Transcript: Episode 0006

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Thank you for making me recommend for you!

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Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast, I am Corey J. Moller, and I'm Woe.

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In this episode, we will be discussing Scripture, Quas Scripture, which is to say Scripture

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as the inerrant, plenarily verbally inspired Word of God, which Christians must read, believe,

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and defend, and which Satan ceaselessly attacks.

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If I am not convinced by the testimonies of Scripture and clear rational arguments, for

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I believe neither the Pope nor the Council's alone, since it is a fact that they have often

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erred and contradicted themselves, then I am by the passages of the Holy Scriptures, which

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I have cited, overcome in my conscience and held captive to the Word of God.

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Therefore, I can and will retract nothing, because it is neither safe nor helpful to do

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anything against conscience.

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Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me, amen.

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This is Martin Luther's testimony to the die of arms in April 1521.

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I wanted to open with that statement, because it's one of the most famous things that Luther

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said that's known, you know, within Lutheranism, it's known across Protestantism at large.

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I think probably a lot of people know the phrase, here I stand, somewhat famously, even

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if they don't know where it came from.

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The reason I want to open with that in particular is that there are a couple points in there

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that Luther makes about appealing directly to Scripture and about plain reason, that although

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modern Lutherans believe that those words are inheritance and the Luther spirit and those

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words are spirit, in fact, it's pretty normal within our churches today to go in the opposite

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direction, to obfuscate Scripture and to try to make things more complicated than they

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are, and to either ignore a rational argument, so perhaps even to say that reason has no

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place in the faith, and as a result, when someone, especially a layman, points to Scripture,

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we are frequently shouted down or mocked or belittled or reprimanded as though we have

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done something wrong.

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So this episode today, we're talking about scriptural inarrency, about the plain reading

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of Scripture, about the plain words of Scripture, and whether that's actually true, whether it

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is true, the Scripture is plain.

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I've made a point in numerous past episodes from the Provincial Album, and I'll probably

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say it in every episode, Scripture is clear, and when I've been saying that, it is a very

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deliberate needle driven into the eyes of these men who think that Scripture is not clear,

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who think that when we read these words on the page that are given to us by God, transmitted

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through time miraculously, and by human hands at the same time, we can't really be sure

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what we're reading.

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And so to say Scripture is clear about anything is defiance against that spirit.

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Before we get into the nature of reading Scripture, I think it's important to begin with the

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point in time where the lady was actually first able to read Scripture because one of the

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things that was lost in the Western Church was access to the Word of God as Rome continued

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to preserve Latin as the soul language people didn't speak Latin anymore.

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And so only the very educated would know Latin, and the books themselves were incredibly

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expensive because they were all andridden.

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So it was really a breakthrough for the first time, particularly in English, when the Word

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of God was translated into English, and so we're going to begin there.

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And so of course, if we begin there, we have to begin with really three men that would

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be Wycliffe, Huss and Tindale.

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Two of them, the latter two, were executed for their efforts.

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Wycliffe did actually manage to live out his life.

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And the things for which the Roman Church persecuted these men, yes, they had disagreements

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theologically, but that was not the core of it.

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The core was that these men wanted the Scriptures to be accessible to the laity, which is to

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say they wanted it to be in the vernacular.

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As mentioned, having it in Latin, when no one speaks Latin anymore, except for the tiny

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upper educated crust of society, is not making the Word of God accessible to the common

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people of your nation.

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And Scripture is very clear.

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You are supposed to study and discuss and think about the Word of God when you rise, when

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you go to bed.

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As you walk by the way at dinner, all of these times you are supposed to discuss these things.

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You cannot do that if you don't have the Scriptures in a language who understand.

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And so in the case of Wycliffe, who has one of the first English translations of the Bible,

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and he translated it, his associates may have translated the Old Testament, but he certainly

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translated the New Testament.

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And so the Roman Catholic Church didn't manage to kill him, as mentioned previously.

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He managed to die a natural death, however, just to show the vindictiveness and the spitefulness

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of the Roman Church.

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They dug up his bones, burned them, and then tossed the ashes into the river in order to

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make a statement about their disagreement with him, which is to say that they did not want

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the common people to have the Scriptures in their hands in a way they could understand

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them, because that challenged the power of Rome.

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If the Scriptures aren't a language that only those associated with Rome, which at

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the time would have essentially been, only priests would have known Latin, or the handful

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of men who were highly educated at universities reading texts in Latin.

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Rome could have exercised a great deal of control then, and in addition, Rome objected to

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any attempts to produce the Bible really at all.

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Wasn't just producing the Bible in a language that was understood by the common people in

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the vernacular, if you attempted to print and distribute the Bible in Latin, they still

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would have killed you for that, because you would have been making it accessible not

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to the common man, but outside of Rome's control.

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And it's that control that Rome wanted to exercise, and that's basically sacerdotalism.

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It's the belief that the priesthood in the Roman sense here, they act as a go-between

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roar, the laity and God.

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The only way you can get to God is through your priests.

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That's basically the view of Rome at the time.

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It's still somewhat the view of Rome today, of course, it's complicated by the fact that

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Rome also seems to think that you can go through Mary or the Saints, but that is a separate

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issue.

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But it's the sacerdotalism that lies at the core of the problems that we will be discussing

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today.

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Because when you have pastors or priests or even theologians who are arguing, know the

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common man, know you, cannot understand the scriptures, you cannot read them for yourself,

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and understand what they mean.

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I have to do it for you.

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All of that falls under the umbrella of sacerdotalism.

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There is a fantastic quote that we found from one of Wycliffe's opponents who, in their

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hand-bringing way, they stated, the jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity.

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They're referring to scripture there.

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God's word, which was the jewel of the clergy, meaning them, had become the toy of the laity.

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They were so terrified of the idea of the common Christian abusing or misusing scripture

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that they were willing to kill men to keep them away from them.

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Well, and of course, they were, because even if you had it in Latin, particularly if you

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had it in the vernacular, but even if you had it in Latin, then educated man could

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start reading the scriptures and start seeing things like, say, 2nd Timothy 316.

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All scriptures, breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,

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and for training and righteousness.

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If you start reading these things that are all throughout scripture, it's not in just

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one place or a handful, it's everywhere beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation.

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If you start seeing these things, these men will start asking questions.

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Why have we restricted this from the laity?

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Why do they not have access to this?

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Why do the priests not want me to read the Word of God?

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If the Word of God is telling me to read the Word of God?

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And it's because Rome wanted to maintain that authority, because the authority of Rome

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is built on a handful of claims, one of which being that the Pope essentially is Christ

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on earth, and they will actually literally use those words from time to time.

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And so if scripture is the Word of God, God speaking directly to whomever is reading

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or listening, then you don't need this go between.

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You don't need the Pope, and then you can start to question the Pope's power, which is

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exactly what Rome, of course, did not want.

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When Rome hated the fact that the scriptures had been translated into the vernacular,

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that when they executed John Huss, they actually used Wycliffe's Bible as kindling on his

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pyre for his stake.

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They burned the Bible to murder a man for preaching and speaking from a Bible that they

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didn't want people to have access to.

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If you look at these men in history, Wycliffe, Huss and Tyndale, they did make doctrinal

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errors.

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We're not saying that Rome was wrong about the errors that these men made, but I think

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that that's actually part of the point of why it's so important.

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This scripture be accessible to everyone, because for these men, prior to the Reformation,

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Wycliffe was in the mid-1300s.

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When they undertook translating scripture into the vernacular, they became outlaws.

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They effectively became outside of the church, which meant that they didn't have the support

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of other Christians in the establishment, and that's not normal.

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Christians are not supposed to be solo.

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When we talk about scripture and air and sea and about the fact that the word is fruitful

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for these things, it does not follow that we want every man sitting under a tree by

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himself reading his Bible and never having any contact with other Christians.

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These things are meant to be discussed.

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God says that iron sharpens iron.

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That's talking about doctrine as much as anything, and there are numerous places in scripture

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where it says, particularly in the New Testament, there must be disagreements among you so that

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the truth may be known.

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When doctrine is reasoned out properly and argued from scripture, that is what God wants

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of us.

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He wants us to have scripture, to read scripture, to discuss it, and to argue, to figure

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out who is right.

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What we're going to get to in the second half of this episode is that one of the main

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attacks today, for a while, the attack was, well, scripture is not real, or it's true,

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but it's not accurate.

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There's some of that today, but it's sort of morphing into a thing where you can just

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say, that's your interpretation.

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You have your Bible and I have mine, and we can just believe what we want.

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As long as we confess Jesus in our heart, it's all good, man.

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The papers and others repeat the silly lie that there are 30,000 denominations today.

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It's pure nonsense for one thing.

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There may be a couple dozen branches that have discernible, very particular beliefs that

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differ from each other, and all the rest is basically just flavors of Baptist in one or

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two others.

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We should also point out that the claims from Rome and the East, when it comes to unity,

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are complete fabrications out of whole cloth.

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They are not unified.

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You have various groups within each of those umbrella church to use the term loosely bodies

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that don't agree with each other.

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They have categorical disagreements on doctrine from, in the case of the Eastern Orthodox,

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one national church to another, or even one body within a single nation to another.

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The unity they supposedly have and they try to make as an argument against Protestants

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is just complete nonsense.

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The facts do not bear it out.

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We can throw in the, for the show notes, the picture showing the relationship of the

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various Eastern Orthodox churches who are and are not in communion with one another over

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various things.

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It's as complicated as the org chart for any large international corporation, if not more

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so.

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Some of them are not in communion with each other.

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They don't have anathematize each other, but they say, yeah, we're not even of the same

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belief.

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That falls just under the umbrella of quote-unquote orthodoxy.

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Yes.

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You've got the same thing going on in Rome with those.

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It depends on how far you're willing to extend the umbrella.

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Are those who think the seat of Peter is vacant, still Roman Catholic?

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Are they not?

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Are the Jesuits and the Dominicans the same?

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It's just, it's never ending.

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Their claims of unity are complete nonsense.

