Is The Russian Invasion Fulfillment Of Prophecy? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so forewarning---this question is---we obviously don't know who asks the questions. And so we don't want to be disrespectful, but we also want to look at this from what we believe, a Christian's standpoint should be. Some questions we get, we feel maybe motivated politically, or maybe you hear things from other leaders and preachers. And so we're going to discuss this from what we believe is the perspective a Christian needs from a biblical standpoint.

Gary Schick
It's a good question really.

Ben Poole
It really is. And so we want to honor the question and the one that's asking it, but also, just be prepared. It may not be what you were expecting.

Gary Schick
Do you want the Bible's answer or what you want to hear?

Ben Poole
Yup. So here it is, and this is probably something that you've heard. If you've been online listening, this is definitely a hot topic. So here it is, "As we watch what Russia is doing in the Ukraine, many are wondering if this is fulfilling any biblical prophecy." So again, this is something I've seen a lot of. And I think there's gonna be multiple stances on this, depending on who you listen to. But as always, we want to come at it from a scriptural standpoint. So with that, Gary, why don't you open us up with some plots?

Gary Schick
You know, and I really wasn't thinking about it when I said it. I was just thinking about the snow outside, but if you're familiar with the Narnian kind of allegory, there was a time in Narnia when they were waiting for Aslan to come back. Which is, symbolically, the world under a winter like we're under now, in more ways than one, waiting for Jesus to return. And that's a question, you know, really is this a sign that Jesus is coming soon? And I know there's a lot of places people go in scripture, I actually start with the gospel. Every time people want to talk to me about the end times and "Are we in them and are we getting close?" I start with the words of Jesus, and then I go from there. Out to Revelation and back to Daniel and all those places that people wanna jump to right away. I start with the words of Jesus. And that gives me interestingly, a slightly different perspective on how it's gonna unfold than most Christians seem to have to me. The context is very close to the end of Jesus' life and ministry on this earth. He's in His final week in Jerusalem, He's in the temple---Herod's temple---which was one of the wonders of the world. And, you know, the disciples lived in a time kind of like ours. There was some stability and there was great instability. They were under Roman rule, and they were looking to get out from under it. Everybody was thinking that Jesus maybe was a Messiah, but not the Messiah. Cause they thought, they were thinking, "Political leader to get us out of this mess." Not truly a savior to the whole world. In fact, they weren't even interested in the rest of the world. They, like so many of us, let's just be honest we're interested in ourselves and our own life and our own little plot on the planet. And that's kind of where the Jews were, they didn't really have a God's heart for the world mindset. They had a God's heart for "us" mindset. And so anyway, one of the things that was stable---they thought in their world---was God's temple. "Here it is. Look at it Jesus, isn't it amazing." The buildings and the structures and wow! I mean, it was just really, very recently completed in Jesus time. Actually, I think they may have still been finishing up part of it. And so he just kind of makes this offhanded comment, "Do you see all these great buildings? I tell you not one stone will be left on another." Well to them, the thought of that temple being taken away could only mean the end of the world. And so later in the day, while they're sitting on the Mount of Olives, sun's going down, they're looking across. Today, if you sit on the Mount of Olives, you're gonna see, what is it? The Dome of the Rock. I mean, it's built where the temple was, this Muslim edifice. But there's kind of a mystique about it, the sun's shining off the golden roof. And so probably you'd get a similar feeling. And so the disciples are looking across at God's temple at that point and they're saying, "So Lord, tell us, when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming?" You know, because all they could imagine was the final, the showdown. And so I wanna take you back to Mark 13, you could also look at it in Matthew 24, you can also look at it in Luke. All of these end times speeches of Jesus, they're the same one, but each one, you know, Matthew tells us more than Mark does, Luke tells us some different things. But I start with Mark, cause it's the shortest, simplest, and really the core of it. And so Jesus said to them, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one will be left. They'll all be thrown down." So while sitting on the Mount of Olives, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will these things be? What will be the sign that they're about to be accomplished?" Jesus began to say to them, "See that no one leads you astray." This is a topic that people, Christians are vulnerable to being led astray about. Because we have a itching ears that want to know more. "See that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name saying, 'I am he' and they will lead many astray." And there were false Christs prior to Jesus: At the time of Jesus, right after Jesus, and there have been a few since. They'll lead ministry. And then, this is what's relevant to us Mark 13:7, "And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are but the beginning of birth pains." So first I wanna say where this does fit into scriptural prophecy, and then I want to key in on just one thing Jesus said there. In terms of prophecy, there has been a lot going on in the world in recent years. You know, we're hearing more about global warming and increasing, you know, violence in our weather. We've had the COVID thing. And just as we're coming out of COVID we all are wondering, I am too, could this lead to world war three? And what will that mean? Well, Jesus talks about how, as we approach the end, the very things that have been since the dawn of time: natural disaster, human war, famines and skyrocketing prices like you and I are seeing at the fuel pump today, these things will happen. But the only part of it that is showing that we're getting closer to "The Turn of the Jesus," is He compares it to birth pains. And I don't know about you, I remember particularly when our first one was born. My wife didn't believe that it was the day, but I'm sitting there at Red Lobster with her having supper and I just started timing the contractions. And they started out pretty spread out, but the intensity and the frequency began to increase. And I remember going upstairs with her to the hospital, she was still resistant and I was all wild, you know, like wild in my head. And I get to the desk and I said to the nurse, "I think we're pregnant." She looked at my wife, "Yeah, I think you're right about that." What I meant was, I think our pregnancy is about to turn into something more. The world is pregnant friends, and we're about to give birth to something. Is it today? Is it tomorrow? I don't know. But Jesus did say there would be an increase in intensity as we draw near to His coming. But what I wanna just move back to, is one word He said here in verse seven, "When you hear of wars and rumors of wars do not be alarmed." The Greek word there is, "θροεῖσθε," and it means to wail, to clamor, to frighten, to cry aloud, to make a noise by outcry, troubled, frightened, be troubled in mind, alarmed. Isn't that where we find ourselves? When we're sitting there looking at the news, whatever news station you happen to watch, whichever one you've decided is telling you the truth or not. We get a little crazy don't we? And Jesus says, "Hey. Hey! Don't be alarmed. Don't be." Then He goes on and talks about what we should be a little concerned about. You're gonna be brought before rulers in this world, and you're gonna have to give an account for what you believe. And even then don't be afraid, just say what the holy spirit says. Jesus says, "You be my people until I come again, you focus on that. Don't be focused on what's in the head lines." Cause it's gonna come, it's gonna go. And it's gonna come with greater frequency and nothing we think about is gonna change it. But what we do wanna focus on is being witnesses for Him. And living out the Christian life and praying for the leaders and letting God be God of the things that we can't control.

Ben Poole
Yeah. This is probably a touchy subject for a lot of people, and we understand that. And I think that from our perspective, whether it is fulfilling prophecy or not, I don't think that should be our main focus. Because one thing I know: God is God, He is unchanging and He is going to send Jesus back. "Period." End of discussion. When that happens nobody knows, not even the Son. He even said, "I don't know, it's only God. When He says it's time, it's time, and that's that." And so what happens that I struggle with, personally, is watching Christians get so wrapped up into things like this. They neglect the ministry of being a Christian. We are called, not to look for signs and wonders and prophecies, in fact, Jesus---

Gary Schick
In this very passage.

Ben Poole
He kind of is antagonistic against those who are looking for the signs and the wonders. And He's saying, "This is who you are to be." He's asked, "What's the greatest commandment?" Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself. These two complete, they are the fulfillment. They are the embodiment of all the law and the prophets. That's who we're to be, is to love God and to love people. And what happens is, so many times Christians are getting caught up in watching the news or listening to certain televangelists or preachers, from my perspective, teaching a fearful faith.

Gary Schick
And it brings in money.

Ben Poole
Yeah, it does.

Gary Schick
It sells.

Ben Poole
Fear sells, and so we are called to something else. And I really love the book of Revelation, and I think I see it differently than a lot of people. Like you said, it is one of the greatest books of hope in the entire scriptures. Because you think about the first generation church---

Gary Schick
God Wins!

Ben Poole
That they were being hunted like animals legally, legally murdered.

Gary Schick
Right.

Ben Poole
And God sends this revelation to John, for John to write down. To send to the churches as a message of hope, that you are going to endure great suffering, but I'm coming back.

Gary Schick
And that's the other thing people don't want to hear. I mean, obviously there are different viewpoints. Is Jesus coming before the tribulation, middle of tribulation, after tribulation? Regardless of your stand on that, Christians will go through times of tribulation. We're going through them now. Is it 'the' great tribulation? I mean, that's gonna depend on your position: Pre-trib, mid-trip, post-trib, and for some of you, what trip? I know, it gets confusing. But I think those arguments can be a ruse, because regardless of what happens at the very end, the last seven years, Jesus---in this passage---very directly says, "You will go through times. There will be times of trouble." And that's when we anchor in Him and say, "You know what? I know you're coming again, and I know you've got me. And I know that I need to rely on you for how I need to respond and not respond in the flesh."

Ben Poole
Yeah.

Gary Schick
But to be Christ's kid in the world and be prayerful and watchful and loving toward all. Which gets harder when it gets tougher. You know, it is hard to love.

Ben Poole
And that's just who God has called us to be. We know that tribulation and hard times are going to come. Who are you to be in the middle of those? You are to be the sons and daughters of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and to live for Him and to worship Him. But we can never use these times to neglect sharing the message of Jesus, because maybe God's coming back soon and maybe it's gonna be another thousand years. It doesn't really matter. He has called us to be His church, His people in the midst of these times. So that's our encouragement to you. I know that, maybe again, this might not have been the way you thought this conversation would go, and we would love to have more conversations about this if you'd like. But again, we're looking at this from a scriptural point from what we believe and really my heart and I think Gary's. No matter what comes be God's people.

Gary Schick
Well, and what gives us a great opportunity here is, just as Christians kind of get a little scared and wondering, or are excited, I would say, the world is actually scared. And to be without Christ in the crisis that we're in, and have just been in and are about to be in next, we don't know what's coming next. There's a lot of instability. You know, we've talked about what's gonna happen with oil and nickel and all kinds of, because we're dependent, we are so dependent. You know, can we even fully break the rush on everything who knows? But we have a message of hope. We know that God wins and that God's got us. And so it's not a blind, fluffy, boy are you're feet even laying on the ground. No, we are. We're walking through it. We're paying at the pump. We're praying for the relief to the people of Ukraine and the salvation of, you know, President Putin that he would just have a different heart and mindset. Whether that happens, you know, we know the gospel is getting through to the people in Ukraine and Russia and we need to proclaim it right here.

What Is The Sabbatical Year And The Year Of Jubilee? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Tim Hebbert
And so a question we want to sit and visit a little bit about today, we had to do a little digger-thinking on this one. "How about this sabbatical year and the year of the Jubilee found in Leviticus 25? Can you explain those things to us?" So I thought I would just start off by reading that first part of the 25th chapter of Leviticus, and I'm gonna start with verse two. "And when you have entered the land I am giving you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath rest before the Lord every seventh year. For the six years, you may plant your fields and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops. But during the seventh year, the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest. It is the Lord's Sabbath, do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards during that time. And don't store away the crops that grow on their own, or gather the grapes from your unpruned vine. The land must have a year of complete rest, but you may eat whatever land produces on its own during the Sabbath. This applies to you, your male and female servants, your hired workers, and the temporary residents who live with you. Your livestock and the wild animals in your land will also be allowed to eat what the land produces." Then verse eight goes on to say this, "In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years. Seven sets of seven years adding up to 49 years in all. Then on the day of Atonement in the 50th year, blow the Rams horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a Jubilee year for you, for each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors. And return to your own clan, this 50th year will be a Jubilee for you. During that year, you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own. And don't gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. It will be a Jubilee year for you and you must keep it holy. You may eat whatever the land produces on its own, and in the year of Jubilee, each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors." And I guess to define the difference there guys, is it goes along with God's plan. Our seven days of creation, He does all the work that He's going to do, to establish the universe and the world that we live in. Everything that's on it in six days, and He rests on the seventh day. So on a sabbatical year he's saying, "Okay, let's take every seventh year, let's shut everything down and let our land rest and replenish itself. Which is just really pretty good advice for a farmer, right? I mean, now they rotate crops, but you can probably go back through the history of time. Smart farmers would let fields rest, they just wouldn't let them all rest at one time, but they were letting the land rest or replenish itself. The Jubilee year, I think God takes that and He said, "Okay, see how we're resting the land on that 50th year? We're not only gonna rest the land, but I'm calling all of you into a Sabbath year, where you rest, you depend on the land." It's a time to reclaim, like maybe, reset yourself, hit a restart button, reclaim the land that you've come from. We're gonna settle all the debts, forgive all the debts that are left unsettled. And one of the things, you know, we see the word slave used a lot in scripture, but it didn't mean the same thing as what we've come to know from our history here in America. But it was all those that you would call slave, people that are indentured to you; you're gonna free them from that. It's also time where you're gonna go back and reclaim the land that you came from. And maybe what you're also going to do is settle some hard feelings and unforgiven debts that you have within your family, so that your families are restored. It's all part of God's plan to get us in a rhythm of work and then rest and depend on Him. So in that Sabbath year, then we would trust Him. They would trust Him for the provision of the food and the livelihood they needed. In the 50th year they would trust Him even deeper to restore to them, everything that He'd given them to begin with. And so I'm gonna turn this over to Gary. What did they do for the people of Israel?

