cover article

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Welcome to a special edition of Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael, we’re glad you could join us. Coming up in today’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Doctrine of Salvation.  In Religion in the News, “The Kabalah in Tinsel town.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “How Much Education is Needed to Understand the Bible?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  We begin a revisit to our 2000 radio series based on Dave Hunt’s book, Occult Invasion.  Today we focus on the question, “What Is Occultism?”   Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Dave, to start right off, why write a book on occultism?

 

            Dave:

Well, because as the title suggests Occult Invasion, cultism which used to be looked upon as sort of a superstition, you had to go into a darkened séance room, a ghost, see a psychic or crystal ball reading or whatever.  Now it has invaded every part of our society including science and education and religion and even including the evangelical church, so I think it’s a very important topic.

            Tom:

I find that kind of amazing actually that here we are in a day of computers, high technological advances yet the things “spiritual” there is almost a rampant desire, a hunger for things “spiritual” on a day in which science was supposed to solve all our problems.

Dave:

Yes, because science doesn’t really solve problems, it creates a lot of problems, unfortunately.  Yes, we have a more high-tech world.  It’s a lot more conveniences in the home and we can do a whole lot more than we used to be able to do but that doesn’t change the human heart.  It doesn’t change man’s desire for purpose and meaning, for love, for companionship.  It doesn’t change man’s search for:  Where did we come from?  Where are we going?  I think in the book I quote Erwin Schrödinger, one of the leading physicists of this century who gave us our modern physics, and he says that science doesn’t have any answer to:  Where did I come from? Where am I going? God, heaven, hell, beauty.  Science can’t tell you why a sunset is beautiful.  Science cannot deal with any of the basics that man realizes are most important in life.  Einstein when he came up with his theory of relativity—somebody said, well I guess this will show that everything is relative including morals and religion and so forth.  Einstein said:  This is science, it has nothing to do with religion.  And, of course, that’s a problem because science can’t really calibrate or examine or come to any conclusions about the non physical dimension of life.

            Tom:

Science, also in some ways has really failed us, hasn’t it?  It has created more problems—it has driven us away in certain ways.

            Dave:

Well, it creates emptiness, I mean, it raises more questions than it answers actually.  I remember a scientist friend of mine, one of the really top scientists in the world saying it’s like a hall of mirrors that just keeps going on, ever receding images.  He said every door science opens there are ten unopened doors on the other side and the more we learn the more we realize we don’t know.  You talk about cloning or some of the things that we are doing today. These raise moral issues and of course, science is amoral; it doesn’t have any answers for these questions.  You can feel satisfied for a while with your TV and your VCR and your computer and all the great things that you can do that you couldn’t do a century ago, but it doesn’t satisfy the human heart.

            Tom:

But aren’t there some other kinds of—I want to say drives but it’s not really drives, but appetites there that would move people in the direction of spirituality?  I mean, that’s what the Occult Invasion is about.  That there is this hunger, this thirst, almost a rampant hunger, thirst, for things spiritual.  How do we account for that?

Dave:

Well, because science has come to a dead end.  Science realizes that as I said, you can’t explain love, purpose, meaning, justice, truth, some of the major concepts that man has and he knows that they are real.  You can’t explain those in terms of chemical reactions or neuroactivity in the brain.  And science has come to the conclusion that the physical dimension is not all there is.  There is something beyond that.  Now, of course, our society has been driven to that conclusion.  You could go back into the late fifties, sixties, seventies, the drug culture opened the door.  Somebody drops LSD and suddenly they are catapulted into a spiritual adventure, another dimension that they didn’t know existed.  They meet beings, they get all kinds of revelations on drug trips and then that opened the door to the gurus from the East who realized that we were ripe for it now and they came with their Transcendental Meditation, their Yoga, self realization.  Much of it was encouraged by psychology, new developments in psychology, transpersonal psychology, in other words beyond the human being—there’s something out there.

            Tom:

Also, the new physics, quantum physics, hasn’t that at least made the spiritual ideas more acceptable for those who were kind of moving out of materialism, scientific materialism?

            Dave:

Well, it depends on who you talk to.  Some people would say, yes.  There are some people who—Fritjof Capra for example, who wrote The Tao of Physics.  But it wasn’t through physics; it was through meditations, through an eastern meditation experience.  But physics is not going to lead you directly in—physics will imply, but physics comes to a dead end.  And medicine and the medical model of man comes to a dead end and says, Wait a minute—I mean, we can’t explain thought.  Your brain—I think everybody, except maybe some behavioristic psychologists, realizes your brain doesn’t think.  If your brains thought, you would be the victim or the slave of your brain.  You would have no control.  So, your brain just makes you do whatever it wants you to do.  Of course, the psychologists try to say that we were stimulus response mechanisms.  They finally realized you cannot explain a sense of a person’s own identity.  There’s got to be some meaning, some purpose.  What about justice?  You see, none of these things are physical.

