Q & A

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Well, if we have any guests tonight, let me just tell you that ordinarily on Sunday evenings, we're opening the Scripture, and someone is teaching through a passage of Scripture. But tonight we're going to do something a little different. A couple of times a year, we have open mic Q & A.

So basically tonight is yours. Whatever's on your heart, whatever issues or questions that you might have, I will do my best to respond to them and answer them. So I hope that you have come prepared.

Here's how it works. There are mics in each aisle. You just come and come to one of those mics, and I'll call on you. You introduce yourself, give us your name, and then give us your question, and I'll try to answer it. Now, let me just encourage you: If you have a question, don't wait until the person who has just asked their question sits down and I'm done. Otherwise, I won't know there are more questions, and I'll just keep answering that question. All right? So I need to somehow know that there are other questions. So just sort of make a little line or get to a mic, even if I'm still dealing with another question so that I know there's another one coming, and I'll keep myself moving and sort of limit myself a little bit in terms of time for each of the questions if I know there are others coming.

Okay, so let's see. Do you have any questions that you have on your heart tonight about maybe something we've been studying or maybe something that you've been dealing with in your own life or struggle that you've had? Who will be first? I know there are questions. All right, come on up Rod.

Remember to introduce yourself just in case there are some folks that don't know you, and let's hear your question.

[Rod Milton] Good evening, I'm Rod Milton. This is a question for my daughter, and I'm here because I had no answer for it, but she was asking about Lazarus' experience in the grave. What was that for him until Christ raised him?

[Tom] Yeah, that's a good question. Look at John, chapter 11, and you know the story of Lazarus, of course: Jesus decides to wait. This was really, you know, what makes this miracle remarkable to me is that it's really the only miracle in Jesus' ministry that seemed to have been especially fashioned to draw public attention to itself.

Jesus often was healing people and helping people and even raising a little girl from the dead but telling everyone to sort of keep it quiet because it was really just an expression of His great heart of compassion often. But this miracle was specifically done to put Himself on display. You remember He heard that Lazarus was sick, He waited until he was dead, and by the time He arrived, he'd been dead for four days, Lazarus had, and as Martha so discreetly put it, by now, Lord, he stinks. And so there was a reason for that. Bethany, where Lazarus, these dear friends of Jesus, Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived, was just two miles over the hill, over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. And Jesus came just probably in February of the year of His crucifixion. So it's just about six to eight weeks before His crucifixion, and He comes to Bethany with having waited, sort of having set the stage, all the friends from Jerusalem have come over the hill. This was apparently a wealthy family. All the people have gathered. And He comes into the middle of that and a dramatic display stands away from the entrance of the tomb after they roll back the stone and says "Lazarus, come forth." And nobody could doubt that this was a miracle. Nobody questioned whether or not Lazarus was raised from the dead. In fact, if you look later in chapter 11, they are very much concerned about the leaders of the nation are very much concerned about what happened. Verse 45: "Therefore, many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what had been done, believed in Him."

But some of them went to the Pharisees. They go back over the hill to Jerusalem, they tell the Pharisees what Jesus had done. Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, a secret council meeting in which they are trying to decide what to do about Jesus.

And so they decide He has to die. And from that moment on, they try not only to put Jesus to death, but they want to put Lazarus to death as well to sort of cover the miracle. But it was a miracle distinctly done to call attention to Jesus' claims as the Messiah. There was no question it was a miracle. There was no disputing it. And instead of acknowledging Him, instead of worshiping Him, the leaders of the nation instead convene a council and decide He's got to go.

So that's the point of the miracle. But to the question that your daughter's asking, Rod, the bottom line is in those days in which Lazarus was dead, we don't really know what happened. We can only assume. We know it was unique. This didn't ordinarily happen. We know he wasn't raised in a resurrection body. He died again; Lazarus isn't still on the planet somewhere in a resurrected body. There's no indication that he was in a resurrected body after this and just ascended to heaven. So undoubtedly he died in a body like ours, and he was raised in a renewed form, in a resurrected form of that fallen body.

Now, what happened to his soul during that period of time? That's the real question. His body, we know where his body was. It was in the tomb. But we're two-part beings: We're body and soul. And so the question is, where was Lazarus soul during those days? And the answer is we don't know. We're not told that. If I were to fashion a guess, and that's all it is, I would say that it's possible that he got a glimpse of heaven in that time, that he was able to experience something of heaven because for the believer to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I can't imagine there was some holding place or that his soul was floating around the tomb. I expect that's what happened, but we can't be sure at all of exactly what happened to his soul during those times. But what we do know is that eventually he died again. And at that point we know that his soul was immediately in the Lord's presence.

