Month: May 2020

Answers to Tough Questions

A Friend posted on Facebook recently about a lead singer of a Christian band who had a crisis of faith and ended up walking away from God altogether. While it doesn’t seem that he ever really had a relationship with the Lord in the first place, he still asked some really good questions that plague a lot of people. I thought I would sit down and write my answers to tough questions to help strengthen all of our faith.

If God is all loving, and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can you not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will?

The simple answer to all of that is yes, it’s a result of his desire to give us free will.

When God created everything, he always said that it was good. All of it. He then took this good creation and handed it over to man and made him the ruler of all creation.

Man then chose to turn his back on God’s way of doing things and decided to do things his way. The world you see around you is the result of that choice and about as far from God’s plan as possible.

What about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn’t caused by humans in our free will?

The simple answer to this is it is still a result of our free will. God himself says three times in Genesis chapter 6 “Because of sin, violence entered into the world.”

God made us rulers of all of creation. Creation follows our example. If we choose to do things our way instead of God’s way, there are consequences to that. It happens in our spiritual life, of course, but also into our natural life, making us sick and even extends to the world around us.

Everything that happens that is violent happens as a result of sin. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes never happened before the fall. We don’t really understand the power we possess to do both good and evil.

If God is loving, why does he send people to hell?

God doesn’t send people to hell. God created a good creation and created us good. When Adam chose to go his own way instead of following the path God laid out for him, he doomed the whole human race to destruction. Then God, who would have been just in wiping us from the planet at that point, ordained instead a plan of redemption to spare some of us from the consequences of that choice.

God doesn’t create people. People create people as an act of their own wills. God ordains marriage according to his plan and out of this children are created. Children not created according to God’s plan run the risk of never being saved.

What then is God to do? Give them, who fulfill their most evil desires, the gift of eternal life? No. Instead he created an incinerator for their destruction so they don’t contaminate eternity with our mistakes. That said, Hell isn’t what we’ve been taught, so take some comfort in that.

Why does God seem so pissed off in most of the old testament, and then all of a sudden he’s a loving father in the New Testament?

Another version of this is, “I like the God of the New Testament better than the God of the Old Testament.” This is a fallacy from the beginning and takes a little explaining.

The root of some of this problem is simply terminology. There is no “Old Testament” or “New Testament.” These were names men created for two sections of the Bible. Instead, there’s a plan and the story of that plan in two parts which should really be called “Part 1” and “Part 2.”

Part 1, like all good stories, introduces the main characters and sets up what’s going to be the conflict for the story. We meet God, and his opponent and man who is the crux of the conflict.

Everything starts out really good, and then man screws up and starts a pattern of destruction that colors the rest of the story. It shows how bad it can get because of man’s screw up.

The good news is that it also introduces the solution to the screw up that’s coming, immediately after the screw up so that there’s hope and a future still, even though things just got really dark.

Part 2

Part 2 tells the story of the promised redemption. It also begins to show us how good things can be now that we can go back to doing things God’s way. How that, with a restored creation, we can walk in healing and freedom and even overcome death.

One of the fallacies people fall into when reading part 1 is to lose track of the fact of the time that it covers. Sometimes centuries pass in just a few chapters. This is one reason why those pesky genealogies are there. The show us the passage of time.

But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

Genesis 15:16

This is a scripture that’s not taught on a lot. God’s revealing to Abraham his plan about how Abraham’s children are going to come back to this place and take over about 500 years from now.

He’s saying this because the Amorites are a wicked people. They are practicing child sacrifice just for starters. And God shows how merciful he is because he’s giving them nearly 500 years to change their ways. He knows they wont’ but he’s giving them every chance.

Keep in mind that Americans have only had electricity in there homes around 100 years and look how much has changed. God is giving the Amorites 5 times that long to change their ways. Is this a God that’s pissed off or a merciful God?

Also, in the end, it’s not even really God that has them wiped out. Look what God says to the Israelites when they’re about to take possession of Canaan.

Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

Leviticus 18:24-28

So their destruction was a result of the natural consequences of their sin. God simply used the Israelites to carry it out.