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And you mentioned the word solo versus, say, perhaps solo.

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It does bring up the issue of most people don't even understand what solo-scriptura means

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anymore because no one knows Latin, which is funny that we're talking about translating

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things into the vernacular, and we discover a problem related to people not knowing Latin.

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But it is what it is.

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People look at solo-scriptura, and they won't know the term because people aren't taught

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even English anymore.

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They think it's the nomative.

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And so they think it's scripture alone, but that's not what it is.

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It's in the ablative.

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It is bi-scriptural alone.

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And what we mean when we say solo-scriptura is that scripture is the norming norm.

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It is the norma-normans.

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It is the standard by which all doctrine is tested.

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It does not mean that we take only scripture.

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We still look to our fathers in the faith.

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We still look to tradition.

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We look to all of these good things that have been preserved by the grace of God.

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They are just not the ultimate authority.

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And so when you said that these men were separated from the church, that's true, and that

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is exactly as you said, unnatural Christians are supposed to live within the context of

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the church, in a Christian society, in a Christian nation, in Christian families.

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And part of that is you have to have the word.

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Because we're going right back to headship as we always do, it is incumbent on the master

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of the house, which is to say the father, the oldest man in the house typically.

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It is incumbent on him to know the word, and to see that those in his house are instructed

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in it.

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And that's why you have the admonitions in the small catechism as the father of the

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house is supposed to teach.

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And also, he is supposed to question those in his household and see if they are actually

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learning this material, because one day the father is going to stand before his father

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in heaven and have to answer for what he did or did not do with regard to the authority

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he was given on earth.

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And the reason the discussion of scriptural and errancy and its suitableness for teaching

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is so important, is that particularly for new believers coming to the faith, or even

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for someone who's not a Christian yet, but they think they want to be a Christian and

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they want to know what does that mean.

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You look at this enormous menu of biting, bickering, angering, angry, in many cases killing

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each other for 1,500 years or more groups that all call themselves Christian, and every

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single one of them says that all the others are wrong.

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How is anyone to know how to make sense of that?

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And the easy thing for people to do is to throw up their hands and say, either to pick one,

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which is one of the reasons that I started, I mentioned last week that I had rebranded

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and started talking a lot more about my faith.

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And particularly about being a Lutheran, I did so because I saw more and more of men,

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the men on the right of the political spear, being attracted to Christianity and having

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this very problem.

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They see all the bickering, they see all the options, they don't know what to do.

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And they're either not Christian or they're barely Christian, and so they don't have

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any frame of reference for evaluating scriptural or doctrinal claims.

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All they can do is sort of look at the superficial aspects of things.

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And what I saw years ago and what's continuing to this day is that a great many men who want

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to become Christian because they see, even if they don't understand God, they don't understand

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Jesus and justification, they understand the Satan's real.

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They understand that evil is a real thing and that it is supernatural.

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It's not just that there are bad people, some of which are in some ethnic groups, but

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they're bad people in general.

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It's the, they see that those people cannot solely be bad because they had bad parents or

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they had a bad religion or a bad upbringing.

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There's an animating spirit that is clear in the world.

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And in many cases, it's only clear to unbelievers.

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Christians don't even see it anymore because we just say, oh, we're all sinners.

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Unbelievers can see more clearly than us that this is a spiritual war that we are in

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the mid-stuff.

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And so these men who don't know Jesus, but they do know that Satan has to be a real thing.

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They look at the churches and so one of the tests is, well, which one's biggest?

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The answer is Rome.

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Rome has more than a billion adherents worldwide.

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So obviously, I mean, they're the winner by default, clearly.

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I mean, that's the, that's the churchiest church you can go for.

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And then when you actually look at Rome, they have smells and bells.

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They have great optics, you know, they have, they have vestments.

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They have beautiful buildings.

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They have history.

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They have historic claims, some of which are actually true many are not.

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But, you know, again, even if some of their historical claims are not true, if someone

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is coming to the church as a blank slate, they're going to go for which everyone has more

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historical claims.

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And so it appeals to them, the Rome and that the East will say, we're older than those

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other guys.

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That Protestant stuff, that's new.

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That started in the 1500s.

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And the reason I started talking about my Lutheran faith was to say, hey, the Reformation

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was just that.

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It was not a revolution.

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It was not an overthrow of the church to replace it.

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It was a Reformation of the church as she had been centuries prior and a restoration

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of beliefs which had been once held within the church and then were lost precisely

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because the people were prohibited from having access to Scripture.

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And that's actually what happened to Luther, although he was a scholar, he was, he was

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reading the word, but it wasn't until he actually went back and actually really read

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Romans and Galatians that he had the breakthrough that what he had been taught in his own churches

20:21.260 --> 20:25.300
and what he'd been teaching as a, as a teacher in the church was actually false.

20:25.300 --> 20:27.340
It was contrary to Scripture.

20:27.340 --> 20:35.340
And so the Reformation didn't begin in a fever dream of Luther or in his desire to be

20:35.340 --> 20:36.580
a revolutionary.

20:36.580 --> 20:39.220
It became, it began in the word of God.

20:39.220 --> 20:45.740
It began in a man reading Scripture for the first time clearly and saying, hey, this

20:45.740 --> 20:48.180
isn't what what God told us.

20:48.180 --> 20:51.540
And if that's the case, then something has to be done.

20:51.540 --> 20:55.540
And we're in a similar situation today and so we're talking about why Scripture is both

20:55.540 --> 20:58.420
an errant and why it's accessible.

20:58.420 --> 21:03.820
It's not a mystery to us and it's very important that we combat anyone who says, oh, it's,

21:03.820 --> 21:08.100
it's really confusing because when people are coming into the church and they're looking

21:08.100 --> 21:13.660
for a church, if they see us making those claims, hey, they're not going to be interested

21:13.660 --> 21:16.140
in us because we're, we're equivocating.

21:16.140 --> 21:21.060
We're saying, we're saying the truth is unknowable that it's just all up for grabs and whatever

21:21.060 --> 21:22.500
you feel, man.

21:22.500 --> 21:25.140
And they know that that is a worldly thing.

21:25.140 --> 21:30.220
We have ceased to recognize that we again, and we talked about the genealogy of ideas.

21:30.220 --> 21:34.940
A pagan can look at the one, at the way Christians talk in our churches and see that a lot of

21:34.940 --> 21:38.180
it can't be Christian because it's modern.

21:38.180 --> 21:39.460
It's a modern ethos.

21:39.460 --> 21:47.860
It's a modern philosophical approach to something that if the claims are true is ancient, is,

21:47.860 --> 21:49.460
is originated from God.

21:49.460 --> 21:51.900
It's originated from a supernatural source.

21:51.900 --> 21:56.220
And so it's not going to be buffeted by the whims of philosophy as it evolves over

21:56.220 --> 21:57.620
the centuries.

21:57.620 --> 22:03.700
And so having these discussions and talking about the clarity of Scripture is not just about,

22:03.700 --> 22:05.660
it's not about winning arguments on the internet.

22:05.660 --> 22:08.820
It's not about seeing who's going to be more right.

22:08.820 --> 22:15.420
It's about reaching souls that are lost and are groping in the darkness towards God in

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a way that, as Christians, Scripture says that's clearly that's possible, that it is

22:19.580 --> 22:23.500
possible for people to grop their way towards God.

22:23.500 --> 22:24.860
You can't save yourself.

22:24.860 --> 22:28.860
You're not going to come to faith because you try really hard because you think about

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it.

22:29.860 --> 22:34.780
Faith is given as a gift through the hearing of the Word, which is Scripture.

22:34.780 --> 22:42.020
So pointing to Scripture is the way to save souls and denying Scripture outright or denying

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acts to Scripture is a way to damn souls.

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And that's why this conversation is important.

22:48.700 --> 22:53.220
It's worth actually emphasizing what you said about Luther.

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Luther was a monk and he still did not have access to Scripture, not ready access until

22:58.300 --> 23:04.980
he had been a monk for a while because even from those who were in the church being trained

23:04.980 --> 23:11.220
to teach in the church, they were largely using secondary and tertiary materials instead

23:11.220 --> 23:13.620
of Scripture.

23:13.620 --> 23:18.380
That's how far Rome had corrupted things by the time of the Reformation.

23:18.380 --> 23:23.580
And why the Reformation was absolutely necessary.

23:23.580 --> 23:26.980
And that's something that's just that's unfathomable to us today.

23:26.980 --> 23:30.860
We can't even understand not having the Bible because like I have, I don't know, I've

23:30.860 --> 23:33.380
probably done some Bibles in my house and I've done it.

23:33.380 --> 23:34.380
At least.

23:34.380 --> 23:35.380
Yeah.

23:35.380 --> 23:39.300
And I have the Bible on every one of my devices too and numerous translations and, you

23:39.300 --> 23:46.100
know, it's, we're so buried in Scripture that we take it for granted to something that,

23:46.100 --> 23:51.380
but in that day it was something that men literally died to get their hands on as they

23:51.380 --> 23:52.380
should.

23:52.380 --> 23:56.340
It was worth dying to get their hands on a single Bible.

23:56.340 --> 23:59.740
For the common man, the only time you would see a Bible is if there happened to be an

23:59.740 --> 24:01.940
altar Bible in your church.

24:01.940 --> 24:05.180
And it would be a Latin, so it would be of no use to them.

24:05.180 --> 24:07.500
Yeah, it would be an ornate Latin.

24:07.500 --> 24:09.620
You wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near it.

24:09.620 --> 24:14.740
So even if you had been able to get near it, it would have been useless to you.

24:14.740 --> 24:17.420
But you were allowed to view it from afar at best.

24:17.420 --> 24:22.700
And now, you know, I have logos open here in the background, my computer with however many,

24:22.700 --> 24:27.180
probably a hundred different translations and various languages and diglots and triglots

24:27.180 --> 24:31.180
and interlinear and the wealth of materials we have today.

