How Do The Different Accounts Of The Resurection Fit Together?

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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
So, the question, and this is the fourth week that we're dealing with this question. "Hey guys, as we approach Resurrection Sunday, which is just a couple days away now, would you talk about the different accounts of the resurrection and how they fit together?" So we began this series with the gospel of Mark, and kind of an introduction of the whole series. And really, Mark is a good base to start from, cause we believe it's most likely the first gospel that was written. Then we branched out into Matthew and Luke. And so today, fitting John in with the rest is kind of our topic. Jonathan, would you get us started as we think about the gospel of John's resurrection account?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. We open up in John chapter 20, and we would run through verses 1 through 18. And at the beginning it talks about Mary, "the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb." And as I think about that, you know, Jesus could've came out of that tomb without moving the stone, right? Like, He could've easily just been on the other side. And so, you know, thinking about that, why was the stone itself moved? It wasn't for, you know, like, it wasn't for him, right? He didn't have to have it moved for him to exit the tomb. It was for, you know, Mary Magdalene when she gets to the tomb. It was for, you know, the disciples when they get to the tomb. It was for us to see that, you know, I was able to peer into that tomb and see that he was gone, right? We know that Simon Peter, and the one whom Jesus loved, which we would say was John, right? And I always teased people saying, "yeah, Jesus loved me, you know, since my name is John!" And we know that in this story, Simon Peter and John, in a sense, raced to the tomb. And we find out in this gospel that John must have been faster or a track star and made it to the tomb first. And so another thing, I always tease my brother, his name is Peter, and my name is John. So I always tell him, "I'm a lot faster than you, but you're a little braver than me." You know, as we see this story, John made it there first, but he didn't look in first. As Simon Peter got there, he was the one that peered into the tomb. And, you know, I wonder, why was this, you know? We can always think, you know, think into scripture a little bit further, I guess. And, you know, Peter was always the one that spoke first, or I guess in a sense, a little braver. Obviously, during the rooster crowing he had a moment of not being brave, you know? But here, Peter looks into the tomb and he sees, you know, obviously Jesus isn't there, right? Like, the body's not where it was placed. And so, you know, these are some of the things I enjoy as I read through this. Just seeing, you know, Peter was willing to, even though he had that moment back then, you know, "I'm gonna peer in. I'm gonna see for myself what's taken place." And I encourage each of our listeners, you know, see for yourself who Jesus is. See for yourself. Like, get into those scriptures and start reading and digging in and doing those deep dives into the scriptures and seeing for yourself who Christ is. You'll always come back with joy and, you know, it'll be exciting for you. We see that when they go back and tell the other disciples about what they seen, and you know, we see that some of them had some moments of doubt, right? Thomas doubted, "Okay, is it really, you know, our savior? You know, our leader left us and he died, right?" And so we see these men or disciples, even the women that were there, where they were at, you know, how would we be in those places, right? Would we have been like Thomas and doubt what was taking place? I mean, as an early, early believer, I doubted a lot of things. Like, "Gosh, is this, is the Bible true?" Right? "Is this resurrection true?" Like, you know, there's a lot of things that I doubted early on. And as we dig into scriptures and we start learning who Christ is, we can see the truth, and we can see that the Bible is reliable. And I think that's what we see here. You know, Jesus had shown himself, not just to Mary and that's it. He showed himself to multiple people over a certain period of time. And, you know, that's what we would've seen back then. That they needed more than just one eyewitness to have something to be true. You know? And so he showed himself to multiple people to show, "Hey, what I said before and what I'm doing now, there's truth to this."

Ben Cline
Yeah, that's so good. And we, you know, come to the book of John and it's the last of the four in our canon of scripture as far as the order that they're placed in our Bibles. You know, the gospels are there. And we wanna read through each of those accounts, you know, pick up the things that are unique about each of those accounts and see how all of those things fit together. And when you're looking at the book of John, it's so interesting because this is John's record from his perspective of, you know, all these events that took place. And as you're reading through, it seems to be a story that is a lot about Mary Magdalene's experience. And I just thought that that was so interesting. There's some things that are unique in this record. You know, Mary Magdalene goes early in the morning, at the beginning of the day to the tomb. And in the other accounts, you see that there's other women who went there with her while, you know, this is her account. She goes there, she sees that the stone has already been rolled away, and she leaves. She goes and she finds the other disciples that were living nearby. The ones who had actually stuck around, that would be Peter and John. And she tells them the stone has rolled away. And the report that she gives to them is, you know, it would've been startling news to see that the stone had been rolled away. And her fear was that somebody had taken Jesus' body. And that's what she went back and reported to Peter and John. And so you can understand, you know, as they were racing toward the tomb, you can understand the urgency behind that, right? And you can understand why they wanted to get there as quickly as they possibly could. And so she went back with them and, you know, after they went and they both eventually ended up looking inside of the tomb and seeing the linen wrappings that were sitting where Jesus used to be, where his body used to be. She stayed there and she was weeping outside of the tomb. And she ended up looking into the tomb and saw the two angels there. They asked her a question actually that would get, you know, asked of her again in just a minute, uh, but by a different person. They asked her, "why are you here? Who are you looking for?" And she explains to them again, the same thing that she reported to Peter and John. That she was afraid that somebody had come and taken her Lord. She was chosen. Mary Magdalene was chosen, to be, well I guess, I don't know if she's the only one, but she's one of the few who got to see Jesus that early. You know, Jesus came, she turns around, and Jesus came and met her at the tomb. And, you know, he was talking to her as well, and she didn't even recognize him at first. And I just love what Jesus did there, because he knows what's going on in this woman's heart. He knows how distraught she is. And he knows the concerns that she has about Jesus' body. And so he's telling her all of these things and having this discussion with her. And then he says her name, he says, "Mary," and then suddenly she recognizes him and calls him "Rabbi," which is His teacher. And she just thought that he was a gardener, at first, who was tending to the, you know, I guess you could call it landscaping or whatever, around the tombs. But you know, he was standing there in front of her. And, you know, there's just this very uniqu record in John about all these things that Mary Magdalene experienced. And I love what Jesus does here, because he doesn't just let her stay in that state. He doesn't just let her, you know, stand idle. He gives her this first command that she's hearing from him, and that is, "go and tell the others." And I think that that's an important lesson for all of us, that we need to go, we need to take this message out into the world, that Jesus is risen. And that's why I look so forward to Easter each and every year, is to be able to do that.

Gary Schick
Good stuff! And this really concludes this series for us. So as we kind of draw it together, it's probably good to just step back for a second and just realize the four gospels are kind of like the four ends of the compass. You know, they are looking at the life of Jesus from four different perspectives. But that said, the first three that we've looked at, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what are called the Synoptics. And they basically kind of use the same framework, and just kind of branch out in different directions. We believe Mark is telling us the eyewitness account as Peter remembers it. And there's so much in Mark that just, is very eyewitness. Even though Mark himself probably wasn't the guy who was standing there talking about; for example, the feeding of the 5,000. They sat down on the green grass or, uh, talking about how Jesus felt on certain occasions, just very up close in that way. But just quick snapshots. Peter, just even in this account of running through the tomb, you just know he's an abrupt guy who charges in. And so that's how he would've told the stories. Matthew as a former tax collector and one who's really got a heart for the Jewish community, just very meticulously lays out how Jesus fulfills, fulfills, fulfills. And Luke, who is not an eyewitness at all, he was actually the one Gentile to come back and to research everything and say, "and you know what? These things I've researched so that you may know." And he's talked so much about Jesus, especially as he relates to, they all do, but in a special way, Luke kind of zeroes in on the downtrodden and the way that Jesus lifts people up. But what is so magnificent about John, is he just starts from a different place. In fact, in John 20, he says, "Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples not written it in this book." And John made no attempt to follow the outline previously prepared. He made it his goal to really tell some things that hadn't been told. And where Mark is kind of like, an old fashioned photo album, does anybody remember those? I think today we call it Facebook, where you just see individual snapshots. Luke and John could be, and actually Luke has been by the Jesus film made into a full-length movie. I think actually, at this point, all the gospels maybe have, but John has been described to me as a beautiful, like a Rembrandt painting. Just up close, the detail is just, it's like the, the paint is still wet, and you have these up close moments. And so, where John is telling us the same resurrection account as the others have told, as has been pointed out, he really brings us close. Rather than talking about the women, he talks about one woman at the tomb. Rather than focusing very much on Jesus' appearance to the disciples, he tells the story of one disciple; Thomas. And then, rather than zeroing in on kind of the whole group of them as they go up on the mountains to receive the great commission, he zeroes in on that one restoration and commissioning of Peter. So, you know, all of it's true accounts, all of it happened. But John tells the story in a way, as you pointed out, as you guys both pointed out, that focuses on individual experiences of that. And his purpose, as we see in John 20 is, "but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that by believing, you may have life in His name." And I think, one of the powerful things about John is, is it tells these individual stories and the book is full of them. You know, there's Nicodemus, there's the woman caught in adultery, there's the man born blind. Really, it tells us extensively their stories, even the coming of the first disciples as they kind of went and found Jesus. "Well, where are you staying?" "Well come and see." You know, these up close personal accounts. But John is ultimately inviting us to have our own personal encounter with Jesus. And friends, I know I speak for the brothers in Christ with me today. That is what we are longing for, for you. You know, Easter's a great time. It's hopefully, we're about to see the full flowering of spring; looks like some warmth in the week ahead here. So that's a beautiful time of year. There's a lot to celebrate in terms of the story of Easter. Whether we're talking about the passion of the Christ, what he endured as he died for our sins, the songs of Resurrection Morning, "Christ The Lord Has Risen Today. The fellowship time, the Breakfast at church, the time around the table at home. But ultimately friends, it's gotta be more than celebrations and chocolate rabbits and great movies. It's got to be your personal encounter with the risen Christ. And once you've experienced that, it just changes it forever. It's not just a day in the calendar, it's not just some time off of work. It's not just some special celebration and some good music or some whatever. It becomes a time of personal worship. Whether that starts for you at sunrise, or a little bit later in the day. Where does your personal encounter with Jesus come? And I just wish that for you today, good Friday, as we think about what he endured on the cross for us.

If God Knows That Some People Will Go To Hell Why Does He Create Them?

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.