Gary Hashley
I have to smile a little bit, cause there's a little farm boy that's grown up in me all these years. And that is, as you read this, it makes everybody wanna be a farmer, because if your storekeeper who doesn't say anything about shutting your store down every seventh year, you know? If you were a basket weaver, it doesn't say anything about shutting down your basket weaving business or your rug weaving business for a year. But it does say that, you know, those who are in agriculture, that every seventh year they were to not farm that year. And so I just kind of smile and I think more people would be signing up to be farmers if we were living according this instruction God gave to Israel. And that's one thing to keep in mind, this was specifically given to the people of Israel. A specific people, in a specific place, at a specific time. But what did it do for the people? Well, it gave them a rest. Farming's hard. We have equipment today that seems to make it easier, but it's still very time consuming and very long days for some. And here, you basically would get a one year vacation from your planting and harvesting of your crops or pruning of your crops. If it was at like, the vineyard or the olive grove. So there was rest for the people, and you know, we do need rest. Jesus told the disciples one time, "Come apart and rest awhile." Because we weren't designed to work 365 days a year all of our lives without a break. So rest for the people, rest for the land. I mean agriculture does take, growing crops does take nutrients from the soil. This would give the land a chance to recoup from having things drawn out of it and the chance to have it back. But I think one of the biggest things that I see in this is, not just rest for people and rest for the land, but trust for the people. Because in essence, God is saying, "Don't farm for a year and trust me that you won't starve to death. Trust Me that you won't starve to death." God basically told them, "On the sixth year I'll give you enough, to not only live that year, but the following year. And then into the next year when you plant until you harvest," which is partway through the year. Would the people trust God enough to say, "Okay, I will set the land aside, I won't harvest my grapes, I won't harvest my olives, I won't plant my wheat, I won't plant my barley," whatever it might be? It also was a lesson in selflessness, because they were to release any servants, as Tim said, and they were to release any debts they were owed. So that, you know, this idea of selfishness couldn't stand because it's not all about me. In fact, I'm gonna have to let go of this when that year comes. They say a Jubilee which followed a Sabbath year, which meant on the 48th year, God said, "I'll give you enough that you'll eat the 49th. You'll eat the 50th on until the harvest comes in the 51st year." So it was really a challenge to their faith. So Brad, is there any significance for us today in all of this?

Brad Kilthau
Yeah, I think so Gary as you know, those same principles are something we can always adhere to in our day and time. And it's kind of amazing when you look at the Old Testament and you see how many things that God used with the Jewish people; that actually gave us a symbol or a type of what we can learn from and see actually happening on this side of the cross and the work of Christ. You think about the Passover and how important the Passover was for the Jewish people and how that is so significant when it comes to the Lord's supper. The Passover was always a picture of the sacrificed lamb of Jesus Christ who would come. You see in the Old Testament, the story of Noah and the Ark, and of course Noah and the Ark is, as I was just sharing with our congregation a week or so ago. You know, when you're in 1 Peter 3 and Peter actually uses Noah and the Ark as an antitype to describe baptism. And that is to, you know, be free or away from the sinful world, put that behind you. And I think the same thing is true of the sabbatical year and also of the year of Jubilee, because the Jubilee when you get to the heart of it, it gives us a picture of looking forward to the kingdom age. It's a picture of that, of when Christ is going to come and reign on His throne there in the city of Jerusalem for that thousand year reign. And He's gonna fulfill all the promises that He'd made to the Jewish people.

You can read about that spiritual deliverance in Isaiah 61 about the tremendous joy and the freedom that the people of Israel, and basically all people on the face of this earth, when Jesus reigns on His throne there in the city of Jerusalem. And so the year of Jubilee points us forward and gives us a picture of that kingdom age, but it also gives us, as Christians, a picture of our Christian life. Because when you think about when Jesus, in Luke 4, was standing in the synagogue in the city of Nazareth, He was preaching. And He was actually reading from one of the scrolls of Isaiah, Isaiah 61. And He was reading as it shares there in Luke, through the first two verses of Isaiah 61, but Jesus stops short of reading about the day of the vengeance of God in verse two. And so why is that? Why? Because the day of judgment is gonna come, but it's not gonna come until after the Lord has finished this present work that He's doing of bringing all these people to Himself. And so it's actually a picture of the church age that we live in right now, and how the Lord is going to bring that freedom and that ability to come to Him. And of course, it's gonna be in the literal sense during the kingdom age. So it's, again, a picture of things that we are now seeing happen and what we're also gonna see in the future. So it's beautiful how the Lord puts those things together in the Old Testament. And when we study, we can see that that was a type or picture of what is really to come in the fulfillment in the fullest, in our time of the age of grace and looking forward. And then of course, Gary, as you shared also, we can learn always the principle of the year of Jubilee as it forced the Jewish people to say that God is their provider. They didn't have a choice. They went for three years as it came to that, 48th, 49th and 50th year, that through those three years they had no harvest. And of course they had to see that God was ultimately their provider. So maybe we ought to back up, look at that and say, "Yeah, that's true because that is our God for us. He is our ultimate provider."

Gary Hashley
And, you know, I've heard different preachers say, "We have no indication Israel ever did this."

Brad Kilthau
That's right, I've seen that too.

Gary Hashley
That they ever actually set aside the seventh year and then the 14th year and so on to the 49th and the 50th. And I guess the challenge to my heart, Brad, is even when it comes to tithing, when it comes to other things God asks of me, am I willing to trust Him in it? Because to my knowledge, they never let God show Himself powerful by actually doing it.

Brad Kilthau
That's right, because they were so greedy that they couldn't trust God. They had to hold onto their money and their power.

Discussion on Eschatology - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Jeff Banks, Andy Griess and Bruce Peterson.

Jeff Banks
It's good to be back together, guys. Over the last several weeks, we've been in the area of what theologians would call Eschatology, right, and talking about future things. And so Bruce is gonna give us a little bit of a recap of where we've been, and then we'll try to continue and maybe hopefully wrap up our discussion on this.

Bruce Peterson
Yeah, so eschatology is the things of the end, right? How the world's gonna wrap up in this, God's program. We're not in any eternal kind of never ending show. This is gonna wrap up and Jesus is going to reign and be King. And there's much debate over how it's gonna wrap up right? We all want to claim infinite knowledge and perfect knowledge, I think that's probably a stretch. I personally think that God is shifting, I'm broadly speaking a dispensationalist. So I think you have the Jewish nation, then the church, and then we're gonna go back to the Jewish nation. I think Jesus will be the king. We talked about the millennium, that's when Jesus, if you're a dispensationalist, you're gonna think that Jesus is gonna reign physically in Jerusalem, right? On some kind of a throne even right? And He's going to rule the world with an iron scepter. We're eventually gonna get back to the rapture. That's really what this whole thing started with, is the rapture. And so as we've been talking, it turns out Andy is shifting. And so Andy's gonna give us a perspective today called:

Andy Griess
Postmillennial view of the millennium and the kingdom of God, I guess.

Bruce Peterson
Yeah, so that's the same subject and well, I would like to say right front, that I have the absolute deepest respect for Andy and his biblical study and knowledge. And as he was answering questions, even during our discussions of the weeks ahead, I'm like, "Hmm, I never thought about it that way. Oh yeah, I could see how you could take it that way." And so I would like to make a couple points, first off that Andy is not spiritualizing the text in a negative sense. He's addressing the text theologically and this is a huge, very, very important thing to do, is to look at all the texts through the Bible. All the stories of the Old Testament have a theological point, they don't just have a physical point. You know, David didn't just kill Goliath. There's something very theological going on there in that story, and we are supposed to learn something about God. And we're supposed to understand how, theologically God is saying to the Israelites, "I'm gonna deliver you." And this is more than just a battle scene, right? It's just more than that. Oftentimes people read the text in end times stuff and we read it just like it's a story. So we go to a text and this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen, and this is gonna happen. And we're addressing things too. Literally like, prophecy is always mysterious, it just always is. There's a layer that, if you just take it very concretely, you're gonna miss some wonderful stuff. And so Andy's answers have been really challenging to me and looking at the text, so I really appreciate it. And I really would recommend considering deeply the perspective.

Andy Griess
And I'll say this about where I'm at. This is new to me in the last couple of years and I feel like I'm moving into a post millennial view. I'm not sure if I'm there yet, but it's very intriguing to me. So I'm just gonna try to lay out the view as best as I understand in it. And I, by no means am an expert on it.

Bruce Peterson
And this is a broad overview? It's a 10 minute overview of a 20 week study right?

Andy Griess
Right. Yeah, and so I just wanna try to make it make sense to people who are listening, so they could just consider the broad idea of it. I will say though, as we've been talking, I thought I was more on the fence. And then when we talked, I feel like I'm more solid on it. And then this Sunday at AWANA, one of the kids asked me a question and I threw out an answer without even thinking. I was like, "Whoa, that was extremely postcolonial, I didn't have any reservation about that," so maybe I'm less on the fence than I thought. But I didn't know where to start, it's so different from where I grew up. And this picture of the future, the whole book of Revelation being all future post-millennial, it's gonna be a lot different than that. But let me start with, going back to the Old Testament Daniel 2, one of the foundational promises about the Messiah. God gives King Nebuchadnezzar this dream and it freaks him out. He wants somebody to interpret the dream, and Daniel is given that interpretation by God. And he tells him, "You had a dream about a statue. The statue had four parts that represent four kingdoms." The Jews were currently being ruled over by the Babylonian kingdom, and Daniel said, "That first kingdom represents you, Nebuchadnezzar, you are the head of gold." And then the second kingdom that was gonna come, then there's a third kingdom and a fourth kingdom. And when you trace it, it's very clear that the Babylon kingdom ruled over Israel, then the Persians ruled over Israel. Then the Greeks ruled over Israel, and then the Roman empire ruled over Israel. And at the end of that dream Daniel said to him, that in the days of that fourth king, that's when the Messiah is gonna come. So it gives the people of Israel, a very clear timeline of when Messiah's kingdom was coming. And this is why when Jesus was born, the Roman empire had just taken over the Greeks and now everybody in Israel is on edge. They're waiting for a Messiah, cause he could be in any day because of that prophecy from Daniel. And specifically at the end of that prophesy in Daniel 2:44 he says, "In the days of those Kings," that Kings of the fourth kingdom, "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom shall not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these other kingdoms and it shall stand forever. This kingdom is pictured as a stone that's been cut out of a mountain. It crashes into the statue, obliterates the statue and it starts out as a stone and it grows to be the size of a mountain. And then it grows to fill the whole earth." And I think maybe that's the best picture that I can give you for what the post millennial view is. That when Jesus came in the first century, He came to establish a kingdom and He did establish that kingdom. And that kingdom is in the process of filling the whole earth. And so that's the picture in a nutshell.

