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It all right. Sometimes I get questions I do not know the answers to. You know this if you've watched me for any length of time and, uh, one of my commitments to you guys and this this shouldn't be something that's a big deal. Unfortunately for some people, it is a big deal because they haven't experienced it much. Um, when that happens, I like to use a little known phrase I don't know. And so, on occasion, I take one of these questions I don't know the answers to and I come back to it later and I say, hey, maybe I'll tackle that in a future video. That's what I'm doing today. This question comes in from the previous Q and A when Amir Smith said and here's question number one. Amir Smith said, Hi, Pastor Mike. Um, in Ecclesiastes 727 through 29, my fiance, who is new to Bible reading and study wondered why this verse sounded misogynistic. Do you have any ideas? And at the time, I wasn't sure. Um, I read the verse and I thought, yeah, I know this verse. I know I've thought about it before. Nothing's coming immediately to mind. Do you guys have a memory like mine where, um, it's almost like you keep data in files and there it is, a whole bunch of information, but it's in a file and you can't find that file in your head. Once you find it, you go, oh, yeah. Here's all the data. Anyway, it felt a little bit like that, although I needed to study this in more detail, so I did. And this is the verse Ecclesiastes, chapter 729.

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See this alone I have found that God made man upright. But the verse 28 why did I go to 29? Starting at 27. Here we go. Welcome to the live stream. Behold. This is what I found, says the preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things which my soul has sought repeatedly. But I've not found one man among a thousand. I've found but a woman among all these I have not found.

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That's interesting. Then he says, See this? Alone I found that God made man upright but they have sought out many schemes. Is this passage saying that men are better than women? That would be one of the possible interpretations. We'll talk about two others as well and we'll go over the pros and cons of the different views. Um, I need to acknowledge to you guys like this is the ESV. That tends to be my default translation, at least for this season of my life right now. Um, not because it's head and shoulders above all other translations, but because, uh, I've picked it for a few other minor reasons here's. Say the same passage in the NIV. Now, this is interesting. The NIV says in verse 28, I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman. Now, in the Hebrew, the word upright is not there. Okay? The term upright is not there. They're trying to supply into the text what they believe is implied by the passage, he found one man and a thousand didn't find a woman among all these or among a thousand. Uh, probably M among a thousand women.

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So how is it here that it says upright? Because if you take away the phrase upright, then the term upright, then you're like, what is he talking about? What exactly is being communicated here? It becomes kind of confusing. He seems to be trying to discover something about a kind of man, a certain type of person, and he can't find that quality amongst women.

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Okay, now that's the sexist interpretation. Um, there are other interpretations. There's three on offer that I'll give. Um, the sexist one ultimately saying, hey, men are better than women. This proves that either depending on who you are, either it proves the Bible is sexist, or it may, to you, prove that men are, in fact, better than women, that they're more moral than women. Um, in our modern culture, I think that if anybody was to pull random audiences in Western, especially like American culture, they would find people believe women are more Godly than men, that it goes the other way around, um, but they wouldn't feel that that's sexist at all, ironically, but that's the strange world we live in. Um, second interpretive option is to say that it means, uh, this is the experience of the author. There's something about this that is just maybe showing the folly of his own life choices. Maybe it's something about his search and the way he searched. Maybe it's just about his own personal relationships with men and women. He finds one good man in a thousand, but no good women amongst that many. A third option is that it is messianic, and that the one upright man among a thousand. I'll put it back on your screen. Here is Jesus. The one good man among a thousand is Jesus. Here's the ESV again. Um, whereas among women, you don't find that because only Jesus is the good one amongst all of humanity. So there's the three options. Let's talk about pros and cons. Um, the sexist view. If we take that one that says men are better than women, um, you got to admit that it's a very clumsy and weird way to say men are better than women, because he didn't say among men you may find goodness, but not among women. No, he said one good man among a thousand or one upright man. If you take that interpretation, which seems there's something like that probably being meant here. Uh, I don't know what else it might be.

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This is weird. Okay? It's one man in a thousand. If you're saying men are better than women, what you're saying here is men are what is it?

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Better than women.

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It's about as minimally sexist as you can get. If that's what it means. Although I don't think that's what it means. I don't think that's the intention here. I think what happens is we're reading this with Western eyes, right? We come to the text with this battle of the sexes, with gender issues loaded into our minds. And that's actually not the emphasis or the focus of the passage. It's not a commentary on men and women in general.

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I think that this is a misunderstanding. Um, so the idea that women are worse than men is not a biblical teaching. There's nowhere else. If you go to other parts of Scripture and you say, hey, this is kind of important if that's something the Bible wants us to believe in. Um, Genesis one, both men and women are made in God's image. In Genesis two, both of them fell, and both of them are promised redemption. Both okay, so they both sin, they both fall, they both get death. They're both promised redemption. There's examples that go a counter to the idea that men are better than women as a general rule. For instance, in the Book of Judges, we have a list of Judges. Almost all men, except for one, Deborah, who is a woman. She's a judge over Israel for a period of time now in this very high position in Israel, she is one of the only judges that's not a horrible person at some know. So Gideon starts good, ends bad. Jephthah starts good, ends bad. Samson starts bad, ends bad.

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They just continually the m judges you know the most about you end up finding they have major flaws and major problems. We don't see this in Deborah. So if we were looking at Judges, which is actually properly a commentary on the evil of humanity, on the depravity of human nature, that we are evil, we are sinful in our intended and even to people like Israel. Here's, back up. Let's look at Judges for just a second. It's amazing.

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You read Judges and you get depressed, why can't I find a good guy? And the longer the story goes, the less I feel like I can even root for anybody. And that's kind of the point, right? That's not a bug. That's a feature. So Judges comes at this crucial time in Israel's history when God has pulled them out of Egypt. He's given them their own Promised land. He's given them laws and instructions so that they should live uprightly, they should have a beautiful, beautiful time. But because they rebel against him, because they sin, because they keep seeking after false gods or evil schemes I'll use that phrase for the tie into ecclesiastes because they keep seeking evil schemes, as you see in verse 29. Um, it shows that man is depraved, man is messed up, man is in need of a savior. And the one deliverer that will answer the need the Book of Judges cries out for is Jesus. So I think that's a beautiful thing. Book of Judges shows this. Now, in this book that's meant to show us how messed up humans are, there's, oddly enough, JL and Deborah in this one story who stand up as women, who have faith and courage and who are doing the right thing. So in a book that's meant to be commentary on how messed up humans are, we don't have, hey, just making sure women are the worst of the bunch. Like, we don't see that. I don't think women are the best of the bunch either. I think we're just different.

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I guess we can get into more detail there. But the main point is, um, because the rest of Scripture doesn't teach this idea that men and women have these moral goodness differences where women are lower on the ladder, it just doesn't make sense to read that into the background of a difficult or ambiguous section of ecclesiastes. Now, another example would be the woman, uh, who anointed Jesus for his burial. She's the only one who knows what's going on or who is at least in tune with what God is doing enough that she goes and she anoints him for burial, and then the rest get rebuked. Or the women who run to tell of the resurrection of Christ and they aren't believed. These don't fit a motif in Scripture that women are worse than men. There's other indications in ecclesiastes that women are not just like this. Men can be good, but women can't. That's not the case. So ecclesiastes nine nine.

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This pushes against the sexist view. It, uh, says, enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he's given you under the sun, because that's your portion in life and your toil. And in your toil at which you toil under the sun.

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Ecclesiastes, you have to understand, is a very dark book, very much like, um, what's the Point of Life? Kind of book, and from a frustrated, even sarcastic perspective. But he finds some valuable things in there that, hey, regardless, even if nothing matters, even if there was just nothing coming in the future, even, uh, in that hypothetical, which is not the case, because the end of Ecclesiastes, the last verse, you got to read that to understand the context of the whole book. If that was the case, though, you could still enjoy life with the wife whom you love. That wouldn't fit a commentary that all women are worse than men.

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There's other scriptures, too, that Solomon if you think Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, right, which it seems to be attributed to him. Um, I'm in that camp, and Proverbs talks about wisdom as if it was a woman and folly as if it was a woman as well. So we're not saying women are better here, but if women were inherently worse, this just doesn't fit well to talk about wisdom as a woman. Um, also Proverbs tells us to listen to the law of your mother.

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All these things in scripture push against the idea that this is the sexist interpretation. So what are the other options on offer? That would be that this is not a sexist interpretation, but that this is the author's personal experience. And let me explain why this is important and how it changes how you interpret the passage. Ecclesiastes, uh, is very much an in my experience book. As you read Ecclesiastes, you're getting the author's experience, his personal experience in life. He's like, I tried this. I decided to build big buildings and see if that brought me pleasure in life and gave me purpose, and it didn't quite work. I decided to have, uh, success in business, or to seek out jokes and merriment and pleasure and partying kind of life. And, uh, he just experiments with all these different things, some of them seemingly good and some of them bad, and he tries to take things and make them the ultimate thing of life, and finds that nothing is enough. You need more than that for life. You ultimately need God.

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At any rate. What was the experience of the author knowing this, that he includes in Ecclesiastes, his own follies, his own mistakes, even stuff he tried that backfired on him? That's significant in the book.

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Is it possible that a thousand women and not finding a good one connects to something in the life of Solomon? And I think the answer is yes. First Kings eleven, let's read this section for seven verses here, and I'm doing this while you guys are loading your questions in the live chat. You guys know how it goes if you're new here, my name is Mike Winger. I try to answer people's hard questions about the Bible. That's like, what I've devoted my life to at this point, and, um, I hope that it blesses you and benefits to you, and I ask for nothing in return. Um, with the Q A's that we do, you show up for the first moment of the Q A, and you just start pushing your question out into the live chat. We just have to have a funnel to where the questions can come in. You put a queue at the beginning of your comment. Try to include specific verse references if you have them, and make sure your comment's clear, because sometimes I read it and I go, oh, I'm not sure what that question exactly was. Anyway, that's how we do it. Thanks for loading your questions in. I take 20 every time we do this, which at, uh, this season in life is every other week.