[Michael Privet] Evening, Tom. Michael Privet. This is a personal question. I'm asking for some guidance. I've got several friends that are devout and practicing Catholics and I've had some spirited debates with them and done the best I can. And I was wondering if you could give maybe three or so points, the chief arguments, I guess, against Catholicism that I could do in a loving and friendly way.

[Tom] Well, first of all, let me say that's a great question. I know many of you have Catholic family and friends. In fact, let me just ask you this: How many here were saved out of some form of Catholicism maybe early in your life or maybe leading right up to the moment of your salvation? Let me see.

Yeah. At Grace Church, when we would ask that question out there, of course it's a larger audience that's Hispanic and otherwise, and we would have over 50% of the folks who were saved out of a Catholic background. And I believe, and to Michael's point here, I believe that today Catholicism really serves for us what the Jewish synagogues were for Paul, because there are a lot of things in common.

While the first century Jewish synagogues were teaching a false gospel, the Phariseaic form of legalism, nevertheless, they believed in the same God, they believed in the same Scripture. And so there was a foundation there from which to argue. And that's why Paul, when he went to a new city, the first place he always went was to the synagogue. Not only because he was Jewish, not only because of his love and heart for the Jewish people, as he says in Romans, in Romans 10, but also, I think, because it was a great place to evangelize because they already believed certain things in common, although they were not clear on the gospel. And so I think the Catholic Church is a great mission field for us. And as you think about those people in your life who are Catholic friends, acquaintances, family members, this is a great thing for you to pray about and to begin to do.

Now, to your question, first of all, let me recommend to you one of our missionaries, one of our church's missionaries, Mike Gendron has some excellent materials in helping with Catholics. You might check those out, see if they're appropriate for the relationship you have with these folks. And so those materials can be helpful. You can find them online.

But let me go specifically to the key issues. I remember back oh, now, it's been many years ago, but one of the most fascinating discussions I ever had with a Catholic was with a Roman Catholic priest.

I was at the time leading a group that were from Grace to You from all over the country on an Alaskan cruise. And John was there, of course. That's why they were there. He was teaching and they came to travel. Maybe some of you have taken a trip like that with John or some other Christian leader. And I was organizing the trip.

And so every morning for devotions, we would gather in one of the meeting rooms and we would have, I don't know, I was teaching that. And we'd probably have a couple of hundred people that would show up for this morning devotion at 7:00 or whatever time of study of the Scripture and prayer. Well, there was a Catholic priest that the cruise line paid to be there to do Mass for Catholics. And he was coming in right after us, and he was just amazed that that many people would show up because he'd have like, one or two Catholics show up for the morning Mass. And so he's trying to figure out what's going on. And he asked if we could meet.

And I said, well, sure, I'd love to meet. And so we got together and this goes to your question, by the way. This isn't just a story. We got together for coffee and I decided before we met that I wanted to take a particular tact with him. And this is where I would encourage you to go. When you think about the differences between what the Bible teaches, what we believe, and what the Roman Catholic Church has come to believe over the last 1,200 years, there really are two key differences. There are a lot of issues, but there are two key issues.

The first issue has to do with the source of authority. And by the way, that's always the question. That's always the issue to raise in any discussion is what is the ultimate source of authority. In the Catholic tradition, what they would say the source of authority is the Scripture. Yes, but only the Scripture as interpreted by the church. In other words, you see the Scripture through the grid of what's called the Magisterium. It's the collection of what the church has taught about the Scripture.

So you shouldn't go to the Scripture, they would say. You shouldn't rely on your own understanding of the Scripture. Instead, you leave the Scripture to the priest and to the leadership. They will interpret it, and that's your real authority. So in a very real sense in Catholicism, the authority is not the Scripture. And they would, I think even many of them, admit to this. The authority is what the church has taught about the Scripture. And so that's a key issue to go to, because ultimately men can err, men can be wrong. And this was not the approach the New Testament, even the apostles, took.

Think about this for a moment. In fact, turn to 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. Paul describes his ministry. Now remember, Paul was not a priest, he was not a cardinal, he was not a bishop, he wasn't a pope. He was an apostle hand-picked by Jesus Christ, had a vision of Christ in which he was called to this ministry. And notice what he says in 2 Corinthians 4:1: "Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart." So he's talking about his ministry. "We have renounced the hidden, the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating, the word of God."

In other words, he's saying we don't handle the Scriptures in a deceitful way. We're open, we teach the Scripture. And notice then what he says: "In our teaching, we are manifesting the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."

What is Paul saying? He's saying as an apostle, “I'm presenting the truth.” And that person has the truth manifested in their hearts and they have to deal with that truth individually. Now, don't misunderstand. That doesn't mean I can just make the Scripture say whatever I want it to say. That's how the Catholics would caricature our view. What we are saying is that you have the Word, you have the Spirit, and together you can come to an understanding of the Scripture and you are supposed to come to an understanding of the Scripture.

