Search the Scriptures Daily Program #3402a:
Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael; thanks for tuning in. Coming up in this week’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their exploration of the Gospel of John, and “Who is the hireling?” In Religion in the News, “The Archbishop of Canterbury joins the Druids,” we’ll take a look at that story and examine the question: “How do we walk in the Spirit? We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers many teaching materials including books, tracts, audio and video tapes and copies of our weekly broadcast on tape or compact disc. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we make available free of charge. We will let you know how to order later in the program. Now, this week’s cover article. We continue with our series of discussions based on Dave Hunt’s book from Harvest House with the 61 st installment of In Defense of the Faith and along with Dave Hunt, here is T. A. McMahon.
Tom:
Thanks, Gary. You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him. Dave, I probably jumped the gun last week when I got excited about this program. Because this is the—three years. This is our 156 th program. I’ll see if my math is right. Fifty-two a year and three years—wow! By the grace of God. And our program, if you’ve joined us for the first time, or if you are a first time listener, the program is called Search the Scriptures Daily and that’s what we try to encourage our listeners and encourage ourselves to continue to abide in God’s Word, to look to God’s Word.
Dave:
Not to take our word for it, our interpretation. Although we do the best we can with the understanding the Lord has given us, but you have to check us out like you check everybody else out; like the Bereans checked Paul out and you are accountable to God. The Bible is understandable. You don’t have to be a seminary graduate, have a Ph.D., or be an expert in Greek and Hebrew. The ordinary person can read the Word of God and come to an understanding. And we are just trying to do that together.
Tom:
The Word of God, the epistles as you said Dave, are to common folk, not to seminary graduates or seminary professors and God expects us to understand his Word. He’s put it together that way.
Dave:
Amen.
Tom:
So what we’ve been doing for the past number of weeks, we’ve been utilizing—actually months, maybe even a year now, we’ve been going through Dave’s book, In Defense of the Faith and out of which we have gleaned questions that Dave has answered in his many years of ministries and they are terrific questions. They give us topics to discuss.
Dave:
This is just the first segment of the program that we deal with that, not the whole program. We move on to other things.
Tom:
But the bottom line is what we present. How does it relate to God’s Word? What does God’s Word have to say about it? That’s really the heart of it. So let’s begin with our first question. For many weeks we’ve been talking about evil, personal evil, sin, where it came from, how we deal with it and so on. This questioner writes: We are told in the Bible that sin entered into the world when Adam and Eve took of the forbidden fruit. Yet Eve wanted it and must have looked upon it with desire before she actually ate of it. Was it sin for her to do so, even to touch it and pick it? If so, there was sin before Adam sinned.
Dave:
Well Jesus did say that to look upon a woman with lust is to commit adultery with her in your heart. However, there was no conscience; Eve had not been told everything that would lead her to understand that. Adam and Eve were told not to eat of this tree. Every other tree was available for them and there were probably thousands of trees, so you would have to say this was the easiest test God could give man.
Tom:
Test of what Dave? Of their love for him? Of their obedience to him?
Dave:
Whether they would obey him. Whether they would let him be God. In other words, God created the universe; he has to make the rules, he’s got to run the show. Is man, his creature going to decide he can do his own thing, do what he wants in God’s universe? That’s not quite right. So it was a very simple test and Eve failed. Now she said to this serpent that they were not to eat it or even touch it. Now God never said that.
Tom:
At least as far as we understand the scriptures. The scriptures do not say that.
Dave:
Right, so I think Eve had been looking at this fruit, longing for it. It’s like “don’t walk on the grass,” then you have to walk on the grass. The grass is always greener on the other side. What you are not supposed to have, that’s what you always want.
Tom:
And this was prior to sin having entered in.