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All right, maybe one day we'll go to every week again, but not for probably quite a while because there's so much on my plate. All right, first Kings eleven one. What personal experience did Solomon have that could give background and wisdom to understanding what he means when he couldn't find a good woman among a thousand here we go. First kings, eleven one. Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of, uh, Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite, women from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you. Side note, here's a really interesting side note that's super relevant to our culture. The fact that Solomon loved people, women did not make it okay for him to marry them. That is, love is love is not a biblical justification for marriage can be anything I want with anyone I want. Love itself is important, but it's not fully justifying any relationship you want to get into. That's super important. And if people would remember that, it would stop a lot of adultery. That goes on, um, as well. But I love them, so there's other things to consider here. Love is not the only thing. At any rate, he marries a bunch of these foreign women, a whole bunch of them. God, um, told them, don't enter into marriage, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. What is this about? This is about, um, a religious issue.

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We can apply this to our lives today. As a Christian, if you marry a non believer, it's going to be a problem in your walk with Christ, and especially your children's walk with Christ. That's going to be a big problem.

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Still, if you get married, try to make that marriage the best you can, but if you're looking into future marriages, don't look that way. Don't do that. One corinthians says, don't be unequally yoked together with a non believer. I think that applies to marriage. Applies to marriage. Whether or not you think it's exactly about marriage, whatever you think it's about, guess what? That would apply to marriage as well? Trying to skip a big debate there. Um, but Solomon had clung to these in love because Solomon thought, But I love them. I love them, so it's okay, right? Lord, he had how many? 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. How many is that? A thousand.

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Solomon had a thousand women in his group of women amongst wives and concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God. As was the daughter, as was the heart of David, his father. Excuse me. For Solomon went after Ashtarath, the Goddess of the Sedonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. These are the names of the people whom wives he married. Remember, he's a king. So they make these political marriages, these arranged marriages. The god said, don't do this. This isn't how you should do it. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the lord and did not wholly follow the Lord as David, his father, had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. Why would Ecclesiastes tell us, I have not found one good woman among a thousand? Well, he married or had concubines marriage or concubinage with a thousand women, and not one of them ended up being that one wife whom you love and cling to and have the intended relationship that God has planned for a husband and wife. He found a rare man among a thousand. Whoever that was. We don't know. Right. Who he would say that was kind of like an upright man, but one among a thousand. In other words, a thousand women didn't give him a single good wife. Can I give a modern application? Sleeping around with a bunch of people trying to have a bunch of relationships with a bunch of people is not going to give you the one good spouse that you need. But being slow and patient and faithful and I have something in my eyeball, forgive me, is the way to do it. Um, he wanted many, many women, so he couldn't find a good one.

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That, uh, seems to be the application. And seriously, there's, like, something in my eyeball. It's really terrible. It's good timing. Oh, man, livestream is the worst. Okay.

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A thousand women. Not a single good one. One, um, wife could have done it. And that's what Solomon actually recommends to give more evidence of this proverbs. The proverbs 31. Woman Right.

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This writing about this good woman that's out there. So Ecclesiastes isn't really telling us there's no good women, but there weren't for him in his experience.

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Proverbs 518. Let me read this to you. Actually, I'll take you to it because why not? Proverbs 518. Let your fountain be blessed. Your fountain is the idea here. And rejoice in the wife of your youth, the wife singular of your youth. Uh, a loving deer, a lovely, dear and graceful dough. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. The Bible is not ashamed of the intimacy of a husband and wife. It tries to be appropriate, not getting into too many details because it's meant to be sacred and not thrown out there in public, like, um, something inappropriate. Um, but, yeah. Why should you be intoxicated my son with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? This is exactly what, uh, forbidden women, ultimately, what Solomon did.

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So the lesson is, choose one and maybe you get a good wife. Choose many and you get none. Uh, choose one, maybe you get a good husband. Choose many, and you end up with none. And the same people who fool around a whole bunch at a younger age.

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It's much harder for them to find one good spouse when they get older, and they think they're getting experience that will help them along the way. But they're learning patterns of behavior that they will carry unhealthily into their future marriage. I'm summarizing many years of youth ministry right here, watching people's lives where you're like, oh, I'm worried about that person, the way they're living recklessly and they just won't take God's word for it. So, um, I think that's a much better interpretation of the Ecclesiastes passage is in light of these thousand women. Um, also the messianic interpretation, I'll throw this out there for you to think about. What would the messianic interpretation be? It's not about the one woman among a thousand, but about the fact that among all these men and women, there was only one good person, period. And that person could potentially represent Jesus. Jesus is the one good man among all people.

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Now, theologically, that fits. He's the one good person among all human beings. But there's some other support for this that might lend credence. Okay, just take this as conjecture, all right? I don't want to push this too hard on you, but I want you to think about it. So, Ecclesiastes seven, verse 15.

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It says right here. Now, this is the same chapter of Ecclesiastes. Just moved up a few verses. In my vain life, I've seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing. Now, I would say, um, this is obviously him talking about something he actually saw in his life, real people. He saw who he thought, there's a good guy, and in his goodness he perished. And then the wicked man who ends up maybe even his wickedness is helping him live longer, like he got away with it.

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Maybe it's a righteous man who actually died for being righteous. Now, that would be maybe something he saw in his real life, but it would fit really well as you apply it typologically to Jesus Christ who, uh, goes onto the cross. The righteous man who dies in his righteousness and who gets set free is Barabbas. A wicked man who's prolonged his life even though he's in his wickedness. And there's a picture, possibly a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. Then he says, like, be not overly righteous. Do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? This is, again, assurance that the person in verse 15 is a righteous person who dies because of their righteousness. And this, again, you have to read Ecclesiastes as sarcastic sometimes even that this is him just wrestling with the vanities of life. Um, another verse here is verse 20, which going down just a little bit, which then says, surely there's not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

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But then he says he found one upright man here. When you go down further, I found one man among a thousand who assumingly is upright in some sense. Now, maybe he means upright in the sense of, like, hey, I mean, he's like a good guy. Not that he's sinless, okay? But it's interesting that there's just these elements of a righteous person perishing in their righteousness, nobody being righteous. One upright man. It's an interesting, um, enigma that could be solved if you take Jesus and see him as typologically represented in this passage. So I'm just going to throw that out there as a possibility. Okay?

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I would not leave it alone. I would combine that with what I said in option number two of these women being about his personal experience of not finding a good woman among a thousand because, uh, of his bad methods of finding women through rebelling against God.

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So that's question number one. I hope that's a better answer. That's definitely a better answer than I would have given off the top of my head, in which case, I, uh, sometimes just have to say, I don't know. We'll go to your guys'questions right now. Question number two, coming from Rashida from Bangladesh. Um, before Rashida, before I read your question, I want to let you guys know next week's Q A is a skeptics Q-A-I want to hear questions from non believers or from the perspective of non believers. Right. Maybe they're just questions a non believer has asked that you've heard that you want to hear an answer to an objection to Christianity. Again, I may not have all the answers for it, but let's talk about those issues, and let's create another video resource that hopefully someone could send to their skeptic friend who might be a bit open to that sort of thing. Get, um, your questions, get questions from your friends. Bring them to next I say next week. It's actually two weeks from now. December 15. Yeah, I think that's right. At 01:00 P.m..

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All right, question two. Rashida from Bangladesh says, welcome back. Uh, Pastor Mike. I'm a new Christian from Islam. Well, welcome to Christianity. Welcome to Christ. Welcome to the body of Christ and the family of God. My son and daughter are like Richard Dawkins, atheist. What do you think would be the best way to give them the gospel? Short but clear. Please pray for their salvation. I'm desperate. Thank you. Um, so it's challenging because, uh, I don't know them personally, so I can only speak about Richard Dawkins. Right. Like, I can almost ask the question, how would I share the gospel with Richard Dawkins? And that's a hard question. Uh, Richard Dawkins, from what I've seen of I haven't seen him recently, but in the past, uh, he was extremely hard. I would anticipate that with Richard Dawkins, if you would come up and share the gospel in any way, shape or form, there's a good chance that he would have responded by attacking you personally, because that's what he did in public when people tried to share with him or talk to him.

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Uh, he would go on attack mode. He would use sarcasm and biting words to try to make them look stupid. Um, them. So one of the things I would do if I had the chance to witness to Richard Dawkins was first thing I would do is not do it in public. I wouldn't want to do it around anybody where they felt like they had to perform, where they felt like they had to put up a wall, where they felt like they were going to lose face. I would want to break down that barrier first by just getting alone with the person, like, hey, getting lunch, getting a cup of coffee, not in front of other family members, not in front of people that they wouldn't want to look bad in front or something like that. Anybody that gives them the need to perform, try to remove that aspect. That'd be one thing I would do. Um, uh, in addition to that, I think I'd want to try to really focus on what matters, because someone like that, who's an atheist that feels like they have an arsenal of arguments against Christianity, maybe they're not good, right? But they feel like they've got this arsenal. It's very easy for that conversation to get away from you real quick, because I've been down this road, right? And you have too, probably, where you talk to somebody and you wanted to talk about one thing and it just shifted. And before you knew it, the conversation got away. You leapfrogged from one issue to another to another. They said, what about this objection? And you started to answer that objection. Then they brought up another objection. You started to answer that one. They brought up another one, and you never really got to answer any of them. Or if you did answer it, you felt like it just went like water off a duck's back, like they didn't hear you.

