dedicated runner could relate to, the story has captured the hearts of diverse audiences for over 25 years. The British film won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1981 and numerous other awards. Chariots of Fire is based on the experiences of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, two Cambridge University undergraduates, who competed in the 1924 Paris Summer Olympics. Abrahams, a non-religious Jew, overcame anti-Semitism and proved himself an exceptional sprinter. His nearest competitor was Eric Liddell, also an exceptional sprinter. The story follows the two athletes contrast their motivations to compete and win. Abrahams ran to achieve the acceptance and status winning would confer on him. Liddell ran for the God-given pleasure of running. Win or lose, he planned to leave for his father's mission in China upon graduation. Little resolved not to run on Sunday in honor of the Sabbath.

[1:50] This meant he couldn't run in a race in which he excelled. He ran another race on another day instead. In the movie, Abraham's won, but found no lasting satisfaction in his victory, while little discovered joy not dependent on winning, but on being faithful to the dictates of his religion and following God's purpose for his life.

[2:18] While the screenplay contains several inaccuracies of fact and circumstance, it does tell compellingly the real story of little struggles and perseverance. The film's stirring music and uplifting themes of resolve, integrity, and character, along with its Christian message, continue to resonate with viewers.

[2:42] It has beautiful music, isn't it? Chariots of Fire is just a wonderful, wonderful piece of music. It's sad to say, Eric Liddell died in a Japanese concentration camp near the end of World War II, 1945.

[3:04] And one has to admire his convictions, his unwillingness to participate in a world-recognized event, because for him to do so, would have violated his conscience, would have violated his conscience, and would have desecrated the Sabbath.

[3:26] And I just want you to understand that even though he was true to his conscience, which we ought always to be, he was wrong in his assumption.

[3:41] And the beautiful thing about it is that God reads our heart. And he read the heart of Eric Liddell.

[3:53] And you know, scripturally speaking, it was not necessary at all for him to back out of that, because it was on Sunday, which they referred to as the Sabbath. And therein lies just one of a whole host of faulty assumptions that we are going to be examining.

[4:13] And his faulty assumption is still, by the way, held by a lot of people today. And that is that the Sabbath, which begins in the Old Testament and is actually established in the first week of creation, that the Sabbath, which, biblically speaking, begins at sundown Friday and lasts until sundown Saturday, 24 hours.

[4:43] That's the Jewish Sabbath, and that it has been changed to Sunday. Well, the truth of the matter is, it has not been changed at all.

[4:56] The Sabbath is still sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Sunday is not and never has been and never will be the Sabbath.

[5:08] Sunday is simply the first day of the week. And in deference to Eric Liddell, because I do want to honor the man for being true to his own conscience and his own convictions, and God reads that.

[5:27] That's a very big item with the Lord. Still, it wasn't necessary that he do that, but he did so because he was laboring like a lot of other people were under a faulty assumption. And if you look back in history, there are some who blame and some who do not blame the Pope for having changed it from Saturday to Sunday.

[5:48] But there is no authentication of that. It is safe to say, however, that generally speaking, all across Christendom, it has been commonly accepted by many that everything that was illegal and inappropriate for a Jew to do on the Sabbath is equally inappropriate for a Christian to do on Sunday.

[6:19] Now, it all depends on where you go as to how far and how closely that wants to be followed. Because that would also include you do not cook a meal on the Sabbath on Sunday.

[6:36] But do you do that? Of course you do. And that also means that you would not go out to a restaurant and be responsible for making other people work on Sunday.

[6:47] But do you do that? Sure you do. So where does this thing really play out and how does it come about anyway? What was changed regarding the Sabbath?

[7:02] And the answer is nothing. It's still just as it was. And believe it or not, not even the Jewish people are incumbent upon observing the Sabbath as they have for centuries.

[7:17] They're not really under obligation to do that. And I'll tell you why. And this too is something that many people do not understand. And of course, the Jewish people certainly would not agree with. But Old Testament Judaism, as it is practiced in the Old Testament and continuing on into the New Testament, is defunct.

[7:37] It's kaput. It's out of business. It has no basis of operation. When Jesus Christ died on that cross and said, it is finished.

[7:50] And the veil in the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom. This is a wise man opinion, so be advised, take it with a grain of salt.

[8:01] But in my estimation, that was God's way of saying, he's done with that. It's finished. It's over. The Old Covenant came to an end.

[8:13] Right there. There's also another faulty assumption in connection with that. And that is that that's when the New Covenant began. When the Old ended.

[8:25] No, it didn't. The New Covenant never has begun. It is that of which Jeremiah prophesied in chapter 31 and verse 31.