Bruce Peterson
There's 2 billion people right now who have called Jesus, God, right? That's a lot.

Andy Griess
Yeah, if you see in the book of Acts, what they started with and what it's become over 2000 years, that there are, I was thinking about today, our nation. We have people worried about losing our Christian heritage and I'm thinking, the original disciples of Jesus, if they knew that there were nations decrying that they're losing their Christian heritage. They probably wouldn't even have known that America, this place even existed on the Earth. And these people are now thinking, "Oh we're losing our grip on our Christian heritage." There's other nations right now that are building their own Christian heritage that would've been wild to them, and they would've said, "Yeah, I guess this is gonna fill the whole earth." So I think that's the picture.

Bruce Peterson
I would agree with all that.

Andy Griess
Yeah and then in Matthew 12, there's a place where Matthew quotes from Isaiah 42 and says, "Behold, my servant who I have chosen. My beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him. He will declare justice to the nations. You will not quarrel or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed, he will not break, smoking flax he will not quench. Until he stands forth justice to victory, and in his name again, the nations will trust." Right after Matthew quotes that, Jesus heals this man who is demon possessed, blind and mute. And this is where the Pharisees say, "Your power to do these miracles does not come from God, it comes from Satan." And Jesus' comment then included; He says, "If I'm casting out demons by the spirit of God, you can be sure that the kingdom of God has come upon you." And then He talks about, "How can anyone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first finds the strong man." And so He's saying, if these miracles didn't come from Satan, if they really did come from the holy spirit, you better believe the kingdom is here. And then He talks about the binding of Satan. I think that parallels pretty nicely with Revelation 20, this picture of Satan being in the abyss for a thousand years, so that specifically, he will not be able to deceive the nations any longer. So now Satan has been bound and the gospel is gonna go forth. You know, Jesus and His great commission. That I think is the distinctive of where, even if I don't end up believing post millennialism is a hundred percent true, I wish that it was. Because it's the one view that treats the great commission as if Jesus intended the church to be successful at it. If He says, "All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to me. Therefore, because all authority belongs to me go preach the gospel, make disciples of the nations." The Old Testament is just filled with these pictures of the New. The Messiah's kingdom being, not just for the Jews only, that it's too small of a thing. I think of Isaiah 49, "It's too small of a thing for my servant to just benefit the Jews. He's gonna be a light to the Gentiles and he's gonna bring salvation to the ends of the earth." It's just all over there in the Old Testament. This is for everybody, this kingdom is for everybody. So Jesus says "The kingdom's here, go get 'em." And that's the Postmillennial view, is that we are part of Jesus' growing kingdom. You know, you talked about it being like a mustard seed that's gonna grow to be the largest tree there is. It's like a little bit of yeast that you hardly can tell it's there.

Bruce Peterson
How does it end? How does the time just run out?

Andy Griess
No, no, no. That's first Corinthians 15 talking about how, just as death came into the world through one man, so the resurrection is gonna come through Jesus. And so Jesus has come, his resurrection guarantees There will be a resurrection for all of us. And then what does he say? 1 Corinthians 15:24, he's gonna end up quoting from Psalm 1:10, which is like the most often quoted Psalm verse in the whole Bible. It's about Jesus sitting at God's right hand until He makes His enemies His foot stool. 1 Corinthians 15 He says, "Then comes the end when He will deliver the kingdom of God to the father, when He puts an end to all rule and authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all of His enemies under His feet. Then the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, for He has put all things under His feet." So the picture is, the kingdom of God is going to continue its work of reaching the nation's, bringing the nation's into the kingdom. I believe that the church very well could be in its infancy. We could just be still in the process of figuring this out, it could go for a long time.

Bruce Peterson
That was so hard for me, but yeah, I get it.

Andy Griess
And eventually the world will see, eventually the Jews are going to see how much God has blessed all of these other nations. The Jewish nation will look on the one whom they pierced and they're gonna come to him---

Bruce Peterson
Through his bride.

Andy Griess
Through the church. And they're gonna join the kingdom the same way we joined the kingdom. It's that picture from Romans that we were grafted in as Gentiles and just like they were taken out, they can still be grafted in. Then that picture is going to happen, that's the picture. And when that does, then there's a picture in Revelation 20 about Satan being released for a time to deceive the nation. So once again, it's not gonna be every single person on earth that's gonna be part of this.

Bruce Peterson
That's gonna be my next question. Like you still end up with a bunch of unbelievers, so does the gospel just have to get to the nations? Does each nation have to get dominantly Christian? What does success look like?

Andy Griess
I think success looks like, the kingdom of God becomes so much a part of this world and blesses enough of this world that finally, the Jewish nation realizes, "We can't miss out on that." And so until they turn, then at some point after that, that's presumably when Satan will be released to do his thing and there will be a final---

Bruce Peterson
Because then that would represent the fullness of Gentiles, which would've brought the Jews back in. So now you have the sons of Joseph with the other natural tribes of Israel, kind of coming back together and at any time after that, it could end with, "Okay and we accomplish---

Andy Griess
Then Jesus returns. When all of His enemies have been sufficiently put under His feet, where He rules the nation and He's accomplished what He's meant to accomplish through the church. And the great commission has been successful and victorious, then Jesus will return. And the eternal state we'll be in at that point.

Bruce Peterson
It would be His kingdom, it would just be the eternal perfected kingdom. Cause even dispensationalists have that millennial kingdom just rolling right into the eternal one.

How Do We Determine What To Preach? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Kiley Callaway, Tyson Lambertson, John Mulholland and Jon Simpson.

Jon Simpson
We've been discussing preaching. And some of the, maybe letting you behind the scenes a little bit as to how we determine how to preach and what to preach on, and hopefully giving you a little insight into that. Sometimes people wonder how pastors come up with what they do and there's different opinions on styles of preaching. Be it topical or expository. Should you preach through a book of the Bible? Can you preach on a topic? We kind of talked about that a little last time, so we wanna discuss a little bit more maybe how we determine what to preach on in a given year, kind of how we lay that out and what influences those decisions. So, John, how do you kind of look at that in your church?

John Mulholland
Well, like I said last time, for us it's more expository in nature than the topical piece. Try and manage that Old Testament, New Testament piece. So, then we kind of look at, what haven't we gone through? So if a book of the Bible is gonna kind of guide our primary thinking, what haven't we talked about? So are we preaching through, are we teaching through things that we haven't talked about before, and what does that look like? But also just you know, knowing what's happening in our church body. Tyson, you know, you talked about praying and listening to the Holy Spirit, and certainly those things are a huge part of that because of what God is teaching us and wanting us to talk about. A lot of those conversations too, come from staff meetings of like, "What are we kind of," without actually asking the question, "What are we seeing, feeling, hearing from our church body?" But just like being in tune with our other pastors who are connected to small groups and serving teams. Like, you know, "What are we thinking that we see?" And then we set up that calendar, we do operate on a yearly calendar. Usually by October I start getting antsy, cause we want to know what we're gonna teach on in the year. So we're about a year ahead on our teaching. So I would say prayer, discernment of the Holy Spirit, and then just conversations and awareness of what's happening in our local church body of what we kind of feel like we need to teach on.

Tyson Lambertson
I think that's great. You have to pray, be aware of what the Holy Spirit's doing and where you're wanting to take your church as far as the discipleship model or the method where you want to take the scripture. And if you connect that to your small groups and how that works, if you do your small groups in conjunction with your sermon series and all those. So one of the benefactors that I have is, I have a very intelligent wife. Her name's Tammy and she's very in tuned with the Holy Spirit and helps guide how we preach, what we preach, when we preach it. And gives me some feedback on, I'll say, "Hey, what do you think about doing the book of 1 Corinthians or doing a topic on marriage?" or something along those lines. And she'll say, "Yeah, you know, I think that should wait, maybe we can fit it here. This would be better." So just listening to the Lord and listening to my wife and really being sensitive to what's happening to our people, that in the life of our people is so, so important.

John Mulholland
Yeah, and I think a big thing, an advantage, you know, a window that we have into the lives of the people that go to our churches, like social media. What kinds of things are they---

Tyson Lambertson
That gets dangerous.

John Mulholland
It can get dangerous. But what kinds of things are they talking about? So like for, you know, last year we went through---

Tyson Lambertson
Loving your enemies.

John Mulholland
Yeah, we went through the book of Revelation last year, because I just have this sense that people are thinking like, "Oh, you know, we're living in the end times, it's the end of the world," all that kind of stuff. So let's tap, maybe tap into that angst that people are feeling and hopefully coach and guide them through what scripture has to say on those things. How about for you? How do you decide?

Jon Simpson
So one of the things I do throughout the year, I am trying to listen to the Holy Spirit and watch, as you said Tyson or you guys have said, what's going on in the church? What are issues and stuff that we're dealing with or that I see happening in their struggles maybe? And then just the culture at large, what are the issues that are happening in our culture around us? That, you know, because we're so connected to the world it seems like we feel personally connected to something that happens on the other side of the globe, you know, if there's a tragedy. So I think that is what's happening in the world and what the are issues there. And so I kind of take that all together and just let that sort of ruminate in me. I feel like God at times gives me, whether it be a book of the Bible or whether it be, you know, a particular issue to address right? And so just like I said the last series I was in, The Lies That Satan Tells Us. Well, through the last year, I just felt like I was watching, and of course it happens to me, but I see it happen to people where they're believing a lie that the enemy is interjecting. And I see it happen and honestly it makes me angry because it always leads to destruction right? So I'm like, "I want to address that, you know, that's an issue, that's a problem that I see in the world." So then it's like, you know, figuring out, where does the scripture speak to that? And what does the Bible say and how do we? So I think that is kind of what guides me. I've always, since I was a church planner I was coached to do a year, you know, plan that year out. So I always try to go in January. If I have a team, I take some of my team and we just pray over it and talk about, and ask God, seek God, and then look at our church and all that stuff, and try to plan out a year. And you know, 2020 was kind of encouraging, cause that was my first full year here. And of course I went out away in January with Ken, our worship pastor, we figured out, kind of planned the year out. And then as COVID hits, as stuff happens, you know, things just fell in place. Where it's like I had, you know, I did a series on, you know, Fear Less, I think it was, and then I came right after everything kind of was blown up. And it was like, just very timely, I felt like God had really led and it made me feel like, "Okay, God, you're with me in leading this church, you know, and trying to prepare people, cause I know it's not me." But that's where I really trust God to, you know, lead that way and give us the right stuff to address. And so anyway, it's a year out and it's looking at that and then yeah, whether it's a book of the Bible or whether it's, like I said, an issue or a topic, and then just trying to deal with that.

John Mulholland
Now you said a second ago, you said, "Well, that's where you get into trouble," so how do you like, when we see like---

Jon Simpson
Yeah.

John Mulholland
I see the people at Mitchell Berean are really wrestling with they're believing lies. The people at The Rock are doing this, the people at Westway are doing that. Like how, that getting into trouble, explain that. As a pastor, I know what you mean by that. So how do you tackle some of those things without it being, cause this is something I wrestle with. Do you tackle some of those things without wanting it to be like, "I'm looking at you cause I saw what you posted on Facebook last night?"

Tyson Lambertson
So one of my pastor mentors said this to me, "That God always calls you to a place to do a work in you first, and the other, second." More times than not, my sermon series are on something that I've been struggling with and I'm going through. And the minute I preach it, the minute I say I'm gonna preach it, I'm going to deal with that situation a week before or week after, a month before or a month after, there's something that God's doing in me. So what is God doing in me that He can do a deep work in me so that I can give it away? Because other people are struggling with it, we're human, we all have similar issues, similar problems, similar things. And so staying on topic, not trying to curtail it to somebody, who just done you wrong. And so next Sunday you're gonna preach to that person in that pew. I think that gets you in trouble, that's what I meant.