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So I would think ahead of time of one issue to focus on, and then focus on that. And when they bring up objections, you just say, that's a good question, but I was hoping we could finish talking about this one issue first. And you don't chase every objection, because in the end, it will be this long conversation where you remember the fight of it and you remember disagreeing a bunch of times, but you guys both have a hard time remembering what was actually said, and all they're left with is the feeling of the battle, right? And it just feels like that's not going to help that much. So I would think of one issue. Now, you want to talk about the gospel. If you want to give them evidence for Christ apologetics, that's a different question. But you said, how do I share the gospel with them? And the. Gospel taps into our awareness of our sin and the fact that we will one day stand before God in judgment. That's one of the major things the gospel talks about. And so that's where I would want to talk about. And, um, asking people questions about their own standards of goodness can be a way of doing this, where you just bring up the issues of sin, hey, what do you consider goodness?

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What do you consider a good person, a good life, proper way of living and that sort of thing? And do you do that? Um, yeah, I don't know what else I'll give you beyond that, because I just don't know the people you're talking to. I'd say get alone, stay focused, know what you want to talk about, and have some questions prepared where you sort of know how they may respond to those questions. And that gets you started on the right foot. You do it graciously, you do it lovingly. You're not trying to beat them down, you're trying to invite them in. That's the nature of the gospel. All right, question number three. This is, ah, Ashley Graham who says, what is the biblical nature of sacrifice? An atheist asked me how Christ's death and resurrection is truly a sacrifice. If God is infinite, how do I best explain Jesus'sacrifice blessings? Um, Ashley, that's an interesting question. What's the biblical nature of sacrifice?

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Um, I mean, that's a really good question that I think what I'd love to do is just go and read all the biblical passages that talk about sacrifice. Um, but it seems to me that sacrifice has something to do with a cost.

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There's something I'm losing or paying maybe I should put this paying something I'm paying when I offer a sacrifice. So that when someone sacrifices an animal, they have it's their animal, they're sacrificing it, so it's their loss of that animal. If somebody sacrifices their time, they've lost or they've paid that time for whatever purpose. And if you think about it like that, um, it's hard to see how anybody would deny that Jesus's act was not a sacrifice. And I'll talk about the infinite claim in a second this idea that Jesus God's infinite so he can't sacrifice.

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People say the word infinite and then they just say weird things sometimes. I don't think that they're thinking about the word, about the concept of infinity or of God's nature at all. I think they're just using the word infinite and then clumsily. I doubt if you said, what do you mean by that? That'd be a great follow up question.

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Is Jesus's death and resurrection sacrifice because God's infinite? You say, well, what do you mean by that? Why would that mean it's not a sacrifice? And then make them explain it because then you have something to talk about. Otherwise it's just so vague. Um, but Christ, so what does he do? Let's talk about what he does. If you're an atheist. You're a skeptic. Then just say, consider the story that Christians are telling you, the beliefs that we have, because this criticism is an internal critique, right? We're saying, if Christianity is this way, if Christ really came and really died and rose, then that's not really much of a sacrifice. Okay, let's talk about what Jesus did. So Christ came. He's God Almighty for all eternity, and he comes and he comes in human form. He's born.

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And he doesn't just operate a human body the way you operate a robot. He takes on human nature.

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There's a difference there, right? Because if I step into a car, I don't become I'm operating the car. Jesus didn't drive a human body the way you drive a car. I'm not a car. At no point do I become a car. The vehicle's not me. And so the identity doesn't change. Jesus takes on actual human nature. That is huge. Is there a cost there? Well, he's God Almighty who takes on human nature and willingly adopts the limitations of human nature, including limitations, uh, that involve mental limitations. Now, he could surpass those with divine power, but he chooses not to, it seems, most of the time.

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So he's actually genuinely limited in many ways. And strength, uh, weakness, dependency.

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You remember being a child. You remember the weakness of being a child. Imagine the sense of that after being Almighty.

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Imagine becoming a child again, right? Now, let me put it this way. You're an adult. You have the power, wisdom, strength of an adult. Now go back to being three. Go back to being six.

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Not probably fun. And so if you didn't start that way, if you didn't start as an infant, that would have been something of a sacrifice already. But not only that, just I can't imagine the gulf of difference between humans and God, and to see Jesus taking on our nature. But the purpose of Him taking on our nature is to take on our sin, to take on our rebellion. And throughout his life, he suffers. He goes through hardship. He's rejected. He experiences all kinds of pains, physical pains as well, that he would not have ever experienced before. Jesus goes through a lot of different and difficult things. He lives a perfect life. He teaches. He rescues people who hate Him, who despise Him, who spit on Him. Um, he goes to the cross, he suffers and dies. I mean, we know the kind of anguish he was in, because in the Christian story, which I believe is 100% true, jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, in grief and despair over the hardship that's about to happen on the cross. If you knew you were about to die a torturous death of shame, that actually had a spiritual element of suffering to it as well, you would be in grief and despair as well. Jesus says he sweat great drops of blood. It was so difficult, what he was going through.

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This is interesting because so many of the other, um, uh, religious martyrs stories and stuff like that, even, uh, Christian later martyr stories, which sometimes are embellished, they speak of somebody who's going knowingly to their death, but they just do so with great joy and happiness. And Jesus, he knows what he's going through. This is great sacrifice. There's a joy set before him, but there's a great pain and suffering he's experiencing now.

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Um, so he goes through that. He goes to the cross. All the torture, all the suffering, all the pain on the cross. And we're going to act like this is nothing because God's infinite. That's irrational. This is really, truly irrational to say this. There are people who've been irrational, who are Christians even in the past, who would act like Jesus suffered nothing on the cross. There's a picture of him on the cross being crucified and he's just like, I am, uh, all at peace and I have all like, no pain of any kind. And this is not rational and it diminishes the value of what Jesus did. So was that a sacrifice? Yes. What about darkness on the land for 3 hours? What about the judgment of our sin falling upon him? One corinthians tells us he became sin. There's a second he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Jesus went through a spiritual shame on the cross. That's just, it's difficult for me to fathom, but, uh, imagine a moment in your life when you knew you were the bad guy, right? You were the one that was totally in error.

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You did something wrong and you got caught. And now everyone knows. Has that ever happened to you? That is not a good feeling. Now, some of you, maybe you didn't care, right? But that's because you're morally malfunctioning at that point. Anybody whose morality is intact feels terrible and shameful. At that moment, Jesus experienced the shame of all of our sin that didn't feel good.

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He didn't sin, but he experienced the shame and the punishment for our sin that did not feel good. He rises again. All this stuff now to say, but God's infinite. Therefore that sacrifice doesn't mean anything. Or it doesn't count as a sacrifice. Like there was no payment made, there was no cost, there was no personal difficulty or suffering or loss.

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Um, is, I think, utterly irrational. So I just have to ask, what do you mean by infinite equals? You, uh, can't sacrifice.

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If God was giving of his infinite resources, right, where he says, I'm going to give you a car and he manifests a car.

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Did he lose anything? Not really, no. Because he's giving of that infinite resource. But when Jesus takes on human form and he suffers as a human being, this is not an infinite resource. This is a human life that he's actually living. These are days he's actually giving and suffering he's going through. It just seems nuts to say that that doesn't count as sacrifice. I don't think people are thinking about the infinity of God very clearly when they say things like that. Um, others would say that because Jesus rose again three days later, it didn't count or it wasn't really a sacrifice. And I think they're just diminishing what Jesus did. Um, and they're not taking seriously him taking on human form to be the figurehead of humanity, to represent us all before God in our shame, in our sin, to suffer the rebellion and rejection of his own people, um, the physical, the spiritual suffering and all of that, just the limitations of being in a human form alone.

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Mind boggling.

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Okay, let's go to the next question, number four.

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Peace Child. Matthew 625 through 34 says, well, Peace Child is the name of the user. Okay, Matthew 625 through 34 seems to promise earthly protection. How do we contrast this with the other, uh, quote, nakedness and starvation, et cetera, that Paul and other Christians went through, especially under persecution? All right, let's look at this Matthew six passage.

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I'm going to read the whole section, verses 24 to 25 through 34. Here we go. Do not be anxious, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life, can actually take hours away, we found out. And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so closed the grass of the field which is today is alive, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for the gentiles? Seek after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. All these, um, I should recall more verses. Uh, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. This part right here is probably what we should stick to. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Um, yeah, I think that we've got a great question here. Um, just making sure everything's good with the stream. Yeah, I think so. I believe. So I'm, uh, going to read your question one more time since we've read through those verses. Um, it seems to promise earthly protection. How do we contrast this with the nakedness and starvation that Paul and other Christians went through, especially under persecution?

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Um, I think that we just take Jesus'words as a first off, we recognize the limited things that he's saying will be provided. And then we also recognize that the same Jesus talked about being persecuted and talked about being killed for your faith. Meaning that he didn't want us to take these as like a blanket rule that you can name it and claim it all over the place, but as a, ah, general attitude of the way we approach our lives. I recognize there's times where I will suffer, there's times where I may starve for my faith in Christ or because of whatever's going on in life, but not because, um but I shouldn't have an attitude that obsesses over my earthly needs to the neglect of the Kingdom of God. That's not going to solve my problems. I think that's the main point.

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Let me, um, point out the things that he says to not be worried about. It's clothing and food.

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Uh, birds of the air, they don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet God feeds them and God can feed you. And clothing the flowers of the field. You're important. God can clothe you. He provides for the birds through just natural things that happen. He can provide for you. He provides for the lilies through their natural growth, and he can provide for you as well. And so the Gentiles seek after all these things, meaning that that is their main focus in life is, I just want to take care of myself and my needs, but I want you to seek first God's kingdom and righteousness, and then God will take care of those things. So it's majorly talking about a shift in our attitude that we're not focused on me take care of myself and my needs, but rather, my number one priority, and this is a huge shift, is me serve the Kingdom of God. That's my number one priority. And not to overly worry about all of that other stuff. And most people, as they get older, they look back at their lives and they think, I did spend too much time worrying about clothes and food and those necessities and stuff like that. I did spend too much time focused on those things. Most people I've met at least have said that, that there was times where they felt like, oh, how am I going to make it? How are we going to survive? And they were worried about all that stuff. And in the end, they go, why was I so worried about that stuff? It was fine. Now, there's some people who that's not the case, but this is at least a general rule for us as humans don't obsess over your stuff. Obsess over God's kingdom and let God help you with your stuff. As you seek to serve and obey and take care of Him, he will provide for you, he will take care of you. And of course he ultimately clothes us with eternal righteousness and he ultimately feeds us with a tree of life and gives us eternal life. And so the ultimate fulfillment of this eternally in heaven is going to happen even if I go through a time of suffering, a time of starvation, a time of hardship.