[8:38] Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Judah and the house of Israel, not like the covenant which I had with them before which they broke.

[8:53] The New Covenant was ratified with the house of Israel. The New Covenant was ratified with animal blood. The New Covenant was ratified with animal blood when Israel signed on at Mount Sinai. But Jesus said that his blood was going to be the New Covenant, would ratify the New Covenant.

[9:12] And he said that the night that he was betrayed. And it's very, very interesting and very important. Because when Jesus passed that common chalice to the others to drink of it, all 11 of them, because Judas had already gone out.

[9:25] Jesus said, drink of it, all of you. But I will not drink of it until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of heaven.

[9:41] And that's never happened. You may be sure it is going to happen. And that will be millennial truth. And that will be when Jesus sits down at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

[9:56] And the celebration, because the enemies of Israel and the enemies of God will have been decimated and completely done away with. And then they will be bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

[10:11] And then Jesus will lift that chalice. And he will drink from it. And that will be the New Covenant. So right now, the New Covenant does not exist. Oh, by the way, you know the New Covenant by a more familiar name.

[10:28] It's called the New Testament. And we've already pointed out to you that out of the 14 times the word Testament is used in the Bible, it is mistranslated every single time.

[10:46] It should be translated covenant. So we've got an old covenant that ended, if my assessment of that is correct. Because the veil in the temple that was torn in two, that's recorded by both, by all three, Matthew, Mark and Luke.

[11:03] It's all the synoptics. And that veil separated the holy place from the most holy place. And the most holy place is where the Ark of the Covenant was.

[11:15] And that's where God said he would dwell and meet with his people, Israel. And the high priest was allowed to go in there one day out of the year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

[11:27] And there he would offer a blood sacrifice for himself and for the sins of the nation and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. And Israel's sins would be put on hold for one more year.

[11:42] Next year, he'd have to go back in, do the same thing again. And each time he did that, it was with animal blood. But we read in Hebrews that it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin.

[11:58] It took a more worthy sacrifice than that. And of course, our Lord Jesus was the worthiest sacrifice of all. So when he said it is finished and the veil in the temple was rent in two, that opened up, made obvious to anybody there, that which they were not even permitted to look upon before, under penalty of death.

[12:24] I mean, it just dropped dead if anybody walked in there, other than the high priest. And he couldn't do it any other time but that one day out of the year. And now God has ripped that thing and the veil, we are told the veil was torn into from the top to the bottom.

[12:42] Some of our liberal friends said, well, that's easy to explain. It was an earthquake and that tore the veil. But others say that had it been an earthquake, the veil would have been torn from the bottom to the top.

[12:55] But the scripture is very specific. It was torn from the top to the bottom. I can visualize in my mind's imagination just as if it were two giant hands reaching down. And by the way, this veil was not a flimsy little curtain like these things hanging here.

[13:11] This was anywhere from six to eight inches thick, heavily interwoven and very heavy, and draped all the way from the ceiling to the floor. That was torn in two from the top to the bottom.

[13:23] And in my humble opinion, that was God's way of saying, I'm finished with this. It's over. And the old covenant was defunct.

[13:35] And it still is defunct. And Jews today, even the Orthodox Jews, who observe the Sabbath, don't have to.

[13:47] Keep a kosher diet, they don't have to. They're not under that law anymore. And Gentiles never were under it. Mosaic law never was given to Gentiles.

[13:58] We never were. Never given to the Egyptians. Never given to the Babylonians. Never given to the Assyrians. Never given to Gentiles at all. So, now it is defunct.

[14:09] And the new covenant that Jesus said he is going to establish has never yet come into being. So, what we have is a 400 year gap of time between the writing of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew.

[14:27] Which is just a continuation of the word of God. And it is not, it is not correctly, it is not the New Testament. Jesus lived, functioned, thrived, ministered under the Old Testament economy.

[14:44] That's why he, as a Jew, was circumcised the eighth day. That's why he kept the Sabbath. That's why he ate kosher food. That's why he observed the law of Moses in every way.

[14:56] And nobody did it as well as he did. Because he didn't come to destroy the law. He came to fulfill it. But then when he died at the end of the Gospels, that was law passing off the scene.

[15:10] There's a verse in Hosea I'd like you to turn to very quickly if you would please. I hadn't planned to go here, but you need to see this verse. Because it's talking about this very thing. When we were in Israel in 1990, I remember, I think I shared with you this before.

[15:26] I talked to a Jewish rabbi. We had a Q&A session. And I asked him, I said, with the sacrifice of animals being so critical and so germane to Judaism, how is it that you Jewish people now carry on your worship when you don't have an altar and you don't have a temple and you can't sacrifice animals anymore?