Paul says we commend ourselves to every man's conscience. This truth that we're manifesting, we commend it to every man's conscience in the sight of God. You have a responsibility to deal with the truth.

You come to Acts 17. And how are the Bereans described in Acts 17? They're described as those who checked out the apostle Paul daily against the Scriptures to see if these things were so. And so ultimately the model we have in the New Testament is that the Scripture is the ultimate standard and not someone else's teaching of the Scripture, because even -- and here's something I would bring up and did bring up to this priest -- even apostles occasionally were wrong when they gave in. You remember Galatians 2? Paul had to confront Peter to his face because Peter compromised the gospel because of the pressure of the Judaizers. And so the ultimate standard: What was Paul using to confront him with? The Scripture. The ultimate standard is the Scripture, not what the Church or a priest or an apostle even, or certainly a pope has said about it. It's not the Magisterium. I am responsible. The Scripture is clear. The clarity, the perspicuity of Scripture.

It's clear enough in the major issues of faith and doctrine for even a simple person to understand and to get. They may not get all of the intricacies. There are things, as Peter says, that are hard to understand. But at the same time, the big things of salvation, the nature of God, etc. are clear enough for anyone to understand. And so that's the source of authority.

And I think you have to go to the source of authority because what they're really saying is the Church can't be wrong. And the response to that is first: The Church can be wrong. The apostle Peter was wrong in Galatians 2. And second: The Scripture is commended to each man, and each man is encouraged then to study and check the teaching against the Scripture. It's the standard. You see that in a number of places.

So I would go to the source of authority. The second issue that I went to in this discussion with his priest, and he was shocked by this, by the way, is I went to the issue of how a man is made right with God. This is the second key issue.

On what basis is a man made right with God? If you look at Catholic theology, essentially it's very clear, and that is, yes, it is faith. Yes, it is grace, but it is not faith alone. It is not grace alone. It is God by His grace working good works in you, which you then work out. So it's grace. But your works ultimately become, although grace enabled works, become the foundation for your salvation along with baptism and the sacraments and all of the things that you are supposed to do as a Catholic.

And none of those things guarantee your salvation. None of them guarantee that you won't spend time in purgatory and so forth and so forth. But the key issue is on what basis is a man made right with God? When I brought up to this Catholic priest, I said what we believe is totally opposite. And in fact, here's what the Council of Trent, the Reformation era statement about the doctrine of the Catholic Church, said. It said, and I quoted a paraphrased version of it to him, it says that if any man says that a man is justified by faith alone so as to mean that his works do not contribute to that justification, let him be damned. I said that's what the church, the Catholic Church, teaches. Here's what I believe. And I took him to Romans 3, showed him justification by faith alone, and I said, we can't both be right. These are contradictory approaches to the gospel. Paul says in Galatians 1, there's one right gospel, and everything else is a false gospel. That means one of us is right and is going to heaven, and the other of us is wrong and is going to hell. Or there's a third option we might both be wrong, but we can't both be right.

And so he was shocked by that, by the way. And he started saying, "Well, I don't agree with everything the church teaches." And he had been, unfortunately, sort of been brought up in an ecumenical environment in Vancouver, Canada, in which there were all of his Protestant buddies, telling him they all believe the same thing. And this was, I think, the first time he'd ever been told that there were huge gulfs of difference between what he believed and what we believed about how a man is made right with God.

And so I think that's the key issue to go to: The source of authority, what is the authority, and secondly, on what basis is a man made right with God. And you'll get some good materials on both of those fronts with Mike Gendron's stuff on the Internet. Okay?

[Mark Atkins] Mark Atkins and my question is: With so many English versions of the Bible in circulation today, which is the most accurate version to use for personal study?

[Tom] Great question, Mark. Yeah, you know, obviously here we use and I teach from the New American Standard, and here's why. Let me back up and give you translation philosophy.

When you look at why or how the Scriptures are translated, you understand that the Bible was originally written on parchment. It was originally written by the men or in some cases animal skins. And those original documents we don't have. We don't have any of those original autographs. But those were circulated, let's say, the letter to the church at Ephesus, for example, it was circulated through the churches in that region and beyond.

And as each church got it, you can imagine if we received as a church a letter from the apostle Paul, what would we do with it? Well, in today's world, we'd put it on the Internet, but then, all right, then what would you do? You'd say, well, we need to pass this along to other churches, but boy, we don't want to be without this. We want this here. So we're going to make a copy. We're going to have somebody in our congregation who is meticulous to make a copy of this, maybe several, and we're going to compare them and make sure we get as accurate a copy as we can. And that's how the Scriptures began to be copied. And today we have around 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament documents, copies that were made and circulated. We can compare them. And when we compare them, the similarities are astounding and the differences are minuscule. No doctrine of the New Testament is affected by any of the variant readings between all the manuscripts.