24:31.180 --> 24:37.860
And it reminds me of a comment from Luther about men in his day, how little of an excuse

24:37.860 --> 24:40.660
the pastor teachers had for neglecting.

24:40.660 --> 24:42.820
It's from the large gaticism.

24:42.820 --> 24:46.940
Now little excuse they had for neglecting their duties and properly learning and studying

24:46.940 --> 24:50.420
the word considering what they had at their disposal.

24:50.420 --> 24:58.180
Now imagine what we have at our disposal and how little fathers and even pastors, and

24:58.180 --> 25:04.620
if we have any theologians, bother to learn about these things, despite the immense wealth

25:04.620 --> 25:10.660
of material that we have on hand, it's really just unforgivable.

25:11.660 --> 25:14.140
It is a tragedy.

25:14.140 --> 25:20.420
And so as we start talking specifically about the issue, I want to begin with a particular

25:20.420 --> 25:25.900
word that's used very often in these discussions and that word is interpret.

25:25.900 --> 25:32.420
So if I'm talking about something from scripture and I talk to you and you have a different

25:32.420 --> 25:38.100
idea and I don't agree with your idea and we trade proof texts back and forth, at some

25:38.180 --> 25:41.660
point one of us is probably going to say if we're taking cheap shots, you and I, Corey

25:41.660 --> 25:45.260
wouldn't do this, but it's very common in Christian discourse for somebody to say,

25:45.260 --> 25:48.180
well, that's just your interpretation.

25:48.180 --> 25:54.420
And that's a word that's incredibly dangerous and so I want to begin by focusing on what

25:54.420 --> 25:59.220
does the word interpret or interpretation mean in scripture?

25:59.220 --> 26:01.140
What does it mean today?

26:01.140 --> 26:03.060
And where did it come into the English language?

26:03.060 --> 26:08.660
So we're going to start in the middle with the definition of the word and the etymology.

26:08.660 --> 26:15.340
One of the proper definitions of it is to expound the meeting of to render clear or explicit

26:15.340 --> 26:22.140
and it came to us via old French from Latin interpretari meaning to explain, to expound

26:22.140 --> 26:23.700
and to understand.

26:23.700 --> 26:30.140
Now when you say interpret in terms of Christian dialogue, in view of the Latin root of the

26:30.140 --> 26:32.780
word, that's entirely fair.

26:32.820 --> 26:36.680
The problem is that no one knows the Latin root and that's not what they're actually

26:36.680 --> 26:38.780
talking about.

26:38.780 --> 26:43.980
The word when we say interpretation today is much closer to the word that's actually

26:43.980 --> 26:50.500
in scripture and so when you look in scripture for where interpret or interpretation is

26:50.500 --> 26:53.700
translated in English, it's also correctly translated.

26:53.700 --> 26:58.940
Now I'm not trying to set the modern word against the scriptural word because it's a

26:58.940 --> 27:05.420
good translation but it's important to note that when interpretation is discussed in

27:05.420 --> 27:09.300
scripture, it's never used the way we use it today ever.

27:09.300 --> 27:13.540
There are four things that are interpreted in scripture.

27:13.540 --> 27:18.380
The first is visions and dreams as in the case of Joseph when he was translating the

27:18.380 --> 27:20.860
dreams for his master.

27:20.860 --> 27:27.660
The second is signs and wonders as in the case where Daniel translated for Balthazar,

27:27.660 --> 27:36.180
and many, many Teclupars and meant the third is prophecies which are interpreted by

27:36.180 --> 27:42.300
a prophet before they come to fruition and prophecy is an interesting case because once

27:42.300 --> 27:46.420
a prophecy has been fulfilled, it is generally accessible.

27:46.420 --> 27:52.220
The plain reading of the prophecy is going to match up with what was prophesied but until

27:52.220 --> 27:58.540
such a time as God makes manifest his will described in that prophecy, you aren't necessarily

27:58.540 --> 28:01.340
going to know what it's going to look like.

28:01.340 --> 28:05.580
And we talked about that in the previous episode where we talked about Genesis 315 and the

28:05.580 --> 28:11.860
promise of the Messiah and how that was a less fleshed out version of that promise than

28:11.860 --> 28:17.860
was found in Isaiah where he talked about the Messiah being born of a virgin and of us being

28:17.860 --> 28:19.860
healed by his stripes.

28:19.860 --> 28:25.140
Those were also prophecies that they were much more explicit prophecies, both fleshing

28:25.140 --> 28:30.140
out the earlier one and pointing to the ultimate fruition.

28:30.140 --> 28:38.660
So prophecy is interpreted in advance, it's not interpreted in arrears.

28:38.660 --> 28:43.540
The last one is interpretation of foreign languages, it's seen most often in the New Testament

28:43.540 --> 28:49.820
where at Pentecost and also in the churches where some were given the gift of tongues,

28:49.820 --> 28:54.100
others were given the gift of interpretation.

28:54.100 --> 28:59.380
Now it's important to note that in all four of these cases, what is being interpreted?

28:59.380 --> 29:03.380
It's not the way we talk about interpreting scripture.

29:03.380 --> 29:09.380
It's talking about interpreting something that's unknowable to the observer or to the reader.

29:09.380 --> 29:14.420
When you have a vision or dream, the reason that the prophets who were given the gift of

29:14.420 --> 29:20.100
interpreting those visions and dreams had to do so is that it was symbolic language.

29:20.100 --> 29:24.820
When you have the seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows and who knows what it meant,

29:24.820 --> 29:29.860
it wasn't accessible via reason to interpret that dream.

29:29.860 --> 29:37.900
It was a gift of God that the gift of the vision was interpreted by the gift of interpretation.

29:37.900 --> 29:43.580
So in scripture, that's a kind of case in signs and wonders and the four languages,

29:43.580 --> 29:52.500
and prophecy, it is a gift from God to interpret the unknowable and to something knowable.

29:52.500 --> 29:57.940
When we look in scripture, we see, well, this is what interpretation means.

29:57.940 --> 30:00.980
In our own minds, I think that sort of becomes rooted.

30:00.980 --> 30:05.660
Then when we say to each other, well, that's your interpretation.

30:05.660 --> 30:10.540
Even if we're not necessarily thinking it fundamentally, that's what's actually coming

30:10.540 --> 30:16.780
out of our mouths is that, well, you're, you're scrying in the guts of scripture and

30:16.780 --> 30:20.860
you have some, you have this pile of stuff and you've turned it into something that you

30:20.860 --> 30:25.300
think, but when I rifle through those guts, I find something different.

30:25.300 --> 30:31.260
I find another interpretation, and that's simply not what the word means today when we're

30:31.260 --> 30:35.900
talking about it's not a good word to use in Christian discourse.

30:35.900 --> 30:40.980
If I had a book in front of me and we were sitting side by side, and I handed you the book

30:40.980 --> 30:46.460
or the comic book even, I said, like, can you interpret this for me?

30:46.460 --> 30:49.620
And you looked at it and it was English, you'd stare at me and laugh like, what are you

30:49.620 --> 30:50.620
talking about?

30:50.620 --> 30:52.980
Why do you need me to interpret it?

30:52.980 --> 30:56.980
So we instinctively know that interpret doesn't mean what it meant in Latin.

30:56.980 --> 30:59.620
It doesn't mean to explain or expound anymore.

30:59.620 --> 31:04.180
When we say interpret, we're saying we're beginning with something unknowable and turning

31:04.180 --> 31:06.020
into something noble.

31:06.020 --> 31:11.860
And that's the real danger when we're addressing scripture because one of the common attacks

31:11.860 --> 31:17.540
on scripture itself is the denial that it's clear, the denial that what the words that

31:17.540 --> 31:23.020
you have in front of you can possibly be understood, either unless you're a pastor or

31:23.020 --> 31:28.940
unless you know the original languages, or maybe they can't be understood at all.

31:29.060 --> 31:35.460
The only possible fruit of having access to scripture is numerous conflicting interpretations

31:35.460 --> 31:40.700
with no tiebreaker, with no one to say, this is right and this is wrong.

31:40.700 --> 31:44.340
And that's why it's so important to make sure that we're speaking clearly when we're

31:44.340 --> 31:49.460
talking about scripture because when we talk about scripture on this podcast, we're

31:49.460 --> 31:52.300
not interpreting anything, you know, unless we translate.

31:52.300 --> 31:57.100
So for example, the quote that I gave begin with from Luther, core, you translated that

31:57.100 --> 32:00.860
from the original German because the version I had was in a meme.

32:00.860 --> 32:05.060
And I don't want to make claims from memes, even, you know, it was a pretty good translation,

32:05.060 --> 32:09.500
but you gave one that's probably a little less common that's what's typically quoted,

32:09.500 --> 32:13.620
but is a faithful interpretation of Luther's original words.

32:13.620 --> 32:17.700
That was an interpretation because you started in German, which I can't read and I didn't

32:17.700 --> 32:20.420
have access to the source material readily.

32:20.420 --> 32:23.740
And you gave me something in English, that is interpretation.

32:23.740 --> 32:24.740
But that's disgusting.

32:24.740 --> 32:25.740
What's in scripture?

32:25.740 --> 32:26.740
We're not interpreting.

32:26.740 --> 32:27.740
We're using reason.

32:27.740 --> 32:33.660
Yeah, we do actually retain the Latin sense because we do still have the word interpreter.

32:33.660 --> 32:37.580
So we retain it there because when you use an interpreter, it literally means someone

32:37.580 --> 32:42.420
who is translating from a language you do not know into a language you do know.

32:42.420 --> 32:48.980
And so if we think about it, we do still have the sense of the term, but when people

32:48.980 --> 32:53.020
use interpretation, what they really mean when it comes to scripture and things like

32:53.180 --> 33:00.940
that is personal interpretation, which leads us into personal truth, which is not a thing.

33:00.940 --> 33:02.540
Something is true or false.

33:02.540 --> 33:05.100
These are basic laws of logic.

33:05.100 --> 33:09.740
It is not a personal truth because truth is not personal.

33:09.740 --> 33:10.740
Truth is truth.