[15:46] And the answer he gave was, well, we pray. We pray. And I thought back, I thought, boy, can you just imagine the high priest going in to the most holy place on Yom Kippur and bringing with him no blood, no animal sacrifice.

[16:07] And he tells the Lord, I didn't bring an animal and there isn't any blood, but we're praying.

[16:18] I don't think it would fly. I don't think it would fly. Not then, not now. So that is that that whole thing is defunct. So where are we now?

[16:29] What what covenant is there that is enforced? The answer is none. None. None. Christianity does not belong to either covenant, old or new.

[16:41] Christianity is a parenthesis that is plugged in between that is called the church age or the age of grace, or some say the dispensation of grace.

[16:56] And it doesn't belong to either covenant. It just popped up right out of the blue, out of nowhere. And Ephesians chapter three tells us that it was never revealed before.

[17:07] Nobody ever thought of it. Nobody predicted it. Nobody said it was coming. And when it happened. The most dynamic aspect of it is that Jew and Gentile are no longer separate.

[17:20] But when they have faith in Christ, they are melded together into one body. They twain, Jew and Gentile, becoming one flesh.

[17:32] And that one flesh is the body of Christ, of which Christ is the head. And it's a spiritual body. And everyone who is a believer in Christ belongs to that body. But we do not belong to the new covenant.

[17:44] We do not belong to the old covenant. We are not covenantal. We are grace. And that's an entirely different thing. And what I have just shared with you is understood by very few and is believed by very few.

[17:59] But I would take it to the bank. I don't have any question about it being true. Hosea chapter two or three.

[18:11] Some of these move around. What am I looking for? What did I tell you I was looking for?

[18:22] Oh yeah. Israel. Israel. Israel. Well.

[18:34] Part of the problem is I'm using a different Bible. I've got it. Israel will dwell many days without an ephod, without an offering, without a sacrifice.

[18:55] Thank you. Chapter three. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Israel. This is this is this is prophetic too, of course. The sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince.

[19:09] By the way, the last king they had. The last king they had was named Zedekiah. And when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem, they sacked the city.

[19:22] They, they made prisoners of people. They, a lot of people were killed. And they took king Zedekiah. And watched him, made him watch his sons.

[19:35] Be executed before his eyes. And after he witnessed that. They put his eyes out. And they made him and thousands of other Jews walk.

[19:48] All the way to Babylon. And they're going to be there for 70 years. And during that time, it's going to be excruciating for them.

[20:03] And of course, it is in many respects. Right now, they're still suffering. The Jewish people are suffering in different ways. And in verse three, he says, I'm sorry, verse four, the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince.

[20:21] And Israel's never had a king. They don't have a kingdom. They've got a prime minister and a Knesset. They don't have a king. Not a king and without a prince, without sacrifice. And if you know anything about Judaism, listen, and you need to understand this, too.

[20:40] That Judaism is the cradle of Christianity. And God used the principles and practices of Judaism and the system of worship that he built into it to condition not only Israel, but the world for the one ultimate sacrifice that would one day be made.

[20:59] And that, of course, is in the person of Jesus Christ. So they were without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or household idols. These are characteristic things for the Jewish family.

[21:10] And afterward, is this when they are will remain many days without these things? That includes now. This is Israel now. They're without all of these things.

[21:23] Now, bear in mind that when Hosea wrote this prophecy under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, David the king had been dead and buried for hundreds of years.

[21:42] But David is going to be resurrected bodily, physically. And he is going to rule and to reign in Israel as the vice-region of Jesus Christ.

[21:53] We saw this in our monthly sessions that we hold once a month. And matter of fact, everybody is going to be resurrected. We're going to be resurrected. We're going to be there.

[22:04] We're going to be enjoying this. David their king, and they will come trembling to the Lord and to his goodness in the last days. And this, of course, is speaking of the remnant of Israel.

[22:16] And they will embrace Yeshua HaMashiach as their Messiah. And now let's go quickly to Romans 14. I've still got to get this open for Q&A from you.

[22:27] Romans 14. And this is the Sabbath business. Paul is talking about doubtful things. Doubtful things come under the category of things that are pretty much left to the discretion of the individual and their particular conscience.

[22:47] And here he's talking about the diet. And, of course, the big issue here was between Jew and Gentile and what was clean and unclean animals.

[22:58] And the Jew had been given very, very specific directions regarding the animals that were acceptable for food and those that were not. And they were categorized as clean and unclean. Remember in Acts 10 when Peter saw this sheet let down from heaven and it contained all manner of four-footed beasts, clean and unclean?