It's really a remarkable thing, how God has preserved His word. And I'll deal with that a little bit when we get to Mark 16. In that end section of Mark 16, where there's a lot of question about that.

Let's take the New Testament. That's simpler for us to work with. You have these Greek manuscripts and they have been compiled. The variant readings have been compiled into a reliable sort of compilation of those manuscripts. So you have one document that sort of summarizes the best of the readings and the scholars work through that and so forth. Again, no major doctrine is affected even by the variations. They're minor variations. So now you've got to translate that from Greek into English. Now there are a couple of different translation philosophies that are present today.

One of them is called formal equivalence. And that's where you take a Greek word and you say, all right, I'm going to try to find the closest English word to that Greek word and I'm going to have a formal equivalence between Greek word to English word. That's one approach.

Now, you can't do that perfectly because there are figures of speech and things in the structure of the Greek language that don't translate into English. But you can do that almost entirely as you work your way through the New Testament. I read from my Greek New Testament almost every day, and the similarities are remarkable. The word order varies, there are things like that. But you can do a formal equivalence. That's one translation philosophy.

The second translation philosophy is called dynamic equivalence. This is where instead of going Greek word to English word, you say, “No, I'm going to go from Greek word to Greek thought. What was this Greek author, what was this author of Scripture trying to say with that Greek word?” Then I'm going to go from Greek thought to English thought, and then I'm going to go from English thought to English words.

Okay, do you see the pattern? And what you get then is not a word for word equivalence, but rather an idea for idea equivalence. Those are the two translation philosophies. Now, let me lay out for you where the different English versions stand on that. Not all of them, obviously, but a few of the key ones. I obviously believe in formal equivalence. If we believe in word for word as much as possible, because if we believe in inspiration, if we believe all of it's inspired, every word is inspired, every small Hebrew letter and every small stroke on a Hebrew letter, as Jesus says in Matthew 5, then we believe that the words themselves are inspired. So why wouldn't I want to take that as closely as possible from the original language into my language? So with that in mind on the formal equivalence end, the end that I would encourage you to read and study, you have probably the most literal translation into English that we have is the New American Standard. I mean, there are a couple of ones that are called literal translations in which it's very wooden, hard to read and difficult. But the new American Standard is a very literal translation. When you have that, you have formal equivalence at its finest.

Now, if you move a little bit away from formal equivalence, you have something like the English Standard Version. It is not exactly the same or as formal in its equivalence as the New American Standard, but it's a good translation. If we weren't using the New American Standard, I'd probably be preaching from the English Standard Version.

Then you have a little bit further away from formal equivalence. You have the King James Version and the New King James Version. Some of them are relying on different manuscript families. We'll talk a little bit about that some point in the future. So I have some disagreements there on that front, but also it's not quite as literal.

Then you come sort of to the middle and you get to something like the NIV. It's a decent translation. If it's the only English translation we had, we'd be happy. But there is more interpretation in it than I'm comfortable with.

I'd like, particularly for those of you who don't read the original languages, I'd prefer for you to have as much as possible, as close as you can get to the original so that you can make those choices. Let me give you an example, and this isn't necessarily in a translation, don't look for this, but I'll just give you sort of a hypothetical example. In in Ephesians chapter 6, you have the the armor that's given there, the armor that we're to put on. One of those pieces of armor is called the "sword of the Spirit."

The "sword of the Spirit." Now, what does that mean? Well, a translator could look at "sword of the Spirit" and say, okay, "That is the sword which is the Spirit," and he could translate it that way, "the sword which is the Spirit." Or he could say, "No, I think that's 'the sword the Spirit uses'" and he could translate it that way.

Now he is making interpretive judgments and he's giving that to you as a translation. Wouldn't you rather have what the original says and that is "the sword of the Spirit"? So you can decide whether it's "the sword which is the Spirit" or "the sword which the Spirit uses" or other variations. That's just one example of how the further you get toward dynamic equivalence, the more decisions they're making about what the text means. And they're presenting that to you as though that's what the text actually says, when in reality they're making those decisions. And so that's why we prefer formal equivalence. That way if you don't speak the original language, you're getting the best scholars can give us of what the original says in our language.

And so you go down here farther and you've got really paraphrases, things like the Living Bible, where it's just -- you remember how Ken Taylor, right? I think that's who did that. He did it on the train on the way home, sort of paraphrasing it for his kids. Well, that's his interpretation. That's like an uninformed commentary is what it really is. It's not really a translation. The Message would be another example.