33:10.740 --> 33:17.220
A statement is true or false and it is so for everyone at all times in all places or

33:17.220 --> 33:20.300
else it's not true.

33:20.300 --> 33:30.780
And additionally here, we have the issue of, when it comes to truth, let's look at translation.

33:30.780 --> 33:39.180
The famous part of that Luther wrote is, if I were to interpret that as Luther saying

33:39.180 --> 33:45.420
I would like an orange juice, please, that's not an interpretation, that's just wrong.

33:45.420 --> 33:48.500
And so there is an actual truth content there.

33:48.500 --> 33:49.740
It means something.

33:49.740 --> 33:53.460
And if you translate it accurately, you are relaying that truth.

33:53.460 --> 33:55.540
You are properly interpreting it.

33:55.540 --> 33:58.580
But if you mis-translate it, you aren't interpreting.

33:58.580 --> 34:01.180
You are misleading.

34:01.180 --> 34:07.460
But there is another source of this idea of personal truth or personal interpretation,

34:07.460 --> 34:12.700
particularly in the American context, although there are also some cults, supposedly Christian

34:12.700 --> 34:17.180
cults in Europe and other places that engage in the same behavior, it's penicostalism,

34:17.180 --> 34:23.660
it's enthusiasm, it's the belief that if I just do whatever, at least they're using

34:23.660 --> 34:25.300
the word, which is better than they are sometimes.

34:25.300 --> 34:31.780
But if I just stare at the word, I will suddenly be given this personal insight into the

34:31.780 --> 34:34.420
secret meaning of the word.

34:34.420 --> 34:42.300
Now, it's careful, it is important to carefully divide here the difference between a regenerate

34:42.300 --> 34:45.220
Christian will have the Holy Spirit.

34:45.220 --> 34:50.980
And so we'll be able to read and understand Scripture, which is a very important point

34:50.980 --> 34:56.420
for what we are discussing today, versus those who say that they will be given some

34:56.420 --> 35:01.740
sort of gnostic special insight into the real meaning that everyone else has gotten

35:01.740 --> 35:02.740
wrong.

35:02.740 --> 35:07.300
Those people, that is a cult practice, that is not Christian.

35:07.300 --> 35:12.420
And that's another source of this personal interpretation, and it's of a kind with

35:12.420 --> 35:18.620
people who gibber in nonsense, supposed languages, in church and say that speaking in tongues,

35:18.620 --> 35:19.620
it's not.

35:19.620 --> 35:20.940
Scripture is very clear.

35:20.940 --> 35:25.300
There should be an interpreter because tongues are human tongues.

35:25.300 --> 35:28.740
The point of that gift of the Spirit is so that you can talk to someone who does not

35:28.740 --> 35:30.420
speak your language.

35:30.420 --> 35:34.380
Less important today, given technology, and the fact that, again, we have this wealth

35:34.380 --> 35:41.180
of material for learning languages, back in biblical times, it would have been impossible

35:41.180 --> 35:46.460
basically for a common man to learn a foreign language from a country that was 300 miles

35:46.460 --> 35:47.940
away even.

35:47.940 --> 35:52.300
And so those gifts were more important back then.

35:52.300 --> 35:56.100
But there was another point I wanted to add here quickly.

35:56.100 --> 36:02.860
There are two terms that we should mention because the typical terms you hear, well, one

36:02.860 --> 36:06.420
is the typical term you hear one is a mistake, but the typical terms you hear when discussing

36:06.420 --> 36:13.540
this issue, perspicuous, or perspicacity, perspicuity, two different terms are perspicacity versus

36:13.540 --> 36:14.540
perspicuity.

36:14.540 --> 36:18.380
Perspicuity is what we're talking about, which is that Scripture is clearly expressed

36:18.380 --> 36:20.460
and easily understood.

36:20.460 --> 36:23.380
Perspicacity is the term some people mistake.

36:23.380 --> 36:26.300
That's a quality of having already inside into things.

36:26.300 --> 36:29.300
So a person has perspicacity.

36:29.300 --> 36:30.500
Scripture has perspicuity.

36:30.500 --> 36:33.980
You can also say perspicuousness, but that one's awkward.

36:33.980 --> 36:35.340
That's what we're talking about here.

36:35.340 --> 36:37.020
Scripture is clear.

36:37.020 --> 36:42.260
Scripture can be understood by the average man if he reads it.

36:42.260 --> 36:46.020
But again, for the regenerate Christian, you will also have the Holy Spirit that are guiding

36:46.020 --> 36:47.020
you.

36:47.020 --> 36:49.700
So if there are people who say that Scripture isn't clear, you can understand Scripture,

36:49.700 --> 36:55.740
it's dark, and it's incomprehensible and penetrable, they're actually calling God a liar.

36:55.740 --> 36:58.820
Because God says that He will help you to understand these things.

36:58.820 --> 37:02.140
And Scripture also, throughout, says that it is clear.

37:02.140 --> 37:07.300
I have a quote here from Luther in a book that the Reformed happened to love the bondage

37:07.300 --> 37:08.860
of the will.

37:08.860 --> 37:13.300
But he threads the needle here when it comes to the fact that yes, there are some parts

37:13.300 --> 37:15.100
of Scripture that are still confusing.

37:15.100 --> 37:16.940
There are.

37:16.940 --> 37:23.100
But the core doctrines, the core truth of Scripture, the overwhelming majority of Scripture, is

37:23.100 --> 37:24.580
clear and easily understood.

37:24.580 --> 37:28.540
So here's the quote from Luther.

37:28.540 --> 37:32.620
The subject matter of the Scriptures, therefore, is all quite accessible.

37:32.620 --> 37:37.540
Even though some texts are still obscure owing to our ignorance of their terms, truly it

37:37.540 --> 37:42.180
is stupid and impious when we know that the subject matter of Scripture has all been

37:42.180 --> 37:47.940
placed in the clearest light, to call it obscure on account of a pure obscure words.

37:47.940 --> 37:52.060
If the words are obscure in one place, yet they are plain in another, and it is one in

37:52.060 --> 37:56.780
the same theme, published quite openly to the whole world, which in the Scriptures is

37:56.780 --> 38:01.660
sometimes expressed in plain words and sometimes lies as yet hidden at obscure words.

38:01.660 --> 38:06.380
Now, when the things signified as in the light, it does not matter of this or that sign of

38:06.380 --> 38:11.500
it as in darkness, since many other signs of the same thing are meanwhile in the light.

38:11.500 --> 38:15.500
Who will say that a public fountain is not in the light because those who are in a narrow

38:15.500 --> 38:21.140
side street do not see it, whereas all who are in the marketplace do see it.

38:21.140 --> 38:25.060
Your reference to the Corsian cave, therefore, is irrelevant.

38:25.060 --> 38:27.620
It is not how things are in the Scriptures.

38:27.620 --> 38:32.180
Matters of the highest majesty and the profoundest mysteries are no longer hidden away, but

38:32.180 --> 38:36.500
have been brought out and are openly displayed before the very doors.

38:36.500 --> 38:41.900
For Christ has opened our minds so that we may understand the Scriptures, Luke 2445, and

38:41.900 --> 38:45.700
the Gospel is preached to the whole creation, Mark 1615.

38:45.700 --> 38:50.300
Their voice has gone out to all the earth, Romans 1018, and whatever was written was written

38:50.300 --> 38:53.100
for our instruction, Romans 154.

38:53.100 --> 38:58.900
Also, all Scripture inspired by God is profitable for teaching 2 Timothy 316.

38:58.900 --> 39:03.900
See then whether you and all the sophists can produce any single mystery that is still

39:03.900 --> 39:06.580
abstruse in the Scriptures.

39:06.580 --> 39:11.380
Luther is of course responding to Erasmus who had argued essentially that Scripture was

39:11.380 --> 39:12.380
impenetrable.

39:12.380 --> 39:17.660
And this is something that we emphasized in our previous episode, we were talking about

39:17.740 --> 39:18.740
election.

39:18.740 --> 39:25.020
We specifically pointed out the predestination versus the so-called double predestination

39:25.020 --> 39:31.180
or the hypostatic union of Christ or the Trinity or the Eucharist.

39:31.180 --> 39:37.940
These are a few places where Scripture is clear, but reason is not clear, and that's

39:37.940 --> 39:39.940
a very limited set.

39:39.940 --> 39:44.500
So it's a trick that the devil plays on us and that we are all too willing to play

39:44.580 --> 39:51.740
on ourselves and on each other to say that, well, this verse seems to contradict this

39:51.740 --> 39:52.740
verse.

39:52.740 --> 39:55.140
So I'm going to pick the one that I like the most.

39:55.140 --> 40:02.300
And the reason that I began with that quote in part was that, again, Luther refers both

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to the testimonies of Scripture and to clear rational arguments.

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And I mentioned that the reason is something that Christians are either used too much

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of, as in the case of some denominations, where reason is used in the Magisterial sense,

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where all of their beliefs must be in submission to their own reason.

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As Lutherans, we advocate the ministerial use of reason, where we do our best with what

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we have and where our reason fails us.

40:33.540 --> 40:37.260
We look at the plain words of Scripture and where we don't understand them.

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We still confess them.

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That is what faith means.

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But reason has a very precious place in the church.

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And this is found in Scripture itself.

40:48.900 --> 40:56.060
When you look, there are 17, or sorry, 13 places in the New Testament where the Greek

40:56.060 --> 41:02.420
word, D. L. Ego Mai, is used, that word means to converse or address, to lecture, to

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argue, or to reason.

41:05.300 --> 41:12.500
Now when it appears in the New Testament, almost all of the uses are in the sense of dialectical

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reason, of arguments, not in a knockdown dragout argument, but making a series of logical

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propositions to reach a conclusion.

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And they're done principally by Paul.

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In Acts 17, he repeatedly reasoned from the Scriptures with both the Jew and Greek.

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It says the same thing in Acts 18.

41:34.340 --> 41:38.420
It says three times in 17 and 18 that he reasoned, sorry, four times, I'm just scrolling

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through here five times.