[23:16] And he said, and the voice said to Peter, rise, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter said, no, sir, nothing doing. I've never in my life eaten anything unclean and I'm not about to start now.

[23:30] And this went on three times, three times before Peter finally got the message. He was the chiefest of the apostles and he also had the hardest head.

[23:42] He was a slow learner. And the Lord said, this is really significant because all of those animals in that sheet, they were not symbolic of animals. They were symbolic of people.

[23:53] And the end result was the Lord told Peter, what God hath cleansed that call thou not common or unclean, signifying that the kosher diet restrictions were done away.

[24:10] How so? The law of Moses was done away. It came to an end. And here he's talking about the Sabbath. And that's very sacred to the Jew.

[24:21] In fact, Jesus, when he was here for his earthly ministry, he had more clashes with the religious establishment over the issue of the Sabbath than anything else. And here we read in chapter 14, regarding the diet, look at verse 2.

[24:38] One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. That is, he who is actually immature in the faith and he is locked in to vegetables only.

[24:54] He is a vegin. Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats.

[25:09] For God has accepted him. In other words, he's saying, look, you people need to be willing to cut each other some slack. And don't impose your standards on others. Each person needs to be sensitive to their own conscience.

[25:23] And it's important that a man not violate his conscience. And if a Jew, when it was considered unacceptable to eat kosher food or to not eat kosher food, had he been given a ham sandwich to eat, he could look at it and say, I cannot eat that.

[25:44] That would violate my conscience and would be a sin against God. Now, Gentile wouldn't have that problem. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls and stand he will.

[25:57] For the Lord is able to make him stand. And look at verse 5. This gets into the Sabbath thing. One man regards one day above another. Well, everybody knows that the Jew always regarded the Sabbath as the day.

[26:12] That was everything in the Jewish economy. And then it goes on to say, he who does so, does so for the Lord.

[26:23] For he gives thanks to God. He who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat and gives thanks to God. And regarding the Sabbath day, let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

[26:34] And as you read verse 5, I don't know if you've got a new American standard or not, but I do in front of me. And I want you to notice the word alike, if that's what you have. You see anything different about the word alike?

[26:47] It's in italics, isn't it? What does that mean? That means it's not in the original text. That means that the translators inserted the word.

[26:59] They took the liberty of inserting the word alike because they thought it would make better sense. But it actually detracts from the truth. Because when you put that word in, it changes the meaning.

[27:12] Look at the text without the word alike. And here's what you get. One man regards one day above another. Another regards every day.

[27:23] That's what we're supposed to do. Every day. Every day. We're not to regard the Sabbath as one day above another. We're not even to regard the first day of the week as one day above another.

[27:34] We are supposed to honor every day. As the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. In other words, for the Christian, for the Christian, it isn't illegal to do certain things on certain days, but then legal to do them on other days.

[27:54] That's nonsense. You remember years ago, there was a lot of controversy about the blue laws. Remember the blue laws?

[28:05] The reason they were given the name the blue laws is because when they were originally published and printed, they came out on blue paper. And it signified that all these businesses and everything needed to be closed.

[28:17] And you know, a lot of that is still in effect, especially if you go down south. They still observe that very much down there. And we do after a fashion year. But I can remember some of you, many of you aren't old enough to remember this, but I can remember when virtually everything closed on Sunday.

[28:34] About the only thing that was open was a hospital and some kind of an emergency service. The fire trucks had run on Sunday and that was about it. Everything else shut down. Why? Well, it was the Sabbath.

[28:45] Nonsense. It wasn't a Sabbath. It was Sunday. And there was no regard for that, no restriction for that. I remember reading an interesting article about the guy who had the responsibility for doing the scheduling for the Pittsburgh, or not Pittsburgh, but the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Athletics.

[29:08] And the American team, American League and National League team, and they were both in Philadelphia at the time. And the scheduling guy had nightmares because Sunday through just about every other part of the country was a big day for baseball, but not in Philadelphia.

[29:24] You couldn't play baseball on Sunday in Philadelphia because of the blue laws. And this is where it was really seriously enacted. But it isn't now because they've given way.

[29:37] And do you realize what has taken over the blue law? You know what the saying is? Follow the money. Follow the money. And that's how they did away with that.

[29:49] So the Jew today is under no obligation. Keep the sample. What law does he have? He has the same law that people had before the law of Moses was ever established.

[30:05] And that is in the book of Genesis. God wrote in to the heart and mind of every human being, the essential knowledge of right and wrong and good and evil.