John Mulholland
So you said, "God's doing your work in me," and I would come back on that too, and say, "There have been things that I've read in scripture." And be like, "Oh man, this would be really good like at some point this would be a really good series," whatever that looks like. How much of you, do you bring into like your Sunday morning? Like how much of you, do you bring into that? Like how much do you talk about, maybe something you struggle with or something you're wrestling with or like your own---

Tyson Lambertson
Yeah, I think there's definitely a balance and I think authentic leadership is so important. Authenticity allows you to be at a level with everyone else, that I am human. And I think where we've gotten in trouble with pastors, is being above humanity. Being something above, and we're not, we're human. We all have sinned, we all have fallen short of the glory of God. And so I think there's a point where we have to be vulnerable, but how vulnerable can we be from the pulpit? When that vulnerability should probably be with some trusted, what I would call my life team. These are issues that I need to discuss with them, not to the public where it's gonna be all over Facebook, YouTube, and social media. You know what I mean? So there's that balance. I think there's that line that could be crossed. But we all need to realize that we're all sinners, we've all fallen short to the glory of God and we need His help. So personal stories, those type of things, I think there's tastefulness and I think there's things that cross the line.

Jon Simpson
Yeah, I think for me, what I'm very cautious about is that in my struggles, which I think it's important to be vulnerable. People need to see that, how we help lead people is for them to see how we wrestle through things and how we struggle with stuff, like that's leadership. I think you go, "I've struggled through this, but this is what I've discovered. This is how I've tried to follow scripture, and this is what scripture says." But I'm careful, like I'm very concerned that I, in any of that, it's sort of a counseling session for me to share, you know, my hurts, my issues. So I don't want that, that's not helpful to anybody. At the same time, I think it's important to let people in and see, you know, Paul said that, his weakness is what he gloried in, because where he was weak was where God was strong. And so he said, I celebrate my weakness and I think it's important to go, "Hey, I'm weak, like I have weak areas or I've struggled through this and this was hard," you know? And so, I think part of it for me is that it's not something that I'm personally wrestling. Like if I've worked through it and I've kind of, you know, gotten through that issue, then I think I can help others and lead them through that. But I also, I don't know, when I was younger, it was a lot of my personal life illustrating things. And I don't do that as much now, to me more now it's like, the principles inside of a point. Like, how do you get through something? Or how do you think through it? That's where I'm interjecting what I've learned or what I've experienced or what the scripture says.

Tyson Lambertson
And I don't know if you guys ever seen the meme, "If you're a pastor's kid, anything that's said can be used in a sermon," those types of things. I really try to watch how I speak about my children. I'll use funny stories and stories that would keep them in a good light. I don't want to use the stories that would tear them down or my family or anybody for that matter. But I do think there's this authenticity that people need to be able to reach out and say, "Oh, he's human too."

John Mulholland
Yeah, when I was in student ministry, and I was like coaching someone who was new coming onto our student ministry team, we would talk about like, be appropriately transparent. You know, there's a level and I think relationally, you know, I'm really grateful that Anne and I have had the opportunity to be in some really great small groups our entire Christian life. But especially since we've been here in Scottsbluff. So we've been able to share things with small group that certainly I would never share from the front. But it's always interesting for me when we share things and people's response to that. Like I had someone once in small group say, "Oh man, I always thought the pastor and his family was this." So to sit in small group and hear this, is really, and it wasn't, "This is shocking." And it wasn't like, "I'm rejecting you because it's shocking." But just people don't really, I think struggle with the concept that the people who are their pastors are human beings and wrestle with things.

Tyson Lambertson
And I think that's because of the series that we're in from the ashes and the devastation that we experienced in the last 10 months. I'm grieving and there's no better person to minister, to people who are grieving than one who's grieving. And so there's some of that identification and being able to connect personally with our own struggles, our own grief, our own mourning. So I think, I think authenticity is so important.

Jon Simpson
Well, thanks again for joining us for another session here. Hopefully this has been encouraging to you and maybe insightful.

The Sin of Pride and How Do We Control It? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so the question this morning, "Can you address the sin of pride? How do we get a grip on it?" So like I said, I think this is a sin that probably to some degree, we all struggle with.

Gary Schick
Amen and proud of it!

Ben Poole
Yeah, we're proud of how much humility we have! Pride is a hard one, because it can come off almost so innocently and how do we address that in our own lives? What is pride? What does the Bible have to say about pride? And so I think there's a lot that we could dig into in our short period of time. So Gary, why don't you open this up with some thoughts?

Gary Schick
I think there's also confusion based on how you use that word pride. I mean, I think there's a, what we use in our language as a healthy pride, you know? Taking pride in your work, healthy self-esteem, this is I guess what you call a right and proper, appreciation of doing your best. But what the Bible's talking about with pride is actually, self-esteem out of balance, it's self to the extreme, you know? Just the first thing that comes to my mind, that I remember learning in the old King James as a kid, the word from Proverbs, "Pride cometh before a fall." And of course, probably the greatest example of that is Satan himself, which taking from some things in Ezekiel and Isaiah, it appears that he was at one point the highest of the angels. So a healthy pride would've been, "Wow, God has placed me here. What a wonderful thing!" But that wasn't enough, he wanted to place himself above God. And that's what we do when we sin pridefully. C.S. Lewis, I believe in Mere Christianity, calls pride the cardinal or root sin. The sin that is basically at the base of all other sins, where we want our own will above what God has asked of us. That takes a certain unhealthy focus on self and an unhealthy view of yourself, kind of putting yourself in the place of God. So what's the cure to that? Well, Jesus, of course, is the cure to everything and how do we come to Jesus? We have to humble ourselves. You know, when I talk to kids about the 10 commandments, I remind them that there's two sides to every commandment, you know? Thou shall not kill, well what is that? You know, don't murder, don't kill, but what's the opposite of that, that we should be doing? We should be valuing life, you know? Honor your father and mother and respect authority. So what's the opposite of that? Don't disrespect authority. We can go through all 10 commandments. Well similarly, in the cardinal sins, there's also their counterparts, cardinal virtues. And you know like, the opposite to hate perhaps would be love. The opposite to pride would be, I believe humility. And interestingly some of these great thinkers, C.S. Lewis I think, I think he got it right, pride is at the root of all sin. Another great thinker Andrew Murray, in a book on humility, actually calls humility, let's see if I can find it, "The highest virtue and the root of every virtue." You know, Jesus modeled humility and everything. He said, "The son of man came not to be served, but to serve," He humbled Himself. In Paul's letter to the Philippians he said, "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made Himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant, He humbled himself then became obedient to death, even death on to the cross. And God has exalted him to the highest place that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." So Jesus, in His total obedience to the will of the Father exemplifies a healthy humility in all of its ways. And what does the scripture say to us? "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and in due time He will lift you up."

Ben Poole
Yeah, this is such a huge topic, and I think that a lot of what you talked about, even what C.S. Lewis said is so true. That pride really, from my perspective, is selfishness, "It's about me." And as Christians it's everything but about me. It's supposed to be about God and about others, and that should be our hearts desire. So I just kind of looked this up. There's so many different places you can look on different topics of the Bible. One of them is openbible.info, where you can type in different themes and it'll put out, you know, like the first hundred verses of that topic. Well so I put in pride just to see, and there's well over a hundred verses that talk directly about pride and pridefulness and the sin of it. A lot of them are found in Proverbs, which is a book of wisdom, which I think we ought to be reading in pretty regularly. I just wanna read a few of these: Proverbs 11:2, "When pride comes then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom." Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 29:23, "One's pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor." Jump to the New Testament, because this is also talked about in the New Testament, one that's I think really impactful, it comes out of James. That I think sometimes we don't like to talk about some of these things, because it's unpopular, uncomfortable. But this is what James 4:6 says, "But he gives more grace. Therefore Scripture says: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." So one thing that I strive for in my own life is, if there's pride what position is that placing in me in my relationship with God?

Gary Schick
And others.

Ben Poole
And others especially, you know? And so that realization that if I'm allowing pride to settle in my life, this is a real sin, and if I'm allowing it to settle, what does that mean? That I am in opposition to the will of God. To consider that is detrimental to the Christian to think, "I'm placing myself at odds with God." I don't know anyone who's a Christian who wants to be at odds with God. And to lose maybe the blessing of God because of selfishness and pride. And so we strive to be humble and what does that look like? And there's so many things that we could talk about there, but---

Gary Schick
Jesus.

Ben Poole
Its really yeah, what did Jesus do? He gave His life for others and we're called, you know, and I think about this even as husbands. You know, as we are to lead our family and Ephesians says, "Husbands, you are to love your wives." How? Like Christ loved the church. What did Jesus do to love the church? He gave Himself up for the church. That's how we lead our families is a sacrificial way that we would give up ourselves for the people that we love.

Gary Schick
And others, if you're in any kind of a position of power or authority, how do you view and treat those that are under your care or leadership or direction? Do you demand or do you serve? Do you lead by example or do you lead by authority and position? I tell you what, pride not only puts us out of balance, but putting us in the place of God. When we are not that, we're just vice Regents in this creation who rule under Him. But it also dries up everything that we desire, it's a love killer. Let's not forget 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered." It's not proud, not self seeking. You know, in a way that definition kind of spells out what pride is. It's wanted itself, to put it in the Old King James, it puffs itself up, it puts itself first and ends up ultimately, last and alone. A lonely place to be.

Ben Poole
So you're listening to this and we're talking about pride, and you know, we don't have a whole lot of time left, but I just kind of wanna look into how do we get that? How do we get a grip on it? How do we really address, as you did touch on that, kind of at the beginning, what's the anecdote for this? Jesus. And we say that, but I wanna put some meat on that. What is that gonna look like? And I think part of it is, maybe you don't know if there's pride in your life or not. One thing that I do and I try to do regularly in my own prayer time with God is, "God, if there is sin in my life that I'm not aware of, would you help me to see it so that I can truly repent for from that?" And that's where it comes to, is this heart of, "I do not desire to be proud I want to be humble. So God, would you show me in my life where I have the sin of pride?" And then go to God in prayer and truly repent and give that up to God. And then through your daily life, I'm kind of a practical person, so I think about throughout the day, you know, one of my struggles as a Christian is anger, you know? And so I have to be really hands on with that, and really address that. And when I see a situation that I'm struggling with, that I want to be angry, I'm aware of it because it's on my mind. And I think pride or any other sin can be that way. It's in our mind, we're thinking about it and we're trying to stop Satan from having that foothold in our life that we can, "No Satan, you are not welcome here. I'm not allowing this to take place, I'm sticking with team Jesus here. You know, and I'm gonna go a different path." And sometimes, and I think pride especially, that can be really hard. Where to have that understanding that we to be like Christ and have that same mindset. That was not an easy thing, even for Jesus to do, you know? He really, you know, I think about the sacrifice He gave for the world. I mean, He was so stressed out physically as a human, nearly to the point of death already. That sweating blood was a real thing that took place, and it means that your body was so distraught that it's near death from the stress. And so I'm not saying that that's where we're at, but I'm understanding that God is full of grace, thankfully, and He sees that. But we need to understand that we're not called to live this easy life, the stress-free life. We're living a life of sacrifice, but for the glory of God.

Gary Schick
Yeah, and you know, I think of the beatitudes, and they focus on humility. And, you know, the very first, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom." So a confession to God, "Lord, you know what, pride, It is at the core of my sin, the old sinful nature. And I can't fix that, so I just ask you to do what I can't, make me aware." We have to humble ourselves to come to Christ and we need to continually humble ourselves to say, "And Christ do your work in me." I think focusing on the virtues that come from a Christ-centered life, you know, the fruits of the spirit, praying for those and focusing on those. I think, again Paul's words in Philippians finally brought us "Whatever is true, noble, right, pure." Friendship building, well spoken, virtuous, praiseworthy, think about these things. And then, you know, I think there was some real wisdom in old Martin Luther. He would actually pray through the 10 Commandments and he'd just say, "Lord, where is something else God, in my life besides you? Where have I misused your name? Where am I, you know, not respecting others? Where am I lusting? Where am I coveting?" Where, you know, he would work through, and then finally don't ever forget the greatest, "Lord in what ways am I failing to love you and my neighbor?" God will show you the pride in places and the places of sin in your life. When you do the work to declare your need for Him, when you put your focus on the virtues, and when you physically pray through the Commandments, and let Him do the weeding. Don't be so proud that you think you can do this by yourself.