Gary Hashley
The question that we're going to talk about today is this: "If God knows that some will reject His offer of salvation, why would He create people that He knows will go to hell?" I would say there's even another question, a question posed by one of my professors at Bible college years and years ago, a question to get us thinking. "If God knows all things, and the Bible implies He does, He knows the past, He knows the present, He knows the future. He knows what is actual, and He knows what is possible. If God knows all that, and God knew that Adam and Eve, when He put them in the garden and He gave them the one rule. Don't eat from the tree in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If God knows all things, then God would've known Adam and Eve would disobey. Why did God even make Adam and Eve? And that is one of those questions that I don't know we will ever have an answer for that will satisfy anybody. And one thing we always need to keep in mind, and I think Brad would agree with me on this, is that we are not God's judge and jury. God doesn't answer to us. I think sometimes people make up their mind, "If God isn't the way I want Him to be, then He's wrong and I just don't want to believe in Him." But think about it on the other side, since He is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and He is the creator of us, and He is the giver of truth and the giver of morality. Who are we to look to God and say, "I don't think you're fair. I don't think you're doing this well. John 3:16 says, "For God's so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." We know from scripture that those who don't put their faith in Jesus, not only will be condemned, they are, John 3:17, it talks about, "God didn't send His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." Then it says, "He who does not believe is condemned already because he's not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God." And so, you know, God created us, not robots. He created us with the ability to choose. We have intellect to think, we have emotions to feel, we have a volition or the ability to choose. Now, from God's side, scripture makes it very plain that He wants people to be saved. Let me just share some examples: Ezekiel 33:11, "As I live, declares the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways. For why will you die, O house of Israel? Earlier in chapter 18, he says, "I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord. So turn and live." Another place in that same chapter, "have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live." Proverbs 8, "I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently will find me." Lamentations 3, "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him." Jeremiah 29, "you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Isaiah 45, "turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is no other." 1 Timothy 2, "This is good and is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." God wants people to be saved. He provided for us to be saved. Jesus made it possible through his death, burial and resurrection. The Holy Spirit works in people's hearts to draw them to God. We have the scriptures that point us to God. We, as believers, have been told to be his witnesses. And so, if people don't believe and they've never heard, that's our fault. But if people have heard and don't believe, that's their fault. None of it is ever God's fault. I was studying to write my senior thesis as a senior at the Grand Rapid School of the Bible in music in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was writing my thesis on the sovereignty of God and the free will of man in salvation. I was reading a book by Arthur W. Pink who said that Jesus did not even die for some people. He said, "God created some people just to send them to hell." Now, I can't go with that because the Bible says, "God loved the world and gave His only begotten son." So when I posed that to someone close to me, who is of the persuasion that Arthur Pink has, I said, "well it says, for God so loved the world." And he looked at me and said, "yeah, but world in John 3:16 doesn't mean 'world.' World only means the few He's chosen to save." Well, I can't go there folks, because the Bible so many times talks about the offer being made to all of mankind. In fact, Peter talks about people denying the one who bought them. Jesus bought us with his blood. He paid the price on the cross. So I think God's heart is, He wants everyone to be saved. Salvation is to be offered to all. It is available to all. And those who do not put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's their choice. He said, "they're condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." So we can play the game of, "God should do what I think is right, and God should do it the way I think He should do it." Or we can sit back and say, "I trust God to always do the right thing, because God is faithful to Himself." Faith comes by hearing the word of God. And the Bible is out there. People pick it up in motel rooms. People hear it on the radio. People hear it from a friend, read it in a gospel tract. They see scripture in the gospel tract. People have come to put their faith in Jesus. So the thought of, "why would God create people He knows will go to hell?" I don't know why, but I do know that they don't have to if they put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. So, my theologian friend across the table here, Brad, why don't you pick up where I've left off. Or start where I haven't even been and throw some input into this question.

Brad Kilthau
Well Gary, you know, when you look at that question, and I know that question comes up a lot, "why would He create people that He knows will go to hell?" I think you can look deeper into that question and really see what the person is really asking. They're trying to put, again, guilt on God or fault on God for people not being able to go to heaven. And I think what we have to keep coming back to, obviously is it is not God's fault. And it is not God's desire, again, that anyone would perish. And one of the ways we know that is, when we look in the Bible, especially in Romans 1. In Romans 2, it speaks about how God offers Himself as light to every single human being. It talks about how creation is without and how conscience is within. And as we know, that the Lord gives us witness of His existence, and that goes to everyone. Now there are people who do not want to accept that there is a God. There are people who do not want to accept that they have to answer to God. And so they might come up with their own theory of how things came to be. And that's how come we have, I believe, the false propaganda of evolution that's going on right now. It's not that people don't know that there's a God, they just don't want to acknowledge that God is there. They don't want to answer to God. But again, we come back to what you were sharing too, Gary. Is that God created us because He wants to have a relationship with us. He wants us to be with Him. He wants all of us to be saved. And so, again, He shares that He's there. Just look at creation. Just look at, even the moral law that's written on the heart of every human being. Where did that come from? Well, it had to come from some source. And when a person turns to that source, or looks for the source of what that came from, you gotta see that there's a designer who made the design and all of the beauty that we live in on this world. And so, God's witnessing that, "I'm here. I want to have that relationship with you." And then when we, as Christians, come along and we read scripture and we read what Jesus said, as you were saying in John 3:16. And then we also read in Acts 4, when the apostles are sharing the same thing. That they're salvation in no one else other than the name under heaven given among men, which must be saved. And that's through Christ Jesus. And again, there's a resistance. And they, um, "well, we don't wanna believe in this Jesus. We don't want to accept Him." Well, there again is the fault of the person who will end up someday in hell. The Holy Spirit is always drawing people to the truth that there is God. And when we acknowledge that there is a God, that there is some light in general, again, of a creator. Then the truth of the matter is, God will always, always bring more light to show that He is there. One of the questions that come up in my Bible school training was, you know, of course we always have these that come along and say, "well, what about the guy that's living out there on a remote island? And he's never heard the gospel. No one's ever shared the Bible with him. And what about him?" Is it his fault that he'll end up someday in hell? Well, that's when you go to what we teach about in the subject of Apologetics. And we come back to a very familiar story that often could be shared. Think about a guy that's lost out in a dark jungle. He's been out there for some time. He's been exposed to the elements, he needs to get back to civilization, otherwise he's going to die. He's out there in the middle of the night. He climbs up on this mound and he starts looking around and he sees off in the distance there's this little speck of light. Now, what should he do? Well, he should walk towards the light. If he rejects the light, he's gonna be in trouble. So if he starts walking towards the light, the light will get brighter and brighter and brighter, and eventually he'll find himself coming back into civilization where he could find the help that he needs. But if he looks out and sees that little speck of light and says, "nah, I don't want anything to do with that," and turns around and walks back into the darkness, well, whose fault is that? It's the man who chooses to turn away from the light that was offered to him. And in the same way, when God offers, he says, "I'm here. Look at what I've created. Look at the law that's written on your heart." When you see that light and you say, "is there a God?" Here's what's gonna happen, God is going to bring more light to you. And it might show up just as you were sharing, Gary, it might show up as a gospel tract. It just shows up out of nowhere. Maybe somebody threw it inside of your kids' trick or treat bucket on Halloween, and it ends up in your hands. Maybe all of a sudden you find yourself with a Gideon Bible in your hand. Maybe you're the guy on that island all by yourself, and all of a sudden a missionary comes rowing up in a little boat. Why do you think he's coming? Because God is sending more light. And I know that we live in a society today that wants to try to promote our God as some evil tyrant that would just love to see people suffer. That's the work of Satan. That is not God. God doesn't want anyone in hell. In fact, he created hell for Satan and the fallen angels. It's not even there for human beings. He doesn't want us there, He wants us in his heaven. But that is up to us if we're going to accept Him or reject Him. And so when we see God, He gives a general revelation to show that He exists to show that we need to actually start turning to Him. But again, we have to come to the truth is that no one is gonna be saved by general revelation. They have to hear the gospel. They have to hear it from the word of God. They have to hear the message just as you were sharing. And John 3:16, that's how my Sunday School teacher led me to Christ when I was eight years old, is through that verse right there. And so we have to hear it again from God, from His word. And so God will get that word to those who are desiring a relationship or to know Him. And you know, when you look in the Bible, you think about the early church and those who went out. How Peter went out to Cornelius, how Philip went out to that Ethiopian. God must have really loved that Ethiopian to send Philip out there into the wilderness and say, "Hey, there's a guy reading from the book of Isaiah. Go out there and talk to this man about me." And when we look around the world today, we can even see some in Muslim countries that where the word of God is being shut out. But we find that God is still revealing Himself to many today in dreams to show that He exists. And as we see those who are starting to turn and say, "Is there a God? Is there a God like this that loves me?" All of a sudden we find that radio waves or internet or some way, God gets the message or the gospel to those people. And so the truth of the matter is, God wants all sinners, all of us who are lost in sin, He wants us to get the message of grace so that we can say yes to Jesus. There's never gonna be a time of when someone's gonna stand at the great white throne of judgment, which is for only those who have rejected Christ and stood into eternity that way. But there's never gonna be someone who can stand before God at the great white throne of judgment and say, "God, I didn't know you were there. I didn't know you loved me. I didn't know that. I had no chance to have an opportunity to come to know you." And that is not true. The Lord will say, "Depart from me, because I never knew you." But it wasn't because of God's fault. It's because man has chosen to reject Him and His light.

What Are Satan's Angels, And Should I Worry About Them?

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.

Gary Hashley
We are looking at another question today, helping clarify things in people's minds. And here's what came, "Christians and others often talk about good and bad, and that there is a spiritual war going on between God's angels and Satan's angels. I get God having angels, but not sure about Satan having angels. Are these what are called demons, and do I have to be worried about them?" So, to start with, we need to be reminded that Lucifer, who we came to know as Satan, the devil, the serpent, the dragon. He's called all of those in scripture. He started out as an angel. We read about this in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel chapter 28. That's easy to remember: 14x2 = 28. But in Isaiah 14:12, "how are you fallen from heaven, oh day star, son of dawn? How are you cut down to the ground? You who laid the nation's low. And here's the answer you set in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I'll set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high.' But you are brought down to sheel, to the far reaches of the pit." We find that Lucifer was originally an angel himself, because God didn't create Satan as Satan. He didn't create demons as demons, but He did create angels as well as on earth creating humans. But He created angels, an enumerable company of angels, and they were there serving Him. And yet this Lucifer, who it would appear, was maybe the highest ranking angel in God's host of angels. According to Isaiah, he started to become proud. He started to think that, "why should I serve this God? Why can't I be God?" And he declares that he wants to be God, and God cast him from heaven. And he took with him other angels who had followed his thoughts, who had decided they wanted to follow him instead of following God. And they were cast from heaven and Lucifer, we know now as Satan, we know him as the devil. John in Revelation talks of him as the dragon, talks of him as the serpent. And that's where he came from. So he was an angel, and those who fell with him had been angels. In Revelation 12, starting at verse seven says, "now war arose in heaven: Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called," listen to this, "the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him." So when you hear of demons or Satan's angels, it appears from scripture. We're talking about the same group and there are angels who followed Lucifer and his rebellion. Angels who decided that Lucifer must have, they thought had a chance to dethrone God and then found out you can't dethrone God. A created being cannot dethrone their creator. And they were cast from heaven. Earlier in chapter 12 of Revelation, it talks about the dragon with his tale drug out a third of the stars. And the understanding that I've heard all my years is that third of the stars implies that one third of all of the angels God had created went with Lucifer in his rebellion. We read in the Old Testament in the days of Moses, of a rebellion that started with Korah Dathan and Abiram. And Korah decided Moses was getting too big for his britches, and that Korah ought to be in the same place Moses was in. Many people listened to Korah and decided Korah was right, and they were going to dethrone Moses. God stepped in and said, "no, don't dethrone the person I've put in charge!" And so Moses stayed in charge. And Korah, of course, that says the Earth opened up and swallowed him and his stuff. But yes, there are two types of angels now, but there was only one type of angel at creation. But there are two types of angels now. And so the question then comes about the spiritual warfare that happens between these two entities. In our last time we did this, Brad alluded to the time in Daniel, when Daniel prays and Gabriel is sent to deliver a message as God's angel, taking a message to God's man, God's prophet Daniel. And it says that Satan and his angels got in the way and there was a battle taking place until Michael shows up and leads the charge against Satan. And Gabriel then is able to go on 21 days later, earth days later, and take the message to Daniel. We read about the armor of God. It says, "we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world." It says, "so put on the armor: the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation. Take the sword of the spirit." You know, "the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace, the belt of truth around our waist." The word of God, the sort of the spirit, the shield of faith, because there are battles going on that we never see. You know, when Elisha was surrounded by the enemy and his servant was all upset Elijah said, you know, prayed, "God open his eyes so he can see." And the hills were filled with fiery chariots and God's army was out there fighting against the armies of Satan that we never see. So yes, there are evil forces who started out as angels, but we know them now as demons led by the chief of the demons, Lucifer, who we also know as Satan, the dragon, the serpent, the wicked one. So Pastor Brad, should we be worried about these demons?