The New Living Translation is a form of dynamic equivalence where it's very loose in terms of you get the idea, but not the words. Okay? So I would very strongly encourage you to lean toward the formal equivalence side. And that's the New American Standard, the English Standard Version. Those are both great translations.

I read some from other translations, like when I do, I'm reading through the Bible, I'll use some that are more dynamic equivalent. Like I enjoy reading the NIV for that reading if I'm reading through a large portion of Scripture, it's a little more middle of the road. And occasionally I'll use a paraphrase, Phillips' translation or something else, just to see it a different way. But I'm always aware in my mind, and you need to be aware when you're using one of those other translations, that it is someone's interpretation. The further you move down that path, the more somebody is giving you their interpretations rather than the actual words of Scripture itself.

[Matt Stitzman] Matt Stitzman. Could you sketch out a biblical framework for enhancing our anticipation of our hope and the inheritance laid up for us, avoiding what I think Randy Alcorn calls christoplatonism, where heaven is like a glorified India concert, and focusing on heaven as a place to the exclusion of heaven being heaven, because God is there. I mean, it is a place, and we know that His blessing will flow as far as the curse is found. But how to stay out of the ditch?

[Tom] Yeah, well, that's a great question. I'm not sure that I can tell you perfectly how to do that because I'm not sure I do it perfectly, but I'll tell you my own perspective on it, and that is: I think we have to, some of this happens as you age, honestly, and those of you who are older, you understand this. I think aging is a gift of God because it begins to detach us a little bit from this life. You begin to realize, ooh, the same thing is ultimately going to happen to me that's happened to all those millions and billions of people who've lived before me.

And you begin to think to the future. And I think if you're in Christ, you're reading the Scripture, it just begins to happen as you age. I think another thing that happens is when persecution comes. You go to places where there's persecution, and they're not tied to this world. They're not getting up. And forgive me if I'm offending somebody here, but they're not getting up at 2 a.m. to rush to the Walmart. They're looking for heaven. They're anticipating something beyond the "stuff mart." They're looking at something that's much higher and much grander because they don't have stuff. And if they had it, it might be taken away and their lives are at risk.

So I think the ease of our lives hurts us on that front. And I think also, the younger you are, the more you sort of push all of those things out into the future, and it's harder to live in the reality of them. But when you start doing the math...

Let me just share something with you. And this has helped me from the time I was in college, and I'll share this with you again. I think first of next year, I'm going to do a special message on sort of living life intentionally and on purpose. But I never get very far from this idea. I would say I never go more than probably two or three weeks without this idea affecting me. When I was in college, I had a professor say to me, or say to our class, he said, all right. He said, "I want you to understand that there is an industry that is gambling on your life."

There is. It's the life insurance industry. They are essentially selling you an insurance policy, and they are putting together a complicated set of actuarial tables to decide how long it is you're going to live. So they know how much to charge you, and they're gambling that you're going to live only a certain amount of time, and that if they charge you the right amount, they're going to make money in the process.

Now let me cut through the complexity of the actuarial tables to the reality. The typical male in this room tonight is going to live to the age of about 74. That's the average. Some of us will die sooner, some of us will live longer, but 74 is the average. The average woman in this room to about 77, 78 I think it's averaged up to.

So let me just encourage you to do something. Subtract your age from that number. If you're male, from 74, if you're female, from 78. That's how long you have on average left to live on this planet.

What are you going to do with that time? I think that is one way to live in light of eternity. It's to, you know, what does Moses say? The oldest psalm we have was written by Moses 1,400 years before Christ, Psalm 90. And he says, "Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our heart unto wisdom."

I think that's where it begins. I think it begins by realizing, wow, life here flies. I don't have that long here. And so I began to look: I love life here. Life is a wonderful gift, and I enjoy or try to enjoy every day, and I think most days I do enjoy. But I'm glad this isn't all there is.

And I think that's what happens. I think thinking intentionally in that way, regardless of your age, helps. And I think naturally, the life circumstances, as your body ages and as you begin to see your mortality, I think your thoughts begin to turn away from this, and this being all there is, to heaven.

But let me say this too. I think it's important, Matt, to remember: A lot of people get caught up in heaven. And you know what? I'm looking forward to heaven. But you understand that heaven is not your final destination.

Heaven is a halfway house, if you will, because here's what's going to happen according to the Scriptures. You look at Revelation 21 and 22, what you discover is after the great white throne of judgment. Well, in fact, let's do this. Let's just kind of walk through real quickly a biblical eschatology. If you die before Christ comes, your body is going to go in the grave. And your soul, the moment you die, will be immediately in the Lord's presence. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And you will be at a perfected spirit in heaven, in the place where God dwells now. That's where you will be.