God is deeply merciful. We see it throughout Part 1, but we specifically see it fulfilled in Part 2.

Why does he say not to kill, but then instruct Israel to turn around and kill men women and children to take the promised land?

God does not say “Do not kill.” This is one of the most misquoted of the ten commandments. God says,

You shall not murder.

Exodus 20:13

God sets up killing as punishment for sins, which is not murder. Murder is killing in anger or for selfish gain.

Some might say, “What’s more selfish than taking land.” As we saw above, the Canaanites were slaughtered for their many, many sins after a long period of not changing.

Why does God let Job suffer horrible things just to win a bet with Satan? What does he tell Abraham to kill his son and then basically say ‘just kidding! That was a test.’ If God can do anything, can’t you forgive without someone dying? I mean, my parents taught me to forgive people – nobody dies in that scenario.”

These all come down to one simple concept. We are made to serve at the pleasure of God. We are God’s to do with as he sees fit, not the other way around. It is only our arrogance that would cause us to say, “God shouldn’t do things that way.”

Maybe you think, “That’s not fair!” We as sinners, are doomed to destruction. Fair is for us to go straight to burning Hell forever. Anything that we get that is not that is by God’s grace.

God created this system and this plan to show us, worthless lumps of clay that we are, love. He created a system that Jesus would suffer and die to redeem us all. Why? Sorry, God’s doesn’t answer to us. We exist for his pleasure and he loves us. That’s kind of the end of the argument.

Answers to Tough Questions

I hope these answers to tough questions have been helpful to you. Have a look around at our other teachings.

Answers to Tough Questions

I Will Show you the Bride

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed–on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day–and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Revelation 21: 10-27

Many of our concepts about what heaven is like come from this scripture. If you look in your concordance for streets of gold or pearl gates, this is the only scripture in the Bible that talks about these things. This is where the hymns come from that talk about how great heaven is. All from this scripture in Revelation.

There’s only one little problem with this concept. This passage has absolutely nothing to do with Heaven. Let me say this another way: There are no streets of gold and pearly gates in Heaven.

How do I know this? The Bible tells me so. If you want to see what heaven looks like, read Revelation 4 onward. It talks about the throne and about what surrounds the throne–increasing circles of a sea of people singing praises to God. This is what Heaven is like.

I Will Show you the Bride

So how do I know that this scripture in Revelation 21 has nothing to do with Heaven? Because I read verse 9 that introduces this section.

Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

Revelation 21:9

Everything in this scripture is a prophetic vision of the Bride of Christ. It’s all about who we can become if we allow Christ’s nature to be worked in us.

You become the bride by finding and entering into wisdom, which is what pearls always symbolize in scripture.

Do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

Matthew 7:6b

As you become the Bride, all of your ways will be purest gold, which, in scripture, is symbolic of the nature of God.

I don’t have revelation on all of this scripture, but it doesn’t take a scholar to read verse 9 and know what this is about.

So how is it possible that all of the denominations have written books about what Heaven is like based on this scripture and they’re wrong? I can’t answer that. I simply read the verse before it that explains it. It’s been right there all along.

Mansions

What about my mansion? In all of scripture, there’s only one reference to mansions, and it’s this one.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

John 14:2, KJV

This is a mistranslation of the Greek word mone, which actually means rooms. What’s more, this mistranslation is probably deliberate, because even in the early 1600s, they knew that this word should be translated rooms.

Remember that, unlike modern versions of the Bible that are translated for profit, the KJV was translated as a political maneuver. The only answer I can come up with is to deceive people into thinking they had mansions in heaven so they’d put up with more here. Here is this same passage from the ESV.

In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

John 14:2, ESV

There is no translation of the Bible that I’m aware of that translates this word as anything but rooms. There’s simply no one that thinks that’s what that means. So, sorry, no mansions either.

Visions of Heaven

“But what about Kenneth Hagin’s vision of heaven?” You might ask. He saw his mansion of gold with roses in the walls.

The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.