Brad Kilthau
Well, there's a lot of thought with that. And in some cases, well, we need to know where they are. When we look at the Bible, we understand that some of those demons that were cast out, that followed Satan outta heaven, were cast out and came down to this earth. We know that some of them we don't have to worry about because they're permanently bound right now. We read about that in Genesis of where these angels came and had sexual relations with daughters and men, with women, human beings. And of course, there was the offspring, and this was totally against God's will. God saw it as such a heinous, immoral sin that he bound them forever, and they are in the lowest abyss. And they will be there until the Lord decides to dump that into the lake of fire at the end of time, and so they don't get another chance. And so we don't have to worry about those angels, those fallen angels that is. But there are also the fallen angels that we think about in Revelation 9 that come out. We could call them the locust demons that are in the bottom of the Euphrates River as they obviously sinned against God in a very heinous way here on this earth. And they are cast into this abyss, but they will be released during the tribulation period as part of the fifth trumpet judgment to carry out some very hurtful things against those who are on the face of the earth. If we're believers, I'm just saying, we don't have to worry about those angels either because it will come out during the tribulation period. And as we are raptured before the tribulation, we won't be here to be seeing them. But there are still demons that are active, thriving, doing the work of Satan right now all around us. And just as you said, Gary, if we could pull back that veil, we would see that spiritual warfare. We're not fighting against flesh and blood, we're fighting against a spiritual enemy in our life. It's something I think we always have to be reminded of. What can these demons be doing to us right now? I think a lot of people think about the demon possessed people as we see in the gospel accounts of where they were cast out and and so forth. When Jesus cast the demons outta that one man, a host of demons, and they went into the swine and then they went out into the sea of Galilee and drowned there. You know, and I think a lot of people have this misconception that, well, we don't have to think about those demons anymore.

Brad Kilthau
They're not active today like they were then. I truly believe they're more active today than they've ever been because they know their time is getting shorter and shorter before their judgment comes. So how can they hurt us? Well they can cause, as we know in the Bible, certain physical and emotional and mental disorders in people. We can see that in Matthew 12 and Luke 13. They can also cause among people what we would call self mutilation. Some of the things we've looked at in the past, one of the things that's very popular was, those who were cutting themselves. And some of that's still going on today. Sometimes we wonder, where does that come from? Why would a person do that to themselves? Well, I think we've labeled everything as a psychological problem, but we need to know there's also a spiritual problem going on. And sometimes I think we're mislabeling some of that. And it is the work of demons. They're very active today in teaching false doctrine, and I think that's one of their main things. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4, he says, "Now, the spirit of God expressly says in the latter times, some will depart from the faith giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." And when we start looking at what's being taught in some of our church buildings across our country today, and we start to wonder, where could that come from? How could ministers of God, claiming to be that, standing front of his congregation and telling his people that Jesus was not born of a virgin. To stand in front of his people and say, "well, Jesus resurrected from the grave, but it wasn't physical. It was only spiritual." And we gotta think, where could you get such a thought? How could you stand in front of people and share that? Well, the only way you could do that, is if you are being misled by, I think, a demonic presence. That there has to be an influence of a demonic spirit that's misguiding and teaching false doctrine through people as a mouthpiece for them. They can hinder spiritual activity. I know that those of us who've sought to lead people to Christ, it invariably happens. And I know, Gary, you could attest to this too. You know, when you're preaching a message and you're getting down to the heart of the message, you're ready to drive the point home that people need to recognize Christ as Savior and Lord of their life. And you're bringing it right to that point, and all of a sudden hymnals start to drop on the floor, or it seems like somebody pinches a baby about that time. And the whole place goes to confusion and immediately as a servant in the ministry, we recognize what that is. That's a spiritual attack. It's trying to hinder the sharing of the gospel that happens over and over. We gotta also remember that demons can do miracles. They're limited in their ability to do that, but they can do some very deceiving miracles. One of the things that I thought of a while back is what we call the apparitions of Mary. And there's a rise on this right now in the world of where many people are truly believing that they are seeing Mary, the mother of our Lord. As we think about in the Bible, they're seeing Mary appear before them, and then she starts to share some things. She says, "I'm speaking for God to you." Most often, what she is saying to these people is, "you need to pray to me. You need to confess your sin to me. You need to come to me. I'm gonna be the intern between you and God." And we know that's false. We know that's not true. It is only Jesus who is the intercessor between us and the Father. How can that be? Well, demonic beings can actually present themselves in a physical form to look like a human being and be used to share false things. And people will believe this because, again, they've been deceived. And then sometimes, yeah, they can invade and possess certain humans. And that still happens today. And I know we like to label everything as a physical or a mental issue, but we need to look sometimes further. There could also be demonic possession of people today. Some people have asked me in the past, they've said, "So, Pastor Brad, have you ever seen a demon possessed person in your years in ministry?" And I've gotta say, "yes, I have." And when that person looked at me and spoke to me, I immediately recognized that it was a demonic presence. And of course, how do you defend against that? It comes back to what you said again Gary, Ephesians 6, it is through prayer and through the word. Through prayer and through the word. The word is our offensive weapon against a demonic presence in our lives.

Gary Hashley
Well, I hope that helps answer that question about Satan's angels and demons. Are we talking about the same thing? And I believe the answer is, "yes," we are. And there's much to learn and there's much to grow in our faith, because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.

What Are The Best Bible Translations? Part 1 - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez, and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
So great to be with you guys and great to be back with our listeners again today. We're gonna do a follow up today to a question that we covered a couple weeks ago. Somebody asked a little bit of a translation question about some names in the Bible, and as part of that conversation we got just kind of talking about a little bit about different translations, which is something people often wonder about. I think probably, I wish personally, I don't know, but you guys, I wish people came to me with more Bible questions. I've never met a pastor who said, "oh, people are constantly barraging me with Bible questions." So...I love doing this program. But one of the questions that I've probably been asked the most is, "well, pastor, what's the right translation? Or the best translation? Or what would be a good translation for me?" And so I think that'd be a good one for us to just kind of talk about today.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So, I think that is definitely one of the most questions I would get too is, "what translation should I read or which one should I stay away from?" And so today, I guess I'll kind of go through something that when I, that was probably one of the questions I asked too when I first became a believer too. Is, "pastor, what translations should I read?" And so, you know, back then, great question. You know, he threw out a couple, but I had a friend that actually drew me out a chart I guess, so to speak. And so that's kind of what I've used now. And I don't have all the different English translations on here. I guess at some point I could start adding and making this list a little bit better.

Gary Schick
There's always more!

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So I kind of have just the ones that he had showed me back then. And so imagine, like, a straight line, and on one side of the line you'd have, like, your literal translations. And so the literal translation is an attempt to translate by keeping as close as possible to the exact words and phrasing of their original language. So they would take the original language and make sure that they stay true to that. And then on the other, the far side of this, you would have the free translation. This would be more of like that paraphrasing translation. And then in the middle you kind of have, what my friend would call, was the dynamic equivalence. And this was an attempt to translate the word, and it would be close, but it was kind of more of like a word for word. And a lot of times that's kind of tough because, in one, you know, language they have a word, but that word means many things. English should be just kind of, you know, like love! You know, like love, we just think 'love' and, you know, in other languages there's many types of love. And so, those can kind of get kind of tough as you start translating through that. And so, you know, if we look at some of these translations you look at, like the King James version, that would be a literal translation of the scriptures. NIV would be more of that dynamic equivalence. And I guess the NIV 1984 , I should say. Cause you go with some of this new NIV and I would start putting that more of kind of like that paraphrase. Cause some of it's really not where it needs to be anymore. So if you're going NIV, I would definitely try to make sure you find a 1984 version of it. If you can.

Gary Schick
You gotta go for a used though, cause they won't sell them in the regular stores anymore.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. They won't sell that anymore. And so if we were looking at a paraphrase version, this would be, I guess, the most popular one would be the Message Bible. And, you know, that's a good one to read through. But that's not one that I usually use to study through. For me, I usually use either the, New King James, more than likely that's what I'll have in front of me. I'll go back and read through many of them, but I usually study out of more of the New King James. That's kind of the direction I guess I've gone, because that's what I was given when I started, when I became a believer. Everybody kept on handing me, either the King James or the New King James version. Those are the ones that were constantly given to me. So I guess, if we look at the first complete English language version of the Bible, was John Wycliffe's in 1382, I think is what it's what it said, he was kind of accredited for that complete translation of the English Bible. You'd also have, like, William Tindell, that was the 1500's I believe, kind of where he was translating the scriptures. And so, yeah. So for me, I mean, that's kind of the Bible that I've kind of stuck with. And then I've had, like, the Message Bible, I've used that to kind of further study I guess, and not as my main study. So, yeah.

Ben Cline
Yeah, thanks for that. That's a good overview of, you know, the different styles of translation that there are. And, you know, it's funny cause Gary, I don't know what translation that you use, but we may all use different translations. You know, the one that I kind of tend to stick to is the New American Standard Bible. But that's one of the literal translations. And the hard part about some of those is that, you know, especially with that particular translation, is that reading through it is kind of choppy, you know, in English, it's sort of abrupt. And so it is nice to be able to go to some of those other translations. Like the New Living Translation is one that I use just for listening to or for reading, you know, in my own personal devotion time, because you know, it flows in English better. So there's a lot of different choices out there. I guess some of the things that I wanted to talk about, you know, translation is really kind of a funny thing when you're translating from one language to another. I remembered a story. We went on a missions trip to Mexico and we were visiting a church down there, and the pastor asked me if I wanted to preach. Well, I don't speak a lick of Spanish, right? So, I had to have somebody who lived there, who knew English well enough, that he could, you know, translate as I was teaching that morning. But the interesting thing was that we had to sit down and go through the notes that I had written out and all that stuff because there's so many, you know, idioms and, oh, what's the other word? Figures of speech, that we use in English. And every language is like 'that' actually. They have their own idioms and their own figures of speech that they use. But we had to kind of try to take all of those things out and make them, you know, words that he could translate, you know, from English into Spanish as I was teaching. So that's just kind of the way that it goes. And so you have all these ideas that are, you know, from the Hebrew culture and, you know, ideas that come up in the Greek language that don't exactly translate over to English. And so, you know, they do scholarly study to try to figure out how to best get it down on paper in English. But, you know, I just had some thoughts, you know, about the different translations. And these are kind of more, you know, personal thoughts, things that I've learned over the years. And one of those things is to just be really careful when, in your understanding of what a translation is, there are, you know, some false ideas going around. You can't trust certain English translations, because the idea behind, you know, their understanding of how a translation is coming about, especially the newer translations, is that they're translating from one English translation to another, and making an updated version of it or whatever. But, you know, the truth of the matter is, the good English translations that we have, they're all happening from the original languages. From the original manuscripts. And so that's something that is just really important for us to understand, that those ideas that are being translated, the words that are being translated over are not from English to English. They're being done from the Greek and the Hebrew and the Aramaic over to English. And so, just one idea to be aware of. And then the other thing too is, you know, be careful of the idea that there's only one English translation that can be considered the word of God. You know, I know that there's, I might be stepping on some toes by saying that, but there's certain, you know, arenas that you can be in where they say, "this is the only trusted English version of the Bible." So don't go into that, because they're all, you know, a lot of these translations are done very carefully, and they have, a lot of work that goes into them and they really are trying to get that best meaning from the original languages. And then we also have, you know, I don't know if everybody's aware of this, but everybody has access to the resources if you have a word that you're, you know, getting really hung up on, there's resources online to be able to go to and find out the definitions and the different meanings of this word back in the original languages. And so, you know, that's not something that was readily available 20 years ago, but it is now for sure. And so, I guess the last thing that I wanted to talk about was just, you know, as the body of Christ, let's make sure to not let differences in opinion over Bible translations get in the way of us being unified as the body of Christ. You know, we don't want to let that cause divisions at all. So, just some thoughts.