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But as a Christian, I will continue to seek God's Kingdom first, no matter what. I think we're just taking Jesus's words too woodenly.

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Too woodenly, like the name it and claim it, people do where they just take a verse and quote it and they're like, ha, well I want to be clothed like the lilies. I've given a southern accent because so many of them seem like they got one. I want to be clothed like the lilies. I want a gold robe. A gold robe like the daisies and the sunflower.

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My inner Kenneth Copeland. I have no inner Kenneth Copeland. That's a joke. Yeah, I'd barf it out. All right, let's go to question number five. Take liberties. Has a question. How do I explain to a Palestinian Christian that Allah is an idol and isn't God? My coworker claims to follow Jesus and doesn't follow Muhammad, but insists it's okay to call God Allah in her language. Okay, I hope you hear me out on this. I hope you all hear me out on this because I'm going to say something that might feel a little controversial.

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Your coworker is 100% right. It is totally okay to call God Allah in her language because Allah is just an Arabic word for God. Now, it's true that the Arabic world is predominantly Muslim. So when they say God, they're usually talking about Islam. And it's true that Islam, this is an interesting feature of Islam is that it has Arabic built into Islam so that they believe the Quran written in Arabic is the word of God. And it's all these perfect things. But translations don't carry those qualities, not necessarily. So when they talk about God, they'll speak often in Arabic, the way that say older Catholics will speak in Latin, right? Like as it's sort of a magisterial language. So to Islam, Arabic is like a magisterial language, a religious language. And so they always use Allah. Now when they bring Islam into a Western culture, they'll still say Allah. So Westerners who are used to saying God, and they'll say God when they're talking about the God of Mormonism, which is not the God of the Bible. We're talking about the God of whatever some other religion, we still use the word God.

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We try not to assume that God always means the Christian version of God, the proper biblical and real understanding of God. We understand that god is used in other ways as well. Allah is like that in Arabic. It's used of Islam and Islamic teachings. It's also used if you are reading an Arabic Bible, right. Like just the book of Genesis translated into Arabic, you'll see Allah.

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So I don't believe in Allah when you define that as the Muslim understanding of God, but I do believe in God and Allah. If you define that as just an Arabic word, that means God. Your coworker's correct here, they don't have to change their own language, her own language, to say that she follows Jesus and doesn't follow Muhammad, and she calls God Allah. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. That's just us from a Western perspective, always hearing Allah coming because we're English speakers, right. Coming from a Muslim who brings their Arabic language with them wherever they go, at least pieces of it. And so Allah carries that meaning. Yeah, not a problem. So when someone says, like, god and Allah are two different beings, I'm like, well, it depends on what you mean by God and Allah. Like, if I was raised Arabic, I would disagree with you and say, no, Allah. Uh, the Muslim Allah is wrong. The proper biblical Allah is correct.

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It's just language confusion. When languages cross over, you got to have a little bit of grace to hear each other out.

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I think your coworker is doing just fine.

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Question number six. This is an anonymous question, and we have all 20 questions for today. We're loaded up on questions. Um, it says, do you think it is sinful to use pseudonyms online to protect your personal identity? Could this be considered intentional deception? As Christians, to what extent do we have a right to privacy? Yeah, I think pseudonyms are appropriate when they are not deceptive.

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Right. So, like, an author uses here's an example where you could feel like it's crossing a line, but I don't think it is. It's known that authors use, uh, a pseudonym. They'll use an author name, their writing name, often instead of their actual name, for whatever reason. I don't know why this became a thing. Doesn't bother me. I don't care. Mark Twain, that wasn't his real name. His name is Samuel Clemens. So we all know that the authors do this because we all know it because it's part of the normal understanding of things. It's not deceptive when an author puts a pseudonym on their work.

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However, social media is a lot more varied than that. And there are social media accounts where pseudonyms are obviously pseudonyms, right. Where someone's YouTube name is take liberties or peacechild. These are some of the names I've read today from you guys. And everybody knows that's a pseudonym. It's obvious to us. But if someone else who has a question, uh, Rashida from Bangladesh, you might be Bob from Canada for all I know. Really? In which case, that name Rashida from, that feels fake. That feels like you're impersonating somebody. So I would say online, you're asking me moral questions is my personal opinion.

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The moral is don't be deceptive and don't lie. The application is my personal opinion. In the online world, if you are in an environment where real looking names typically are expected to represent the names of the real people who own those accounts, then you should probably do that or use fake looking names, because then it tells everybody who's looking at your account. You're just keeping yourself anonymous. So you open up a new account on some social media and you call yourself like tough guy or something, and everybody knows you're just keeping yourself anonymous, and that's fine. Uh, that's not deceptive at all. So I think I would look at it like that personally. You guys let me know what you guys think in the comments, in the live chat you can discuss amongst each other. Do you agree? Am I parsing those ethics properly? Dilly guy says christians in general should not rebel against the government without biblical reason. But as one in the military, should I keep my oath to defend the constitution if government violates it? That's a really tough conflict. Okay, so let's hypothetically, as I understand your question, you're in the military and you're to defend the constitution. One of your oaths is not as I understand our military oaths, if I'm m understanding this right, um, if not, everything else that follows should be changed. But if I understand our oath right, you're not just taking an oath to obey commanding officers, because in America, we think our laws are actually over the people that are in those legal positions, in the positions of government. What stands over them is our laws. And so when you commit to obey the constitution and the laws of the land, and if you find that your orders from the people, your superiors, are violating those very commands, then I think that it's difficult, but it seems cut and dry. If it's a true violation of the thing that I've taken my oath to obey, then to honor my oath, I have to rebel or reject the orders from my commanding officers.

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That seems like that's the way it is. Now, am I right in that? Or am I correctly discerning that my orders are in violation of my oaths to obey the constitution? That's a big question. Am I right on that? But let's say it is. Then it would seem cut and dry and difficult to then say, I can't do that, sir. It violates my oath. I've taken an oath to obey the constitution. Um, in addition, another layer of complexity to this is being a christian, because my primary oath or my primary obedience is to god above all else. And so anytime, whether it was a state document, constitution type thing, or a superior giving me an order, anytime those things are calling me to do something that is against my Christian convictions to obey the Lord again, I have to say I can't do that.

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I will obey God rather than men. That seems actually fairly cut and dry, but very challenging.

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Yeah.

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A simple way to put this is when obedience to human authorities requires rebellion against God.

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You rebel against human authorities in the Godliest way you can. I think that's one way to do it. All right, number eight, Jason Elford says, Where do you see the Bible? Speak to touring temples of other faiths for the goal of long term relationship sharing or sharing the gospel while also guarding against demonic influence or causing people to stumble?

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That's an interesting question, Jason. Um, okay, so let me give an example for people who might not have your background. Let's suppose you have a friend who's Mormon and they opened up a new temple in your city. The Mormons have a number of temples, and when they open one, they make a really big deal about it, and they'll do a little open house thing before they start doing stuff in that temple like baptizing for the dead and things and ceremonies and stuff and getting sealed for time and all eternity, all the rituals they have. Before they do that, they'll invite people to come through. And it's kind of like your one chance to do a little tour. Let's say your friend's like, man, I'm so excited about the new temple. The new temple in Phoenix, Arizona, or wherever they're going to put one next, I don't know.

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And let's go there. I want to check it out. Will you come with me? And you're thinking, Man, I know that this is going to open the door to lots of conversations, because I'll be like, well, what about that? OOH, what do they do in this room with the weird cowheads and stuff on it? Like, what goes on there? You'll find that in the Bible anywhere?

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Where does this come from that it might open doors for conversation? Um, I'm hesitant to drop out a rule. A lot of people listening right now, you would be like, don't do it. End of story. That's the rule. I think that's probably good advice in most situations, but that I wouldn't make it a rule for the following reasons. Some people are like me, okay? I'm not normal, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm not a normal person.

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I think that some of us, we're in a place, in a position in our walk with the Lord, but not only that, but in our disposition towards evangelism and towards interacting with false beliefs, that we are ready to go into an environment like that for the sake of evangelism. And I would only do it if my friend knew I was going as a LookyLoo and not as someone participating. I would not actually participate in any temple rituals or activities. I would not do anything to affirm a false religion. I would not take a single step or breath in a direction that would affirm false lies about Christ, lies about God that are damning people and hurting them, none of that. But I also know that I'm in a situation where the knowledge I would gain through this event would enable me to minister to others with my ministry a little bit better, that the experience of doing this and then going out to maybe eat with my friend afterwards might open doors for evangelism. I also know there's 0% of my heart that is wooed or awed by pretty buildings and big ritualistic environments. But I know that this is not the case for probably the majority of people. I think the majority of humans, when they walk into a gaudy religious building, they go, wow.

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And they get drawn.

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Whether it's real Christianity or a false religion, I think that the impact of these sort of hyper religious buildings is a real thing. And it can be for good if it's used for the Lord or it could be for evil if it's drawing you away to false beliefs, whether that's a cult or just us twisting of Christian beliefs where you're starting to pray to saints and you're starting to bow before statues and things like that, that God does not want us um, in. I remember being in Jerusalem on a tour to Israel, and we visited all these sites, and for me, my favorite was, like, the Sea of Galilee. Um, just walking around the hills, around the Sea of Galilee, being in the actual water there and going to sea, um, in getty and things, the outdoors stuff. Okay. Outdoors locations were really interesting. Ruins, not as much, because, of course, they've been ruined, so they're not really standing anymore. Um, buildings like the Western Wall in Jerusalem, that area that stuff is super interesting, of course.