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It just keeps going.

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Over and over, Paul is going to the synagogues into the public places, and he is reasoning

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from Scripture.

41:48.180 --> 41:58.180
Now Paul had revelations directly from God, and his writings to us are the revelation of

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God.

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But when he spoke to his fellow Jews, and he spoke to the Gentiles, there were cases where

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he would reveal something prophetic, but his go to was to reason from the Scriptures.

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Now, the Scripture that they had in that day was the entirety of the Old Testament, the

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Tanakh.

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They didn't have the New Testament yet, because Paul hadn't written it, and the few other

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authors who contribute to what we call the New Testament today.

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But when he reasoned with them, he was obeying God.

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He was saying, look, here we have the prophecy in Genesis and Isaiah and elsewhere that there

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would be a Messiah, and now I point to you to Jesus and to his life and to his preaching

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and his ministry and his death and his resurrection.

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As a testimony to the fulfillment of those prophecies, Paul was using a reason to explicate

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prophecy.

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See, again, he didn't have to use a special revelation from God to explain the prophecy

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because he was in the review mirror, both the prophecy itself and its fulfillment.

43:05.940 --> 43:11.860
What Paul had to do was to use a plain reason from the plain words that were given to the

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Hebrews and the Old Testament and to all of us to say, look, God said this and then God

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did this, what God said and what God did look exactly the same.

43:22.100 --> 43:23.580
That's reason.

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It takes faith for us to believe it, but just as a jurist is someone, particularly at

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the time who, you know, just having access to the facts and not having access to faith,

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could potentially believe that too, now it may not be salvific without faith, but they

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would reach the same conclusions by virtue of reason.

43:44.980 --> 43:48.380
Now to be clear, we're not saying here the reason can save you.

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That's never the point it is faith that saves and faith alone.

43:52.100 --> 43:58.340
The reason is a gift of God that is given to every man, although not an equal measure.

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Some men are apparently entirely bereft of reason and some men seem to have too much

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of it because they can't shut it off.

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The reason is a gift that is given to us by God to help make sense of the things that

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God has also given to us and scripture is what God has given to us.

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God has not given us tradition.

44:17.140 --> 44:23.020
One is what has been passed down for our benefit, but I want to quote Luther's works of

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volume one where he's talking about Genesis, and we're going to get into in a minute, one

44:27.780 --> 44:31.780
of the reasons we're talking about this is that recently on the internet there have been

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people who call themselves Lutherans and call themselves Christians who are directly

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in opening attacking Genesis is again, they're saying, well, yeah, it's true, but I'm not

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going to go along with it being factual.

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That's a bridge too far.

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And one of the appeals that these men actually made was to the church fathers who disagreed

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in some cases with Genesis being a narrative, particularly the first nine books, which are

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considered more metaphorical, kind of a narrative, but not a factual recounting.

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Here's what Luther had to say.

45:06.940 --> 45:12.460
Whenever we see that the opinions of the fathers are not in agreement with scripture, we respectfully

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bear with them and acknowledge them as our forefathers, but we do not on account, on their

45:18.980 --> 45:24.740
account, give up the authority of scripture, Aristotle's statement in the first book of

45:24.740 --> 45:31.540
his ethics is well put and true, better it is to defend the truth than to be too much devoted

45:31.540 --> 45:35.020
to those who are our friends in our relatives.

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And this is above all the proper attitude for a philosopher, for although both truth and

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friends are dear to us, preference must be given to truth.

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If a pagan maintains that this must be the attitude in their secular discourses, how

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much more must it be in our attitude in those which involve the clear witness of scripture,

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that we dare not give preference to the authority of men over that scripture.

45:58.420 --> 46:03.300
Human beings can err, but the word of God is the very wisdom of God in the absolutely

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infallible truth.

46:05.300 --> 46:11.140
So also Luther had to say about his forefathers and the faith of the church fathers, disagreeing

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with genesis.

46:12.980 --> 46:14.900
And that's what we're talking about here.

46:14.900 --> 46:17.860
It is possible for anyone to err.

46:17.860 --> 46:22.340
It is not possible for a man to err and to be faithful to scripture.

46:22.340 --> 46:27.540
And so the reason that these arguments and discussions must be had and must be had in

46:27.540 --> 46:35.460
public is so that it can be plain to all where the scriptural revelation ends and where

46:35.460 --> 46:41.420
man's additions to it begin, because reason can go too far and there are some denominations

46:41.420 --> 46:43.500
that take reason too far.

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But reason can also be neglected.

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And so it's a very dangerous for anyone to advocate, well, we can't know what that means.

46:52.660 --> 46:58.460
Well, yes, it is theoretically possible that you can read something in scripture that

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you cannot understand, but it's incredibly unlikely.

47:01.620 --> 47:05.620
And those things have already been identified in the past by all of the other men who for

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thousands of years have struggled with these same questions.

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So we don't need to come in blind and mindless to scripture.

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We can look to what the fathers have said, but we can only look to them in the light of

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scripture and not the other way around.

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As Cory, as you mentioned, when Luther was first accessing scripture even as a monk,

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it was through the eyes of other men and through the words of other men.

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And his revelation was when he finally read scripture itself and realized that what he

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had been handed through tradition didn't add up.

47:39.060 --> 47:40.780
It wasn't what was scriptural.

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And so reason has a very crucial place in the life of a Christian, again, subordinated

47:46.900 --> 47:56.420
to faith, but used wherever possible to make clear that which can be made clear from scripture.

47:56.420 --> 48:03.380
And I would just want to pose a question to those men who say that we cannot use reason

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in order to interpret or in order to exegy, it would be a better term, really.

48:09.460 --> 48:12.260
What are they using?

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What are they doing when they are reading scripture?

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How is it that they are teaching?

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Because you will hear this from certain pastors and teachers that you can't use reason

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in order to understand these things or they aren't clear or any of these.

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What is it they are doing that these other men cannot do?

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And why is it that we should believe them?

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Of course, we know what they're actually doing.

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It's a cartel is what it really is.

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They have the exclusive authority to interpret scripture because they got a little stamp

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on a piece of paper saying that they're allowed to do it according to whatever group.

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If it's the Roman church, then it's according to the Pope.

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If it's some other church, then typically it's according to some seminary.

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And that's not how it works.

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I'm not saying that seminary education is bad.

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It's certainly in our era has its problems.

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But just because you have an MDiv does not mean that you are an expert in all things scripture.

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In fact, it may be a fairly good indication that you were not.

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One would hope that those with an MDiv would recognize that because in basically any other

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field, the higher you go in degrees and education that field, the more you realize how little

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you know, and of all places in which that should be true.

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It should certainly be true when it comes to scripture because you're dealing with

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the word of an infinite God.

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You should absolutely know it forward and backward, the things that can be known.

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But you are going to realize that there is always more for you to learn.

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It's the same thing that is said in the small catechism.

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It's those who read it through once, then throw it in the corner and think, I've read

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that.

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I'm good enough.

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I'm done.

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No, you read it every day because God will continue to teach you and so you continue

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to read scripture because you will continue to learn.

50:08.700 --> 50:14.580
And so I just, I would want to know what these men are doing when they are somehow exegiting

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scripture, but without resorting to reason or, and again, we know what they're doing.

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They're reading what others have written and just parroting it.

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Which there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.

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Some very good teachers are simply, we could call them a synthesis teacher.

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There's synthesizing materials from others, who know more than you, and then teaching

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it to others, who know less than you do.

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That's perfectly valid.

50:40.420 --> 50:44.060
You have scholars who do that as well, who synthesize quotes from various other authors

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and peeper did a lot of that.

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A good scholar at his own right, but a lot of what he did, was corralling together quotes

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and things and vaulted in some of that as well.

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That's not a condemnation of those men, sometimes that's what you need to do as a teacher.

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But reason is a gift from God.

51:03.700 --> 51:09.620
It is a valid tool, but as you said, it's just something we do not put it on a throne.

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It's not the magisterial use of reason, it's the ministerial use.

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Reason is a servant we employ to help us understand scripture.

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And scripture itself testifies over and over again that it is complete, that it is from

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God, that it is an errant, and that it is valuable for these purposes.

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I mind a few verses I like to read now that just from Olden New Testament that make clear

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how much God reinforces to the Christian that this stuff is vital.

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And Isaiah 8, God says himself, to the law and to the testimony.

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If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

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In Matthew 4, Jesus said, but he answered, it is written, again quoting back to the Old Testament,

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man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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Now those who heard Jesus speaking in his earthly ministry were blessed that all of the many words

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that he spoke were direct from the mouth of God, which John records as more than could be written

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in all the books in the world.

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That statement is equally true of scripture, and that is one of the things that one of the

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attacks that Satan through these vipers who live in our churches today will make is that they

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will try to subdivide the scripture that we have before us, the Bible that you have in your hands,

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and say, well, this part, yeah, this part is definitely from God, but this part might,

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yeah, it is a little sketchy. I am not sure about that.

52:45.980 --> 52:53.660
And a couple of episodes go, I exhorted people to read the read letters in the New Testament

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for a very specific purpose, and I spent more time talking about how dangerous it was

52:58.460 --> 53:02.940
than I did about actually describing what you would have because of this very reason that there

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are people, again, who will say, well, if it's not in red, well, maybe God didn't really say it.