Gary Schick
Yeah, really good thoughts, guys. You know, just in real simple, I think, in terms of answer to the question, which, what is the best translation or the best one for me? It's very simply, listeners, the best translation is the one you're going to read. It's the one you're gonna pick up and read. I'll tell you my own experience as a kid; I was handed, in primary one, I don't know what even that was, you know, somewhere between kindergarten and first grade, I was handed a little King James Bible. I've still got it. And in the cover plate it says, "thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." And oh, how I wish that I had read more out of that first Bible I was handed, unfortunately, as a rambunctious kid in Sunday school. We probably used our Bibles more for knocking each other over the head and really getting some talking to about that. "What? The word of God? What are your kids doing? But when I actually reached a point in my life when I was ready and hungry to read and I opened it, I mean, I made the same mistakes so many people do. The Bible's not just a book that you necessarily want to go cover to cover. It's a bunch of little books and probably best to start in the New Testament. But no, I started in Genesis 1 in the King James version, and as a, I don't know, maybe sixth, seventh grader at that point in my life, I was soon lost. And so I went to the Christian bookstore and there on the shelf were all of these translations. Some of the ones that you guys have already mentioned. The New American Standard was the one, like they were teaching in the seminaries. But again, a little bit harder language. There was the Revised Standard Version, which was a little smoother. I didn't know, but I looked at all of them. And the one I settled on at that point in my life was the Living Bible. And it was at a, was it a perfect translation? It wasn't even a translation, it was a paraphrase. But I'll tell you what listeners, I read it from cover to cover, and as I began to go, if you look through my old copy of the Living Bible, you'll see the opening pages are white. And then you start to see some red lines in there where I start to underline some verses. And then you see, by the time I, and I still did it the hard way. It took me three years; Genesis 1 to the end. Actually, I started in Revelation, because Hal Lindsay was a big deal back then, and I wanted to know how everything was gonna end. And I'll tell you what, if anything will cure you of being just totally, gobsmacked over what is, how are the end times gonna play out? Just read Revelation, and it just blew me away. I was like, "yeah, okay." And now I went back to Genesis 1 and worked my way back there again. But by the time I'm in the New Testament, the pages are, it's just like, "who bled on these?" You know, there's just all different colors. And as I was outlining and highlighting and underlining, it just became such a rich experience for me. And then from there I worked my way into, I guess what you might call, a better word for word translation. I guess we just want to come back to once again, what is the best translation or the best one for me, the Bible you're going to read.

An Explanation of Slavery in the Old Testament - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez, and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Hey guys, it's great to be together. We've got another interesting question that was passed along to me. Exodus 21:1-6 is the passage that's being asked about, and Jonathan's gonna read it to us. But the question is, "can you talk about slavery and the Bible's seeming endorsement of it? Also, it seems strange that a man would have to choose between his freedom from slavery and keeping his wife and kids. What does it mean that the slave's wife and children belong to the slave's master? Is there a spiritual truth that God is trying to show us here? I'm confused."

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. So Exodus 21:1 starts out, "now these are the judgements which you shall set before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh, he shall go free and pay nothing. If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master has given him a wife and she has bore him sons or daughters, the wife and the children shall be her masters, and he shall go out by himself. But if the servant plainly says, 'I love my master, my wife, my children, I will not go out free.' Then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl and he shall serve him forever." So that's the scripture that they gave us for today. And I think for me, a lot of times when we look at the scriptures, we look at them through our current circumstances, or the eyes that we've seen here with slavery. When we hear "slavery," we think of it as how we've grown up learning about it, I guess, through school. And, you know, how slavery was in the early times of the United States history and stuff kind of like that. And so we think of it, now slavery is evil like, I hope people don't think, as we talk through this, that we're trying to justify something or anything. But, you know, slavery in itself is evil. And it's not something that should be happening. And hopefully it's not happening currently, but we know that it is happening all across the world right now. So we look at this and we see that slavery, I guess, in the Bible we see it throughout the Bible, happening. And slavery was, I guess, permissible in certain situations as long as slaves were regarded as a full member of the community. And we kind of see this in Genesis 17:12, it says, "throughout your generation, every male amongst you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner. And so you see that even slaves were having to walk through the same things that the Hebrews were having to walk through. The slaves would also get the opportunity to have the same amount of rest. It says, "work six days and on the seventh day, rest." And so even the slaves were held to that standard. Like, "you're gonna work six days for me as a slave owner, right? But on that seventh day, we're gonna give you rest and you're gonna be able to recuperate, hopefully and be able to go on." They were to be treated like humans, cause that's, you know, even though they're slaves, they're still humans. And I think that's some of the difference that maybe we're seeing in the slavery that we've seen happen in the early US history; is a lot of the slaves weren't seen as human. You know, so we dehumanize things so that way it's easier to do things that maybe we shouldn't be doing to other humans. Not saying that back then in the new or in the Old Testament, that people weren't dehumanized. I think you were still seeing some of these things happening. And so I think you see, like, even here, like it talks about the Hebrew slave. They're gonna work six years for that person, and then in the seventh year they're gonna be free. And within our question it talks about, "what about the women and the children?" And I was reading through a bunch of different forums, I guess, on this yet last night and trying to, "okay, where are we seeing this." I've seen some people talk about, "okay, in this passage it doesn't say forever. And so maybe they're serving their six years, and then they'll be free on their seventh. But it doesn't really support that either." And so you kind of have this back and forth on that. What does that mean? And I guess for the way I read that, if the husband was willing to stay and become a slave forever, more than likely his wife and his children were the master's forever. Cause otherwise, why would you, you know, stay knowing that, "hey, your wife's gonna be out in two years," you know? Like maybe you'd, you know, work close to that, to where your family's a slave at, so that way you could be with them. But I guess I'm not really sure on that. So yeah.

Ben Cline
Yeah, these are, you know, difficult questions to deal with and sometimes to understand even from studying through what scripture has to say. But again, it goes a lot to the historical context of what's going on here. And again, like you said Jonathan, we have, you know, such a tendency to look at things through the context of how we understand things in our modern times. And, you know, in our modern times we understand slavery to be, basically, kidnapping somebody and owning them, which again, is evil. It's not okay. But a lot of times, the slavery or the servanthood that is being talked about in the Old Testament, and especially here in this passage in Exodus 21 this is talking about, you know, slavery within the Hebrew culture. And so this is, you know, somebody who owes somebody else a debt, and basically sells themself into servanthood to a person that's called their master now. And so this is something that we could compare to, you know, like indentured servitude. So they're basically there to pay off a debt. And the thing that I love about this passage of scripture, where God is establishing the law, is that he's taking something that the world has been doing for, you know, so long. You see a lot of examples of slavery in scripture of things that were happening in the world, where slavery was taking place. But what God is doing here is, He's regulating it and He's helping people to see that they can't just, you know, do whatever they want and take advantage of other people. And so He's really taking some time to establish some rules here and actually establish some rights, or some basic rights for the slaves, or the servants. And so, you know, slavery is fundamentally different in some instances, you know, from our modern slavery versus what was happening back in the time when this was written. And the thing that was happening that's so interesting, as you read through this passage a little bit further in Exodus 21, the modern slavery that we understand today is expressively forbidden. It's in verse 16 of Exodus 21 that the kidnapping and selling of people is expressively forbidden. And so modern slavery was expressly breaking that law that was established by God. But the interesting thing as you're looking, you know, at slavery in the Bible, is that oftentimes it was like this economic arrangement. And one big difference is that it was never one race feeling a superiority over another race. And that being the determining factor as to whether or not somebody could be a slave. And so that was, you know, a huge difference between what was happening back then and what's happening, not what's currently happening, but I guess there's probably still a lot of slavery that's taking place in different forms in the world now. But you know, what you were talking about, Jonathan, in the early days of the United States, that's exactly what was happening. You know, people were being taken and people were being sold as possessions, which was not okay. But God was establishing here ways for people to relate to each other in ways that were fair. And so there's that six years, you know? They're only allowed to have somebody serve for six years in order to pay off a debt. You know, a married couple, if they went in, if the husband was sold into slavery to pay off a debt, if he sold himself into slavery and he was already married, then they were treated as a married couple. They were treated as part of the community. They were treated as temporary residents of the community. And then when his debt was paid off after that six years, he got to go free with his wife. But then there's that situation where a man marries a woman after he has sold himself into this servitude and he now has a choice to make at the end of that six years. And, you know, if you have a person who truly loves his wife, he's gonna stick with her, right? And so God is giving them this option as a way to show people, you know, God's love and His mercy and His justice. He's giving them a way to be able to stay together. And so, you know, God really is just establishing order. He's allowing a way for families to stay together. He's showing His mercy and His love in establishing these laws, really. And that's probably just some of the answer.