Ben Poole
Yeah, and I think I wanna close with that before we pray out of here, but I kind of give it as a warning, but kind of just a realization. If you're gonna pray to God, which you should, and you're asking Him to reveal some things, or show some things, be prepared to listen. You know, be prepared to listen and then be obedient because He's not gonna lead you down a path that He doesn't want you on. He's gonna lead you down the right one, but we need to be able to hear, listen, and obey.

What is the Israel of God? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
And Gary, as one of these questions were sent in by our listeners, it reads this way. It says, "Can you explain what Paul is talking about in Galatians 6:16 when he talks about the Israel of God," and I'm gonna read that verse. And then I'm gonna turn it over to you, Gary, and to see what your thoughts are. But the verse reads this way, "And as many as walk, according to this rule, peace and mercy, be upon them. And upon the Israel of God." And this term, Israel of God, seems to have really got a hold of our listener who is asking about what this means.

Gary Hashley
Well to start with, we should begin with that statement about, who follow this rule. And if you look at what Paul's been talking about, he's talking about, that salvation is found in the Lord, Jesus Christ. He talks up in verse 12 about the cross of Christ, and he talks later about not boasting in your flesh. But he emphasizes the need for faith, and we know that it is faith that saves. And so the rule he's talking about is the truth of the gospel. It's not like, you know, "Do this physical act, bring an offering, whatever, and you're saved." Or you know, I'd say, "It's not be baptized and you'll be saved or take communion and you'll be saved," but it's believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. But yeah, the part that the question entails is the last three words, Israel of God, question being, what is he talking about when it comes to the Israel of God? And part of this hinges upon another word, just prior to that, which seems like a word you don't pay a lot of attention to, it's just a connective word. I'm reading from the ESV, the English standard version, "Mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God." We've talked in the past on this program about the inspiration of scripture and that we believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of scripture. Verbal, we believe the actual words that were written down by Moses or by Isaiah or by the apostle Paul, the very words they wrote, God superintendent, that those were the words that they used. Plenary has to do with the fact that all of the words, not just some of the words, not just the ones that seem like spiritual words, but all of the words were inspired. And we always like to make sure we give this little explanation. And that is in the original theological term, the original autographs or the actual copy that Isaiah wrote or Ezekiel wrote, or Matthew wrote or Paul wrote. Well in this particular verse 16 of chapter six of Galatians, "Mercy, be upon them, and upon the Israel of God," it's just a little three letter Greek word, Kai. And the question being, how is that to be translated? Because that word technically can be used in more than one way. If you have a New International Version that you like to read from, the word you find isn't 'and' it's 'even.' So it would be read, "Mercy be upon them, even upon the Israel of God," making that the same, but my ESV and the New American Standard and others, "Mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God." So that makes a whole change in how you would understand that. Is it them even the Israel of God or them and the Israel of God? And I must say that I agree with the scholars who did the New American Standard and who did the English standard version. That the context and all makes sense, that it's 'and' be upon them 'and' upon the Israel of God. So there are those who say, "Well, you know, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about the Israel of God being everybody who knows Jesus? Are we saying the Israel of God are Jewish people who've come to truly know Jesus as their personal savior? Or are we talking about the Israel of God is the church today? And saying then that the church now is Israel, that the Israel of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Israel of crossing the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai. And the walls of Jericho falling down and the Israel with a king like David and a king like Solomon, that they were totally thrown away by God. And the church today is slipped into that spot. And we are now the Israel of God, thus saying the promises to Israel now are promises to me, promises to you if you know the Lord Jesus as savior. So if you go along with the NIV, "Mercy be upon them, even the Israel of God," you might come to the conclusion. Then we're talking about Israel of God, are believers in the church age. And we are now Israel, but I would go along with those who say, we're talking about mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. And if you remember, there's a spot in Romans where the apostle Paul says, "You know, not everybody who is a blood descendant of Abraham, is a spiritual descendant of Abraham." That there are those who are Jews simply because of their genetics, but there are also those who are children of Abraham in the sense that they are also not only just genetically Jewish. But they are people of faith, like Abraham was a man of faith. So that there are Jewish people who come to know the Lord, Jesus Christ, and even today with Israel set aside and Gentiles grafted in, as Paul wrote in Romans, to the faith. Yet there are Jewish people coming to faith today, and yet someday it says all Israel will be saved. But right now there are Jewish people who realize Jesus is Messiah putting their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. So my conclusion is, and I'm not sure where Brad's going because we didn't discuss this before we started. But my conclusion is, he's talking about those who are Gentiles, who know Jesus, them and upon the Israel of God, Jewish people who have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior from sin. So it makes a difference. Is it the word 'and' or is it the word 'even' Bradley?

Brad Kilthau
You're gonna find Gary, that my thoughts on this are not anywhere away from what you're sharing. I mean, we're pretty much on the same thought. Kind of, when I was reading through this and thinking about what to share with our listeners about the Israel of God, that is shared in this verse. You know, it seems like in the church, we've always tried to categorize people who come to our worship services. And one of the things I found, is that years ago the Methodist church registers once contained three columns of people who would attend their worship services. You could either be considered a seeker or one who's saved or one who is sanctified. And so they would actually make this register and put your name in one of those columns after you attended church on that Sunday. So I guess it kind of, they must have had some special insight into the heart of people that other people don't have. But, you know, there's obviously always been this thought to categorize people, and I think this is one of the things that's being addressed here in the church of Galatia, by the apostle Paul. And I think he's addressing these legalists who are trying to put something upon the congregants of the church. And the argument I think that they were trying to express here is that, they had a form of legalism that had to be done in order for a person to go into heaven. And so these Judaizers, as we would call them in Bible school, I think had two columns. They had those who were legalists and going to heaven, and those who were not legalists and weren't going to heaven. They were trying to force these legalistic things upon the people. And I think it's very clear, is when you look at verse 15 it says, "If we're in Christ, neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation." And so he was getting after these Judaizers who were always trying to put their rituals upon the Gentiles, and especially the Jewish ritual of circumcision. And so I believe this term is really the apostle Paul, who's kind of putting the leather to these guys, and he's making a charge against them for their false teaching. Their doctrinal deviation, their unworthy motive, because I think their motive that Paul's getting after here is really bragging rights. And that's really the motive of what most people would do when it comes to legalism, is they put legalistic requirements upon people, so they can brag. And I don't know, maybe the picture here is that when these Judaizers returned to Jerusalem and they got up in their missionary conference meetings and they got to stand up in front of all the people, they could say, "Well we traveled far and wide, and we've got all of these scallops to show for our efforts," or something like that, I don't know. But you know, it's really a great warning in application, I think for us as ministers and those who serve in the ministry today. And it's a challenge for us to make sure that we keep the gospel pure, but also that we keep our motives pure in the ministry. It's very tempting for those in the ministry to get together, have bragging sessions about the statistics that are going on in their church. And you know, sometimes we'll tip our hat obviously and say, "Well it was God, it was the good Lord that made it happen." But then we get to sit back and dwell in the limelight for ourselves, and we have to be careful that we don't fall into this. And the truth is, no one can really escape this temptation fully, because pride is one of those tender boxes that just so easily can go off in the heart of people on this side of eternity. Cause right now we are not perfectly conformed in the image of Christ, that will not happen until we get to heaven. And so we have to have this antidote, I think for this poison of pride, and that is, you know, self crucifixion of the flesh. We have to do that everyday and make sure that our motives are never prideful. And you know, I think it's kind of ironic that we're talking about this right now too, at this time of the year, because we have our church annual meetings that usually come up at the fiscal part of the new year. And we make up our annual reports and we got to be careful that we don't make these reports into bragging about our churches, or bragging about our self efforts, or bragging about these statistics that we have. We've got to make sure that we keep pride out of the ministry. And so I think that's what Paul's done here, is he set the stage in these verses with addressing these Judaizers in the church at this time. And he's saying, "Guys, there's only two categories, but there's these two categories are this way. There is the new creation, and there are those who are trying to add on to their old religion, adding salvation onto their old religion." We know that those are part of the new creation we're a new creation in Christ. We're totally new, and it comes about by faith alone in Jesus Christ. But there are always those who seem to want to add onto their old religion. That is, "Well, we'll believe in Jesus, but we're gonna keep our old rituals and our old religion. And that has to be done too, and they make the two try to come together." Now we have to make sure that we are part of the new creation because it's only about Christ and it's only about Him and His work. This new creation, it's not an improvement, it's not an addition to our old, but it's something entirely new. And so I think when he uses this term, the Israel of God, he's trying to point out something to these Judaizers. And he's trying to very pointedly say, "I'm talking about those who put their faith and trust in Jesus," not only as a Gentile and a Jew, which is the general church, but he's making an address to the Jews are born by nature, and a birth of being a Jew. And those who also accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah. That's the Israel of God, Jews who are saved. And so again, he's taken a leather to those guys who are trying to obscure the gospel here, because the true is, as he shares here. There's no real peace and mercy for those who want to walk under the law, there's only peace and mercy for those who are part of the new creation and that's through Christ and Him alone.

Gary Hashley
And, you know, there are those who differ on this. I love reading Bob Utley's commentaries and he says, "It is, the church is the Israel of God." And I'm not gonna break fellowship because I don't agree with him, but I think it's not simply talking about the church. In fact, another author talks about the fact that, you know, Israel of God, that if we say this time, the word Israel of God refers to the church, this author says, "But the other 65 occurrences of the term, Israel in the New Testament refer to Jews." So why would there be 66 times? The word is there 65 times, it refers to people who are genetically Jewish, and one time that it's the church. I mean, I used to teach in Bible college that, if the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense. And if 65 times is talking about national Israel, those who are Jewish by blood, that is probably talking about those who are Jewish by blood here, put their faith in Jesus.

How Were The Scriptures Written? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So last week, if you tuned in, we were talking about different ways people interpret scripture and how it came to those who wrote it down. And we kind of came to a point near the end of our discussion, talking about where the Bible came from, and how that works out into our lives. How can we trust it? Do we take a blind faith to what the Bible says about all these different things? How do we know that the scriptures are true? And so we thought, at least for this week and maybe more, we'll just see where the conversation takes us. But talking more about how we got the Bible and how that plays out into our lives. So I'm gonna hand it over to Gary.

Gary Schick
Well, and yeah, I thought it was a fun conversation last week and you know, the scripture gives us some hints. I mean, like I mentioned last week in Peter's letter, he talks about how people did not just basically write down whatever they wanted, they were carried along by the holy spirit. And we talk about where Paul writes to Timothy, "All scripture is God breathed, it comes from God." So this is what scripture says about itself, but how do we know it's true? And so I just wanted to dwell on that a little bit today because yes, we take God's word by faith, but it is not a faith without evidence. It is a well-founded faith. It is a faith that basically to my mind, it takes more faith to not believe the scriptures than to believe them. And I say that for several reasons, there is both internal evidence in the Bible that shows me that it really is truly God's word and there is external evidence. And so I just want to click off some of the evidences for scripture. First of all, if the Bible really is God's word, what would we expect? We would expect that it actually claims to be so, right? And no kidding. The Bible does claim to be so, over and over again, there are phrases like, "The word of the Lord came," or "The Lord said," and these are things that don't just happen now and then. This kind of, "The word of the Lord came," or "The Lord says," shows up no less than 3,808 times in the Old Testament alone.

Ben Poole
That's impressive.