53:08.220 --> 53:13.020
I actually heard Kanye say that this week in a quote, and I was just shaking my head, like,

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please, Lord, don't put me in the same boat as him as a theologian, but it's important to

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remember that every word of scripture is from God, and God himself says it, and if you don't

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believe that, then you call God a liar, and the truth is not in you, and you do not have God,

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and that's where this stuff comes bound to, when you, when Cory and I fight for sound doctrine,

53:38.380 --> 53:43.980
for agreeing with scripture, even when we don't like it, there are things in scripture that I have

53:43.980 --> 53:50.060
a hard time with, not because I don't believe them, or that I don't want to obey God, but because

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they're hard to hear, because they condemn things that I have believed in the past, or the way I

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want to live in the future, or the things I like to do right now. Those are not reasons not to

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believe God, but there are hardened hearts and there are seared consciences in men who will

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gleefully say that these literalists, like you and I Cory, don't really have access to scripture,

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because we're so dumb, and we're such hayseeds, that we just read the Bible and believe it,

54:19.980 --> 54:24.300
and that's just, that's really dangerous, and it's embarrassing, and Christians should be better

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than that. That's not what God says. In Matthew 5, Jesus reiterates what was said in Isaiah,

54:33.820 --> 54:38.220
he says, for truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter,

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nor the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law, until everything is

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accomplished. Now, this in the King James is the famous John Titl quote, I think here I actually

54:48.700 --> 54:55.900
used NIV because I like how it works best with the Greek, but the smallest stroke of a pen

54:55.900 --> 55:02.460
and the smallest letter refers to the fact that there's no part of scripture, there's no corner

55:02.460 --> 55:07.980
that you can find, there's no piece of a letter that you can find that is so insignificant,

55:07.980 --> 55:14.140
that you can leave it out and still have God. And there's a word in there that I want to highlight,

55:14.220 --> 55:20.140
because Jesus said, will by any means disappear from the law. Now, one of the games that these

55:20.140 --> 55:25.260
vipers will play, he'll say, well, the law, that's the Torah, that's the first five books, that's

55:25.260 --> 55:30.540
the Pentateuch, that's the book, that's the law of Moses, that's just that's a tiny portion of

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the Old Testament. He's not talking about the whole thing, nonsense. Jesus, who is the word,

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knows what the word is, he knows what was revealed to Moses and to the other prophets,

55:41.980 --> 55:47.100
because he's the one who revealed it. So when these men try to say, well, Jesus isn't really

55:47.100 --> 55:52.620
talking about the whole thing, they're trying to devalue your souls, and that's why fighting over

55:52.620 --> 55:59.100
an air and see and fighting over the whole of scripture being vital is so important. Really,

55:59.100 --> 56:06.060
it's the same thing that we run into again and again and again and again. Satan has changed his

56:06.060 --> 56:12.940
tactics over the centuries, because he has done certain things and the church has responded

56:12.940 --> 56:20.060
and dealt with the issue, and so he does something else. We've mentioned that the church

56:20.060 --> 56:27.900
handled with the Reformation, Article 4 justification. We handled that problem. Yes, there are still

56:27.900 --> 56:35.820
cults, sex that do not get it right, but the church handled the problem of the denial of

56:35.820 --> 56:43.420
by grace through faith. And so what did Satan do? Well, he switched gears. He's going to attack

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the first article of the creed, creation, ontology, the nature of things. Instead of attacking

56:48.380 --> 56:55.420
justification, it's the same thing that's happening here. If Satan cannot keep the scriptures out

56:55.420 --> 57:01.180
of the hands of the laity, which he can no longer do, because good luck putting that back in the

57:01.180 --> 57:07.100
bottle at this point, everyone who wants to have a Bible could have a Bible. Everyone can have

57:07.100 --> 57:13.580
the word of God. Anyone with a smartphone has access to a wealth of information that would make

57:14.620 --> 57:20.780
the wealthiest scholar in human history envious in comparison. Kings had libraries the likes of which

57:21.900 --> 57:28.620
don't even hold a candle to what we have today. And so Satan isn't going to attack that because

57:28.620 --> 57:33.340
he can no longer keep it out of your hands. He cannot make it so it's just in Latin and you don't

57:33.340 --> 57:41.500
know Latin. But what he can do is he can have false teachers, wolves, snakes. He can send them out

57:41.500 --> 57:45.900
and they'll tell you, is that what God really said? So of course, he's not really changing his

57:45.900 --> 57:51.340
tactics that much from the beginning. But the goal now is to make you think that scripture is

57:51.340 --> 57:57.820
unclear. That scripture is difficult to understand. That you cannot just read scripture as

57:58.460 --> 58:04.060
a layman and understand it and get something out of it. And that's not what scripture says because

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the goal as ever is to get you to willingly or unwillingly, willingly or unwittingly, call God a

58:11.340 --> 58:18.940
liar. That's what happens with the denial of certain aspects of creation. It's what happens with

58:18.940 --> 58:26.060
the denial of ontology. It's what happens when you say that scripture is unclear because God says

58:26.060 --> 58:35.020
it is clear. And Hebrews 4 is written, for the word of God is living an act of sharper than any

58:35.020 --> 58:40.940
two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit of joints and marrow and discerning the

58:40.940 --> 58:47.100
thoughts and intentions of the heart. And one of my favorite quotes I found was from Isaiah 55.

58:47.740 --> 58:53.500
God says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways. Declare is the Lord.

58:54.140 --> 58:59.260
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts

58:59.260 --> 59:04.780
than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there,

59:04.780 --> 59:10.060
but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the

59:10.060 --> 59:18.140
eater. So shall my word be that, goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty,

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but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

59:25.100 --> 59:32.060
God gave us these words for our clarity, for our comfort, and for our salvation,

59:32.060 --> 59:39.900
and anytime Satan through his certain servants on this planet gets you to doubt even a tiny bit of it.

59:40.700 --> 59:47.660
That is the whole armor of God having a chink put in it. That is a place where now Satan can get

59:47.660 --> 59:53.100
through the armor and can get to your flesh, where God is no longer protecting you because you're

59:53.100 --> 59:59.100
no longer believing God. It's not that God has lost his power. It's the you of satiside is word

59:59.100 --> 01:00:07.180
even by the smallest decree. And when we do that, we're a terrible risk. One of the reasons that we

01:00:07.180 --> 01:00:11.660
did this episode this week was that for the last few days there's been a stink and I'm not going

01:00:11.660 --> 01:00:16.700
to go into the drama because we've been talking enough about Twitter, but there are those who claim that

01:00:18.220 --> 01:00:26.300
the six days of creation are their true, but they're not literal. In other words, God has

01:00:26.300 --> 01:00:31.180
revealed something that's true in the narrative sense, but not in the factual sense.

01:00:31.820 --> 01:00:42.460
And one of the attacks that this man, Lymanstein on Twitter made was to mock the six days of creation

01:00:42.460 --> 01:00:51.260
where in Genesis 1 and 2, God reveals that in the beginning, God said, let there be light and

01:00:51.260 --> 01:00:58.620
there was light. That was day one. And it wasn't until late that he created the sun and the stars.

01:00:58.620 --> 01:01:06.380
And so these mockers, these scoffers will say, well, the six days of creation can't be literal

01:01:06.380 --> 01:01:11.420
because how can God say that there was light on day one when there was no source of light

01:01:11.420 --> 01:01:16.700
until later days because as the big brain ratter to these guys all know through their material

01:01:16.700 --> 01:01:23.980
knowledge of the world that in order for there to be light, you need an unbounded nuclear reactor

01:01:23.980 --> 01:01:30.940
in the sky emitting photons. That's how science gives us light, right? That's what stars do. The stars

01:01:30.940 --> 01:01:37.500
give light. And now we're not going to make the the scientific case for creation, even though there

01:01:37.500 --> 01:01:44.140
is one and the more we learning about the first moments of creation, the more we see how clearly

01:01:44.140 --> 01:01:53.740
scripture the the genesis of count of creation is literal. God says let there be light and there was

01:01:53.740 --> 01:02:01.020
light. Now that's God speaking. That is a voice. That is a sound. And then light occurs from it.

01:02:01.580 --> 01:02:05.500
The red at our mocks and says, well, that's stupid. That's utterly impossible. Everyone knows that.

01:02:05.500 --> 01:02:12.940
Can't happen except in the 70s or sorry in the 30s, they some German scientists discovered

01:02:12.940 --> 01:02:20.460
sonoma luminescence where it is literally possible to create light from sound. It turns out that if

01:02:20.460 --> 01:02:28.060
you emit a particular type of sound into a liquid, it will cause a bubble to appear and collapse.

01:02:28.060 --> 01:02:35.180
And in that collapse, you get intensely high temperatures on the order of tens of thousands of

01:02:35.180 --> 01:02:41.420
kelvin degrees kelvin. When the bubble collapses, there's a flash of light. You can have a fluid

01:02:41.420 --> 01:02:48.220
where light appears by virtue of a sound being passed through it. Now what does liquid have to do

01:02:48.220 --> 01:02:57.420
this? Well, also in the genesis account, the spirit of God hovered over the waters. Now the man who

01:02:57.980 --> 01:03:04.700
mocks the literalist reading genesis will say, well, as a material expert as a scientist, I know that

01:03:05.580 --> 01:03:11.580
water is H2O. It's two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. There was no water because God hadn't

01:03:11.580 --> 01:03:17.980
created the waters yet. So what's this water stuff? It must be a metaphor. Well, again, just in the

01:03:17.980 --> 01:03:27.100
last couple decades, as particle physicists and other scientists have unwound the big bang

01:03:28.140 --> 01:03:34.700
to based on the physical evidence in found in the universe to try to figure out the very earliest

01:03:34.700 --> 01:03:41.100
moments of they don't call creation, but it's really creation. What do they find before there was

01:03:41.100 --> 01:03:47.900
a matter? They call it quark glue on plasma. You can Google that and you can read about the

01:03:48.780 --> 01:03:54.940
the theoretical aspects and then the physical experiments they've done. Every scientist will describe,

01:03:54.940 --> 01:04:03.020
describe quark glue on plasma as the most perfect liquid. It is a liquid that is more liquid than any

01:04:03.020 --> 01:04:08.300
liquid that we have. It's more liquid than water in terms of its liquid properties. The reason they

01:04:08.300 --> 01:04:12.700
were excited is they expected a gas because when they were doing their simulations and their

01:04:12.700 --> 01:04:18.140
thought experiments to try to find what was there before the big bang, they thought, well,

01:04:18.140 --> 01:04:26.300
it must be a gas. They found a liquid. They found waters. Now, why would God speak to Moses when

01:04:26.300 --> 01:04:34.940
he gave him the narrative of Genesis? Why would he say water? Well, Moses didn't know anything about

01:04:34.940 --> 01:04:41.740
particle physics. He didn't know anything about strength theory, but it was also true. It literally

01:04:41.740 --> 01:04:47.580
happened. God hovered over the face of the waters and the scientists have now simulated those very

01:04:47.580 --> 01:04:53.180
waters. These are men who deny they deny God. They're trying to find something so that they can say

01:04:53.180 --> 01:04:58.620
that we didn't need God. Here's what we found instead. The more that they dig, the more that they

01:04:58.620 --> 01:05:03.740
find the first two chapters of Genesis revealed in their experiments. Now, they'll never see it

01:05:03.740 --> 01:05:07.500
because their eyes are closed and their hearts are hardened. They don't have faith and they

01:05:07.500 --> 01:05:13.420
hate God and they don't know God at the same time. But as Christians, we don't need to be afraid

01:05:13.420 --> 01:05:19.180
of science looking to scripture as we look to scripture because they're saying the same thing.