Gary Schick
Right, and there's so much. But I think you guys have really laid the groundwork well. I mean, first of all, differentiating between, really, what's happening even in a lot of Islamic countries to this day where people are, you know, being taken. And we hear about human trafficking, again, right here in the United States. Quite a lot of it. But again, it's people being taken into slavery, and with no way out. And it's completely under the radar of the law, at least, if it's going on here in this country and in other countries. I guess it is legalized, but still in a very bad way. Whereas in the world of biblical times, you know, first of all, the economics of that world were so much different. Today, if you're poor, there are safety nets. You may or may not choose to take them, but they're there. Back then, if you were poor, and had no means to provide for yourself, you would starve to death. Or if you would fall into debt, there was no, you know, way to get out of that. There were no bankruptcy laws that would set you free from it. And I don't even know that there were debtor prisons, so how do you do this? So yeah, by all means, by one of the primary ways that people, and it would be a temporary thing, was to sell yourself. Many people came to this country that way, people forget, many people sold themselves as indentured servants to come here. You know, Englishmen selling themselves to their fellow Englishmen to work in their estates until they had paid off their debt, and would often go on from there and build up their own estates. So I don't, you know, think people really would have a problem with that. At least the idea of this was a temporary means. And then the other thing is, what did it mean to be a slave in the house? Again, we tend to think of the United States model, where the slaves quarters were, you know, kind of down the field. They were very, very poor quarters. The master lives up on the hill, in the mansion. Take a look at Abraham and Sarah, with her maid servant. Take a look at Isaac, Mairus, Leah and Rachel with their maid servants. They're not out in a separate part of the property, they are part of the household. The servants were part of the household. They have, as you guys pointed out, the same rights. And they had responsibilities, but they were, in a sense, part of the family without the rights of full heirs of the family. If we'd have read further into the scripture that you read to us, Jonathan, we would've seen that sometimes a woman from a poor circumstance, her parents may sell, in a sense, sell her to someone as sort of a secondary wife. But if she's not pleasing to him or, you know, maybe she was forgotten as a bride to his son. If that doesn't work out, then she is to be set free, free and clear. I mean, as you pointed out, unlike in the United States, where people were treated as possessions, people remain people in scriptures. And let's remember where this is being written in Exodus, the Hebrews themselves have just come out of slavery. It was, as you both pointed out, just sort of part of the world's system of that time. And so God is moving them towards seeing the humanity in every human. The bride that's provided for by the master is still part of his house. That was the problem. The guy who comes in from outside, and now he's going to basically take away from that household. But he has the option to become a part of that household for life. And in terms of the spiritual application, you know, isn't it in a an interesting thing in the New Testament, we do see even more of the seeds of moving away from slavery. For example, where Paul writes to Philemon about Onesimus, who was a runaway slave, who's now become a Christian and now is a brother in Christ. "He not only asks that you forgive him," in other words, not give him the punishment. Which could have been either a severe beating or death. "But rather receive him back as a brother." And in fact, Paul indicates, and I know you're gonna do even more, indicating basically, "Philemon, it's time to set an Onesimus free." Paul couldn't quite come out and directly say that because of the law of the Roman Empire at that time. But he could sure point Philemon in that direction, which he clearly does. And so this freedom, and it's interesting what the New Testament says to slaves and masters. He says, "slaves, you're free in Christ. You are not serving your earthly master. You're serving Jesus. So regardless of how you're treated by your earthly master do what you do as unto God." And we translate that without even thinking in our context to people working in the workplace, "regardless of your workplace, your boss, those around you, You do what you do as unto the Lord." On the other hand, Paul says to those who are free, the masters, "and you are yourselves enslaved to a heavenly master, and so you treat these others under your authority, under your workspace with the dignity that that is there due." And isn't it interesting then when, for example, James and Jude and, you know, these guys, they're writing the New Testament letters, they identify themselves as a slave of Christ. You know, a servant of Christ, bond slave of Christ, someone who is wholly belongs to the Lord, has become fully His man and fully His representative in the world. And so, you know, and those are some of the positives of that kind of relationship in that time period. They were part of the house, they were obligated to the house. They were to be fully provided for by the house. And they were full representatives of the house when they were sent out on an errand, on a mission with a message. And that is, we are sons of the living God and daughters of the living God through faith in Christ. But we are also his servants, his emissaries, his ambassadors. So is scripture endorsing it? No, it's not endorsing any of the bad, but it's moving the reality of what was going on in the world toward God's ideal for mankind. And also giving us some pictures of how we relate to one another and how we need to be fully God's people. And represent Him well and serve Him well in all things.

Why Is James Translated That Way Instead of Being Jacob As It Is In The OT?

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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
I don't know guys, I think the questions that Russ is, is giving us are getting harder, do you think? So maybe instead of Ask the Pastor, we should call it Stump the Chump.

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah. I've been stumped a few times.

Gary Schick
But definitely, it sends us digging into the word and that's always a good thing. So here's the question he sent us this week, "Hello guys. Someone told me this last week that the name James in scripture is actually translated as Jacob in the Greek." Which of course the New Testament was written in Greek. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, mostly Hebrew. Then they asked me, "why does it show up as James in our Bible and not Jacob? Feel free to tackle this if you would like and maybe discuss further the translation of the scripture from the original languages. Thanks, Russ." So, as the questions get harder, I hand it off to Jonathan to get us started.

Jonathan Hernandez
Well, as much as I wish I was a Greek scholar, I'm unfortunately not, and so, I'm not gonna try to say some of these names in Greek cause I'm not gonna be very good at it. So from what I was able to gather, I guess there's kind of a couple trains of thought when we look at, why is James not called Jacob in the New Testament? One interesting one that I came across, was that as King James was having the Bible translated, he would rather have the name James in there instead of Jacob. Cause obviously, his name was James. I don't know how much truth is to that one, but I felt that it was pretty interesting as I was digging in. I keep seeing that over and over again, but there's actually nothing that says, "here's the truth behind that or anything." So I just thought that was kind of interesting. As I was digging through some stuff, and people even had YouTube videos about that train of thought, and so I thought those were kind of interesting as I was as digging through So, as we looked, I guess look at the name James, it actually comes out of the name Jacob. And so from what I understand, I guess, and this timeframe, there would've been a lot of people with the name Jacob, cause that's their, you know, kind of an ancestry name. Just like some of you guys, you know? Maybe you have somebody that was part of your family and then everybody's name was derived from that same thing. Like, my dad's name is Peter, and so his dad's name is Peter. My brother's name is Peter, and my brother's son's name is Peter. And so you kind of have this generational name that's going through, and I think this is kind of that same place. Where we see this name Jacob that kind of just was handed down through the generations. And so, as they have this name keep going through, and then as you have these new cultures coming into the land, you kind of have this name kind of start being changed into James over time. And so that's kind of how I was seeing that. Just kind of move through the different time frames and, you know, the Latin culture I guess. Or the different Greek culture coming in and kind of making the name move from, I don't know how to say it, I guess Lavos? I guess that's how they pronouce Lakovos? And that was the, you know, the name kind of just being translated as James rather than Jacob, which, how do you say it was? Lakovos? And so, yeah. See, my Greek's not the best. Sorry. But yeah, so that's kind of how I was understanding this. Just, from that time it just kind of formed into James and so yeah.

Ben Cline
Yeah, it's really interesting just the way that words work over the course of time. You know, one of the things that we see happen every year is that our English Dictionary adopts new language. And a lot of times, those words are developed from words that already exist. But, you know, it's interesting just thinking about the transformation of Jacob into James over the course of time. And one of the things, I think that Jonathan and I were using some of the same resources, so this is good. But, you know, one of the things that they talk about is, that there was so much Greek influence on the language and on the culture during the time of Jesus, that some of these things started to happen. And they talk about how this is a good example of a word getting Greek sized or hellenized, and that's just meaning that it's being influenced by the Greek culture. And so the Greek spelling and the Greek structure ended up, you know, sort of taking over and beginning to transform this name. And I got to thinking about what this looks like in our families today, kinda like you were talking about Jonathan. How those names are passed down. But this is sort of looking at it from a little bit different perspective. You know, on my side of the family, we're Clines, and we spell it, you know, C l i n e. But I would imagine that our ancestors did not have that, you know, more English spelling of a German name. I'm sure it was a K or something like that. You know, and so that has transformed. My wife's family is all from Scandinavian descent. And when they lived in, and I'm not sure if it's the Norwegian or the Swedish side of the family, but when they lived over there, it was Johansen. And when they came over here, it sort of transformed into Johnson. And so there's that, you know, that change that happens because of the influence of the culture. But one of the things that, you know, as you study the Bible, you run into this word etymology. And it's just a bigger word, I guess, that means the study of the course of words over time. You know, how a word changes, how a language changes over time. And one of the things I was reading about, is that before the Latin Vulgate was produced, which the Latin Vulgate would've been the Latin translation of the Bible.

Gary Schick
Which the Roman Church follows to this day,

Ben Cline
The Catholic, yeah. So there, before that time, there was the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Bible.

Gary Schick
Right. For the Old Testament.

Ben Cline
For the Old Testament. Yeah.

Gary Schick
The New Testament has always been in Greek.

Ben Cline
Yeah. And so the etymology of this is that, the Greek Septuagint was translated into Latin. And so in that version, from what this says, the influence began to change that name Lokovos into a form that looks more like James and is translated into James, from what I understand could be. So that's another possible way to look at it. You know, as there were, and I think that there was some French, you know, involvement in that as well. Where the Latin was changed into the French and there's just a whole lot of history to that.

Gary Schick
A lot of history in Latin and French.

Ben Cline
But, you know, so all of that to say, this is the etymology of that word, that it changes over time. And so we do still see the name Jacob in the New Testament. But it is, you know, almost always referring to the Old Testament characters and not the New Testament characters. And so there's just a lot to it. There really is.

Gary Schick
And just picking up on that, as I looked at those two words in Greek, there's actually in the New Testament, there's both names. There's Yakov, which is just directly translated from Hebrew into Greek as Jacob. And then there's the Greek name, which is the Hebrew equivalent Yakuba, which is always translated James. So there's your difference right there. So it is actually two different Greek words for the same name. One is the Greek name, one is the Hebrew name put into Greek letters. And so yeah, Yakov=Jacob. And then there's something else that goes on. And that is, how does it get from a y sound into the English with a J? And that is because English has a certain amount of heavy influence, as you mentioned, by French, but also by German. And I think it's in German, that for some reason, what we have as the letter J is pronounced as an I or a Y. And so you mentioned in your own family's history, Johansen. Well, Johann is John, and it has a J. And so in the New Testament, Yohannes is John and comes into Johan in German or Scandinavian or whatever it is. And then in English, we come to that letter J and we don't pronounce it with an I or a Y, we say "Ja." And so, you know, for example, we hear about in, you know, Spanish, the name Jesus. Jesus comes from the Greek "Yesus," but when you send it through into English, it ends up with a J. And so we say, "Ja" where in older times they would've said, "Ya" And so these are all ways that language kinda changes over time. But it is the same essential name. And similarly, you have in Hebrew the name Hanah, we say Hannah. And then you meet the New Testament prophetess who celebrates Jesus' birth, Anna. And in English we call her Ana. And both names are the same name, and they all all mean grace. So, Hannah, Anna, Ana. And in Hebrew you have a lot of H sounds and there's a couple of Hebrew letters that have an H sound. There's really not an H letter in Greek. There's kind of a little hyphen to say there's an H sound here, but yeah. So there's a lot of reasons why, especially, names get kind of twisted up as they go from one language to another. And so now I don't know why, and I noticed you guys really didn't find it either, why the M sound comes in there. But just to check what you said, Jonathan, cause it sounded a little suspicious to me too. Is King James' influence on the King James Bible influencing the name? And I'm gonna say, "no," and here's something you readers you can do, or listeners you can do this too. While you were talking, I just looked up the Bible Gateway, which has a whole bunch of translations and I looked for the Wycliffe translation, which predates the King James by a lot, you know, over a hundred years. And it's translated there as James.

Ben Cline
Oh, interesting.

Gary Schick
I don't know why people kind of go off in these in the internet about King James. Friends, it's a witch hunt. It's what do they call it? A conspiracy theory, it's nonsense. A conspiracy. It is 100% nonsense, cause you can go back a hundred years before him and find, "No," it's already being translated as James. And so Yokuba, you're gonna find consistently throughout the New Testament, James, it refers to all those contemporary to Jesus.

Ben Cline
And I think that M sound that's in the end of James, that is from the French influence.

Gary Schick
Probably. Yeah.

Ben Cline
And I think that's where that comes from.