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But there was a lady on our tour when we went on this trip who we got to Jerusalem and we went into this super gaudy. Uh, I think it was a Catholic building, and it was just tall and stained glass windows everywhere. And I think it's beautiful, right? But I see these windows and I see this building, and I think, man, I wonder what it looked like when Jesus was here. That's all I'm really thinking. This is not how she was wired. She walked in and says, now I feel like I'm really connecting with God in a building that never would have existed in Jesus's time, that Jesus never would have walked in, never would have seen nobody in the first century had ever seen that because these buildings have an impact. And so this is why I would caution most people against doing this sort of thing. You guard your heart. Like, are you actually drawn by bells and whistles? Are you drawn by stained glass and incense? Are you drawn by clean, well made buildings with happy, smiley people where it seems. Like you've just entered into their world. Does this draw you? Well, then don't go to the Buddhist temple. Then don't go to the Mormon temple. Then don't go to this Islamic gathering, because you are one who can be tricked by appearances. I don't know how else uh, I'm only using strong words because I want to guard you. I want you to guard your heart and say, okay, this isn't my internal spiritual radar showing me where truth is, because maybe I'm the kind of person where if I walked into a Muslim building enough times, I sort of start to become Muslim. If I walk into the Mormon building enough times, I kind of start to become Mormon. I will sort of go with the pretty and if that's the case, guard your heart. You got to be a weirdo like me if you're going to do that stuff. It's my honest, straightforward advice to you. Take a very real assessment of where you're at, and if you feel that little tug, do not head towards what you know to be false teachings when you know that you're drawn towards surface level things that those people have really worked hard on. Um, it's no bueno, ma'am. All right, number nine, Adrian Mason says, how can we be certain that the scapegoat isn't Satan in Leviticus 16 and Revelation 20?

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Um, that's a good question, Adrian. Um, so the scapegoat in Leviticus 16, um, I'm trying to think of how much background I want to give you guys on this so that everyone's on the same page. Leviticus 16 talks about the day of Atonement. Um, let me get on your screen. So there's these two goats. One of them is sacrificed, and the other one is set free.

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And the function of these two goats is interesting. One is their blood is brought before the altar, and that one time a year when the priest enters into the holy of holies. And this is under the Jewish law, right under the whole mosaic system.

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And they bring that blood into the temple and into the holy of holies. Only time of year they're able to do that. And then the other one is set free into the wilderness, and nobody wants to touch that goat. And as time progressed, they actually got a tradition of just, like, pushing it off a cliff because they wanted to make sure it died and that nobody could get near it. Because they associated this goat with all of the guilt and sin of the um let me skip to the part about so we have the Aaron's going to offer a sin offering for himself and then he's eventually going to get to the sin offering for everybody.

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Um, I have a teaching on Leviticus, on the sacrifices in Leviticus. I'll link it below afterwards, and you guys can check it out yourselves. Where I go through all this in, um, me, I think rather than going through it all in detail for the sake of time.

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Um, I'll just skip right to this part. Okay. So Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat. This is the one that's not going to be sacrificed. And confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. So there's like somebody who that's their job. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. The symbolism of this goat is, uh, one goes in and the blood says, hey, like, you're clean. And this goat is perfect and pure and clean. Then there's the other goat that's like the opposite. It's like dirty, spiritually dirty and icky and unclean because we've laid our hands on it, we've confessed our sins and then we send it away from us as far as possible because it represents our sins are being taken far away. I think these two goats represent Jesus. Not one Jesus, one Satan. Now Jesus goes into the holy of holies. He presents his own blood. But Jesus is clearly taught in scripture as the one who bears our iniquities.

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Isaiah even uses this. Isaiah 53. He shall bear their iniquities. That's, uh, like a technical term in the Levitical system that this scapegoat does. Jesus does that. Jesus is both goats because he does both things. But the picture is important. You have one goat that remains pure and one goat that becomes impure.

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The impurities go far out of the camp. They're gone. Your sins are separated from you as far as the east is from the west. The Pure One enters into the Holy of Holies. And then finally, the High Priest himself can enter in for the only time of year, because Jesus comes in pure and righteous into the presence of God, and he brings us with Him. When Jesus dies, both things happen. He takes our sins to the grave and they're taken far away from us, but he brings us in. His resurrection brings us into the very presence of God. So I think both these represent Christ. That's what we should see there. Um, you, uh, mentioned Revelation 20, and I'm, off the top of my head, don't know exactly why.

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Um, maybe because Satan is cast down.

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When the thousand years are ended, satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive. The nations that are at the four corners of the earth. GOG and Magog to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints in the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. So the idea here is that Satan's cast out, like Jesus comes into the presence of God, but Satan is cast out. I see. You could call that a parallel with the scapegoat. But the scapegoat's main function isn't just that it goes away, it's that it carries our sins away.

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Satan never carries my sins anywhere. I don't have my sins placed on Satan. Um, he's cast out for his own offenses and his own issues. Right. But this scapegoat had to be a pure goat, had to qualify in all the same ways other animals did, where they had these symbolic representations of purity and that they didn't have, like, a broken limb. They were at least a certain age. They didn't have, like, a funky mold growing on their ear or something weird like that. They had to be pure because Jesus had to be pure to be the sin bearer.

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Yeah, so there's my thoughts on that. I will link below my thing, uh, where I do go through, like, the five Sacrifices of Leviticus. Really neat video. It may sound boring to you guys. You will be excited about the Book of Leviticus after this because it's just amazing what God has done with that book and how it represents Christ. Let's go to question number nine. Number ten. Sorry, that was nine. Hans Fenceler says, when should we apply? Matthew 76. I asked because for Christmas, I want to give a spiritual themed gift to my unbelieving sister who has crudely rejected the Bible and God multiple times. Should I even bother? Matthew 76.

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Do not give to dog. Give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

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Um, the problem with applying a saying like this is that it just takes wisdom. Like, this is a this is a proverb of Jesus. Effectively, he's giving you wisdom. And anytime you read a proverb or the Book of Proverbs, you have to have wisdom to understand it and apply it. Rightly? And your situation and your individual spot, the answer could be, yeah, maybe it does apply here. Um, when we say that they will, um, trample them underfoot and turn to attack you, the thing Jesus seems to be warning against is a person who will only get mad at you the more you evangelize. So if you share truth with them, they only get more angry. And they're actually worse than they were before, but now that anger is pointed at you, so they attack you.

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Pigs, um, cannot perceive the value of a pearl. Right. You throw your pearls before pigs, what do they think you've done? They think you've just attacked them with something you've like, thrown hard objects at them, whereas you toss anybody else a pearl, they're like, Whoa, a pearl. Excited about it. But the pig doesn't have the discernment. Don't, uh, give to dogs what is holy. It also says, a dog, of course, can't tell the difference between we're in a Jewish setting here at Jesus'time between meat that is holy, that is considered like, this is for the priest or for the sacrifice table versus meat that is like the stuff you cut off and toss out. They don't know the difference. They're just gobble, gobble, gobble. They just eat it all up and don't care.

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So what are we saying? The person who cannot perceive the goodness of the Gospel and responds to it in only anger, it's okay to just move on and say, you know what? All they're going to do is get mad. All they're going to do is get upset with me and think I've insulted them when I'm just trying to share Christ with them.

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That may apply to your sister, I have no idea.

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But that heart of evangelism that the Bible teaches us over and over would probably have you asking questions like, is there a way I can reach? Is there a way I can minister? Sometimes we look at gift giving as our chance.

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Um, that can backfire. And maybe it's because of their ignorance, or maybe it's because of our ignorance. It goes both ways.

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When the atheist in your family knows that, um, birthdays and Christmas are going to be the time when you try to evangelize them, it can actually become, uh, a pearls before pigs thing where they don't perceive this as evangelism and love and kindness. They perceive it as, oh, great, here comes the annual preaching moment from so and so. I'm so irritated with them. And it ends up backfiring. Right? You're telling them what you've already told them and you know they're just going to get upset in those cases. Maybe it's time to just back off. Yeah, maybe it's just time to back off.

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Try to build relationships some other ways, seek other ways where they will no longer perceive it as an attack.

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Um, and think of it that way. But I would consider this yours is your sister, man. I consider this a, uh, project to seek to build relationship with her as a sister and then hope for opportunities to share more in the future and build that foundation of love so that when she sees you throw something, she's thinking, well, maybe it's coming from the right place. Um I don't know. I hope that helps a little bit. But I guess my short answer is this is a proverb of wisdom. You got to have wisdom to apply it. The one thing I would caution Christians against and everywhere is to say this.

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You don't just apply this when you're irritated at somebody. It's about them and their response. It's not about you.

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It does not say the following. Don't evangelize people who you're irritated at. Don't evangelize people who you're upset with. It doesn't say that. Wrestle through your own issues of irritation, anger, that are understandable, right? Wrestle with those, pray through those. Get yourself to the place of loving that person, and then ask the question of whether you should do this or not, because you will interpret it wrongly. Probably. If you're angry, you'll interpret it in the most convenient way. Um I know, right? Because I'm the same as you. So that's the process I have to go through.

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Number eleven. Neon rainbow or neon raindrops? Excuse me. I apologize for getting your name wrong. Neon Raindrops Studios says, how can I honor my parents while not agreeing with their lifestyle or theology? What does it mean to honor your parents biblically, as a young adult? And when do you draw the line?

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Um um uh so this is a great question. I don't have, like, sort of a rule that I can apply, because the rule is honor your parents. What you're really asking is, how do I apply honoring my parents into the variety of situations in life? And I think that we honor our parents by giving them a special preference above other people in our lives, right? That's not just somebody asking that. That's my dad, that's my mom. You give them a special preference above other people in your lives. That's one way of honoring them. You don't have to, as an adult, honor them by obeying everything they tell you to do. You're an adult when you're a child, that's what you do. Unless they're telling you to do something ungodly, unless they're being very abusive or something along crossing some major line, but you obey them. But as you get older, you move to a place of I respect you at all times. I give you preference over others in many ways. Um, do you agree with their lifestyle?