            It’s interesting when you think of Lenin—I guess I’m using the Russian pronunciation—Lenin.  He believed that we were just stimulus response mechanisms.  He’s an atheist.  Scientific materialism, matter is all there is, and so, you touch something hot and you learn about hot, you touch something cold and you learn about cold.  So, every concept that we have comes from something that’s real, that’s in the physical world.  You can’t think of something that doesn’t exist.  You say, well I can think of a pink elephant.  Yeah, but pink exists and elephants exist.  I mean, it’s very simple to prove it.  Come up with a new prime color for the rainbow.  You can’t do it; you can’t even conceive of it.  So, that was what bugged Lenin.  If all the thoughts that we have are a response to physical stimulus out there and you can’t even think of something that doesn’t exist, where did this thought “God” come from?  What was the physical object that brought this about?  Obviously, there is no physical object to bring it about.  He’s trying to say:  Well, that is an insidious lie.  You know, the opiate of the masses taught by the preachers and so forth.  Yes, but where did they get the idea?  But then when you think about it a little more clearly, as I mentioned “justice.”  Has anybody ever seen justice?  What color is it and what’s the texture of it and so forth?  Furthermore, you sit in a courtroom and the judge comes to a conclusion and you say, there’s no justice here.  Some people say there’s no justice on this earth.  Well, if there’s no justice on this earth, what are they talking about if they have never seen justice?  

            So, we begin to have ideas that are not the result of some stimulus around.  They are innate within man and you can’t explain them physically.  So we realize that there’s a ghost in the machine.  Your brain is not running the show, you are running your brain.  Now, what happened on the drug movement?  In an altered state of consciousness, and I often quote Sir John Eccles, Nobel prize winner for his research in the brain,—in an altered state of consciousness the normal connection between you—that is, your spirit, and your brain is loosened, and that allows another spirit to interpose itself and begin to tick off the neurons in the brain and create an entire universe of illusion.  That’s where the out-of-body experiences (so called) come from.  Shirley MacLaine has not been out of her body.  It’s like a demon playing a video tape.  If she had been out of her body, she would be dead.  James ? Cooley says the body without the spirit is dead.  So, science came to a dead end and science realized there is something beyond.  We cannot explain what we are experiencing.  There is another dimension to this universe and we cannot measure it, we can’t manufacture any instruments that will calibrate it because it’s not physical and all of our instruments are physical.

Tom:

Now Dave, these things that you’re presenting here—this is really the catalyst for moving out of a kind of a scientific materialism, right?  This is something that would encourage the world.  I mean, we’re seeing an occult invasion as the book title indicates.  So, these are catalysts to move people into concepts that relate to spirituality.

            Dave:

This opened the door to a whole new way of looking at things.  But a lot of people aren’t that logical so how do they get into it?  Well, much of it came through the Positive Mental Attitude, Success Motivation Movement, the Human Potential Movement.  You’ve got it in the business world.  I remember a high schooler who came to me and said:  What’s happening?  I’m taking business as a senior and my teacher suggested I write on a piece of paper my ambition in life.  What do I want to be?  Do I want to be a CEO, or I want to be a CPA, or whatever I want?  How much money do I want to earn?  Write that and then put it under my pillow and meditate on it and that’s going to bring it about.  So, the desire for power, for success, for control—I want to be in control, you know.  And of course, in the area of health, I’ve got two new hips—I used to run six miles every other day.  I could back pack, as you know, carry seventy pounds on my back and run the young guys into the ground—

            Tom:

Yes, myself included.

            Dave:

—in my sixties and suddenly, I can hardly walk.  I’m out of control, so I’ve got to have control, I’ve got to recover control in my life and somebody comes along and says, well, there’s an infinite potential inside of you and if you know how to tap into this thing—okay, so that opened the door.  People didn’t realize—for example, as you know, in our ministry we just got a letter from a father, I think it was, who said his daughter had been involved in yoga for a number of years and she was experiencing, he said, exactly what I wrote about in this book, I think he said on page 225 or something like that.  Okay, a lot of people didn’t think yoga was spiritual.

            Tom:

Just a physical exercise.

Dave:

Hatha yoga, in fact claimed—and she was involved in—hatha yoga, claims to be.  And suddenly, like the people who took TM, you know, we have interviewed some of them, and suddenly they’ve got a demon sitting on each side of them trying to get in, or suddenly they find themselves up on the ceiling looking down on their body that’s meditating—well they are not really--but something is going on—

            Tom:

That’s the imagery that they are receiving.

            Dave:

—and they did not intend a spiritual experience.  In fact, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said:  It’s not spiritual—this is not religion, this is science.  Okay, but they wanted power—they wanted to relax—they wanted to develop their full potential and so, that again, is one of the reasons the door was opened. 

            Then you’ve got science fiction when—Tom, I am considerably older than you are so you probably can’t remember, but I remember Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and stuff like that—

            Tom:

Buster Crab, come on!

            Dave:

That was too late for me.  I’m thinking away back when I was a child and we never took it seriously.  I mean it was fantasy.  I can tell you, the kids watch science fiction and they take it seriously because they know it can happen.  Okay, so we’ve got a whole new mentality.  There’s a fantastic potential for us human beings—we can move objects, physical objects, with our minds without touching them and we can develop this potential and WOW—we’re going to do amazing things.  The next step in evolution is not going to be physical—it’s going to catapult man into another dimension of reality—a new species will be formed, I mean on and on it goes but it’s the old lie of the serpent in the Garden.