01:05:20.300 --> 01:05:24.460
Now, when I mentioned the big bang, you're going to think, oh, well, he thinks that the, you know,

01:05:24.460 --> 01:05:28.780
he's not a young earth creationist. I absolutely am. And that's the point of this discussion.

01:05:29.100 --> 01:05:36.940
When God created the universe, how old was it? That's what they're trying to answer.

01:05:37.980 --> 01:05:42.780
There's a separate question that's a little more accessible to us. When God created man,

01:05:42.780 --> 01:05:51.580
when God created Adam, how old was he? Was he zero? We hadn't lived today, but God created a man,

01:05:51.580 --> 01:05:59.500
a fully formed sexually mature man is who stood in the garden with God. So God didn't make a

01:05:59.500 --> 01:06:08.380
sheet of fetus, the gestated in a box. He made a fully grown man. Adam had an age. My personal theory,

01:06:08.380 --> 01:06:14.060
which is, it's not a belief, it's just something I, as I was reading scripture, I noticed Adam died

01:06:14.060 --> 01:06:22.060
after 930 years. Methuselah, who's the oldest lived man in scripture, lived 969 years. And my

01:06:22.060 --> 01:06:28.300
brain did the math and said, well, that means that Methuselah lived 39 years longer than Adam.

01:06:28.860 --> 01:06:33.980
That's a conspicuous number if you're familiar with numerology in scripture because 40 is a

01:06:33.980 --> 01:06:39.500
significant number. It's usually signifies trial. But I thought, and that's what made me think,

01:06:39.500 --> 01:06:45.260
well, how old was Adam? Personally, I think he was probably created as a 40 year old because

01:06:45.260 --> 01:06:50.620
that would make him the first, first born man in creation, the oldest man in creation. He was the

01:06:50.620 --> 01:06:55.660
only man who was ever perfect. He was the only man who ever walked sinlessly with God. And so

01:06:55.660 --> 01:07:00.700
my personal theory, again, this is not, I'm not adding to scripture. It's not a matter of faith

01:07:00.700 --> 01:07:06.380
or salvation. It's just a theory. When I die, I'll find out. And God will say, either, yeah,

01:07:06.380 --> 01:07:10.940
good guess or no, you made a mess of this. Here's what really happened. So no faith hinges on

01:07:10.940 --> 01:07:15.980
this. And there's no, there's no belief downstream from it. But I think that Adam had to have an

01:07:15.980 --> 01:07:23.740
anage. Maybe he was 15. Maybe he was 20. Maybe he was 100. 40 seems to work. But he has an age. And so

01:07:23.740 --> 01:07:30.700
when we looked to the age of the universe, how old was the universe that God created? It was 13.77

01:07:30.700 --> 01:07:36.460
billion years old. God didn't create a universe from scratch and then set it in motion.

01:07:37.180 --> 01:07:43.020
From the beginning, he said it in motion as though it had been in motion for billions of years.

01:07:43.020 --> 01:07:50.700
And that's what we see today. That's why the starlight that comes to our eyes is older than creation

01:07:51.420 --> 01:07:58.300
because God created those stars in those places in the universe with their light, with their

01:07:58.300 --> 01:08:03.820
photons already, already streaming towards us, according to the natural laws of the universe. And

01:08:03.820 --> 01:08:09.020
such a way that the whole thing makes sense and the whole things works. God wasn't making up something

01:08:09.020 --> 01:08:13.980
from whole cloth. Well, he was, but he wasn't making something that would be fictitious. He was

01:08:13.980 --> 01:08:19.900
making something that was a real whole machine. The machine of the universe is internally consistent.

01:08:20.540 --> 01:08:27.500
And so his core and I appeal to scientific understanding of these things. It's not an attack on

01:08:27.500 --> 01:08:35.100
faith. It is a confirmation of the faith that we find by virtue of literal simple plain readings

01:08:35.100 --> 01:08:41.260
of the scripture that's been revealed to us. And it's almost as if scripture somewhere says that

01:08:41.260 --> 01:08:44.860
it's the glory of God to conceal things and the glory of princes to reveal them.

01:08:46.140 --> 01:08:53.340
Princes, of course, don't necessarily just mean princes. And so we are able to use the things

01:08:53.420 --> 01:08:59.020
God has given us, which would be our intelligence, our wisdom, insight, whatever attribute it

01:08:59.020 --> 01:09:05.420
happens to be. In order to investigate the world, in order to investigate the things that he created

01:09:05.420 --> 01:09:13.580
into which he placed us as head. And so science properly understood, I don't want to get into

01:09:13.580 --> 01:09:18.380
the technicalities there of what science used to mean and what it means now, but it's just knowledge.

01:09:19.260 --> 01:09:24.860
Science is a way of going about things, obtaining knowledge. It's not contrary to scripture.

01:09:24.860 --> 01:09:30.620
It does not conflict with scripture. It's not anti-Christian. Most of the great men in these

01:09:30.620 --> 01:09:36.140
fields who made the major advances that really meant something were Christian. Some of them were

01:09:36.140 --> 01:09:45.020
monks, you have Mendel, but these were Christian men investigating creation. And that's part of why

01:09:45.100 --> 01:09:53.260
science really took off in Europe. Science, yes, in some parts of the ancient world advanced to a

01:09:53.260 --> 01:10:03.100
certain level beyond what Europe was at relatively at the time. But that all stopped many centuries

01:10:03.100 --> 01:10:10.140
ago. And Europe has been far and away in advance of others since then, because Europeans were looking

01:10:10.220 --> 01:10:15.020
at the world from a Christian perspective. We were looking at the world as something that is

01:10:15.660 --> 01:10:23.580
created by an intelligent and loving God in a way that is comprehensible to us. There are of course

01:10:23.580 --> 01:10:28.460
things that are beyond our comprehension. At the time, they didn't know that because they couldn't

01:10:28.460 --> 01:10:33.260
delve down into the inner workings of the proton and start looking at it going, this doesn't actually

01:10:33.260 --> 01:10:39.660
make sense to us. They couldn't do that. But they could certainly look at the grand scale of things,

01:10:39.660 --> 01:10:47.260
the macro scale, and realize this is a world built by an intelligent God. We are placed in here

01:10:47.260 --> 01:10:53.740
in his image. We have intelligence. We can understand the world. And so you can shore up what is

01:10:53.740 --> 01:11:00.700
said in Scripture with science. Yes, today you have scientists and others who attempt to undermine

01:11:00.700 --> 01:11:07.100
Scripture using science. The problem is most of the people who get high up in these fields

01:11:07.180 --> 01:11:10.460
wind up confirming the things that are in Scripture and some of them wind up converting,

01:11:10.460 --> 01:11:19.820
particularly geneticists and men like that. And God says in Scripture, he created the universe to

01:11:19.820 --> 01:11:25.740
testify to his own glory. And that is the reason that Christians delve into these subjects,

01:11:25.740 --> 01:11:32.700
not to try to second-guess God, but to try to find God's glory in his creation because it

01:11:32.700 --> 01:11:37.980
testifies to it. Everyone, Christian pagan alike, when they look up at the stars,

01:11:38.620 --> 01:11:43.820
humans are mesmerized. It's something that has always captivated the human spirit.

01:11:44.620 --> 01:11:51.340
And the Christian, frankly, the Christian, I think, has forgotten why today. Maybe we may look

01:11:51.340 --> 01:11:56.540
up and think, oh, well, that's nice. And honestly, I think the way that most Christians today think

01:11:56.540 --> 01:12:01.820
is, oh, look what God did for me. Look how beautiful God made the universe for me. Look at all the

01:12:01.820 --> 01:12:07.340
things that God's doing for me. That's not what Scripture says. Scripture talks about the heavens

01:12:07.340 --> 01:12:14.140
testifying to God's glory, not to man's glory, not to man's entertainment, but to God. The angels

01:12:14.140 --> 01:12:20.780
in heaven, before they proclaim the greatness of God for his salvation of man, they proclaim his

01:12:20.780 --> 01:12:25.420
greatness as creator. And that's why we keep talking about the first article because a lot of

01:12:25.420 --> 01:12:30.700
this stuff is bound up the first article of the creeds that God created the heavens and the earth

01:12:31.420 --> 01:12:37.660
because this attack that Satan is undertaking today is an attack on the belief

01:12:38.540 --> 01:12:46.780
that creation, that material, the humans, that us as individuals in the world came from God.