That's where you will stay until the Second Coming. At the end of the tribulation period, you, in your perfected spirit, will return with Christ to this earth. He will, you remember, land and put His feet upon the Mount of Olives. He will retake Jerusalem. He will establish his kingdom on this planet. He will renew this planet, we're told, and that's described in glorious ways in Isaiah the prophet, and other places.

We will live then not in heaven, but on this renewed planet for a thousand years. And we will rule and reign with Jesus Christ. At the end of that thousand years, according to Revelation 20, there will be the "uncreation" of all that we know. Jesus will speak the universe as we know it out of existence. It will be destroyed. Peter describes that as a great sort of almost atomic implosion in 2 Peter, I think it's chapter 3.

And so the world as we know it, this planet, the universe as we know it will be "uncreated." And then will be the great white throne of judgment. That will not be for us who are in Christ. That will only be for the wicked dead. Every person will be raised. The wicked dead will be raised from hell where their souls have been. They'll be reunited with bodies. Not glorified bodies, but bodies that can endure the torment of hell forever. And they will stand before Jesus Christ according to Revelation 20, and be judged. They'll be judged based on their works. There will be degrees of punishment in hell. They will be consigned to hell. After that judgment, according to Revelation 21 and 22, God is going to make a new heaven and a new earth.

I think it will bear remarkable similarities to the one we have, except it will be without the curse and it'll be more grand and more magnificent, which, frankly, for me is hard to imagine. I drive down the street and I see the fall colors and the sky and everything God has made, and I'm amazed. And I can't imagine all of this without the curse. But I love the way John John, the apostle, describes it. He says, "It will be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness is at home."

No sin, righteousness will be at home, and we will live with Christ on that new earth for eternity. There will be a satellite city that's called the New Jerusalem. I think it actually is connected to the earth, so it will be something different in some ways, but it will be a new earth, and that's where we will spend eternity.

I think the more that you study those passages, and let me encourage you to go back when I was going through systematic theology here on Sunday nights for four years, I did a series on eschatology and go back and listen to some of those messages and sort of get in your minds. Listen to the two on the new heaven and the new earth. For me, that was the most helpful because it reminded me of what really is my eternal future.

We're not going to be floating around on clouds playing harps for eternity, all right? That's not the reality. We're going to live on a new earth in which righteousness is at home, and we're going to live in a new universe that I think will bear similarities to the one we know, but it will be even more spectacular.

[Randy Rhodes] My name is Randy Rhodes, and I just celebrated Thanksgiving with family members. And I just want to make a disclaimer. I grew up in a not so United Methodist Church, and I give praise to God that I was saved in a Methodist church. But it's always been my concern because I have some loved ones who reside in the Methodist church. I always appreciate sermons or people lecturing mentioning statistics about maybe the virgin birth, the six day creation. And I'm always perplexed as to why the Methodist Church always tends to rank really low, tends to be that maybe the Baptist are the highest percentage. Really more of a commentary from you. What do you think it is about the Methodist Church? Or is it just the typical maybe unsaved liberalism I know obviously with ordaining women in the pastorates, just maybe the inclusion of homosexuality and so forth. So my question is specifically, what are your thoughts about the United Methodist Church? And then I don't know if it has anything to do with Wesley on the issue of a Holy Spirit second birth after conversion in the second blessing slide that they moved away, but just really just your comments on that.

[Tom] Sure. Yeah, no, it is tragic. I mean, the Wesleys, while I would have some I would have some disagreements with the Wesleys, they were brothers in Christ, and I anticipate seeing them in heaven. I think they would be appalled at what the Methodist Church has become, how it is largely, particularly the United Methodist Church, it has largely fled from the gospel.

In fact, I'll just give you a little anecdote. When I was out in LA, I was asked, I ran into a man at a concert, classical guitar concert. Christopher Parkening is a dear friend of mine, the world's foremost classical guitarist. And we were a little concert, my wife and I, that he was doing. And we ran into this couple who were in a United Methodist church in the San Fernando Valley. And he found out that I was on staff and that I spoke, and he didn't know. And he just invited me to come and speak to their men's group. Well, I was eager to do that, of course. I'd love to.

So I went to speak to this men's group. There were probably 100, 150 men that showed up that night. And I decided, because I knew likely the condition of the church, I decided just to go to the heart of the gospel.

I went to John 20 and dealt with the Resurrection, the death of Christ and the Resurrection and just worked my way through the text. And I was struck by the eagerness with which the men were listening, taking notes. It was obvious they didn't come prepared to take notes. They were pulling out little napkins and scraps of paper. This isn't something they normally did because they didn't need to, but they're taking notes. And then at the end, they had asked me to leave it open for questions.