[30:21] And this is what he's talking about in Philippians 2 when he says, for the Jew or for the Gentiles, for the Gentiles who have not the law, do by nature the things recorded in the law.

[30:34] That is the idea of right and wrong. Where did they get that idea? God programmed it. He built it into us. And it's part of our volition and part of our conscience. We have a conscience and a conscience is a moral indicator that we have violated a standard when the conscience is activated.

[30:52] And the Jew has that and we have that and the whole humanity has it. Everyone in the world has that. That's the law that we are. And if you are a Christian, then you are under the law of liberty of life in Christ Jesus, according to Romans chapter two, which means we have a higher standard than simply that which is written in the heart because we have the word of God.

[31:13] So entertain a comment or question. You may have another article here to read, but I'll hold that as long as you've got a question. If you don't, I'll read it.

[31:24] It's interesting. Anyone? Okay. You've had your chance. This is an article. This is an article written by Walter Williams, one of my one of my favorite columnists.

[31:40] And it's quite interesting because it's so timely and it's right on track with what we're talking about. Experts, as Trump critics prove, aren't always right.

[31:52] Now, this is fascinating. And I made copies of it and it's on the literature rack back there. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers predicted that if Donald Trump were elected, there would be a protracted recession within 18 months.

[32:11] Heeding its experts a month before the election, the Washington Post ran an editorial with the headline, quote, President Trump could destroy the world economy.

[32:24] Steve Ratner, a Democratic financier and former head of the National Economic Council warned, if the unlikely event happens and Trump wins, you will see a market crash of historic proportions.

[32:39] When Trump's electoral victory became apparent, Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that the world was very probably looking at a global recession with no end in sight.

[32:55] By the way, Krugman has been so wrong in so many of his economic predictions, but that doesn't stop him from making more shameless predictions. Anybody here remember Jean Dixon?

[33:07] She, the world waited with bated breath every December for Jean Dixon's predictions because she was going to tell you what was going to happen in the coming year.

[33:18] And they give column space to her predictions and people read them and gasp, but there's never any follow up.

[33:29] Her average on accuracy was about 12%. Well, I can do better than that for crying out loud. But they never published her failures. And yet every year the public would be a sucker and line up to buy her book.

[33:43] Amazing. Amazing. Listen, listen to this. People whom we've trusted as experts have often been wrong beyond imagination. And it's nothing new.

[33:54] Irving Fisher, a distinguished Yale University economics professor in 1929 predicted stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

[34:07] 1929. Three days later, the stock market crashed. In 1945, this one I thought was really interesting. Regarding money spent on the Manhattan Project.

[34:21] You know what the Manhattan Project was? Yeah, that was the research team that came up with the atomic bomb. Hmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm.

[34:32] Mm-hmm. So, Admiral William Leahy told President Harry S. Truman, that is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off.

[34:44] These are experts talking. You remember the definition of an expert. An X is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure. Albert Einstein.

[34:56] Now, I would expect better from Albert. Wouldn't you? I mean, he's kind of like the paragon of intellect. Albert Einstein predicted there is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.

[35:12] It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. In 1899, Charles H. Duell. This is a cooker.

[35:23] Charles H. Duell. In 1899, the U.S. Commissioner of Patents said, everything that can be invented has been invented. So just quit.

[35:36] Shut down the patent office. Nobody's going to come up with anything else. Listening to its experts in 1936, the New York Times predicted, a rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

[35:53] Listen, do you realize these were the best and the brightest? Now, any kid in grade school knows that these things aren't so.

[36:06] To prove that it's not just academics, professionals, and business people who make harebrained predictions, Hall of Fame baseball player Trish Speaker, in 1919, advice about Babe Ruth was, taking the best left-handed pitcher in baseball and converting him into a right fielder was one of the dumbest things I ever heard.

[36:24] And Babe Ruth was only one of the greatest outfielders who ever played the game. And this is the one that really gets me. Because this guy is one of my idols. Sir Isaac Newton. The world's greatest geniuses are by no means exempt from out-and-out nonsense.

[36:39] Sir Isaac Newton was probably the greatest scientist of all time. He laid the foundation for classical mechanics. His genius transformed our understanding of physics, mathematics, and astronomy.

[36:53] What's not widely known is that Newton spent most of his waking hours on alchemy. Some of his crackpot experiments included trying to turn lead into gold.

[37:07] Oh, come on, Ike. Surely you knew better than that. And there's mathematical physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin. Kelvin is widely recognized for determining the correct value of absolute zero, approximately minus 273.15 degrees Celsius, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit.

[37:31] In honor of his achievement, extremely high and extremely low temperatures are expressed in units called Kelvins. Kelvin predicted, X-rays will prove to be a hoax.