Gary Schick
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could write a fictional book where in it you say, "The Lord said," so that doesn't actually prove that it's God's word. But if it's God's word, you would expect it to say so and tada, less than almost 4,000 times, 3,808 in the Old Testament, it says, God said. And then you have things like fulfilled prophecy. And I know there are other quote-on-quote scriptures in the world or books that claim to be scripture, but this is really unique to the Bible. Where you have, for example Micah 5:2, the Savior's gonna be born in Bethlehem and then you move onto Luke 2, Jesus is born in Bethlehem and we hear the story on how he gets there. Now Jesus has no control over where He's born. Did it just so happen that He was born in Bethlehem? And you know, that's gonna be of course the argument of people. Well, yes, there's some coincidental fulfillments. Oh no. Oh, over and over and over again in scripture, we read about these fulfillments and not just in Jesus' life. I mean, in the Old Testament, it's such a long book, I mean, it takes over 1500 years to write it. You have these early prophecies of other things that are gonna happen, and you read later on in the Old Testament how these things happen. And not just, sometimes they're within the same book, like the Lord said to the king, "You're gonna win or lose in battle today," and it happened that day. But there's other ones like, you know, when Jericho fell there was a prophecy about what would happen if anybody ever rebuilt it. And several books later, generations later, unrelated people later, it happens. And then in the life of Jesus, I don't have it right in front of me, but even for Him to have fulfilled a fraction of the number of prophecies that relate to Him, the statistics against it happening are gazillion to one. I mean, it's just impossible. And Jesus didn't fulfill a handful of prophecies about the Messiah, He fulfilled all of them. And there are many prophecies. So this one about fulfilled prophecy, that's kind of a big deal. And then you just have the, I guess you wanna say, the continuity of scripture. It really reads kind of like a story from beginning to end, and so what do you need to do that? Well, you need an author, right? I mean, whoever heard of a committee coming up with anything cohesive. And look at the Bible, we're not talking about a committee, we are talking about 40 different writers from all walks of life. Shepherds, kings, farmers, just all walks of life, they lived on three different continents, Africa, Asia, Europe. I mean, they were in different places. Three different languages over a period of 1,600 years with all the changes in people's viewpoint and understanding of how you do life over that kind of a period of time. And yet they come up with a single storyline, and it works from beginning to end. Forty writers, three continents, three languages, 1600 years. And in the Old Testament Christ is coming and in the New Testament He has come and He's coming again. And, you know, Hebrews 1:1-2 kind of talk about, you know, in the past our forefathers, you know, they got the word in various forms, but in our day, Jesus has come. And so we even see why this story has an endpoint because Jesus is the endpoint of scripture. And then God promises, His word is gonna accomplish what it promises. Isaiah 55:10-11, "My word will not come back forth," and it does accomplish. God promises His word will not pass away, Matthew 5:18. Matthew 24: 35, "And His word has not passed away." So there's a lot of internal evidence that God's word is a unique book, that it really is God's word, but then you don't even have to look in the Bible, you can just look at the Bible from the outside. You have the evidence of history, it's not just the Bible that talks about the person of Jesus. There are Roman historians who were not Christians, who reference this man Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilot. His followers said he was raised from the dead. So, you know, does it say one way or another whether Jesus rose again, we could go off, just have a whole conversation about proofs for the resurrection of Jesus. The evidence is, there is early historical evidence from outside of the Bible. Jesus lived, Jesus was a teacher and a healer, He was crucified under a specific Pontius Pilot. And His followers said, "Yup, He rose from the dead." There's sociological evidence, I guess you could call it, there's some things going on in Genesis that just seem weird to us. In terms of, what do you do if you can't have a child? And so Abraham does some things where his wife Sarah gives him her maid servant, and we would go, "Wait a minute." But that was actually common at that particular time in history that Abraham was identified with. We didn't know that until they started, archeologically digging up documents from the era of the Galileans, where Abraham grew up. And oh, some of this stuff that we never could figure out why this was happening it wasn't part of God's plan, but Abraham tried some things that were sinful, but it was common in the culture. And over and over again, the archeological evidence, archeology, you know, there's people would say, "Well, of course the Bible's not true. It says there's a town there and there's no town there." Archeologists start digging with a shovel, guess what they find, they find the town. So there's archeological evidence, there's historical sociological evidence, there's historical evidence. And then there's the manuscript evidence, you know, nobody questions, the writings of Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, or Plato. We have a handful of copies and they're very late. Like Plato lived here and the earliest copies from thousands of years later. We have from the New Testament, I mean, there's a scrap of John that's from, could have been written while John was still alive. We have thousands of copies over and over again, and you can put them all together and you know, is there an error or a change in spelling on a name or something here and there? Yeah. But has there ever been found anything that makes a difference in what we believe? No, probably the biggest question wasn't about the New Testament, it was for a long time about the Old Testament, because the oldest copy that we had of the Old Testament was a thousand years after the time of Jesus. I think it's called Leningrad Codex which is over in Russia. And so people would say, "Well, yeah, that's the Old Testament as we have it now, but what was it really like before Jesus?" Well, then they dug something up called the dead sea scrolls and these things go back what, 2 to 400 years before, or 200 years before Jesus. And so all of a sudden they're reading the Isaiah scroll and they're comparing it to the Leningrad Codex, more than a thousand years later. In a whole chapter, they may find one slight variation in a three letter word, and again, the meaning has not changed at all. And there's a reason for that, the Jews, true they lived in a day when they had to hand copy everything, but they had figured out how many letters were in every book of their Bible. And so they'd get, you know, finished writing the 150 chapters of Psalms, and then they would go back and count the letters, and if it didn't match upright, they'd crumpled it up and start writing over. They were meticulous. So there's the manuscript evidence, it hasn't changed. And then there's just the Bible's endurance in the face of opposition. People have tried to outlaw it, burn it, get rid of it. This book, we still have it, and I don't know about you, Ben, but I've heard about the many lives that the Bible's changed. And I lied, I do know about you cause I know you, I've seen how it's changed your life. I've seen how it's changing my life. This is a living book, this is God's word and it is alive and changing lives. I don't just believe the Bible's God's word because it says so, I believe it's God's word cause I know so in my own life, and then there's all this other evidence besides.

Ben Poole
Yeah, and I think that's really where it comes down to is, as a Christian digging into God's word will show evidence in your life of a life changed. I know for me personally, I would not be in any way who I am today without God's word affecting my life. It's what I love about Hebrews writers says, "Word is living and active and we read it." It's like growing up and I always heard, you could read one passage one time, read it another and you gained something else. I mean, there's always more to learn because the author of the scriptures is the creator of the universe, and He knows what we need in it. And I wanted to just kind of put some numbers out real quick that I was thinking about. When we were talking about these different writers of history that are taken as, how would I put it, secular gospel truth of whatever they were writing nobody questions.

Gary Schick
Or that they wrote it.

Ben Poole
Yeah, nobody questions Homer or Plato for fact. So since Plato lived, the closest evidence of his writing was found 1,300 years later. That's the closest they can come to. There are only seven manuscripts of anything he wrote. Seven, and it is taken as truth. Aristotle, another famous historian that we read about in school growing up. Closest manuscript to his original writings is 1,400 years, there's five copies.

Gary Schick
And they probably don't match up all that well, who knows.

Ben Poole
Right, they are what they call reconstructions.

Gary Schick
Okay, so that means, so they've actually gone in and changed things?

Ben Poole
Things have changed in what was being said. Now let's just look at the New Testament. The closest we come to the original writers is 100 years. Again, could have been while John was still alive in that one piece. There are 14,000 manuscripts.

Gary Schick
Yeah, tons of them.

Ben Poole
And they are all telling the same truth. The reason I believe that there's such an issue with the disbelief of scripture, is because this is Satan's playground. If he can get you to question the authority of scripture, in a lot of ways, everything else crumbles. And that's where we have to be so careful. So this is more than just numbers and we're trying to tell you, there's a lot of actual, physical proof that the scriptures are absolutely true. But you have to in some ways, you've got to investigate and invest into this to know it.

Gary Schick
Well, so confronted with that, are you willing to let the Holy Spirit come in and change your life? And that's, I think why we don't wanna believe it because, if this is true then wait a minute.

Ben Poole
Our life has to change.

Gary Schick
Yeah, I have to line my life up to God. I can't make God fit into my box, I have to fit into His picture. And you know what? That is painful at times. But as I look at where I'm at and where I've been and where I'm headed, I'm just like, "You know, and it's gonna hurt some more Lord, but keep making me more in the image of Jesus," because I don't wanna be who I was without Him. I don't even wanna be who I was five, six years ago with Him. And it hurts, but God, God is faithful, and His word is true. And, you know, you talk about how you keep getting more out of it. The meaning doesn't change, but the applications and the way it applies, you just didn't see it before. And there is just so much depth there, because of its true author, the Holy Spirit.

Views On How The Scriptures Were Written - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
All right, so kind of a big question or topic that we're discussing today that maybe a lot of these words you've never heard of, and we'll try to kind of make this understandable and easy for us to walk through. So, they asked if we could take some time to walk through some of the different views of inspiration regarding the scriptures. Views like modernism orthodoxy, Neo orthodoxy, verbal and plenary inspiration. Essentially, what do we believe as to how the scriptures were actually written and what do other people believe as to how the scriptures were written? And then what does that mean for us? And that's really kind of, I think where we need to go with that is, what does this mean for us as Christians, who are Bible believing people, and how do we place our trust in that? And so Gary, I just kind of wanna open up and let you take off with it.

Gary Schick
Yeah, and that's a great question, it's huge. I don't know if we'll get through it today or not, I guess we'll just kind of keep an eye on the clock and see where it goes. But what you believe about the Bible is huge. Is it God's word? Is it not God's word? If it is, you know, how did we get it and even you know, how do we know it's true? So I didn't dig into quite all of the things there, but, I dug into a couple of them a little bit. There are different viewpoints as to the nature of God's word, and there are some big words that are thrown around. Inspiration is one of them, which "to inspire," literally means in breathe. And we get that from Paul's letter to Timothy, where it says all scripture is God breathed. Literally God breathed it out and profitable for teaching, reprove correction, and training and righteousness. So that's, I guess a starting point, and what does God's word say about itself? So I want to kind of define some of this, but then I think that's where we really need to go. What does the Bible say about itself? So in terms of orthodoxy, and I picked up some of this from a website called Got questions, Your answers, Biblical answers. So in terms of orthodoxy, the Orthodox view holds that the Bible is the revealed word of God, given by the inspiration of God. By inspiration both verbal and mechanical, is meant that the holy spirit was in full control of the biblical writer by either verbally dictating everything he was writing or using the person as a vessel through which to work. This doctrine of inspiration comes to the logical conclusion that the original manuscripts are without error or contradiction. In other words, yes, there's a human author, but they are writing what God has given them to write. And God has taken that person with their vocabulary, their viewpoint, their understanding, and gotten His words in print for us. Plenary is this concept that the Bible is complete and sufficient revelation of God, and a couple of passages that would support this are 2 Timothy 3:16--17, which I just quoted from. And also 2 Peter 1:20 and 21, which I'm hoping to get to here in a few minutes. Neo orthodoxy is kind of a semi liberal view. The liberal viewpoint would be, "You know, the Bible's written by a bunch of human authors, it's full of errors, it's basically what different people have believed over time." Neo orthodoxy kind of tries to come at least part way to the Orthodox position. It defines the word of God as Jesus, and so that would appeal to us. John 1:1 "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God," it's Jesus. However, here's where we part ways with the Neo Orthodox. It says, "That the Bible therefore is simply man's interpretation of the word's actions, Jesus actions." And thus the Bible itself is not inspired, it's a human document, various parts of it might literally be true, but various parts might not be. And so, the Neo Orthodox you would be essentially, the Bible contains the word of God, without being the word of God. I happened to have a professor when I was in college, drove me crazy until I figured out this is really where he was coming from. We were in a class called Bible and Culture, and I was like, "Great, and we're gonna talk about Moses and the parting of the Red Sea." And I'll never forget him standing up in front of the class and saying to us, "There are true stories and truth stories. And the Bible is full of truth stories." Well, you know what? Aesop's fables are great stories full of truth, but they're not true, they're fiction. And I woke up in the middle of the night and my roommate's like, "What was going on with you last night? You sat up in bed and you're like, Ryan Arnold will tell you it's a truth story." It's just like choking on this idea. I'm sorry, friends, I have not dedicated my life to teaching people a bunch of truth stories. Yes, God's word is full of truth because it's true. And so with that, first of all, I wanna let you know what my denomination, the foresees, a conservative congregational Christian conference believes. We believe the Bible---consisting of the old and new Testament---referring to the 66 books of the Protestant Bible to be the only inspired inherent, infallible authoritative word of God written. Inspired, God breathed, inherent, without air, infallible. It won't lead us astray, authoritative, it's what we base our Christian life and practice on. Word of God, written down, as opposed to Jesus, the living word this is the written word. What does the Bible say about itself? I think that's the key. I've already quoted 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is, God breathed." 2 Peter 1:21 says, "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the holy spirit." I think it's important to remember that Jesus quotes from the breadth of the old Testament. If you look at the Hebrew Bible, it consists of three parts, the law, the prophets, and the writings and Jesus quotes from all of them. He never quotes from the apocryphal book. The books that we find in the Apocrypha that's included in the Roman Catholic Bible, but he does quote from the books that we consider the Bible of the old Testament, that the Jews consider the Bible of the old Testament, the Jews also don't include the Apocrypha. And in terms of the new Testament, we have evidence that the new Testament writers knew exactly what they were doing. For example, Paul writes 1 Thessalonians 2:13, "Therefore we never stopped thanking God, that when you received His message from us, you didn't think of it as our words, as mere human ideas, you accepted what we said as the very word of God, which of course it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe." And the Bible's a powerful book, there's so much we can go off into, in terms of what the Bible says about itself. Hebrews 4:12, it's one of my favorites, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edge sword. Piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow, discerning the very thoughts and intentions of the heart." Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." The scripture describes itself as a lamp, as a fire, as a hammer, as a sword, as bread, as milk, as honey, as meat. If we had time to look at all those scriptures, it really is complete and without error and good for us. It's not only do we base our faith on it, but we grow in our faith from it. Just so much could be said on this topic.