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Dude, I've lived this, okay? I've lived this in my life. And you don't have to fix them to honor them.

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There's an old saying in the military, and I'll apply it here. I hope people hear it. I don't mean it crudely. Uh I mean it genuinely. But they'll say, salute the rank, not the person. Maybe you've got a superior officer who's kind of a punk to you and to others, and so you salute the rank, not the person, meaning that you still give them all the respect and honors, and you do all the right things towards them because they're in that position. And you respect the position. Even if the person in the position is not being respectable, that person in that position, that's still your mom, that's still your dad. And even if they're not doing respectable things, you still seek to honor them and respect the position because of the value of what a mom is and what a dad is to a person. This can be incredibly difficult. It can be incredibly hard, but you do it for the Lord, you do it for Christ.

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I have absolutely lived this in my life at different points, and I don't regret any time where I gave gracious and generous honor and respect to my parents. And I absolutely regret anytime I didn't. So if my own experience says anything to you, I'd say, when in doubt, honor more. When in doubt, give more respect and love and care to them. Um, and you will probably not regret that in the long run. So it's tough as a young adult. Doesn't mean you have to agree with them. Um, maybe they're right, maybe you're right. Maybe it's a mixture of the two, which is often the case.

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But always honor, always honor. Honor has to do with not agreement, not endorsing. It has to do with the way that you talk to them, the attitude you have to them, the kind of thoughtfulness, uh, you have towards them. And, yeah, I hope that helps you. I hope you can figure that out. Um, Ethan Wisdom has a question. He says, how would you respond to a oneness believer who denies the distinct personhood of the Father, Son, and Spirit, even after showing them clear verses that distinguish the Father from the Son, etc.

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Well, Ethan, um, part of me, I would throw my hands up and say, my job is done.

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I gave you the evidence. I showed you very clearly. If I've done it well and communicated well, they're without excuse. You can't control that. Um, so there's a sense in which one layer of this, I would say, is to realize that you're off the hook.

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It's not your responsibility to actually fix everybody. It's your responsibility to share and then see how they respond. And this is what Jesus did. He didn't fix everybody. He shared. And then those people responded. But there's other layers to this, and one of them is I love the quote from Greg Cochle of giving people a stone in their shoe. Sometimes when I feel like I can't change someone's mind completely in a conversation, I don't worry about it too much. And I think, how can I just give them one thing to think about that won't leave their mind?

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And so maybe at that point, at the end of the conversation, I might just get real soft on my claims and say, well, would you agree with the following? Would you agree with the idea that at least on the surface, these verses sure look like they disagree with your theology?

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Would you agree with that they at least kind of look that way if I could just get them to even go, no, fine. Uh, yeah, I'll agree with they'd look that way on the surface. And I would leave them with that and think, man, that's just going to sit there and burrow in their shoe and their little rock in their shoe is going to keep nagging at them. If I could just give them one thing, because people change their views over time. And sometimes you just give someone something to think about. And often in the middle of a disagreement, people are they're hostile in that moment, and they dig their heels down even further. But if you can sort of before they leave, you could just give them something that they're willing to accept that they will carry with them. I think that can be very impactful and powerful. I hope that helps. Ethan um, all right, let's go to the next question, number 13 from Luke. Why is the title of Jesus Son? Why isn't the Holy Spirit called the Son of God?

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Um, I think it has to do with the incarnation. Luke I think it's all about the incarnation. So Jesus we have Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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But Jesus is the one who comes here. Let me back up and say this way. These titles, father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they not only speak of the relationship of the Trinity within itself, but they speak of God's relationship with us. Let's talk about that part of it for a second.

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The son becomes incarnate. He becomes a human. He takes on a human form, still God, but he's truly man. And he lives out a relationship of Father Son with the Father, and he represents us like a Son of man. Right? That's that Old Testament saying. If you're not familiar with it, really important old Testament teaching. Jesus'favorite title, uh, for himself was Son of man. And so he's the son. He's living out this actual human life.

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Then the Holy Spirit is the one who inhabits us, who indwells us, whose spirit joins with our spirit when we are saved. And then the Father is the one who we have this relationship with through the Son, who we pray to the Father that these things aren't just arbitrary titles. They're also about how we relate to God in different ways. God is in us, God's for us, God's with us, god's all these things. And I think that they're all relevant. So, yeah, hope that helps. Um, okay, strong parent warning on this. I haven't read the question yet. In fact, I don't read any of these questions except the first one before we go live.

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This is why I stumble over them sometimes. But there's a parent warning on this one. Parents, you've been warned. If you're not sure, just pause the video, come back later. Okay. Does a wife have to do everything her husband wishes in the bedroom? I feel so uncomfortable doing oral things, but he says it's the only thing that satisfies him. I feel guilty. We both are believers. Um, no, you don't have to do that. Where does scripture say you have to do this? No, um, that is not necessary. It may be desirable. Humans have lots of desires.

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They don't need to be satisfied.

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That's part of the nature of human issues is that we don't need all of our desires satisfied. And if there is, okay, there's the, um, obvious intercourse there should be between man and woman. But all of these other acts that people are currently obsessed with because of our pornography culture, right? They would not let me say this. Your husband would not be obsessed with this, most likely, if we did not live in a pornographic culture, in a culture that was filled with stuff on TV and TV shows as well as full on pornography that is so accessible and so widely viewed among people. And they don't think this is affecting their view of sexuality, but it's raising up their desires. And I want to try this, and I want to do this, and I want to have this thing. And that you just never would have heard 20, 30, 50 years ago from at least as many people, certainly not a fraction of as many people.

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Um, no. Uh, there's a proper design that actually makes babies, and that's something that every marriage should have. Unless there are physical problems that are stopping this from happening. Major mental, emotional problems that are in the way, which are understandable, sometimes there's things that go on in people's lives, but ideally, that should happen. We shouldn't just be pushing against that. But requests for other things, um, need to be mutually agreed on. Uh, this is something that makes you feel uncomfortable.

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I'm just going to be straight with you. That should be all your husband needs to know to say, I'm never going to ask you to do that. You're not comfortable with that. I'm not going to ask you to do it. End of story. Period. He says it's the only thing that satisfies him. Needs to get over himself.

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Sorry. No, that's not true. Okay? That's husband you're lying. You're lying. That's not true. I don't know what else to tell you.

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Sorry. I feel for you here. I'm totally in your space. But your anonymous questions so nobody knows who you are. You know me. I know you. There's a chance I mean, I know your situation from what you said.

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There's a chance, um, that he's just lying about what needs to satisfy. He needs this to satisfy him. This is the only thing that would satisfy him. Because forget biology. Forget the way we're designed as humans. Like, this is my preferred thing is to do this. Um, I don't believe that because obviously you're childless and all this other stuff. You guys can read between the lines.

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Yeah, I think he's lying.

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All right, we go to question 15. Get away from that. Bang. Bang hershey squirts. That's a disgusting name.

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That's what we said in junior high for when someone had bathroom problems. Uh, been kind of eating at me for some time now. But did Jesus actually lie in John seven, verses six through eleven? Peace and love in Jesus name. All right, John seven verses six through eleven, jesus said to them, my time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you. But it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to the feast, for my time is not yet fully come.

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Okay? So this is actually a conversation, um, between Jesus and his brothers. And his brothers are kind of mocking him. And they're like, hey, if you are all these great things, then go up to the show yourself to the world. Go to the feast. And the feast is here's. The background for anybody who doesn't know we're talking about Passover, this is one of the busiest times of the year for Jerusalem. Everybody goes to passover. They're like, hey, Jesus, if you're going to do fancy stuff and talk about being this special person, you're the Messiah, right? Go up and show yourself to the people at the feast so all of Jerusalem can come and rally around you. They don't believe he's real. They're mocking him. Uh, his brothers have not seen the miracles Jesus has done. They currently think he's kind of crazy.

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So Jesus, he says, my time has not yet come. Implying what? There's a time when he will go to the feast, but not just go to the feast, he'll show himself to the world. His time has not yet come to show himself to the world.

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At the very end of Jesus'three years of ministry, he's much more open about his claims. He's much more bold about the things he says and does. He allows things like at the end of Mark, we see this. He allows a man to openly go out, calling out that he is the one who healed him of his infirmities.

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He, uh, is more confrontive of the Pharisees. He also walks or goes in Jerusalem on the donkey, boldly claiming that he's the Messiah. That's when Jesus does this right, he's like, my time's not yet come. It will come in like a couple years, but not yet. He says, Your time is always here. Meaning that they're hasty. They're hasty. Hobbits. The, uh, world cannot hate you. But it hates me because I testify it about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. So he sends them up, but he doesn't go with them. He says, I'm not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.

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Here's the part where you're like, wait, did he lie? Because shortly thereafter, Jesus goes up to the feast. He says, I'm not going to the feast. Then he goes to the feast. This is one of those things you'll see on infidel websites, uh, Bible contradiction.

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But you just have to read the Bible as though its authors have a brain. That's all we got to do, right? He goes, you up to the feast. I'm not going up to this feast for my time has not yet come. After saying this, he remained in Galilee. What? Fulfilling his words that his time is not now. He's not going up to the feast right away, but after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but in private.

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Here's the thing. Jesus's brothers were not saying, travel to Jerusalem for Passover. I dare you. They were not daring him to do that. They were daring him to publicly proclaim who he was during Passover in Jerusalem that he did not do. Not this time. He's not going up to this feast in that manner. Uh, some manuscripts actually have I'm not yet going up to this feast. But basically, the point is, the author has a brain in John. He's not contradicting. He's communicating. Jesus'conversation, read between the lines in a healthy way, in a proper way.