1 Corinthians 14:32

This scripture talks about a truth about prophecy and visions and dreams. The spirit realm is alien to us who have not yet gotten our glorified bodies. A person sees into the spirit realm, but everything has to be processed through that person’s brain. The purer our mind is, the purer the things that we are going to see, but as long as we live in this body this is always the case.

This is why God and angels ask the prophets in the scriptures “What do you see?” and the prophet explains what he’s seeing before the interpretation is given. You can see this here Revelation, Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel and others. The question should be read as, “How do you perceive what I’m showing you?”

The reason that Kenneth Hagin saw mansions of gold is because his mind was programmed that he would see mansions of gold there. When God showed him heaven, that’s how his brain interpreted what he was seeing.

This is why prophetic visions cannot be the final authority on doctrine. This is why God gave us the scriptures to be the final authority. Checking the scriptures, there are no mansions referred to in Heaven, so Hagin’s vision must have meant something else.

What’s Cool about Heaven?

So the cool thing about Heaven is not the furniture. The cool thing about Heaven is that we get to spend eternity with our creator. We get to praise and worship Him forever. That’s what we look forward to, our reunion with Him and never leaving Him again.

In the meantime, we get to learn how to be part of the Bride so that we “will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”

I Will Show you the Bride

Here are the ground rules for doctrine. These are the rules we follow for establishing doctrine and for validating other doctrines.

Ground Rules for Doctrine

1. The Bible is inerrant
2. All doctrine must be based exclusively on scripture
3. Scripture must be first interpreted literally (see the prophetic imagery exception)
4. Any major doctrine requires two to three scriptures
5. How God behaves is the ultimate interpretation of scripture

These ground rules are critical for good doctrine. Anyone unwilling to accept these rules will find the doctrines based on them useless.

The Bible is Inerrant

If we are to trust God, we have to trust the scriptures that he has given us. Since God is omnipotent, it is trivial for him to have protected the scriptures and insure they have arrived down through time the way he intended them.

Once you start picking and choosing, then it is impossible to believe any of the scriptures. As such, the Bible must be accepted inerrant as a whole.

All Doctrine Must be Based Exclusively on Scripture

In the same way that the acceptance of the New Testament was contingent on it being based on the Old Testament, so must all doctrine be based entirely on the scriptures. There cannot be things added that cannot be based on scripture.

An example is church membership. There is no scriptural basis for church membership, yet many bodies practice this concept.

This is a problem because church membership contains rules for inclusion, which means they contain rules for exclusion and some people will simply not meet them. Jesus never excluded anyone during his entire public ministry. Some people left as a result of his teachings, but never because Jesus said, “You don’t belong.”

Church membership is an example of the damaging kinds of things that can happen when you do not base all of your doctrine on scripture.

Scripture Must be First Interpreted Literally

Scriptures must first of all be read in context and literally. Scripture is created to become both word and spirit and so there are many interpretations for any part of the Bible. Jesus and the Apostles frequently used scriptures out of context by divine revelation. Nevertheless, the first interpretation must be literal.

Prophetic Imagery Exception

There is some scripture that simply cannot be interpreted literally because it is prophetic imagery designed to speak to the spirit instead of to the mind. As such, it is simply not possible to interpret these scriptures literally.

The prophetic imagery exception applies only to those scriptures that cannot be interpreted literally. Before applying this exception, though, you must still attempt a literal interpretation first.

Any Major Doctrine Requires Two to Three Scriptures

While there are some smaller doctrines that may be acceptable to be based on a single scripture, all major doctrines must follow the scriptural rule “In the mouths of two or three witnesses is a thing established.”

Things like who is Jesus, how are we saved, what is heaven like, what is man’s role in God’s plan are questions the entire Bible was written to answer. Any of them should easily be answered with two to three scriptures or should not be accepted.

For example, if the battle of Armageddon was an event that happened on a day in the future, it would be a major doctrine of the Bible. There is, however, only Revelation 19:11-21 that discusses it.

At this point, you realize that this is prophetic imagery. Once you understand that, you can see that the battle of Armageddon began at the fall of man and that the entire Bible is about this. This is the importance of the two to three witnesses rule.