Ben Poole
Yeah, there really is. And I think if you're listening and part of a church that is in any way really associated with even KCMI, I think that we would all fall on that same understanding of scripture. That we believe and hold scripture to be our beginning and end of our understanding of faith. That we believe that it is perfect in and of itself, we believe that it is God's word. There's times where the writers wrote, like dictations, specifically wrote exactly what Jesus said. You can see that through Jesus' teachings, you can even see that from the gospels. Even in Revelation where John writes and records what Jesus said, to specifically the seven churches. But we also see that they didn't write just verbatim what Jesus was saying, they wrote stories. They wrote, you know, John's seeing this vision of the Revelation and he's writing what he sees. You see Luke who writes the book of Acts, and he's writing about the growth of the church. He's writing a history lesson essentially, of what is taking place. You see Paul, Peter, James, they're writing letters to churches, encouraging them. Paul says, "These people say hello and blessings to you, and I pray for you and I think of you." And so all of that though, we believe is 100% inspired through the Holy Spirit, speaking through the apostles. And sharing God's word from Genesis to Revelation that it is completely God breathed through them. It very well could have been different for each of them. Obviously, John writing Revelation had a very different experience, than maybe Paul did in writing his letters. But, yeah, I mean, this is huge and I would just encourage you to probably try and make a grasp of this, if you don't already, because this understanding can affect our spiritual walk. Because like, if you have a professor like you had Gary, who really doesn't believe. I mean, and what if we take that stance? How does that affect our faith? Well, that can make massive lifelong changes in our world and in ourselves.

Gary Schick
What it really means is, and this is where the liberals and the modernists part ways with us, that means they can pick and choose. They get to be actually the authority of God's word, not God Himself. And so, if they don't like something, you know, like, "Oh, the Genesis. That doesn't match with our views of evolution, so therefore that's just a story with truth in it, it's no longer true." And not just Genesis, although Genesis is foundational to everything. But, you know, we look at all the moral questions of our times and we see how, what we call Biblical churches have parted ways with what we call Mainline and Liberal churches. Well, what what's going on there? The Mainline and the Liberal churches are following the culture and wherever culture contradicts scripture, "Scripture's wrong, scripture's wrong, scripture's wrong. We've moved on, we've evolved beyond that. And so our understanding has evolved." Well, God said it, I believe it, that settles it, and you know what, cultures change, our viewpoints change. What people consider morally right culturally, a hundred years from now, may be radically different from what it is today. But God's word and His view on marriage, sexuality, on so many things, it stays the same. And thank God that it does, because it's a foundation you can build your life on. Jesus said, "Whoever hears my word and puts them into practice, is like a wise man who builds his house on a rock." And every other path is what the other guy built, the fool built on sand. So I'm gonna stick with God's word, I'm not saying it's always easy. You're right, you pointed out there's every kind of, I guess what you'd call genre, in scripture. There's history, there's poetry, there's prophecy, there are parables, which, you know, they aren't things that literally happen when they're parables. But that's different than when we're reading a history that is saying, this is what happened. And so, do we have to kind of understand what we're reading there to get the right interpretation? Absolutely, but the key is, God has given it. It's true and it contains truth because it's true.

Ben Poole
Yep, absolutely. I would encourage if you've never really looked into this, this kind of goes with it, but maybe a history of how we got our Bible. It's a beautiful history actually. There's so many books, I studied one when I was in college. It's simply, How we got the Bible from Lightfoot, I just looked it up on Amazon, it's the first one that pulled up. A phenomenal, just really great view, for me it helped solidify my foundation of my faith. That I can trust God's word, that what we're reading is true and accurate today.

What Does It Mean To Be God's People? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
Our question today is one that's very extensive and we'll try to get through it as quick as we can. There's a lot of subject matter to cover, but the question is, "Often 1 Peter 2:9-10 is quoted in the church about who we are as believers in Christ. But being chosen or called a Royal priesthood or a holy nation or His own special people is really hard to comprehend for some of us. And so could you guys explain a little bit of the meanings of those titles?" So I'm gonna just take the first one if you don't mind and then I'll let you guys take the other ones. Maybe mine's a little easier, I don't know. But when we get into verse nine of 1 Peter chapter two, the apostle Peter identifies the church, that is believers, as a chosen race. And as I was looking at this in the context of scripture, of course, when you go back to chapter one, verse two, Peter already told us that we are the elect, according to the foreknowledge of God, the father. When you start bringing up the subject, obviously of being the elect, that's a very controversial subject. And it has a lot of problems within the church and there's a lot of divisiveness, but I think if we look at it in light of what Peter already wrote in 1 Peter chapter two, when he said "We are the elect, according to the foreknowledge of God, the father," that clears up a whole lot of things. That means that before God created the world, that he chose us in accordance with His omniscient knowledge, which includes all of our free choices. And when I look at this, I know there's those who stand on one rail as compared to the other rail, free choice or God's sovereignty. I don't see that in the Bible, I see both rails running to heaven as has been shared in some of the commentaries that I've read in past years. And what I see it as is, really it means that God doesn't violate our free will, even though He is sovereign, even though His will is going to be done perfectly, He doesn't violate our free will. He doesn't force anyone into His heaven, kicking and screaming, not wanting to go. We do know that God didn't create us as robots, He doesn't wind us up and we walk around as a programmed robot and loving Him. In fact, I love what C.S. Lewis said some years ago, he said, "Without choice, you cannot have true love." And I think that's something we have to always keep in mind when we think about the sovereignty of God, and also our free choice is, if there's ever gonna be real love, there always has to be choice. And we know that even in our own personal relationships, there can't be true love between a husband and wife, unless there's a choice to love one another in that relationship. But then on the other side of things, we know that God is in the eternal now. That means that He's not limited to time, He's not limited chronologically like we are. I know for myself, I can't even operate unless things are chronologically put into order. And I think this is one of the problems that we come up to with this debate, is that many people wanna make God think like us. They try to make God limited, they try to make God finite, they try to make God in a box. And that is not our God, our God is eternal, our God is infinite, our God is necessary, and our God is the first cause. We have to remember that God's above space, time and material universe that we live in, He's not bound by it. And therefore in His order to determine who's elect and His omniscient knowledge of our free choice, they run together. In fact, some of the commenters that you'll study on these passages of scripture will tell us that those two are coextensive. In other words, God's sovereignty does not outreach our free choice, they run together. There's not one more powerful in the way God does things over the other. So since God has transcended again over time, space and material, universe, He's not limited to the ways we are. In time and chronologically again, He exists in eternal now that means that God can look into the future just in the same accuracy as we can look in the past. In fact, I love what Norman Geisler wrote in his book that I read just recently, called Free But Chosen. And he talks about how often he'd be out, giving lectures and there would be a football game at home, and he wanted to watch the game, but he couldn't get home to watch it. So his wife would record the game and then he would go home and watch the game, the film. And what he said is, "Of course the game would always end up the same way on the film. I mean, you could watch it over and over and over again, the play, the players, the referee calls, everything was always the same. It was fixed, you couldn't change it. But the day they played that game, the players all had a choice in which way they ran, what play they ran as the game was played." And I think we can look at the same way of our life, is we are players in the game of life. We have a free choice, even though God has His will determined of what's gonna happen in the future. But I think we have to keep in mind the consequences of our choice, understanding that you and I, we will always absolutely be held responsible for our choices. Our choice of accepting the Lord or rejecting the Lord, that is determining our eternal destination. God has always projected Himself before all men that He exists. As we know in Romans one and two, and God has always shared that He is there. And if man would reach out and pursue that light, God will give more light until eventually it accumulates to that gospel, bringing that person to the knowledge and understanding of our lost condition and our need for Christ. It's not a case of if we see God or not, the Bible tells us all man sees God, but the Bible also tells us it's man's choice to accept or to reject Him. So I guess what I'm saying is we are responsible for our decision to accept or reject the Lord. But at the same time, God has in His foreknowledge accepted us according to the choice, obviously that we've made to accept or reject Him too. So the chosen race, yeah. We either choose God or we suppress the truth and walk away from Him. So that's one of the ways I would try to, in a nutshell, try to quickly explain why we are called a chosen race. And so Tim, I'm gonna hand off the next one to you a Royal priesthood.

Tim Hebbert
You know, guys, I think this is a passage of scripture that all Christians need to read more than once, maybe once a week, remind ourselves of who He's called us to be in Him. So when Peter's writing this letter and he refers to the church as God's chosen, as a Royal priesthood. For the Jews anyway, he's hearkening back to something that they would've understood from scripture, all the way back in Exodus, 19th chapter. Moses has led them out of Egypt, two months into the journey they make a stop at Mount Sinai, and it says this, "Exactly two months---." This is chapter 19 verse one of Exodus, "Exactly two months after the Israelites left Egypt, they arrived in the wilderness of Sinai after breaking camp in Rephidim. They came to the wilderness of Sinai and set up camp at the base of Mount Sinai, then Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The Lord called to him from the mountain and said, 'Give these instructions to the family of Jacob, announce it to the descendants of Israel. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on Eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you'll obey me, keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth, for all the earth belongs to me.

Tim Hebbert
And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation. This is the message you must give to the people of Israel." God's intent for His children, that He delivered from Egypt is that they just wouldn't be a band of followers, but that they would be king priests, Royal priesthood that would declare to the world who God was. They were to be the on earth, living example of what happens when you follow the king of the universe, they struggled to do that. And so what Peter's telling us, I think in this passage is, "Okay, we're the new Israel, that's our calling now. That calling that he gave the nation of Israel so long ago, he's calling on his church now to take up that mantle, to be my Royal priesthood, to be the king priest, if you will, here on earth, declaring to the world who I am. And whenever I read this passage, I think of growing up as a kid, when my dad was leading song service at church, that was back before worship teams, right. We'd do a couple of hymns and invariably, his favorite chorus was Child of the King, oh yes, oh yes I'm a child of the King. And this is the phrase he loved the best, "His Royal blood now, flows through my veins." And I think we forget that we get worn down in the day to day minutia of life. And yes, we love Jesus, yes we're following in as best we can, but we forget He's calling to a higher purpose. He's called us to live a Royal life, just like He did. And that's what I get from that. but I'm gonna turn it over to Gary, cause he's gonna talk a little bit about, what does it mean to be a holy nation?