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Are you just reading the lines? I guess. Really? Because basically saying, look, Jesus, we're not telling you go up to the feast at all. We're saying, go up and proclaim yourself the Messiah. And he's like, you'd want me to do everything now, right? You're just being worldly. Um, it's not time yet. I'm not going to do that. So then he goes up privately and quietly. So it's not a contradiction. It's just emphasizing Jesus holding back his public proclamation of his messianic nature until a later time.

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Number 16, Wing Beat says, aren't we saved when we do our best living Godly lives.

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Otherwise, God is a biased hypocrite who plays favoritism. Oh, is that right? Those are the only options.

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Those are the only options we get. Wow, wingbeat, that's pretty extreme to say that. Um, I'm going to read it again. Aren't we saved when we do our best? Living Godly lives otherwise, as, uh, in if your answer is no, then you must conclude god is a biased hypocrite who plays favoritism. We are to be perfect as he is. Other logic is a fallacy, thus false teaching. Thank you. Okay, there may be a misunderstanding of how I'm reading your question, so forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but here's how I'm understanding this, is that we get saved by doing our best to live Godly lives. I think that's actually a very unbiblical idea. It's a very common idea. A lot of people, I think people by their gut, they feel this way because they realize something there's something good. They realize they realize that they'll be judged by their works. They'll stand before God one day, and he'll examine your life, and he'll look at how you lived. And so you think, I just have to live good enough, and then he'll give me the path to go to heaven. So I'll try to be sincere, and I'll try to be good. And probably a lot of time we just spend telling ourselves how good and sincere we are until we believe it. Um, even. Though we're not quite as good and sincere as all that Jesus shows us, there's a different thing. He shows us that, in fact, even us trying really hard, we say we're trying really hard. But oftentimes when we say, trying to do my best, what we often mean is failing.

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If you actually did your best, you would never say, I tried to do my best. Because if you did your best, you said, I did my best.

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And most sober minded people realize they haven't done that in this life. I haven't done that. I've failed. You failed. We've all fallen short of God's glory. Jesus comes and he does his best. He's the one who by proxy, he lives out the perfect life for you. He dies in your place. And now his goodness can be placed on your account so that if you put your faith in Christ, he says, I will hand you my righteousness. I already did it all. I will give you my righteousness. Is that God being biased? A hypocrite who plays favoritism? No, this is God giving free salvation to all mankind. No matter how sinful they've been, any one of them can receive Christ. That's not favoritism. That's not hypocrisy. That's free forgiveness. You just trust in Christ. What does it require? Real relationship with God, right. Not just, I'm going to be a good person, but I'm actually going to know God. I'm going to receive his spirit, receive his forgiveness, receive his grace, and enter into a relationship with Him through just faith. All I have to do is believe. Anybody can do that. This is not favoritism. This is grace. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I hope that you will do it. Wingbeat. You are not good enough to earn your way to heaven. Neither am I. You've fallen short so many times, whether you admit it to yourself or not, in some sober moments, you have to look back at your life and go, man, I've done so many bad things.

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Jesus died for those bad things. And at some point, you have to look at your life and say, boy, there's so many good things I didn't do, uh, so many times. I just didn't do the right thing. I just didn't. Guess what? Jesus did the right thing all the time, and he did it on your behalf. You put your trust in Him, and you enter not only forgiveness, but relationship with God through Christ. So I hope you find the goodness in that.

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Number 17, this is coming in from Justin Duck, who says, thank you and greetings from Finland. Oh, cool. It's exciting to just think that you're there in Finland and watching the content. That's really neat. Uh, would you ever be interested in doing a video teaching on Christian science, the teachings of Mary Baker? Eddie, thank you so much. Oh, yes, Justin, I'm very interested in doing that. Um, I cannot make any promises about timeline or anything, because I literally have, like, the next couple years planned out. As far as projects go, that's at least a couple years, maybe more, maybe three or four years. So I really don't know. Forgive me.

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You probably should just do your own research at this point. Don't know when I might be able to get to it, don't know how. Um, but it's definitely on my long list of things that I ideally would love to do at some point in time. And I have looked into a bit of it somewhat, uh, in the past, and would be interested in specifically looking into Mary Baker Eddie's teachings, like an examination of her teachings. I think that would be an interesting thing to do. Um, number 18, Andrea W says, or Andrea, um, how can we know which Proverbs, if any, are direct, unilateral commands of God? And then I get, ah, an example here. Proverb 23, verses 13 and 14. All right.

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Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from shiol.

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So is that a command, or what else would it be? Is it like gentle advice?

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So, Proverbs are not generally commands. Um, they are sayings of wisdom. And sayings of wisdom have to be taken carefully. Like, for instance, um, look both ways before crossing the street. That is good advice.

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It's good advice. Uh, let's say someone's chasing you with a hatchet and they're right behind you, and they're about to and you say, if I stop and look both ways, I'll get killed by this hatchet. Obviously, you just run. You don't look both ways in that situation because it's more dangerous to stop and look than it is. So the wisdom is about safety and doing right things. Um, the wisdom of this Proverb is about disciplining kids so that they do not, um, get into lifestyles and habits that end up ruining their lives.

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You need to punish the bad behavior to keep them from repeating it and turning into a lifestyle that ends up destroying them.

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Do I have to use a rod?

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Do I have to strike the child?

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I don't know that you have to strike with a rod. Exactly.

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I would say that if all spanking, uh, or hitting. Now, here's the thing. Our culture the problem with our culture is not that we have a culture. It's that we're ignorant of it. We're largely ignorant that we have a culture and that we're reading our own culture into someone else's stuff. And then we get mad, like when Ecclesiastes says something about, I couldn't find a good woman among a thousand. And we're like sexism and misogyny, and we don't realize we're reading our culture. Our glasses are okay. We have a culture. That's not the problem. Our culture is that we've been raised on movies where every parent who spanks is abusive, yet many of us have been spanked by parents. And it wasn't abusive, but we forget this, and we just think that all the Hollywood examples are the whole story or the person you knew who was abused. That's the whole story. Um, I've been spanked appropriately, and I've been spanked inappropriately in my life. And the appropriate ones were perfectly fine. And teaching me discipline didn't cause me any harm. The inappropriate ones did. Um, and that was not, ah, my mother, by the way, but somebody else. Um, at any rate, the rod. What I think most Westerners, at least most people like, okay, I live in California. Most California style people, they read this and they go, strike a child with a rod, and they picture, like, some big, thick piece of wood, and you're just beating the kid, and you're hitting him on the head, and you're hitting him on the shoulders, and you're breaking his fingers, and you're and you're angry. You're angry. This is important, right? You're mad. You're personally angry, which I would say never discipline when you're angry, because you do everything wrong when you're angry. You don't even drive normal when you're angry. You don't close doors normal. You're not going to spank normal. Like, you can't do this when you're mad.

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So we picture this as being abuse.

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It says discipline here. Not abuse, not, uh, torture, not injure, but discipline.

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My mom was disciplined with rods from her parents, and it was like they called it a switch. Take a little thing from a tree and like that. My mom hated it, that's for sure. But it was not what you would consider, like, call CPS at least. I do not believe it was like that at all. Um, there is proper discipline that can be done properly. And whether it's a rod or a hand or a belt, um, or grounding, it can be overdone.

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You can ground somebody way too much. You can ultimately just lock your kid in the room and isolate them from everybody for very long periods of time. And they're like, Dude, I'd rather get spanked and then go about my life. Any discipline can be done wrongly. Any treatment can become abusive and torturous if it's done wrongly. And so we're not talking about abusive and torturous things. What we're ultimately talking about proverbs here is discipline your kids. And this is something our culture is very bad at, to be honest. If you don't discipline them, if you're not consistent right? Here's how a lot of parents discipline. They discipline, um, if you get me mad enough, I will discipline you. Not if you do bad things, you will be disciplined. And here clearly laid out here's, the bad things you can do that you will be disciplined for. Here's the good things you do that are expected. Not like that, where you're building character and good structure. But just if I'm in a bad mood and you do something, you're going to get in trouble. If I'm in a good mood and you do it, yeah, I'll overlook it. That's how a lot of disciplining happens. And that is not discipline. That's a parent exacting their emotional anger on a kid or just being lazy the rest of the time.

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I feel like I'm making people mad right now.

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I can feel it coming through the camera, through the screen. Um, yeah, I do believe those words are all true.

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Um, and obviously, what I'm saying has to be taken with some ounce of wisdom. You can exaggerate it and twist it and try to turn it into something I'm not saying. But the bottom line is, um, proverbs teaches principles that even if you say, okay, I don't have to physically like the example of strike with a rod, that doesn't have to be the way I discipline, perhaps, right, this is the book of wisdom here. But there needs to be some discipline, because that's the principle Proverbs is teaching. If no discipline, kids go astray. And so there needs to be discipline. It has to be proper and appropriate. But, uh, it is a little bit funny. People who think, um, that discipline, uh, say spanking is bad and then they end up having no recourse.

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Or they'll do other things grounding for these exorbitant periods of time that don't even compute to a kid. Like a kid's going to understand at the age of five what it means to be grounded for a week.

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A week isn't on their radar. They're just thinking about lunch or whatever.

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Anyway, more stuff to talk about some other time. Um, let's go to question number 19.

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What advice do you have for witnessing to someone who doesn't care about what happens after they die? I have a friend who is content with betting their eternity on hell if they are wrong.

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Um, this is tough because ultimately we're asking, how do we change what people care about?

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I don't know. Um, if someone says, I just want to live my life like this, I don't care.

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Maybe, uh, think of it this way. You have a friend who's chain smoking cigarettes and you tell them, you're probably going to get, like, lung cancer or something. It's probably going to kill you and be very painful when it does and end your life really short. And then they say, I don't care. I don't care about that. I enjoy it right now. What do you say to that person?

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I'm drawing a blank.