Gary Schick
How did Jacob stay Jacob through all those centuries? We'll never know. And we are not experts in language, but we're thankful for it. And we're thankful for those who've done the hard work for us. I still to try to hang on a little bit to my Greek from seminary days, and I don't know if that's so much, because it was such a painful experience for me. Or a little bit, you know, somebody who influenced me a lot, I'm rereading his works right now is C.S. Lewis. He's a language guy. And so I'm a wannabe language guy. I still keep trying, you know, I've been trying for 30 years and I'm still trying. But I know a lot of guys that just say, "thank the Lord I got through that class and put it on the shelf." But it is important that people do the work, or that some people have, because as we talked about last week, we were talking about orthodoxy. There have been mistranslations through the years that have led to much more serious things than, how do you pronounce a name, for example. As we've talked about, did we talk about this after the show or during the show once how the divine name was actually mistranslated into the King James as Jehovah? Where actually two names are going on there, the Hebrew name Yahweh, and as in order to not say that name, the Jews would say Adonai Lord. And so they put the vowels for Adonai into the word Yahweh. And in the King James it got translated Jehovah. Well that's not a big deal, cause God knows who we're talking about no matter what we call. But then it becomes a little more serious in the Latin Vulgate when St. Jerome, who was a pretty good translator and he did, he had both as you pointed out. He had the septuagint in front of him, but he also was very proficient in Hebrew. But somehow he translates the words for repentance as dependence. And so that creates a whole new train of thought as opposed to merely turning from my sin and trusting in Jesus. Now I've gotta do something about it. And so that leads we Protestants to say in a wrong direction that we were grateful for our Greek studies. To go back to the original and say, "no, it doesn't say dependence, it says repentance." But then even worse, you have somebody who stumbles over John 1 and mistranslates it. "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God." And it's mistranslated by the Jehovah's Witnesses as, "in the beginning was the word, and the word was a God." Which, if whoever did that really knew their Greek, they would know that that would not be a possible translation there, but a mistranlation. And so, and now you've got it taking us, not into a wrong teaching within the Christian Church, but taking us now completely out of Christianity. Because now, at least by Jehovah's witnesses, they don't understand Jesus even to be divine. They just see Him as a very good man. Sorry friends, there's a lot of good men I know, and not one of them can save me. It takes a perfect---the sinless son of God who is God in the flesh. And so, aren't we thankful as English speakers, that is our primary language for those who have carefully done the work to say, what does this text say? So hopefully this conversation has been helpful to our listeners, but you can do some of this work yourselves, listeners, in the sense of: open up Bible gateway and don't just compare the modern translations, but also look at the ancient translations or what's the other one that I look at all the time? Not Bible gateway, but, oh, the You Bible. If you look in the You Bible, you can find a lot of English translations. You can find other languages, and you can find some of the older ones. The one I would be cautious about is the Geneva Bible. Over and over again, I have looked for the Geneva Bible online, but what I'll find is what calls itself the Geneva, but it actually is just the King James. And I don't know why that is, but I'm pretty sure I was looking at that Wycliffe translation. That it really was Wycliffe's translation, which actually predates the Geneva translation into English, which is a whole other conversation, isn't it? So maybe we should end there. Other than what's the edifying part in this? Just to be really grateful that, #1 the original language has been preserved for us. #2, there have been people who love Jesus, love the Lord very much, who have been very careful in the translation to make sure that our modern translations really do get it right. And where there's discrepancies and questions, they'll often put it in the footnotes. And then #3, sometimes we're gonna scratch our heads and say, "why is Jacob the Hebrew name? Jacob become James?" And I think we solved it. In the New Testament, they went with the Greek name, and then through French it becomes from Yokubo to James.

Why Do Bad Things Happen If God Loves Us? - 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.

Gary Hashley
Hello and welcome to this edition of Ask the Pastor. A question was sent into KCMI and forwarded to me by Russ Garrett, and it says, "Hello, I googled the simple and often asked question, 'If God loves me like a father and has good things for my life, in accordance to what Christians often purport to convey to non-Christians, then why do bad things happen to me when I had no role in them? Further, and more problematic He doesn't act on my behalf or others when He could. Let me personalize this: Friends went to another city to start a church plant. After they and others prayed for months and believed this was God's leading, within three months of the plant, his wife was murdered leaving him as a single parent. So where was God, without the ward and tepid explanations Christians give? How do you begin to reconcile this? I have children, and I don't have any power like God, and even I would've acted to protect my kids. Thank you." Well, you know, this is a very common question, and this is a question that probably neither Brad nor I will be able to answer to the total complete satisfaction of the questioner. Because living in a sinful world, we are surrounded by bad things happening to people, and not just the evil people of the world, but even the good people of the world. And there are those who would say, "I don't wanna hear the worn and tepid explanations," and that's a legitimate thought. but yet maybe those ward and tepid explanations are truly biblically based and faith based understandings. One thing I notice in scripture is that I don't find anywhere that God promises me, or promises you as a follower of Jesus, that life is gonna be easy, and that He is never going to allow anything bad to happen in your life. In fact, in Isaiah 30:19, 20, we find both sides of this. Verse 19, for a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you. Now, that sounds fantastic. It sounds like, you know, God's gonna step in and everything's going to be good. The next verse, verse 20, "and though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher." So, one sentence right after another sentence, the first almost leading you to believe that God is gonna make sure that everything goes well, "you'll weep no more. As soon as you cry, I'll hear, I'll answer." And then the very next sentence says, "the Lord might give the bread of adversity and the water of affliction." Now, there are those who would say that if bad things happen to good people, if God is there and He's loving and He's wise and He doesn't step in, then it must mean that God really isn't there. In fact, one author says, "you know, there are some assumptions, a fact, and then a conclusion that we can approach in two different ways. Assumption #1: an all powerful God would be able to end suffering. Assumption #2: an all loving God would desire to end suffering. Fact: suffering exists. Conclusion: an all powerful, all loving God, therefore, does not exist." And I have a dear friend who I went to Bible school with. I flew airplanes with and ministered alongside of, who had two teenage sons killed in an automobile accident. And now he claims he was a fool to ever believe in God, because if God didn't stop the bad thing from happening, then he's not going to serve God. But on the other side of the page, he says, "assumption 1: an all powerful God does exist. Assumption 2: an all loving God does exist. The fact that suffering exists then leads to the conclusion: God must have loving reasons which he is able to achieve for permitting suffering." I'll tell you, when I come across times in my life where life is hard and suffering is a reality, I like to remind myself of what God said through Isaiah 55:9, "for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." And I just remind myself that God doesn't necessarily think the way I think. Because basically the question is saying, "well, if I as a parent would step in and would make sure my children don't endure suffering, then if God is a loving father, then He should do what I think I would do if it were me." And yet, the fact of the matter is, God thinks differently than we do. He never told us that what seems normal to us is normal to Him. He didn't tell us that what seems reasonable to us will be reasonable to Him. And so we face these struggles. I think of Hebrews 11, before I turn this over to Brad. You know, in Hebrews 11, the faith chapter about these faithful people, you know, and early on we read about Adam and Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Sarah, and all these through Joseph and Moses. And then it talks about, you know, "by faith, great things happened." He says, "what can I say? Time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak, Sampson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stop the mouths of lions, quench the power of fire, escape the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women even receive back their dead by resurrection," and some say, "yes, I like that." But then it says, "some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered, mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated." So when I look at that, I realize that there are times where God does step in and wonderful things happen. And there's times He allows hard times in people's lives. Now, I can't say anything I've said is the absolute answer that's going to solve this in everybody's mind. But I'll tell you, as I've lived life for 65 years myself, as I've gone through difficult times, I find that what the Bible teaches about God's mind and God's love and my need to trust Him, it may not be in some people's minds the best answer. But in my mind, it's the better answer than any other answer out there. So yeah, do tough things happen in people's lives? You're listening to a guy whose mom died of breast cancer when I was 29 years old. You're listening to a guy whose nephew died at five days old, because only half of his heart was developed in the womb. But yet, I have found that trusting God and His wisdom and His love and his sovereignty, and trusting that He has a plan, I I don't find that as worn and tepid. I find that as encouraging. Pastor Brad, tell me what's going through your head right now.

Brad Kilthau
Well, I know one thing, Gary. When you're talking about Isaiah 55, and we use that a lot, and we have to because again, God's ways are above our ways, and we have to keep that in mind. But as I was looking at this question too, and I don't wanna be disrespectful in any way to the listener who sent this in. And I don't want to come across that I don't have compassion for them and where they are and what they're thinking. But my first thoughts is this, we don't get saved to be kept safe from harm and disasters here on this earth. We get saved to ensure that we will not have to pay for our sin/debt in hell forever and ever. We have to think about the other side. We have to think about heaven, you know, and we have to keep in mind that God doesn't owe us anything here on Earth. It doesn't matter if we go to church every week, it doesn't matter if we give our life savings to all the charities to feed people. It doesn't even matter if we plant churches. God still doesn't owe us anything, okay? And so when I looked over this question, "if God loves me like a father and has good things for my life, then why do bad things happen to me when I have no role in them?" And as I looked at that question, it appears to me that our listener has figured out God to be made up of some type of a merit system. That if I do, then God does, and we have to understand again, that's not our God. Ephesians 2:8-9 makes that very clear, especially when it comes to our salvation, "for by grace through faith we're saved." It's not of us. It's not of our works. It all a gift from God, and we think about this gift. It's a gift that we don't deserve. And then the second half of the question, "why do bad things happen to me when I had no role in them?" I think that brings out that there's a misconception of who we really are as human beings. Because when we think about it, you know, if we're born on this planet, as a human being, we're a descendant of Adam, and therefore we have that sin nature that Adam passed on. And secondly, we have all sinned and sinned and sinned and sinned repeatedly against God. So to say that I had no role in this, well, we have to remember that we're all sinners. I love what it says in Ecclesiastes 7:20. It says, "there's not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins." Romans 3:23, of course, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." 1 John 1:8, "for if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us." All right, so here's a thought. We all are contributing to the situation that we live in, and the bad things are happening on this earth because we're all sinners. Bad and horrible things are gonna happen to all of us. And the reason those bad and horrible things happen, is because we have this sin issue, and sin has brought about these horrible, horrible things. And when we think about us saying, "I've never caused any of this. I didn't cause this with this person." Well, what have we caused? We've caused sin. We sinned ourselves, and there is judgment and there's consequences for that. So to say we don't have any role in the bad things that happen here on Earth is basically saying, "well, I'm pretty good. I mean I'm perfect, I'm holy." You know, sin brings death. Sin brings illness, sin brings hardship, sin brings loneliness. And we've all contributed to the world's sin problem. And when I think about this horrible thing that happened to this woman, the blood of this woman is not on God's hands. Her blood's really on our hands because we're the ones who've sinned against a holy God. And so, even though we're all sinners, even though we all contribute to the horrible situation of this world through our sins and the hardships and everything that comes upon people, we gotta see the other side of this. God in His great love died for us. While we were still these horrible sinners, Jesus, who was perfect by the way, He paid our sin debt in full. He shed His blood on the cross, and therefore we're free from what we do deserve. And that freedom comes by faith in Christ. We always go to John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He sent his only begotten son. That whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." I mean, think about that, Gary. When you think about it, Jesus came and gave us a gift that we don't deserve. He gave us a gift, a freedom from our sin problem. And the truth of the matter is, He's taken care of that eternity situation already. And then we also know that in the end, when He returns, there is not going to be any sin at all. It's gonna be eradicated completely. But until then, we don't have to live in despair. We don't have to, even when there's evil things happening to us, we realize that as believers, the moment we die, we go into the presence of the Lord. And when I heard about this woman who's involved in God's work in planting churches, most likely she's a child of God and a believer. And so most likely, as we know from the Bible, at the moment she died she went into the presence of the Lord. She gained, gained, and gained. She went to heaven forever to be with Christ in the Father's house. She's not cheated out of anything. She's got the best of the best. And yes, compassion and love needs to go out for the husband, but I think he's a believer also planting churches for the Lord. Yes, he's hurting. Yes, he's mourning, but not as those who don't have hope. This is a short time. Soon he will be united in the presence of the Heavenly Father forever and ever. We've gotta keep in mind that God acted already to protect his kids. If you're looking for something right now to protect, He already did that 2,000 years ago. And that protection cannot be taken away from us. It is eternal security that we have in Christ. And so I think we have to keep the right perspective here. The perspective is that Jesus paid it all. The Father has already protected us, and He offers that free gift for us to take by faith at any moment.