Gary Hashley
You know, there's a lot of confusion today over the role of Israel, the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob and Jacob's 12 sons. And today the church, which is comprised of yes, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who've put their personal faith in Jesus Christ, as their savior, and those of us who aren't Jewish. I remember on the way home from church one Sunday after hearing this term circumcision and uncircumcision in a sermon, you know, I asked my dad what all that meant. And he says, "Well, if you're uncircumcised, it's referring to you as a Gentile." What's a Gentile? How do you know if you're a Gentile? He said, "If you're not a Jew, you are one. If you're not a Jew, you are a Gentile." And so what this isn't saying as I look through the entirety of scripture, it's not saying that we, as the church today have totally replaced Israel in God's purposes, in God's plan, in God's prophetic realities because you know, we are not Israel. Though we are still a chosen people, we are still a holy nation. Kenneth West does great work with Greek, and I don't know a lot of Greek, but I love to know guys who do know Greek. And Kenneth West says the word nation is the translation of a Greek word, meaning quote, "A multitude of people of the same nature." It doesn't mean that we're of a nationality as a nation, as the Jewish people are a nation, but that we have this commonality in Jesus Christ. We have this new nature in Jesus Christ as His followers. The word holy means set apart, set apart for His service. And so let me quote, Matthew Henry who says, "All Christians, wheresoever they be, composed one holy nation. They are one nation collected under one head agreeing in the same manners and customs and governed by the same laws. And they are a holy nation because they are consecrated and devoted to God renewed and sanctified by His holy spirit." So it doesn't matter what nation we belong to physically, as in whether we are of the United States or we are of Bolivia, or we are of Brazil, or we are of Russia, or we are of China. We are a special people to God, and we're special people, not because of the land we live in or the boundaries of our country, but because we are all followers of Jesus. As we used to sing as children, "Red and yellow, black and white, they're precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world." And as His children, through faith in Jesus, no matter the color of our skin, no matter where our ethnic background goes, we are His people. We're a holy people, but we're set apart for Him. And I love what Warren Wiersbe says, because in the old king James, it says we're a peculiar people. And I remember as a young person, peculiar was not something you wanted to be, because we think of strange, we think of weird. But Warren Wiersbe said it so well he said, "It doesn't mean odd, it means refreshingly different. That there's something about us that when the world looks, it's refreshingly different." And if we read a little farther, Peter in verse 12, just a couple verses later says, "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation." Peter says, "We are chosen, a chosen people, a chosen race, a Royal priesthood, a holy nation." And the whole purpose of that in God's scheme of things is to have a way to glorify Himself through people who are refreshingly different. And if the world wants to look for something to complain about, something to pick at us about, all they can find is we live a wonderfully different lifestyle that is respectful and kind, and honorable and ethical. And that just like with Daniel, when said, "They went to look for some reason to accuse Daniel, the only thing they could find was he prayed a lot." And so they worked against him because he prayed a lot. So what a joy to be a part, no matter where we live on the planet, as followers of Jesus. We are God's nation. Does He still have a plan for Israel nationally? Yes, He does. I believe fully. We didn't replace Israel in that sense, but we are His people in a very special way.

Where Does The Sanctity Of Life Come From? - Ask the Pastor

You can listen to Ask The Pastor every weekday at 9:00am MST on 97.1FM Hope Radio KCMI! You can also listen and subscribe to Ask The Pastor in your favorite podcast feed. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music and most other podcast services.

This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.

Ben Poole
So, like I said, we're gonna continue in our discussion. We have a few questions that we'd like to cover, but I'm just gonna start with this next question. "We use the term, sanctity of life. What does that mean? Is it right to use this term? And if so, where does this sanctity come from?" So Gary, what are your thoughts on that?

Gary Schick
Well, you know, it's a great question. And sanctity is one of those, you know, 50 cent, well, I guess we live in an inflated world, $300 words. But you know, it's a kind of a pricey word that we're not sure really what it means. Basically it means, to be holy, to be set apart, to be sacred, these are all ways of translating the basic meaning of that. And so what we're saying is, that human life is very precious in the eyes of God. We are, as the scripture tells us, Genesis chapter one, "In the image of God, He created them, male and female. He created them." So we are created by God in God's image. And of all the rest of creation, go back and read to Genesis chapter one. It's a beautiful chapter, great place to start the year. As we enter this new year, all life, all creation is precious, God made it. And we should have a care for it, but above all human life is unique in that we reflect the image of God. And so that's why there's such a priority on life, and with sanctity of life Sunday, this is something that has come about. Since the advent of Roe v. Wade, bringing attention of Christians to the sacredness and the specialness of life, right from conception, right from the womb. We talked a little bit about scripture on that you know, "You created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb," Psalm 139. In Job, it actually talks about how Job reflects on how God actually caused his conception. So yes, there's a physical process involved, but there are no human mistakes. You know what? I've talked to people, I spoke with somebody this week, just basically said, "You know what, all my life, I felt like I was a mistake." And I don't think they were even referring to conception, it's just the way this world treated them. And you know what good news it is when we discover that the Bible tells us the truth about ourselves, it doesn't deny sin or evil. These are real, I've heard people to deny that too. No, these are real, but you are still precious in God's sight. Jesus died for your sin, Jesus died to save you. And so, right from conception, life is precious. We need to protect it we need to honor it, we need to treat it as sacred. We need to make ready for it to come into the world, but at the same time, you know, I'm just gonna touch on this real lightly, cause I don't want any fuses blowing. But unfortunately this has become a kind of a politicized issue, and you know, there are basically two parties out there. I don't have to know what they say or say what they are. One of them, at least in its platform stands for life, and the other one seems not to. I just wanna caution us all, that when we say we're pro-life biblically, that means womb to tomb. And unfortunately one side is really good at saying, "We need to protect life in the womb." And the other side is actually better at saying, "And we want to care for that life once it's out of the womb." And as Christians, we need to speak to both parties, we need to say to the one, "Yes, thank you. This is precious from conception, but guess what, what is it that's pushing people toward those hard decisions? How can we help them care for this life once in the world?" The other side, "Thank you for your care for the life that's in the world, by the way, it's in the world even when it's in mama's tummy."

Ben Poole
Yeah, a hundred percent!

Gary Schick
And so that's as far as I wanna go with that. And I think whatever, and I do know Christians of both political persuasions, whatever party you're in, stand for all sides of life within it, stand for the biblical concept of life.

Ben Poole
That is such a powerful statement you made. And I know we don't wanna, you know, pop a cork with anybody, or blow a fuse. But that's speaking truth, plain and simple. And I was thinking about the sanctity of life and why, which actually, kind of coincides with the last question. Why do we seem to place more value in the life of animals than we do on humans? And man, we see that, honestly, I've thought about that even in movies, you know, the dog dies and everybody's, you know, crying, but a person dies and it's like, well, maybe they had it coming, you know. And we just have this kind of a twisted view in the world, but why do we consider human life a sanctity? And I think it goes back to that Genesis one in creation, that we were created in the image of God, but even later at the crucifixion. Jesus didn't come to live this perfect sinless life to become sin for animals. Animals don't sin, they are just animals. We are the ones in need of being saved, because we sin and we mess up and it's because of what God had done. And sending His Son Jesus to save us is really what I think sanctifies us. In life and why we believe life is so precious, and you know, I've really struggled with, you know, people talking about, babies in the womb are not alive and I can't grasp it. My wife is pregnant right now, she's due in March and so right about now is really when, you can really start feeling the baby move. And just the other day my wife said, "Come here, come here," and I mean, she was just kicking and punching and I mean, you could feel her moving and alive and active. And I personally just, I don't grasp how you can say that is not a living human.

Gary Schick
Well, and the reason that you would have to say that, is because if you were in the position of aborting, there's no anesthesia given to that child. There's brainwaves there, there's a heartbeat there, they feel, they even dream, they suck their thumb. And unfortunately, you know, we live in a world where people can abort right to the point of delivery. If it's still in the womb, we can still kill it as long as it's in there and cut it apart in the womb. Again, this might be a little graphic for some, but abortion is brutal. I mean, yes, they'll give maybe the mom, some anesthesia, but they treat the baby as if it was a non entity. With no feeling and just a clump of cells. I mean, even you talk about, you know, do we love our animals more? If we have to put our dog down, it's a horrible day, but we're gonna make that as painless for the puppy as possible. And yet here are lives that some of them are to term, and I think a lot of people would have a problem with that. It gets harder when you can't see it doesn't look like a baby yet, but where in that process, do you suddenly magically, you know, wave a wand over it and it becomes a person? You're there, your soul is there. And even the ancients believe this, I don't have them with me today, but I have some quotes from the earliest Christians saying that, "You know, all life is human from conception." Christians have just understood it because of what God's word says about this right from the beginning.

Ben Poole
Yeah. So with this, I just was thinking, maybe you're hearing this and you're like, you are struggling with this decision or, you know somebody that is, "Okay, what do we do about that? Where do we go? What are the resources? We don't really wanna send them to the hospital." Or you know, you've heard things about certain organizations like planned parenthood, which I don't think we have one real close by here, I'm not sure. But in town here, we do have a Christian pregnancy center, it's called Options Pregnancy Center.

Gary Schick
That's the place to go.

Ben Poole
Here in Western Nebraska, it's a Christian organization. They're, I'm just gonna throw this out there, 1308 avenue B, suite B. They're on avenue B next to, I believe it's Nexus Mechanical Shop. If that is a resource, you need, seek them out. They are there for you and want to help you and just love you through this time.

Gary Schick
And you know, for those who find themselves in a pregnancy situation, and they're just saying, "But I can't raise this child." I just want you to know my family is so grateful to two families out there that we don't even know, that we adopted our children very, very young from, one of them a little older, one of them just a few months old. And I'll tell you what, we honor those moms and those biological fathers. We pray for them and we're grateful for them because our family would be incomplete without all of our children, adopted and otherwise.

Ben Poole
Absolutely. Both of our older girls are adopted, and so I know that there are so many families that would gladly support you in that decision, if that's what you chose. But I want to jump in, in just the last few minutes because a lot of times I think a lot of, young ladies especially, feel like, "I've made this decision, now everybody's looking down on me." Or, "I don't know if God can forgive me." And so one of the questions that came in was, is abortion the unpardonable sin? And you know what, there's probably some people that would say yes to that. And I'm gonna go ahead and say no.

Gary Schick
And the Bible says no.

Ben Poole
And the Bible says, no, too.

Gary Schick
We support you in that.

Ben Poole
So, we are here for you, but I just want to just maybe close with this thought. That whether you've had an abortion or are thinking of it or feel like maybe that's your only way out, God absolutely still loves you. And you are never so far from His grace that you can't come to God. And He is there to receive you and to welcome you into His arms, which is way better than anything in this world can offer. What are your thoughts on that, Gary?

Gary Schick
Well, you know, I mean, yeah, for those who are at a crossroads, I just beg you to call one of us, call Options, and find out your options. But for those, for whom the moment has passed and you're looking back at it and saying, "You know what? It was a hard moment in life, but I took a life and now what do I do for the rest of my life?" That is hard. It is not the unforgivable sin. Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the place where this comes up is, the Pharisees were basically saying Jesus in the miracles He performed had an unclean spirit. And He's like, "You know what? You can be forgiven any sin, including blasphemy against me," Jesus said. You know, against Jesus. But He said, "Whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven." What was the holy spirit? He was giving testimony that Jesus is the Christ. And so if you turn against the witness of the spirit, you are rejecting Jesus. And as long as you reject Jesus, you can't have salvation, cause Jesus is salvation. So as long as you reject the witness of the spirit, that Jesus is the savior, that's where you get forgiveness. As soon as you come to Jesus, all sin is forgiven, and it is really as simple as that. Does that mean that there are no consequences? Well, of course not, there's always consequences. And so, you know, again, for those who may be considering abortion and you're in a tough place, realize that you will get past this day of your life, you will get through this. But if you take that life, you can never undo that, and so forgiveness absolutely. Consequences to your life and even your potential ability to have future children, it can mess up a womb when you do this. You might be cutting off all life from your womb, and so I just wanna caution people about that. That, yeah there's forgiveness, but we don't walk into it and say, "Well, I'm gonna go ahead and do this and be forgiven and it's all okay." There's still some things to carry from that. And again, for those who are on the other side of it, well then it's a question, "Okay, so now how do we go on from here?" But never walk into a situation saying, "Well, I'm gonna do what I know is wrong and I'll be forgiven anyway." But yes, forgiveness is there.