[37:49] What do you make of this? Well, really, it ought not to surprise us for the simple reason these people are just human beings. And you know what? They were all guilty of faulty assumptions.

[38:04] Every one of them. And when it comes to theology and doctrine and biblical truth, how do you think it is?

[38:14] Why do you think it is we have 250 denominations, conventions, synods, splits, splinters, sects, and cults.

[38:25] And they all radically differ from one another for the most part. What happened there? What's going on? How were these doctrines arrived at?

[38:37] I'll tell you how they were arrived at. They were arrived at by men of honesty and integrity who read the Bible and who rendered their interpretations and because those men were well thought of, were highly regarded, were intelligent, were well educated.

[38:57] They took their findings and they cast them in stone. And they have become bedrock almost ever since. And many of them have no basis in truth or fact at all.

[39:12] But the more people you get to believe something, the more people will believe it. Because numbers tend to add legitimacy accuracy and accuracy to a position even if it's wrong.

[39:26] Just as long as you can get enough people who endorse it in the eyes of many, that makes it right. You can buy it. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's not the case.

[39:39] And interpretations that people have come up with through the years, verses and passages of Scripture, many of which we're going to be looking at, they were just wide off the mark.

[39:50] And yet, because they were honored and revered individuals, respectable people, knowledgeable people, where does that put the laity under them?

[40:02] Well, they're the experts. They know all about it. Hey, he knows Greek and Hebrew. That automatically means he knows what he's talking about. That makes him right. No, it doesn't.

[40:13] There are so many factors that come into play here. And so many people are just willing to buy into almost anything if the right person who is notable enough and has a good enough reputation endorses it.

[40:25] That's good enough for them. Well, it shouldn't be. That's not being a Berean. That's being a flunky. You just fall in line with the worst thing, worst thing anyone could say.

[40:36] Well, if that's what's, if that's what so-and-so believes, that's good enough for me. Well, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Unless the one speaking is Jesus Christ, then it ought to be good enough for you.

[40:47] But as long as it's just a man, it's subject to question. And I'm not going to stand here and teach you anything that I don't believe to be true.

[40:58] But that doesn't make it true. That's why Christianity has always been regarded as a thinking faith. God does not expect nor want you to put your brains on the shelf.

[41:14] Okay, you've got questions or comments, preferably, I hope, about this. But yes, Nathan, we got a microphone? Okay.

[41:24] Okay. So with all the disagreements and things, I think it's very common today for there to be kind of a relative, a relativism of some extent, saying, well, we can't really know for sure what the Bible teaches about this or that.

[41:47] And so people say it's kind of common. There's even kind of movements where the thinking is, well, we just need to ask lots of questions but not really hold too tightly to any answers, that kind of thing.

[42:01] And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Well, I would be the first to agree that there are a number of passages of Scripture that I just do not have any satisfactory answers for.

[42:14] And I've been studying this book for over 60 years. I still don't know the significance of the wheel within a wheel in Ezekiel chapter 1. And I certainly don't know what Paul says.

[42:25] if the dead rise not, why are they then baptized for the dead? Last I heard, there were 42 different interpretations of what it means to be baptized for the dead.

[42:39] And there's a good possibility none of them are right. I still don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. I'm sure that it's related to history and the culture. But I don't know. And you know, the Mormon Church has bought into that.

[42:52] And they practice proxy baptism. You will not find a greater compilation of genealogies anywhere in the world than what you will find in Salt Lake City and the Mormon Church.

[43:09] And they have got an incredible genealogical thing. And the main reason they do it is because they take that verse, 1 Corinthians 15, 29, very seriously about baptism for the dead.

[43:20] And they find these registers and lists of people from all over the world, foreign, foreign, whatever, Asia, Africa, it doesn't make any difference. They get these names and then they have Mormon people subject themselves to water baptism in that person's name.

[43:36] And it's called proxy baptism because Mormon theology says that baptism is essential. people, and it wasn't long ago, maybe it was just two or three years ago, that the Jewish people found out that they were doing that and they wrote them a formal letter and they said, please have your people stop baptizing Jewish people in your name.

[44:00] Proxy baptism, they were offended by it because it encroached in what they thought was their Judaism. But that's just one verse and there are so many. But you know, somebody asked me, don't you have verses in the Bible, passages in the Bible that you don't understand?

[44:17] And I said, oh yeah, I've got a bunch of them. He said, well then, if you can't even understand those verses, why do you believe this stuff? Why do you believe this book at all?