Gary Hashley
I think the difference comes because doubts and questions come from feelings. Faith is a choice. I choose faith. So Father, those who are suffering right now and wondering where you are, remind them you are right there with them in their suffering just as you were right there with your own son when He suffered for us on the cross.

Keeping Our Focus During The Holidays - 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 Pastor Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Hey, listeners, as I kind of prayed, this is what I wanted to address just briefly with you this morning as you're about your day, something to help keep our focus for the holidays. It is a mad dash till Christmas starting today, Black Friday, and it is so easy to forget the pause that we just took yesterday to give thanks. And to lose sight of what we are about to celebrate, Jesus, whose birth Christmas is at least supposed to be about it. Sometimes we kind of hear the not so funny joke about that the Christ child kinda lost in the wrapping paper of the day. And I know some of you are just starting your Christmas shopping. Some may already be done before Black Friday even arrived, others probably are gonna be making a mad dash on Christmas Eve. But whatever your Christmas season looks like, I hope that you can just pause and keep in touch with the highlights of what the season is about. You know, Thanksgiving was yesterday, and in a way, even talking about it is like eating turkey for the next couple of days. Not quite the same, is it? But yet giving thanks. What a beautiful way to enter the Christmas season. In fact, what a beautiful attitude to carry with us all through the year. And as we enter into the season of love and joy and peace and hope, let's maintain that attitude of gratitude that I hope was a part of your Thanksgiving celebration yesterday. Today, I just want to read to you one of the great Thanksgiving psalms, and then just think about it for a moment or two. Psalm 136, and you can even join me. There's a refrain that's repeated every verse or two, and I invite you to, as I'm kind of reading it, and you're going to learn what the key word is. I'll just give you a hint, "His love endures forever." And I want to invite you listening, friends, as I'm reading that to join me. And in saying it, I think there is something powerful about hearing the word of God, which is one of the wonderful things about being able to send it forth over the airways. But there's also something powerful about speaking the word and speaking it together. So join me on the refrain as I go through this powerful Psalm, Psalm 136. "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good." And here's that refrain, "His love endures forever to him who alone does great wonders. His love endures forever, who by his understanding made the heavens. His love endures forever, who spread out the earth upon the waters." Join me now, "His love endures forever. He who made the great lights; His love endures forever. The son to govern the day; His love endures forever. The moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever. To Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt; His love endures forever, and brought Israel out from among them; His love endures forever. With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; His love endures forever. To Him who divided the Red Sea as thunder; His love endures forever. And brought Israel through the midst of it; His love endures forever. But swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever. To Him who led His people through the desert; His love endures forever. Who struck down great kings; His love endures forever. And killed mighty kings; His love endures forever. Sihon, king of the Amorites; His love endures forever. And Og, king of Bashan, His love endures forever. Engrave their land as an inheritance; His love endures forever. And inheritance to His servant Israel; His love endures forever. To the one who remembered us in our low estate; His love endures forever. And freed us from our enemies; His love endures forever. And who gives food to every creature; His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever."

Over and over, this beautiful psalm tells us something about God and then repeats. And I hope you were repeating it with me, that refrain, "His love endures forever." You know, whatever's going on, here are four words for you to just repeat today. "His love endures forever." It's a powerful psalm. The psalmist looks back, first at the creation, and as he considers different aspects of God's creating, he's just reminding those who are joining with him in song and praise that this God who created, His love endures. And then he zeroed in on what was the keynote of blessing for Israel. That powerful moment when they really birthed His nation, when God led them out of Egypt. Triumph over peril, brought them through the Red Sea and into the Promised Land. Granting them the land where kings had once ruled, and now giving them, who were a slave people, and nothing and no one in the world, a place in this world. Friends, that was what Israel looked back to. What is it we're looking back to today? In this country, we're looking back yesterday to the pilgrims and how You brought them through the sea and how You brought them through a difficult winter. Allowed them to be befriended by the natives and taught to hunt and fish and plant corn and to celebrate God's faithfulness. And now, as we are just on the pivot point of entering into the Christmas season, we remember when Jesus came, walked among us, prepared the way for the Lord. Isaiah wrote, "prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight the path for Him, a highway for our God." And Jesus came and he dwelled among us, and he gave his life at the cross. And he rose again and he opened paradise. And he is Mighty God, King of King's, Everlasting Father, Counselor, Prince of Peace. All of this and more, we have so much to be thankful for. The God who Israel knew as the God whose love endures forever. The God who our pilgrim's fathers, followed to this great land of plenty and discovered His love endures forever. The love in whom Christ has come and dwelt among us; His love endures forever. He is coming again. Friends, why not take, just even each verse of this psalm as you enter into the King. Into the season before us, is a starting point for your prayer and your praise and entering His presence with thanksgiving in your heart, developing an attitude of and for your mind and a joyfulness in your spirit. If you do, I believe you're going to answer further into the joy of this season. Then perhaps ever this season that is just beginning. I'm wishing you thanksgiving. I'm wishing you joy. I'm wishing you peace. I'm wishing you the fullness of the hope that is ours in Christ, and the steadfastness of His love in your hearts. Now get out there and enjoy the gift of this day and remember his love endures forever.

Is Worshiping God As important as Some Make 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 Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau (00:31):

The question that we wanted to address today, is a question that goes this way about worship. It says, "is worship of God as big a deal as some Christians seek to make it? Is it that important to God, or are there other things that He is much more concerned about?" Well, it's a good question, but when we think about God and the need for worship, I think you gotta look at what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37. Basically, a man walked up to Him one day and said, "what's the most important thing in the Bible?" What's the most important thing? And remember what Jesus said, He said to the man, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And this is the greatest and the first commandment." I think, obviously when we look at that, we find what Jesus was saying. Is that the worship of God is the absolute purpose of our life, is that we are to worship God. That's our purpose for being here. Now, when it comes to worship and the way it's expressed in different ways, through different believers, different churches throughout the valley, how do we have a God-honoring worship? And maybe this is maybe what the listener was thinking about with the question. But I think, when I was looking at this question a little bit, I thought, "well, there has to be a passion." There has to be a passion for the Lord. I know, when we love our jobs, we get up in the morning. If you really love your job, you can't wait to get up and go to work, and have something, you know, happen with the your hands or whatever God's given you, giftedness, to do. You just, it drives you. It drives you to do the best that you can. A lot of people have a passion for sports, and you look at the crazy things that they'll do for that. But when it comes to worship, we've gotta have the same thing. We have to have a passion for the Lord before worship will ever be heartfelt. Before it'll ever be, I believe, God honoring. And so a question that we have to, I think, ask ourselves when it comes to worship is, "do I really have a deep burning passion for God Himself?" And if that passion is there, you're gonna see that the worship is there. If the passion isn't there, you're probably gonna see a bunch of actions, routines, ritualistic type things, worship that's not really honoring to the Lord. And one of the passages of scripture, Gary, that I was thinking about when we look at this question, is found back in Malachi 2, especially in verses one through nine. And it talks about the corrupt priests of Israel, and how these priests were, as they should be, called to lead the people to worship God. But they weren't doing a very good job of that. What was happening was, when people were bringing in sacrifices to be offered up on the altar, they'd bring their old sick cow. They'd bring their old animal that had a lame leg or something like that, and they would bring it in and the priest would just go, "okay." And they'd offer up that sacrifice before God like it was nothing. And so they were letting the people get away with not worshiping the Lord properly. And then God comes down on the priests, as He should, and God gets after these priests because they're the ones who are to lead worship. And one of the unpopular parts of that passage of scripture is, the Lord said, "I will spread refuse on your face and on your feasts." And you think about that, it says dung. That's animal dung is what He's talking about there. And so, what was God saying? That He's gonna smear that across their faces and on their feasts? Well, what God is really saying to them is, "because of your lack of leading the people in worship, I'm taking you outta your position. You're gonna be like filthy refuse that's gonna be taken outside of the city and burned and done away with because you are of no value to me." And I always gotta wonder, what happened with those priests, you know? And how that all went down. But obviously, you can see that the priests had lost their passion to worship God. They had lost their love for God, which led to a lack of worship. And it's just going through the routine, you know, and I guess, what I'm saying is we can do that today as Christians too in the church. We can lose our passion for God. We can just go through the routine pretty soon, and it's like a regular routine of going to church on Sunday and whatnot. And we think that we're worshiping God by sitting there singing some songs and, you know, clapping hands and participating with other believers. But it's not from our heart, it's just another routine. And before God, you gotta wonder if that isn't sickening to Him as He looks at that, because He's looking at the heart. He's looking for people who really wanna worship Him because they're in love with Him. And you know, so you think about, how can we change that? How can we get that back, that fire that we need to worship the Lord? Well, I think one of the things, as we learn here in Malachi, is we need to get ourselves in a place of where we're under the teaching of the word of God that will bring about a love for the Lord. If you're not under the teaching, you're not in love with the Lord, because you're getting disconnected, you're not reading this love letter. I think about Mary and Martha when Jesus walked into the village, and of course, Martha invites Jesus over and she's getting all the house ready, maybe a big meal ready, all of those things. And she's getting frustrated cause she looks over and Mary just continually sits at the feet of Jesus and doesn't move. And so finally she comes over and she's very frustrated. Jesus can read her heart. He can probably read her face. And I love what the Lord Jesus says to her. He says, "Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but the one thing that's needed. Mary has chosen that good part." And that really speaks to my heart, because what the Lord is saying is, until you place yourself under me, under my teaching, you're not gonna see true love and true worship." You're gonna be running around being busy, trying to get the right things to look good for Jesus. But he's looking at us to get ourselves into place of where we'll really see who He is and the greatness of Him so that we can worship Him properly. And so, as I was thinking through that, also, I have to bring this up, Gary, before I turn it over to you. As I think about worship in the church, we have to understand the importance of our peers when it comes to worship. Because again, when you come back here to Malachi, because the priests didn't have a passion and weren't doing their job correctly, the people were walking away from their worship of the Lord at the same way. And, you know, as men especially, I wanted to say this, as men we're called to be the spiritual leaders of our home. Spiritual leaders, even for our wife, and we're to be the spiritual leaders in the church, and we should be the ones leading worship. We've got that same calling as that spiritual headship, that spiritual leadership that God has put us into. And I just wonder sometimes that, you know, if you walk through the church, how many men are really singing from their heart in worship? Most of the time it's usually, I don't know, the women when it should be the men. But men for some odd reason, they think that they can stand there like, you know, Mr. Macho, and "I'm not gonna sing this. I'm just gonna stand here and mumble the words or not even open my mouth at all. And it makes me look tough and it makes me look manly." But I got to think that's not manly before God. God's looking for a man that'll lead his family, lead his wife, and lead the church in worships. Let's always keep in mind our peers when it comes to worship also.