Dave:
Yes, it gives you an insight into sin. In our last program we had a question about Satan being in God’s presence still, why he has the right to be there and how and did sin actually begin in the heart of Satan? It tells you something about sin, about evil, about our own hearts. It tells us that God has created certain beings, obviously Satan, and apparently some of the angels and certainly man, autonomous. It’s a mystery. Those of you out there that are parents—I remember our youngest child, the first word he learned was “no” and he would say it in his sleep. Now Tom, you know him, he’s a nice guy now; in his forty’s but boy! I remember one day asking him “What are you going to be when you grow up?” He said, “I am going to be a villain! Woo, that’s not very encouraging. One day he came in from playing with a next door neighbor boy, I think he was about three, and I asked him, “What kind of games have you guys been playing?” And he said, “Stomp the little people!” Oh my gracious, what do we have on our hands, a master criminal growing up? But he turned out to be a wonderful Christian and really a very sweet guy. So when you look at a child, you can try to train the child, but you don’t know what’s actually going on in their mind as they grow up as teenagers. And you cannot control them. You can try to give them wisdom, tell them what is right, help them to understand, that there are other people in this world than themselves; that other people do have rights and not only that, but there are ultimate consequences for sin, that you will face eternity, you face God. Ultimately he is the judge. So you can reason all you want with a person, but you can’t make them do anything, unless they are willing to—well you can make them do it against their will, but you cannot change their heart, you cannot change their mind. So God says, “Come now, let us reason together,” in Isaiah:1:18Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.. And I guess he had reasoned enough with Adam and Eve. He said you eat that tree, you die. That’s it. They didn’t even know what death was. So was there sin before? I don’t think so. The sin was breaking the specific command of eating of the tree. Not to eat of it, he didn’t say not to touch it. Maybe you could even pick it, but you’re heading in the wrong direction when you do that. Now, Adam was not deceived. Eve was deceived by the serpent. He said you could be like God; you can become one of the gods. This will make you wise. You can fulfill your desires. You don’t have to just knuckle under to everything that God says. I mean you guys can do your own thing and you can really boogie it up, you know. There’s a lot more tunes you can play than what God is allowing you. And she believed that lie.
Tom:
She bought it.
Dave:
She wanted that tree. She was selfish. We can look upon it really as the birth of self. That’s all she was thinking of, how delicious it will taste to me, how beautiful it looks to me, how wise it will make me. I, my, me. And she trampled on the rights of Adam. He was her husband, they were in this together. She didn’t consult him. In fact, it was too late by the time—and she didn’t consult him. She gave him, she said, “Come on Adam, I’m the leader, follow me, this is going to be terrific.” And Adam, the Bible says was not deceived, he was in a transgression. He did this with his eyes open. He knew that he was disobeying God. He knew that he was going down the path to destruction.
Tom:
He made a choice.
Dave:
He made a choice. We can only surmise he didn’t want to lose his wife. He didn’t want to lose Eve and this was changing her destiny and he wanted to go along with her. And so the Bible blames Adam. “By one man sin entered into the world.” So this person says well wasn’t there sin before Adam sinned?” I suppose technically you could say that, but Adam was the head of the household. Adam was the one who had been first created. The Bible indicates that. It says that Adam was first formed and then Eve. And Adam was not deceived. He was in the transgression. So Tom, it’s so simple and yet it is so profound. On the one hand it seems this isn’t right. They just ate some fruit and all of this came from that? All of the suffering and crime and—
Tom:
Dave, for many Roman Catholics out there, and as a former Roman Catholic you confess to sin like that in confession to the priest, he’s just like—“What’s your problem? It’s just a menial sin.” He probably wouldn’t even give it any thought.
Dave:
Yes, but it was in fact, rebellion against God. And you can look at it this way. You say well that’s just a small thing that I did. Well wouldn’t it be even worse to rebel against God for something small? I mean if it was important—this is a big thing—if you were starving and it was the only tree available. But if you have hundreds, probably thousands of trees, and you probably had other trees that had the same fruit as this on them.