[44:27] And I said, because of the verses that I do understand, that which I do understand gives me license to embrace those that I don't understand and even though I can't make sense of them or understand how, I can embrace them in saying that there is truth there because it's the word of God and I just haven't discovered it yet and it hasn't come up.

[44:52] And I've discovered a whole lot of things in the last 60 years that I didn't know 70 years before, you know? So it's a learning process. We are growing and developing and maturing in the word and when we get to heaven, we're all going to get straightened out.

[45:07] Yeah. Somebody else with a comment, question? Okay, Scott? Yeah, I'm just curious. The non-Pauline epistles as part of the, quote, New Testament, Hebrews, James, Titus, all through the non-Pauline, how do they contribute to the false assumptions if they have bled over into us?

[45:39] Well, I would categorize those like I do for that matter virtually all of the Old Testament. And you've heard me say this before but it bears repetition.

[45:49] all of the Bible is for us. All of it. From Genesis to Revelation, it is all for us but it is not all to us and it is not all about us.

[46:06] It is mainly about and for and to the Jew because the writers of the Bible are 40 Jews and every book in the Bible all the 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New, they all deal far more intensely with things Jewish than they do Gentiles.

[46:27] In fact, Jesus had virtually nothing to do with Gentiles and yet even though he came to his own and his own was Israel, he came to Israel, he didn't come to the world, he came to Israel for the world.

[46:43] Now, I don't want to get mired down in prepositions here but they are important. So, he came to his own, his own received him not, so he came to Israel but he also came for the world and as many as received him, to them gave he the power and the authority and become the sons of God.

[46:58] So, the whole concept of those passages, let me put it this way, the spiritual principles that are found in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation are transferable across all dispensations.

[47:24] Spiritual principles are abiding truths that are applicable for every generation, every people of all times. The faithfulness of God is a spiritual principle.

[47:37] Is there any place that isn't in vogue? Of course not. It works across the plain and doesn't make any difference where. So, all spiritual principles are transferable concepts and they fit across the whole spectrum of biblical revelation.

[47:51] But as you read what is commonly referred to as the Christian Hebrew epistles, starting with the book of Hebrews and ending with the revelation, you will note, if you just read them with just a cursory reading, you will see that they have a very heavy Jewish emphasis.

[48:10] Just read them. They don't read anything like Paul's epistles. And the reason they don't is because the audience to whom they are addressed in most cases is very obvious.

[48:23] Who are the twelve tribes scattered abroad? Well, they're Jews. They're Jews who are not in Jerusalem, not in Israel. They're scattered all over the Mediterranean world.

[48:34] And that's to whom these were written. And they all have a distinctly Jewish flavor to them. But when you get into the Pauline epistles, they constitute a parenthesis in between.

[48:49] and they are markedly different. Where you've got Jew and Gentile on common footing, no superiority, no inferiority.

[49:05] And the same is true with slaves and free and male and female. You'll find that in the rest of the Bible. You'll only find it in that updated information that God revealed to Paul after Christ ascended.

[49:23] And here's what we've got. And this helped me to understand it. When Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, right before he ascended to heaven, he gave a commission.

[49:37] You shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. And it was kind of like a takeoff on what's commonly referred to as a great commission, Matthew 28, 19, 20.

[49:50] And those were the marching orders as they consisted at that time. And they continued to be the marching orders as long as Israel was available as a possibility of accepting Jesus as their Messiah.

[50:08] And when the string ran out on that, we are told in Romans chapter 11, that Israel has been set aside in judicial blindness.

[50:22] I'm not real sure when that crisis point came, when the opportunity for Israel was withdrawn, but it was. And when that happened, God raised up the least likely individual in the world, Saul of Tarsus, to be the conveyor of an entirely new message.

[50:51] And that message is Jew and Gentile together as one body. Where did Paul get that information? Let me put it this way.

[51:02] It was an update. It was an update that no one ever anticipated or dreamed of. it was never revealed, it was never prophesied. But the risen Christ, after he ascended, called the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

[51:20] And then later, we are told, Paul said, that he was given an abundance of revelations. Christians. And these were all new things that had never been heard of before.

[51:33] And when Paul went on the stump and began proclaiming Christ and his missionary journeys and everything, who did he get all the opposition from? Jews. Why?

[51:44] They were still locked in to the Old Testament. And when you get into chapter 19, I think it is, in the book of Acts, and Paul comes to Jerusalem, and he's met by some of the authorities there and they welcome him and they say, Paul, we just want you to know that all of your Jewish brethren here, they've been hearing all kinds of wild things about you.

[52:09] And some are saying that you are denouncing Judaism. And Paul never actually did that. He never preached against that. He preached an enlightenment to it, but he never preached against it.