Well, sitting in the back was the man that was pretty -- I hadn't met him -- but it was pretty clear to me he was the pastor for several reasons. And when I opened it for questions, by the way, it turns out he was the pastor. I was right. But I opened it for questions. His was the first hand that went up. And here's what he asked me.

He said, "Well, Tom, isn't it true that we don't even know if the apostle John wrote that book?" He was so appalled that I was teaching his men the truth of John and the truth of the gospel that he had to do something to undermine it. Fortunately, I was prepared for him. There's actually a part of a manuscript that I'd learned about in seminary called the Rylands Papyrus, which dates to 125 AD. I mean, it's like, 25 years after the Apostle John's death. There is no other ancient document that has documentation that close. It's remarkable.

And so I was ready for him, but I was just appalled at that. And I think that's a commentary on what you're talking about. And I believe, and of course, I haven't read enough about Methodism to know this for sure, but my suspicion is that what has happened is liberalism infiltrated the seminaries. That's always where it begins. And then it infiltrates the pastorate. And then the true believers in the church, many of them who have some degree of discernment, when they get a pastor who's standing up there teaching something that isn't the truth from Scripture, they recognize that and they flee somewhere else. They fled to the Baptist or to the Bible church movement or somewhere else. And what you're left with then is you're left with essentially an apostate church in many cases. You're left with an unbelieving pastor who doesn't even believe, as this man didn't, didn't believe in the truth of the gospel, didn't believe in the truth of the Resurrection, of the Scripture, and that's what he's teaching. And so a lot of people who end up there then end up there because it's a nice building, it's a nice facility, they're nice people, and it becomes that. And so the gospel is gone.

It's interesting when you come to the seven churches, you have that church in which Christ is standing at the door and knocking. People try to make that, well, that's God knocking at the door of your heart. That is not what that's talking about.

It's talking about a real church in Asia Minor. And it was so filled with unbelievers. It still had, in this case, the true gospel and the true Christ taught, or it wouldn't have been a church, but it was so filled with unbelievers that Christ was standing on the door outside knocking, asking somebody if there's any believer in there, let me in.

I'm afraid that while that's not exactly true of every United Methodist church, I think that's true of the denomination as a whole. I think it has bought into liberalism and what was taught back with the dead Germans when they were selling all of that stuff. And it's been so infiltrated into the seminaries, into the churches.

We went over to a United Methodist church here locally for a concert where one of the large local symphonies plays. And in their pew, I was sitting there waiting for this concert to begin. Again it was my friend Christopher Parkening, and he was playing over there. And I pulled out one of their hymn books. Not the main hymn book, but a supplemental hymn book that this church specifically wanted their church to have. And in that hymn book was a hymn to "God our mother." I mean, that's the reality of where things are. There's no gospel. There's no clarity on who God is. There's no belief in the Scripture as the inspired word.

And so it's not much above. You heard recently in the newspaper that the atheists so much like what happens in churches on Sunday, that they're going to do the same thing. They're going to meet on Sunday, but it's going to be "unchurch." They're going to sing songs. They're going to have fellowship. They're going to do the things we do, just without God. It'll be interesting to see how that works out. But I think, sadly, that happens even with churches that bear the Christian name. And I think it all starts when the Scriptures are eroded. And I think when the confidence in the Scriptures eroded, eventually the gospel goes. And when the gospel goes, those people who are truly in Christ go by and large. I'm not saying there are no believers in the United Methodist Church. I think some of them stay because they don't distinguish or discern, but they have believed in the true Christ. But as a church, it really becomes Ichabod. The Spirit is departed.

[Unidentified] So two questions. First question is, as I was reading Revelation, just finishing it yesterday, and I read about Tony Pluck, by the way, read about the millennium, and it just struck me. I thought, "Why is there the millennium? Why didn't Christ just come back and judge and move immediately into eternity?" But the other question that Matt was asking, I wanted to just tag on: Is there a sense in which as we let go of the things of this world and we understand how temporary and futile a lot of what we do here is that there is a greater version of those things that do bring satisfaction in heaven. That work will be fulfilling, that relationships will be eternal and not broken. And that our real satisfaction...John Piper writes about the idea that God is most satisfied or God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

And is there a sense in which we look forward to a fulfillment, a lot of these desires that we have in our hearts but can't be fulfilled here because there's just temporariness and sin and other things like that?

[Tom] Yeah. Okay, you may have to remind me of your first question about why the millennium. But let me answer the second question.

I think that's absolutely true. I love the way Solomon puts it in Ecclesiastes. He says that "God has written eternity in our hearts."