Tom:
Dave, why don’t we think like that? I mean this is really an important point that you’re making. We sort of blow off small sins. Aw, it’s just a white lie, it’s no big deal, or something like that. But it’s an offense to God. Why should I take that—and I do—I mean I am confessing right now, maybe all of us do. We don’t see things just the way you laid it out.
Dave:
Yes, why would I do something so major as rebel against God for something that really isn’t that important? I mean she had plenty of fruit to eat. So this was rebellion and we are reaping the results of that. You could say, I don’t know there are many ways you could look at it. That Eve was injected by the serpent with his deadly poison. It’s been flowing through the bloodstream of every one of her descendants since. It’s really in the heart of every one of us. In other words, we’re no different from Adam and Eve. People say well, I wasn’t there. If I had been there I wouldn’t have done that. One day in the Millennium, in the Millennial Reign of Christ for a thousand years, Satan is locked up, the earth becomes a paradise, Christ is ruling on this earth in his resurrected, glorified body, we Christians are ruling with him in immortal bodies. All the proof is there that anyone could ever want, and Satan is locked up—I mean this is paradise! And when he is loosed—millions.
Tom:
I mean yes, here we go again, only this time millions, right.
Dave:
Yes, so I think that the—
Tom:
But it’s in the heart of man.
Dave:
It is. I think that the millennial reign of Christ at a thousand years is the final proof of the incorrigible evil of the human heart. How are we going to deal with this? How is God going to deal with this? What is he going to do? He loves mankind; he doesn’t want them to go into eternal doom, but God is holy. The soul that sinneth, it must die. That’s eternal separation from God. What is he going to do? Well that’s another story, but he sends his Son. God himself comes as a man to pay the penalty that his own infinite justice required for sin. It’s incredible, there’s nothing like it in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and so forth. This is unique to the Bible and yet it is something that people don’t want to believe. They want to do it themselves. Do it yourself kit religion is what most people want. Don’t tell me that I’m so sinful that God won’t accept my good deeds, I mean I can make up for anything that I’ve done that’s wrong by my own good deeds and so forth. Well there was no way that Adam and Eve could put that fruit back on that tree. And there was no way that they could say, “Well Lord we’ll work hard and we’ll try to see that this tree bares more fruit so that there will be a replacement for the one fruit off of that tree that we ate.” Impossible! Because sin now has entered, they have rebelled against God, you cannot change it. And that’s the way sin is. When you break the law you can’t tell the judge well, I promise I’ll never break the law again if you let me off. But if you never break the law again, you are only doing what the law requires. You don’t get extra credit. So there is no way to make up for sin in the past. And we all sin in our hearts. The scripture says as in a mirror the face is reflected so the heart of one man is reflected in the heart of another and “The heart is deceitful above all and desperately wicked, who can know it. “Lord search my heart, help me O God.” This is what David prayed. And we must turn to him and his solution is not just Christ paying the penalty for our sins, but Christ coming to really live his life in our hearts.
Tom:
Dave, as we’ve gone through your book, In Defense of the Faith , and again the book is made up of questions that you’ve received over your many years of ministry and some of them have been just antagonistic, some have been just ludicrous. But some have been very thoughtful and I can see somebody listening to this question that was given by a man or woman, I don’t know which it is, but they might say well, what’s the issue here? Did she sin before; did she sin afterwards and so on? On the other hand, I’m impressed by this and I’ll tell you why. This is a thoughtful person. They’re trying to think things through, and that’s one of the incredible frustrations of today, not just with regard to our ministry of encouraging people to search the scriptures, but we’re encouraging them to be thoughtful Christians, to think some of these things through. Because just as we mentioned, Eve was deceived. What’s the anecdote to deception? It’s thinking some things through. Not letting our biases dictate or our impulses or whatever, jumping into things and so on. Thinking things through and—
Dave:
Trusting God.
Tom:
Exactly.
Dave:
God said you eat of that you die. Well that should have been enough. Not second guessing God. It’s a problem that many people come to the Bible trying to find a verse that will justify what they want to do or wanting to twist the verse around, but anyway she disobeyed God.