01:12:47.740 --> 01:12:51.180
Because as long as you set up in motion, you can say, well, yeah, there's another

01:12:51.180 --> 01:12:55.740
explanation for that. You can delete God. And that's what these men do. And they say, well, no,

01:12:55.740 --> 01:13:00.460
there wasn't actually a 624-hour day creation. That doesn't make sense because, you know, you got

01:13:00.460 --> 01:13:06.860
the lights coming before stars. Clearly, it's kind of made up. No. And the appeal to science is

01:13:06.860 --> 01:13:13.020
not to say, look, you should believe Genesis now because science confirms it, believe Scripture

01:13:13.020 --> 01:13:19.260
literally. And then when the scientists agree, give praise to God for his revelation because we

01:13:19.260 --> 01:13:26.460
knew it first, Moses knew about court cluonplasma before the scientists who discovered it. He didn't

01:13:26.460 --> 01:13:32.380
know the name. He didn't care because it wasn't about introspecting matter. It was about testifying

01:13:32.380 --> 01:13:37.500
to God's glory. And that is what the Christian life needs to be about. When we talk about these

01:13:37.500 --> 01:13:42.860
material things, when we talk about race, and we talk about other things that are in the world,

01:13:42.860 --> 01:13:49.340
it is not to replace God. It is not to denigrate or to doubt God. It is to say, look at the glory

01:13:49.340 --> 01:13:56.780
of what God made. Because the bottom line is this, everything in creation testifies to God's glory,

01:13:56.780 --> 01:14:04.300
including the diversity of mankind. So when we do the episodes on race, that is testifying to the

01:14:04.300 --> 01:14:11.420
beauty of God, to the magnificence of our Creator, that men can live at the North Pole, and they can

01:14:11.420 --> 01:14:17.660
live at the equator. That's insane. There's no other species that can pull that off. We can,

01:14:17.660 --> 01:14:25.340
because within our genes, God gave us the ability to evolve in 6,000 years, not evolving from a monkey,

01:14:25.340 --> 01:14:32.300
but to change in short periods of time in response to the environment. And some of the evolution,

01:14:32.300 --> 01:14:37.660
some of the genetic changes, which is what it really is, is just gene expression. Some of those

01:14:37.660 --> 01:14:45.100
are beneficial, and some of those are degradation, because the fall is also in play. Once creation fell,

01:14:45.100 --> 01:14:51.660
our genome began to corrupt. Things started going wrong. So looking to Scripture

01:14:53.420 --> 01:15:00.220
is about finding where what God says is made clear for His glory, and that should always be the

01:15:00.220 --> 01:15:05.100
motivation. We're not, I'm probably not even going to get into the flood thing, but I'll just

01:15:05.100 --> 01:15:10.220
point out that there are these places like the Six Day Creation and the flood, where guys say,

01:15:10.220 --> 01:15:16.380
oh, maybe it was a localized flood, and then we find the same flood strata all over the world,

01:15:16.380 --> 01:15:21.740
and then they make up other lies, say, oh, maybe there was a global flood, but then all the water

01:15:21.740 --> 01:15:25.820
evaporated, and all the bones were left lying around. It was a big mess, and it was really depressing,

01:15:25.820 --> 01:15:33.660
and poor, poor no, no wonder you got drunk. You can't read Scripture, and just make stuff up, and

01:15:34.940 --> 01:15:39.260
so I want to point out that when I said the thing about Adam maybe being 40 years old,

01:15:40.620 --> 01:15:45.740
that's a pious speculation, but it never goes any further. I would never pin anything on it,

01:15:46.300 --> 01:15:51.340
and that's where a lot of this stuff goes wrong, is that there are other men who will make up

01:15:51.340 --> 01:15:55.340
something that's consistent for Scripture. It doesn't disagree with it, but that they say, look

01:15:55.340 --> 01:15:59.820
what I've discovered, look what I've found. Let me build up a whole religion around this thing.

01:16:00.700 --> 01:16:06.860
They're modern scholars who do that. They find some little thing, they piously speculate, at

01:16:06.860 --> 01:16:11.020
least, to begin with, and then they build a whole pantheon of lies on top of it, and say, look,

01:16:11.020 --> 01:16:15.100
you've got to believe all this stuff, because this is what naturally froze flows from Scripture. No,

01:16:15.740 --> 01:16:19.500
there's no proof of what age Adam was. I have no idea. I could be completely wrong. You

01:16:19.500 --> 01:16:23.740
shouldn't believe, because I said it. It's just an interesting thing to think about, but it's

01:16:23.740 --> 01:16:31.580
interesting in the context of God setting the universe in motion, not from infancy. It's the chicken

01:16:31.580 --> 01:16:38.140
and egg joke is answered in Scripture. God tells us the chicken came first, Adam came first,

01:16:38.140 --> 01:16:45.740
the entire universe was set in motion as it is today, and then it continued as God had created

01:16:45.740 --> 01:16:51.980
it to evolve, to expand, to change, and ultimately to proclaim his glory as it goes through the

01:16:51.980 --> 01:16:58.620
motions of the incredibly unfathomably complex machinery that could only have been conceived of

01:16:58.620 --> 01:17:03.260
in God's mind, and that's why it testifies to his glory. It's not just about entertaining us,

01:17:03.260 --> 01:17:10.860
we're mesmerized because it is a natural revelation of the infinite creator who also died on the cross

01:17:10.860 --> 01:17:19.260
for us as a man and as God, because he loved us in our own place and time, even when he's also

01:17:19.260 --> 01:17:25.500
maintaining this not infinite universe, but it seems like it from our tiny perspective. The same

01:17:25.500 --> 01:17:31.500
God that knows about every quirk inside every atom in the universe, and he knows their count,

01:17:31.500 --> 01:17:36.540
and he knows where they are, and he knows what they're doing right now. He also knows us individually,

01:17:36.540 --> 01:17:42.540
and he knows our troubles, and he knows our sins, and he knows our doubts and our fears, and he knows

01:17:42.540 --> 01:17:48.380
our names, and the elect had their names written in the book of life. God's a very busy God, and he has

01:17:48.380 --> 01:17:53.980
time for all of, because he's more powerful than being possibly comprehend, and these discussions

01:17:53.980 --> 01:18:00.860
should ultimately focus on how wonderful it is that a God so infinite and so magisterial

01:18:01.980 --> 01:18:07.820
made sure the scripture, a book that you can hold in your hand, can be transmitted through time

01:18:07.820 --> 01:18:14.220
and be accessible to us today in a way that anyone can understand and can come to faith and be saved.

01:18:15.980 --> 01:18:20.140
And that actually raises a point that I want to reiterate from an earlier episode,

01:18:20.780 --> 01:18:23.020
because people get this backward all the time.

01:18:26.060 --> 01:18:34.940
We do not trust God because we trust scripture. We trust scripture because we trust God.

01:18:36.860 --> 01:18:41.980
If you look at things the first way, which is incorrect, that's when you're going to come up with

01:18:41.980 --> 01:18:49.660
things like the JDP theory, and the idea of the day-age theory, and all of these various things

01:18:50.300 --> 01:18:57.420
that are ways to get around perceived problems in scripture, because if you are justifying your

01:18:57.420 --> 01:19:04.460
belief in God on the basis of scripture, then what you are going to do is you are going to try and

01:19:04.460 --> 01:19:08.700
explain away anything in scripture that you cannot understand, because you're really basing

01:19:08.780 --> 01:19:14.380
everything on your reason. But if you trust scripture because scripture is the word of God,

01:19:15.260 --> 01:19:22.700
then any of these perceived issues are to problem. Because it's from God, God is perfectly

01:19:22.700 --> 01:19:30.940
trustworthy. God literally is truth. God cannot lie is a sufficient way to say it's not technically

01:19:30.940 --> 01:19:36.300
accurate. We'll go into that another time. And so you trust scripture because it is the word of

01:19:36.300 --> 01:19:43.660
God, and you trust it because God is perfectly trustworthy. And so that order matters, which one

01:19:43.660 --> 01:19:50.220
you trust and why. And there are just a couple of things that I'll make sure I add to the show notes

01:19:50.220 --> 01:19:56.220
for us this time. Saint Basil has writings on the hexameron, the hexameron, just meeting the

01:19:56.220 --> 01:20:02.940
the six day creation, hex six hammer day. And I think we can also link to a couple of things about

01:20:03.340 --> 01:20:08.940
blood. We have some materials on that that aren't behind a paywall, which is another problem in

01:20:08.940 --> 01:20:16.780
and of itself, but for another day. Yeah. And again, where the point is not to make a defense of,

01:20:16.780 --> 01:20:22.140
oh, we'll look how scripture accords with science. It's what you just said scripture accords with God.

01:20:23.180 --> 01:20:29.980
scripture is from God, and it is in God we trust. God who made heaven and earth and gave us his

01:20:29.980 --> 01:20:37.420
word through all time for our edification. If he can speak the universe into existence, he can

01:20:37.420 --> 01:20:44.060
do anything. And these men who cast doubt on, oh, well, maybe God really really didn't mean that.

01:20:44.060 --> 01:20:48.060
Maybe God didn't do that. I don't think God could have done that because the math doesn't add up.

01:20:49.180 --> 01:20:54.540
They don't have God. They don't believe in God. They don't trust in God. They deny him. And if you

01:20:54.620 --> 01:21:01.740
deny the father, you deny the son. If you deny the son, you have no salvation. And so it's not

01:21:01.740 --> 01:21:09.820
just about doubts or speculation about scientific things. It's fundamentally about the root of faith

01:21:09.820 --> 01:21:16.700
itself, and whether it's rooted in God through scripture or whether it's rooted in our own reason

01:21:16.700 --> 01:21:21.660
and our ability to make sense of things. And then hopefully we can bold God on so that that makes

01:21:21.660 --> 01:21:27.580
it okay. And that's not the Christian life and flee from any man who even suggests otherwise.

01:21:29.580 --> 01:21:38.140
God has two books as Christians used to say and should say again, scripture is one creation is the

01:21:38.140 --> 01:21:47.260
other. God is consistent as an author. We will close with a quote from 2nd Timothy 3.

01:21:47.980 --> 01:21:54.140
3. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil

01:21:54.140 --> 01:22:00.220
people and imposter will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you,

01:22:00.220 --> 01:22:05.020
continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,

01:22:05.020 --> 01:22:09.660
and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make

01:22:09.660 --> 01:22:15.900
you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God,

01:22:15.900 --> 01:22:21.580
and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

01:22:21.580 --> 01:22:26.540
that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.