Listen, I know that I'm not made for 70 or 80 years, okay? I know that. I sense that. In fact, my dear mom, who's now with the Lord, when she was 91, I was talking to her -- actually, when she turned 90 -- I was talking to her and I said, "So, mom, how does it feel to be 90?" And she said to me, "You know, it's no different today. I don't feel any different inside today than when I was 18. It's just my body. It's falling down around me. It's decaying around me. But I'm the same person with the same energy, with the same everything inside that I was when I was 18."

I feel that. I'm interacting with some of the younger guys and I forget that I'm 30 years older than they are. It's because we weren't made for just a few years. We were made for eternity. Our souls were made for eternity. And so we sense that, we know that; God has sort of written that on our hearts.

And along with that, I think, we are made in God's image. And there are certain things we love and appreciate and desire that can only have their fulfillment in a place where there's no sin. And I think that includes work. We will work in the new heaven and the new earth. We will work. But it won't be work, it'll be joy and it'll be the satisfaction of serving our Lord and of using the gifts we've been given.

Listen to again to those messages on the new heaven and the new earth. There are two of them and I sort of fill that out: What are we going to be doing in eternity? And as best we can from the Scripture, trying to fill that out a little bit, that was a great encouragement to me. But absolutely, I think there is just a taste here.

There's a reason Paul refers to our existence here as looking in a bad mirror. In the first century, they didn't have mirrors like you and I have. He talks about we see dimly. I think that's the idea. You got this mirror that's made out of metal that sort of gives you a reflection, but it isn't really good. You're looking forward to the day when you see face to face.

I think that's where we are. We live in the shadowlands and I think we're looking for the reality of the sun when we can see in full clarity. But absolutely, I think we all sense that.

I think to some extent, even unbelievers sense that because they have eternity written in their hearts as well, they weren't made for this for just these 70, 80 years. And they sort of have those longings that can never be fully satisfied in this world. And they can't for us either, but we anticipate when they will be.

Now, to your other question as far as why a millennium. I can't guarantee the answer to this, but I can give you what I think. I really think that the reason for a millennium is for God to finish the promises that he made to the people of Israel. I believe that the Old Testament Israelites were not the church. The church was born at Pentecost. There were among Israel true believers who bear a lot in common with us, but who were not the church per se. The church began at Pentecost, but God made promises to the ethnic descendants of Abraham.

He promised that he would do certain things, including that he would bring them back together and he would establish the throne of David in Jerusalem. And I think that's what the millennium was all about. It's about God showing His faithfulness to the descendants of Abraham even though they were not faithful to Him.

And I think he will put Himself on display. You have those descriptions of the peoples of the nations streaming to Jerusalem. I think that's what it's about. It's about God saying, "Listen, I never make promises and break them. And there are promises that I haven't yet fulfilled, and so that's what I'm going to do." And, yeah, could He do what the amillennials think? Could He do that? Yeah, but I don't think the Scriptures teach that. I don't think He will, because He's going to be faithful to the promises He made to them. And there are promises that have not yet been fulfilled. So I think that's what the millennium is all about.

Now I think once even in the millennium, but certainly once you get past the millennium, the differences between Israel and the church are gone. They're gone in the millennium, but they'll certainly be gone in eternity in every sense of the word. We are one new man. As Paul says in Ephesians 2, the Church is made up of Jew and Gentile together. One new man.

All right, great. Thank you guys for your patience and for your questions. I hope some of those were challenging, maybe get you thinking or studying in a little different direction. If you have other questions, don't hesitate to come down and ask afterwards, I'll be down here. If you're visiting tonight, please come down and introduce yourself. It's great to have you here.

Let me pray and then Seth, where are you? Are we going to close with a song? You want me just to close? I think we'll close tonight. It's 7:30. So let me do that. Sorry, you guys. I know you had a great number prepared for us. Save it for next week, okay? All right, let's pray together.

Our Father, we're so grateful for Your goodness to us. Thank You for Your Word. Thank You for the gospel. Thank You for the Scripture. Father, thank You that Your work continues in us and will continue until the day of Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to live in anticipation of that.

Help us to enjoy Your good gift of life here. But, Father, don't let us commit everything here. Don't let us live as if this is all that there is. Father, may we live with an eye to eternity, an eye to Your presence, an eye to the day when we will behold Your glory, and to the day when You will destroy this heaven and this earth, and You will make all things new. And we will live with You in the light of Your presence, in wonderful, glorious fellowship with You. Our God, our Creator, forever serving You and serving others without sin in a place where righteousness is perfectly at home. Lord, we praise You. We thank you for Your grace. Help us to live looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, even our Lord Jesus Christ.

Father, we pray with the apostle John. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. We pray it in His name. Amen.