How God Behaves is the Ultimate Interpretation of Scripture

Our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He will never behave differently than what he says in the scriptures. As such, the most reliable and accurate interpretation of scripture is the way God and Jesus behave.

Any interpretation that varies from God’s behavior is wrong. For example, the doctrine “God is a Holy God and cannot stand sin in his presence” is proved incorrect because of the way God behaves. If this were true, why would God pay the most lavish price ever paid for anything simply to allow sinful people into his presence?

Summary

These are our ground rules for doctrine. Please hold us to them and make sure that the doctrines we teach are reliable and accurate. Hold others to them as well and see how their doctrines stack up.

Speaking of the Great White Throne Judgment and Calvinism recently made me want to mention something else. Let’s have another look at the scripture about the Great White Throne Judgement.

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:11-15

Two Sets of Books

The “books” referenced in verse 13 are commonly seen as the individual histories of each of the people standing before God for judgement. My favorite question is, if salvation is a result of something we did, why are there two sets of books?

Why does a shopkeeper keep two sets of books? One that he shows to the government for taxes, and the other for his personal use that tells the real story.

So, if salvation is something that happens inside the realm of time, then why is the individual history not enough? Why consult with the Lamb’s Book of Life, which this scripture shows, is the one that makes the decision about whether a person spends eternity in heaven or hell?

Since it’s the Lamb’s Book of Life that counts, let’s find out how you get your name written in this book.

And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

Revelation 17:8b

From the Foundation of the World

Revelation 17:8 says that our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from the foundation of the world. How, then, could it be possible that it results from a decision we make within time?

Great White Throne Judgment and Calvinism

The Second Death

One of the hardest things people have with Calvinism is that it means there are some people that go to Hell and suffer forever and that there is simply no hope for them. Let me tell you right now that this is simply not true.

Despite your church experience, the Bible doesn’t tell us a lot about Hell. One of the clearest places is in Revelation.

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20: 11-15

The Second Death

Firstly, if you notice, going to Hell is referred to as “the second death.” The first death is the ending of the body. Doesn’t it make sense that the second death is the ending of the soul? So this, to me, indicates that this is a termination and not an ongoing torture.

History of the Bible

Before I take on the second part of this, I need to explain a little history of the Bible.

When it was decided that the King James Version would be translated from the original texts, Ancient Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) and Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament) had gone through a period where no one, even scholars, spoke them. For this reason, don’t ever let anyone talk down to you for mispronouncing a Greek or Hebrew word from the Bible. The fact is, no one knows how to pronounce these words. There are some learned opinions on this that people argue with each other.

In addition, there were some Greek words that they just didn’t know when they translated the King James Version. They guessed at these words as best they could.

Around the time of the US Civil War, a document dump called “The Papyri” was discovered outside of Alexandria, Egypt. These were business letters, love letters, and other forms of day-to-day communications. Up until then, the only documents in Greek that had survived were highly educated essays.

So the Greek used in the writings of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle were High Greek–think about the language used in doctoral dissertations and other college level reading. They discovered that the dialect of Koine Greek, or street Greek was what the Bible was written in.

Eternal vs. Everlasting

Two of these words were the Greek words aidios and aionios. Aidios should be translated everlasting, meaning time without end, Aionios should be translated “eternal,” meaning outside of time. In fact, all of the translations I’ve seen since then have translated these words in this way.

During the translation of the KJV, they used these words interchangeably, which is why these words in English are used interchangeably in English. Doctrines were created based on this translation are, therefore, flawed.

If you carefully study a modern translation of the Bible, you will see that the word everlasting is always used to refer to the fire itself, to the suffering of the devil and his angels. The word eternal is always used to describe the suffering of human sinners.

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. … And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Matthew 25:41,46

The conclusion that I draw from this is that the devil will suffer punishment forever in a hell that burns forever. Sinners will be sent to this place in a place outside of time and will be destroyed as a kind of “soul incinerator.”

This is supported by all major modern translations of the Bible, but no one has ever gone back and revisited their doctrines when we found this stuff out.