[52:23] And these guys, and they told Paul, he said, you see, brethren, how many, how many Jews there are here who believe.

[52:34] And that simply means they had come to the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah. They were like the 3,000 on the day of Pentecost. You see how many Jews there are here that believe.

[52:45] And he goes on and says, and they are all zealous for the law. Well, they didn't have to be, but they didn't know that. They were still locked into the law.

[52:57] They were still going to the synagogue. They were still offering sacrifices. They were still doing all those things after that Baal in the temple had been writ. And they didn't know that. They didn't understand that. And the understanding wouldn't come until sometime later.

[53:10] And he says, now, what you need to do, Paul, in order to maintain your reputation and prove them that you're not a turncoat, that you're not a traitor to Judaism, we've got four young men here who are under a vow.

[53:26] Would you pay their fee for them? It was the requirement under the Jewish law. And Paul said, yeah, sure I will. Sure. And he did. And you know, Paul has received a lot of criticism from Bible scholars for doing that because they said he's reneged on his faith.

[53:41] He didn't do any such thing. It's an example of what Paul meant when he said, look, to the Jew, I became as a Jew. To the Gentiles and the Greeks, I became as a Gentile or Greek.

[53:57] I'm becoming all things to all men that I might by any means save some. And Paul never compromised his convictions at all, but he didn't go in stirring up troubles, trying to start a fight, although that's what happened a number of times.

[54:11] But this is so critical and so important. This is the transition period in the book of Acts that encompassed a number of years where you've got doctrine that is on the move, developing, changing.

[54:26] And when Paul went on the stump and began preaching salvation by grace through faith alone, the Jewish brethren called him on the carpet and said, what is this new heresy that you've come up with?

[54:43] Justification by faith. You read this in Romans chapter four. He says, what shall we say then regarding our father Abraham as concerning the faith? And he gives Abraham as the pristine example because every Jew knew and was locked into Abraham.

[54:59] He says, Abraham, our father Abraham was justified by faith. Listen, my fellow Jews, this is not some new strange doctrine I'm giving you.

[55:10] This goes all the way back to our father Abraham. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This justification by faith is not some new fangled doctrine that I'm preaching.

[55:24] This has been around from the beginning. But the problem is it had been lost in Judaism. It had been overtaken by ritual and tradition and faulty role and all of the legalism that went along with it.

[55:40] And the same thing has happened to the Roman Catholic Church. And the same thing has happened to the Protestant Church. Nobody has escaped it. They're both corrupt.

[55:52] Protestant and Catholic and Jewish. They're all corrupt. So, what am I saying? We're the only pure ones? Of course not. We've got our corruption too.

[56:04] And I'm looking for it. If you find some, let me know. We don't have a corner on it. But I know that. Well, you didn't get a fair shake on the questions, did you?

[56:20] Okay, I'm going to give you a chance next week. Bring your questions. And by the way, somebody was kind enough to submit some questions in writing, and I appreciate that because I have a little more time to think about them.

[56:32] And I have some of their questions remaining yet, so we'll deal with those unless you have some others. And I want you to feel free to ask them either publicly or submit them, drop them in the offering box, and I'll be glad to deal with them.

[56:44] Okay, well, I'm not done but I quit. So would you stand please? Father, we recognize that there is so very much that we don't know.

[57:06] And there's so many areas in which we are as capable of being wrong as anybody else is. and we look to you for the wisdom that we know we do not have. And we want to come to the scriptures with open minds and open hearts because we cannot afford in any way, shape, or form to be led astray by faulty assumptions.

[57:29] assumptions. And we know that they abound and we know that many, through the years, have bought into faulty assumptions. And the real difficulty with them lies in the fact that people tend to act out what they assume to be true.

[57:45] We want to be people of integrity, of honesty. We want to be people who walk in the truth. But first, we've got to recognize it, understand it, and we trust that as we devote ourselves to the truths that you've provided, in this blessed book, that we will come to more and more conclusions that can be substantiated by the preponderance of scripture that you've revealed.

[58:09] For any heart or mind that might be here now looking for real issues, answers to their issues, answers that only you can provide that will enable one to be at peace with you and at peace with oneself, we pray for that person, whoever they might be, that you will provide them with the information that is needed, and that you'll give them no peace and no rest until they find it and rest in Christ.

[58:35] In his name we pray. Amen. Oh, I'd just like to say one thing real quick. If anybody's interested in pursuing this hermeneutics, interpreting the Bible, go back there and look for Christianity Clarified, volume 26, and through 40, that's where it starts.

[58:55]  And I've already gotten some good positive feedback on it. Thank you.