Gary Hashley (08:03):

I've been asked over the years, "well, what does it mean to worship?" Our English word, worship, comes from an old English word, worth-ship. It's expressing to God the worth that He has to us, the worth He deserves to have in our minds and in our hearts. I've described it this way: worship is letting God know that I know who He is and what He's like. How amazing He is, how much I love Him, how much I rely upon Him, how much I adore Him. It is an expression. We do find in scripture that God wants exclusive worship. And why would I say that? We find one spot in the Old Testament in particular that says, "the people would go before Sabbath during the week, and they would worship on the high places. They would worship the idols and the gods of the peoples around them. And then they'd show up on the Sabbath to worship God." And God was not happy with that. It wasn't, you know, "I'm glad you've come worship me today. The rest of the week is yours." It was, you know, "I want to be exclusively worshiped by you." So, one of the questions we have to ask is, you know, "is God the one that is the most important in our lives? And are we expressing that to Him now?" We express it in a variety of ways. We can express it in song and some today, you know, anytime we're singing in church, they call it worship. Sometimes it's just simply singing because we aren't really expressing from our heart to God, our love and our adoration and our wonder and our awe. We can worship in song, but every time we sing doesn't mean we're worshiping. We can worship in prayer. As we come to Him in prayer, we're letting Him know we're relying upon Him. He's of utmost important in our lives. It's worship to study the word. We kind of differentiate, you know, worship time from sermon time. But actually coming before God during the sermon time and really, truly, all of us focusing on the scriptures and letting God know that we know how important He is and how much He is the most important in our lives. But we can also do it through serving Him and through evangelism. I mean, Brad talked about the great commandment, "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." But he said the second is like it, and that is "love your neighbor as yourself. And I guess the thought that comes to my mind, Brad, is there are things we can do to worship, but simply doing those things doesn't mean we're worshiping. For instance, back in Isaiah 58, the Israelites were, you know, wondering, "how come we fast?" We go without food for a period of time, and it was designed to be a time of worship, but they were doing it and they'd lost the sense of it. In fact, God says, "is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and you're healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call on the Lord and the Lord will answer; and the Lord will say, 'Here I am." He was saying, you know, "You can go without food, but that doesn't mean you're worshiping in a time of fasting." In fact, He said, "I'd rather have you love your neighbor as yourself. I'd rather have you, you know, try and loose the bonds of wickedness in people's lives and help people find freedom in Christ to help break the yolks that bind people and to share your bread with the hungry and help the homeless poor and help the naked poor have something to wear." He's basically saying, you know, "I want you to worship me, but it's not just singing, it's not just praying, it's not just fasting. You can do those things and not worship, but you can serve me in those things. And I will see that as worship." I had a gentleman come to me years ago and he said, "You know pastor, I know I'm not here a lot in church." He said, "but you know, I like to hunt and I like to fish." He says, "I can worship in the woods." And I smiled and said, "do you?" He said, "do I what?" I said, "do you worship in the woods?" You know, we can, that doesn't mean we do. And we can make excuses for it, but what God wants is our hearts to come before Him in wonder, in awe, in adoration. That can be through singing an old hymn, that can be singing a Sunday School chorus, that can be singing a brand new song we call worship songs. And I know we've had worship wars in America, in our churches. What is the right approach to a church service that we could rightly call worship? And I'm not sure God is as worried about the form, or the melody, or the rhythms or the harmonies, or just even the activity. He's more worried about our hearts expressing to Him that He is God, that we love Him, that we adore Him, that we submit to Him. That we take His word seriously and want to know it, because as we know His word we'll know Him better. So yeah, worship is very, very important. It's important to God or we wouldn't be told so much about it in the scriptures. But just remember, it's not just what we do or what we say. It's the thought and the attitude and the heart behind it, because God does want us to worship. Jesus said, "we should worship Him in spirit and in truth." I hope that helps!

The Themes of Advent - 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 Cline, Johnathan Hernandez, and Gary Schick.

Gary Schick
Good to be back with you listeners, and perhaps some of you are doing a little traveling over the last week, and I hope that you made it safely home as we are recording this morning. It is a cold one out there, and maybe it will be on Friday when this airs. But anyway, we kind of have something that we're gonna, I think, hold until January. We're just, really getting in the Christmas Spirit and thought we would take a turn onto some of the, from a Christian perspective, the themes of the season. And take a little bit of a look at, what are called the themes of advent, I guess you might say. So, we come from three different backgrounds, and I know our listeners come from a lot of Christian backgrounds and some of you out there have grown up with something called Advent. And I would guess, just by our conversation right beforehand that all three of us, none of us actually probably grew up with it. I did not....we did not grow up with it. I have served in churches that didn't know what Advent was. I have served in churches where this is a big part of what we do---and I have found---and currently I'm serving in a church where it's not a big part of what we do, but it is something we kind of follow through the month of December. "Bring the kids up for a few minutes as we light some candles and talk about their significance." Of course, this is not found anywhere in scripture, but the themes that we talk about are found in scripture. And so, the very first one, and I guess there's different ways to approach Advent too, but the first one, I think universally, is the prophecy candle that talks about our hope as Christians. And Jonathan, could you get us rolling on it?

Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, definitely. So, like Pastor Gary was saying, I didn't grow up with, you know, going through the Advent season. And I serve in a church that we don't really have it. I've never had it, I've never done it, I guess, since I've served there. And even as going to the church there, we didn't serve, or we didn't go through this process. But it's exciting to dive in and kind of learn and see what this looks like. And so the first candle is a prophecy candle of hope. And so in ancient times God gave His people, Israel, hope by speaking to them through the prophets. And, you know, we see this all throughout the Old Testament, and how the prophets spoke and gave the word to look at for forward. He revealed what was to come and told of the great blessings that they would receive when Jesus, the Messiah, would dwell amongst them. And the people look forward to the coming of their Messiah, and the hope that was spoken into this. We find that same hope when we read through the words of the prophet. And hopefully as you guys read through those, you can feel that hope building up within you. We find that, like I said, we find that same hope, Christ has come and our hope is in Him. "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul," this is Hebrews 6:19, "a hope that is eternal." And so during this week, we get that opportunity to reflect on the hope of Christ. We see what the Old Testament had spoken of the coming Messiah, and then we get to see the actual coming of the Messiah. You know, as we celebrate Christmas here, you could look at the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. "Therefore, the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel." And then we see the fulfillment of that in Matthew 1:23, "Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel," which being translated is, "God with us." And so that's kind of, you know, like I said, I have to really dig in to see what the Advent season is. And so that's kind of where my study is, I guess, so far has gotten me.

Ben Cline
Yeah, I also grew up in a church that didn't really, we didn't really know what Advent was. I think I'm sure that my pastor probably knew what it was, but we never really celebrated it, you know, in any way, shape or form. And so we weren't taught about it. But, you know, in recent years, the church that I serve at currently, we have some years, gone through the Advent season. Some years, not gone through it. But I wanted to kind of, like you were saying Jonathan, kind of dig into that this year and, you know, take some time to think about what it symbolizes and what it reminds us of. And, you know, thinking of the topic of hope, if you do a word study for hope in scripture, oh wow, it's gonna be a long word study, right? And it's a very large topic in the scriptures, and so it's an exciting thing for us to remember. And I guess the question that I always start off with when I'm talking to somebody about hope is, you know, there's a different understanding, I think, of that word hope in the world versus, you know, from what the Bible teaches about it. And so, you know what I guess the question is: what is biblical hope? You know, it is not the same kind of thing that we talk about when we say, "I hope that something happens," or "I hope that I get this thing," or whatever. And even going into the Christmas season, that's maybe something that we hear a lot as well. What do you hope that you get for Christmas? It's a wish, right? Yeah, it's something that, you know, we really just wish for. And it's not based on anything that we know for certain. And I guess that's the difference between worldly hope and biblical hope, is that the hope that we have is based on things that are certain. And the hope that we have is because of what certainly happened. And it's interesting, you were talking about Hebrews 11 as we were kind of talking before we started recording this morning. And the first verse in that says, "Now, faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see." You know, and so you can go through and you can do a, a study of that word, hope, and find all sorts of things in scripture about what biblical hope actually is. And the first thing that I would say, is that biblical hope is deeply tied to faith. You know, our hope in being certain of what we do not see is deeply tied to the faith that we have in God, and deeply tied to the faith that we have in the promises that He's made to us in scripture. And so, you know, if you look at the Greek, if you look at those, the definition of the word, hope, it has behind it this idea of certain expectation. Which, you know, if you're hoping for a pony for Christmas, it's not the same kind of certain expectation. But if you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your savior, you have that certain expectation that you will spend eternity with Him forever. And that you are now adopted as one of His children, that you are a co-heir, you know, of the Father with Jesus Christ. And so, you know, there's all these things that we can place that certain expectation into, and that's just the word that we call, hope. So those are some of the things that I was thinking about. Just getting started off with that theme of hope for Advent.

Gary Schick
Yup, and good things to think about. You know, as I think about these things, these are Christmas traditions. And I don't know about your families, I grew up in a family where it was pretty bare bones. Christmas morning, opening gifts...most of the time. I think, yeah, most years we would read the Christmas story together. Now, my current family, it seems like every year we're adding on some new Christmas tradition, you know? It's starting off with Christmas Eve: we all open one present, and it's a big surprise! It's always Christmas pajamas and a big surprise, we put them on and there'll be a game. And we go around in our Christmas pajamas, driving around looking at Christmas lights. So, if you see some people in pajamas on Christmas Eve, it's probably the Schick family and their dogs are with them in the vehicle. And that is just one of what has become many. But, you can kind of understand when the date of Christmas was somewhat set. And of course, there is a little difference. Most of the western Church, essentially, celebrates Christmas, December 25th. The Orthodox East celebrates, I think a little bit later. We'll probably hit that in January. What's the difference there? But in any case, think about the time of year we're heading into. Think about what this time of year would be without Christmas. The days are dark, long, cold. And so what do people start to do? They start to light fire to keep them warm. And so here is a time in the church when things are gloomy, dark and cold, where people would light a candle and begin to think about the biblical expectation that we have in Christ. And as we approach the day that we celebrate His birth, we don't know exactly. I think there's some ideas when He may have been born, but the 25th is just kind of what we've settled on. It's a great way, I think, to kind of get our minds a little bit back in what it might have been like for the people of the Old Testament past. You know, Peter talks about the prophets of old, longed to look into the things that we now celebrate, you know, who Christ is. So, I'll get up on Sunday and read for example, "for as we light this candle about hope and prophecy," to read just a few verses like you did. About, you know, from Isaiah 7, "the Virgin will be with child," or this Sunday, it wasn't actually part of that, but just part of my message, cause I actually am going through Hebrews 11. Where in Isaiah 9, it talks about, "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." What must it have been like for Isaiah to write that and then to just wonder, "who is this? Who is this gonna be?" You know? And of course, we know it's Jesus, but to just be looking for, and you know what? In a sense, we are with those saints, those Old Testament people in the sense that they were looking forward to Christ. We're looking back on his first coming, but we are also waiting with eager expectation and confident hope. I love the way you talked about that Ben, looking forward to His return. You know, the world is still a dark place, and yet we have this light burning within us: Jesus! This hope, and we have this assurance that He is coming again. He is going to set the world right. And for those who put their hope in Him, there is all of the eternal joy to come. What a great thing to focus our minds on in the hurry and the busyness. In the dark and the cold and the slippery and the wet! But yet, as Christians, let's be out there with hope, and we're gonna talk about some other great things: peace and joy and all the things that we associate with Jesus and His coming. But today, it's on hope. Hey, thanks listeners for being part of this with us. And again, where where are you at today? Maybe you're not feeling hopeful. Maybe there's some pretty heavy burdens on your shoulders. Maybe there's some recent grief in your life, or even past grief that's still pretty heavy in your heart. I just encourage you to open up the word go back to the promises that look forward to Jesus and just be reminded of all that is ours in Him. What a great hope wishing you that today.