Tom:
Yes. But again, going back to this question. As you said, God laid it out very simply, very straightforward and she disobeyed. What she thought, who knows? But she didn’t think as we today, don’t think of the consequences of what we may do.
Dave:
Well she was deceived by the serpent’s lie.
Tom:
Right.
Dave:
She believed him instead of God.
Tom:
Right, but I want to get on to this issue of being thoughtful and consequences with regard to being thoughtless. In our ministry, we get lots of letters and sometimes I’m surprised. People have been on the mailing list for a long time, read the materials, read the newsletters and so on. Somebody might write like not too long ago, somebody wrote and said look, I’ve been getting your newsletters for a number of years now, and I love everything you do, but I just don’t know why you pick on Benny Hinn. And you go, wait a minute!
Dave:
We hardly ever mention Benny Hinn. We do have a book that we offer The Confusing World of Benny Hinn , that documents his false prophecies and so forth, but any way I’m sorry.
Tom:
But the point is, look around at his ministry, what he does, and so on. Is this person—How can he be so thoughtful with regard to appreciating some of the things we do over here, yet somebody is obviously a false prophet, a seducer of the brethren as it were? You look at his camp meetings, presentations, conferences whatever you want to call them. There are thousands sometimes 20,000 people there and more. Why are they allowing themselves to be deceived from something that should be so obvious? They are not being thoughtful. That’s my point.
Dave:
Yes, it’s obvious maybe to us because we’ve done a little more study and research, but I’ve heard Benny Hinn say some good things and if that was all you knew about him, you haven’t read any of his books. You did not know of his false prophecies, then you could be deceived I think .
Dave:
Briefly, briefly.
Tom:
Dave! You are sitting there among thousands of people and he’s blowing people over. He’s taking his jacket or his cape.
Dave:
Well now he doesn’t do that anymore. He claims that he doesn’t swing that jacket anymore.
Tom:
Yes, but what about the previous eight years of what ever or more. So my point is that a lot of discernment could be developed if people would be thoughtful. If they would be diligent; if they would not just accept of everything that’s out there. Caveat emptor, buyer bewares. Why are you buying into these things?
Dave:
Well part of the problem Tom is they want something for themselves. He offers success. He offers healing, he offers prosperity. He’s not calling people to the cross. And this was Eve’s problem. Satan offered her something. She found a guru who told her what she wanted to hear. Now the Bible offers understanding. We have to help people understand. Matthew 13, the sower goes out sowing the seed. The seed is the word of God. The soil, these are the hearts of man and the first seed fell by the wayside. And the birds of the air came and took it and the disciples said Lord what does that mean? Jesus said when anyone receives the Word of the kingdom, doesn’t go forward, doesn’t weep, doesn’t pray. No he didn’t say that. But if anyone receives the word of the kingdom, they hear the gospel and they don’t understand it, Satan comes and takes it out of the heart. The Bible emphasizes understanding, over and over, and over. I can’t believe what I don’t understand. And too often the pastor, or an evangelist or the pastor or who ever it is wants to get by with a superficial presentation of the gospel. Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? It didn’t save us. The nails were driven in his hands and feet. It was because when he hung there he became the sacrifice for our sins. It pleased Jehovah to bruise him. You put him to grief, you’ve made his soul an offering for sin. He took the penalty that his own infinite justice required for us and he paid it in full and only on that basis is there forgiveness. God can’t offer forgiveness on any other basis. So if people don’t understand that, we’ve got a lot of people that call themselves Christians and they don’t even believe that Jesus is God, they don’t understand why he came. They think he’s a great teacher, had some wonderful ideals and we’re going to follow him. So understanding is important and we’re trying to come to some of that in this program.
Tom:
Yes, and that’s why we appreciate thoughtful questions.
Dave:
Right.
Tom:
And we encourage—don’t buy into everything. We encourage our listeners, don’t buy into everything. Search the scriptures; make sure that these things are true to God’s Word.
Dave:
Amen.