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Um, someone who says, I don't care. That kind of apathy is difficult to correct. Life can correct it sometimes.

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Um, as you get older, you start to care. Because every one of those people who says, I don't care, they absolutely care later on, right? They care. When the consequences of those decisions come slamming down on them, they absolutely care. Maybe you can check in with them every couple of years. You still don't care. Do you care now? You didn't care before, maybe you care now. I don't know. Yeah, good question. How do you witness to people who don't care what happens after they die?

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One, uh, question I would have for the person is if it's true that they don't care, or if they're just saying that to get you out of their face.

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Um, I knew someone like that. Uh, they said, I don't even care about that. And I realized that I think what they were really saying to me was, I just don't want to talk about it right now. I just don't want to talk I don't want to talk to you about it. I don't want to talk about this issue right now. And maybe give them a little bit of space and come back to him later, and maybe they'll be happy to talk about it at a later time. Um, hopefully that's the case. I don't know. Let's go to the last question for today. Jackie Zari says, how did Satan become the God of this world? And why did God allow him to reign? Thanks, Pastor Mike. Your answers are always insightful. Um all right, satan.

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Jackie, here's the thought. Um, how did Satan become the God of this world?

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Well, we can piece together a couple things in the scriptures. One of them is that I do believe satan is the one who's behind the temptation in the Garden of Eden. Okay? He's that serpent of old. Okay? So I take that Revelation statement, that serpent of old, he's the tempter, he's the adversary. He's these things. I do think he's there in the Garden. Um, when Eve listened to the serpent, that was the one who they were obeying. It was ultimately Satan.

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That may have had some impact on our relationship with Satan.

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That's one aspect of it. Um, another aspect is Satan is well, let's think about what happens when there's a rebellion. Like, think about even anarchists. Uh, even anarchists have leaders. They don't want them, but they get them anyway, because when there's a rebellion, you break away from the proper order and the proper authority. There will always, it seems, rise up some authority within the group. And it's usually the biggest, the strongest, the smartest, the people who are best at controlling others. Satan, it seems as that that Satan is the one who initiated the breakaway. That's why there's called the Devil and his angels in Revelation. He's the one who is sort of coordinating and organizing the rebellion against God.

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It seems the first one of the angelic hosts to break away from God. And so you've got him, as in the spiritual world, the leader of the opposition, and then in the human world, the representative, uh, of the opposition.

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And so, yeah, it just seems like it's natural out of that environment where he's ruling these fallen leaders, fallen angels.

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And then he's also, um, active in the space where god is not sovereign over people's lives. And so he swoops in so that the Bible describes it kind of like he's the puppet master of the world, so that he's the prince of the power of the air. The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked. One doesn't exactly say that people are like Satanists, like, they're happily and openly trying to obey and follow Satan, but rather they're under his sway because they're not under the sway of God. So I think that in that environment, it's only natural that Satan becomes the preeminent one among the rebellion. Um, why did God allow him to reign? Um, this is connected to a bigger question of why does God allow any rebellion against Him of any kind? I think that you'd have to trace because if I said, oh yeah, let's say God didn't allow Satan to reign. Well, he's still allowing massive rebellion against Him. And so we don't talk about Satan more, but we still have the same problem of scattered rebellion that maybe is leaderless that is still against God.

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Why does God allow rebellion against Him, though? And it seems to me that this is all part of a larger plan. My personal opinion here, this is my personal opinion, you do not need to agree with me to be a Christian or to be a Bible believing Christian. Um, is that it's all part of a larger story that God is telling that involves giving humankind free will and even angelic beings free will and choosing to follow Him so that when we are in eternity, all those who follow God were not only made by Him, but have also chosen Him. So they follow Him in love. And by allowing people to choose love and to let love be that unity of heaven and the unity of eternity is love. For that to be the case, choice had to be involved. And so allowing a rebellion at all is allowing love at all.

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I think that's a big part of it. Um, anyway, there's probably more that can be said on that, Jackie, and other reasons god will also romans tells us he'll show his glory even in how he judges the sin that's there. It'll teach us things like we will see with our own eyes as we zoom out and look at the story of creation to ultimate consummation right from the garden to Heaven and Earth meeting in Revelation. When we see all this from Hindsight, we'll look back and see, um, how God was right, man was wrong, Satan was wrong, rebellion against Him is bad, is evil, how dark sin is, how punished it is, how good the righteousness of God and the goodness of God are. So we're learning all these things will carry with us into eternity. Those things are valuable too. And God Himself will be glorified even in those who rebel.

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Okay, so we have a question that is a bonus question. From leticia frenette this is question number 21, we'll call it. What, uh, was the best and worst part of filming your eleven hour long video?

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What was the best part of it? Let me think of that first. Um, the best part of filming it was, I've been sitting on this data, this information, for a very long time, um, for a very long time. Stuff that I've been itching to communicate and tell people, stuff that I think is really important to get out there, because here's how I see it. The Egalitarians that are, by and large, the sort of mass of people that are egalitarian, they do so because they've heard convincing stories from certain individuals. Those people trace not even those people. Those people trace their information, whether it's a pastor or someone else. They trace their info back to the people who I'm critiquing in my video. Those people have major problems with their argument so that we have poor scholarship and bad reasoning, not in every single argument, in every single case, but in a lot of cases. In egalitarian scholarship on one, Timothy two, and getting to show the problems with that, that most people don't have the time, energy or whatever capacity to go through and dig out. To be able to put that on display, I think can have a ripple effect where all of a sudden the pastor who leads his whole congregation to become Egalitarian because he read Linda Belleville and Philip Payne and these other authors and Westfall and stuff, he reads them and he goes, oh, yeah, look at these great arguments. Then he tells his congregation, they go, oh yeah, we believe you. And now they're all Egalitarian, and they're breaking away from denominations because of it and stuff. And it's like, this is all based on misleading getting information from scholars. I think it can have a ripple effect into whole congregations.

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Um, egalitarianism is demonstrably false, is the thing. And I was finally able to demonstrate it on first. Timothy Two. That was the best thing about it, was getting to like, okay, get all this stuff out. I would stop recording and I would go tell my wife, hey, I'm taking a break. And she's like, oh, good, I can go to the bathroom because it has to be quiet in my house when I do this stuff. Um, and I would tell her, I'm so excited that I'm actually getting to get this out. I've been sitting on this information and sitting quiet on it for so long. And sometimes this is the case, like I have stuff on, say, Brian Simmons I've been sitting on for ever. And one of these days I'll make a video about it when it's not a big enough priority to do it before other stuff, but it's exciting to get it out. That was the best part, was just getting to get that info out and know that it will have a real impact in people's lives. Um, and that the topic of Egalitarian complementary. It is not confusing in and of itself. It is made confusing by the debates that go on around it. And I think that that series is going to clear up the confusion for a lot of people. Um, the worst part, um, it was just such a big project. The worst part was just how massive the project was. It was just so tiring.

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It just felt like it went on forever. The prep was so grueling, to be completely honest. So I would be reading about, um, artemis of Aphasia and I'm reading so many resources I've never told you guys about. They're not in my notes that I just had to read to just dig and dig and dig and dig and dig m and I could spend 20 hours on something and then I was going to mention it in two sentences in the final video. So the prep was just very grueling for me. And this is the way it is for probably other people trying to do the same kind of work as me. It's not like I'm doing something unique. But it was very grueling. Um, and tiring and um, that was the worst part. So the prep was the hard part. All the behind the scenes stuff that nobody sees and people, they're like, hey Mike, why don't you do like, a video about your study process? And I was like, Guys, it's supremely boring. You would not be excited by it. It would be a video that would be hard to make because I'd be like, okay, let me go read that for a while and I come back 3 hours later. Oh no, that was a dead end. What else we got?

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That was happening a lot in that process, but I'm glad to have it done. And if you guys love that series, the Woman in Ministry series, what you could do is help share it out and help people become aware of it. It's the kind of content, I didn't know if it would do well on YouTube. I didn't know if anybody would watch it. Um, but I did it in the way that I thought it had to be done. Um, for the sake of the project, if you can help share it out, spread the word, I greatly appreciate it. Um, I think it can have a big impact in the body of Christ right now, in the midst of when I'm doing all this women in ministry stuff, this is right when Rick Warren comes out as Egalitarian. But not just Egalitarian, but Egalitarian with a scalpel to the neck of complimentarians and stuff, like really coming at him hard. Um, and his church comes out as not exactly Egalitarian, but like a kind of complimentarian that doesn't look like it is at all.

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Um, and then they're making a big fight in the SBC, which I'm not part of and I don't pay that much attention to. But what I'm saying is it's timely. It's timely. This series is timely. It just happened to be coming out in the midst of a time when this is a hotter topic than it even already was, when it was already a pretty hot topic. And so I hope that's just God's providence and that the content is going to really impact people and have a lasting effect in the church at large and not just the Western church like in America. But I pray in England too, in England who has long ago given up trying to be biblical on these issues. I pray my British family in Christ and other countries, Sweden and stuff like that, where they just, um egalitarianism is not just believed, it's believed without any thought is how it seems. And I'm hoping that this content actually has an impact in those countries. We'll see. That's pretty bold to say that, but that's a hope I've got. We'll see how it goes. But uh, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your holy Word. We thank you that your word is better than any of my words, even anything I've shared here today. The best parts was just reading the scriptures. We thank you for the love of Jesus Christ. Thank you for the unity that we can have in Christ. Um, even if we disagree on certain issues, even if we're wrong about certain issues, there's still a core of just knowing Christ that we can share in common as Christians and we're grateful for that. I pray that today's Q A would have an impact in people's lives and really bless them and just encourage them in the truth of Christianity as well as how to just think and live more biblically in their own lives. We ask, Lord, that you bless a, uh, bible thinker this ministry with direction, moving forward with different projects and different things that I'd be doing that I would be led by you as far as what to do so that it would have the best, biggest blessing it can in the world. In Jesus name, amen. Amen, y'all.