            Tom:

Dave, before you get on with that, it’s interesting some people would think, well, wait a minute.  We just came out of a time of materialism when people didn’t want to hear about things spiritual, didn’t believe in things spiritual and now we have this great interest in spirituality.  Wouldn’t you think, I mean, some evangelicals tell us, hey, this is a great opportunity, now people are interested in things spiritual they are going to be directed right to the Word of God, they are going to hear the gospel, they are open for it.  But it’s not working out that way is it?

            Dave:

It’s getting even worse.  The worst delusion you can have is not just science, physical science, you can deal with that, but spiritual science, religious science, Christian science, you know.  It’s interesting because Jesus foretold this in Matthew 24, when the disciples asked what would be the sign of your coming, the end of the world and so forth.  Jesus said:  Beware that no one deceive you for many will come in my name.  That was an audacious thing for an itinerant preacher, ex-carpenter, never been outside of His little country of Israel, for him to dare to say, in the last days when they are looking for a world leader, do you know who he is going to claim to be?—The Christ.  You don’t claim to be me and Jesus said false prophets and false Christs will arise and will show great signs and wonders so that, if possible, they could deceive the very elect.  And He says they will deceive many.  So, Jesus was talking, in contrast to what we would have thought a few years ago, you know, science would reign supreme.  We’ve got men walking on the moon—we’ve got computers, I mean, nobody believes in God anymore—nobody goes to church—nobody is involved in spiritual things, materialism has won the day.  We would have thought, even fifty years ago—Jesus, nineteen hundred years ago, said:  Let me tell you something.  There is going to be an explosion of interest in spirituality and it isn’t going to be good.  It’s going to open the door to a delusion that’s far worse than any physical science could impose upon man.

            Tom:

Well, lets talk a little bit about discernment here.  Why isn’t it, evangelical Christians in particular, those who believe in the Bible, would be more discerning about what’s going on but it doesn’t work out that way.  At least, based on our research, based on the letters that we receive, based on the books you’ve written, that’s not the case.

            Dave:

Well, I can remember back in the late thirties, one of the most popular books, at least in evangelical circles was by Harry Reimer.  It was called:  The Harmony of Science and Scripture.  And our big thing was, if we could just get science on our side, you know.  And so some people fall for this.  Now, when science or psychologists, which psychology is not science, but when scientists, psychologists begin talking about spirituality, we think, isn’t that great?  They are on our side.  We’re too eager to pick up partner that is not following the Word of God or following the truth.  Then, what happens is, you have people using God words, the same sounding words but they have different meanings.  And then people say, well it doesn’t really matter so long as you believe in a higher power, who cares, you know.  No, that won’t do because God says there are false gods out there and He identifies himself very clearly and he’s not going to compromise on this.

            So, we have an incredible illusion that is taking place now within the evangelical church.  We talk about people of faith, for example Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition.  They talk about people of faith.  What faith?  What do you mean?  A false faith is even worse than no faith because a person that doesn’t have any faith you could, maybe help him to recognize that and that he needs faith.  Somebody who thinks he’s got faith, faith is not a force, but we’re getting that impression now.  The positive confession people teach that.  Norman Vincent Peale taught that.  Robert Schuller teaches the same thing.  Robert Schuller, for example, says, the most powerful thing in the universe is “possibility thinking.”  You can do miracles with possibility thinking.  Well, if the most powerful thing in the universe is possibility thinking, what happened to God, you know.  Norman Vincent Peale said positive thinking is another word for faith.  Well, wait a minute!  You can be an atheist and teach positive thinking seminars and be a positive thinker.  So, now we get a confusion of terms and people are deluded into thinking they have faith when they don’t have faith.  Jesus said, have faith in God.  Now if your faith is not in God but it’s in your own human potential or some higher power, that could be a front for Satan then you’ve got some serious problems.  Somebody says, well, this is narrow minded—I mean, how can you be so narrow minded.  I mean, somebody is talking about a higher power, I mean, let them alone.  No, there are false gods, there are false concepts.

            So now, one of the things—I think we may have talked about it before, I can’t remember but they are doing experiments—Yes, we did talk about it—where you have somebody—well, you have a control group of people in a hospital and some of them are prayed for and some of them are not.  What do you know!  The ones that are prayed for seem to get better and Christians are very excited.  Wow, isn’t that wonderful—see, prayer works!

            Tom:

Also, it’s scientific.

            Dave:

Yes, but wait a minute.  Who’s praying?  It doesn’t matter, Buddhists, Hindus or somebody—you give them a placebo—okay, we now understand the placebo effect.  A placebo is just a sugar pill, doesn’t have anything of any substance in it, but you tell them that this will stop their headache, or this will give you a good night’s sleep, and fifty to sometimes eighty or ninety percent of the cases it does what you tell them it will do but it has no ingredient in there for doing it.  And now people say, well, but you see they believed that it would happen.  Isn’t that wonderful?  That shows what faith is.  So now, what we have done, we’ve turned God into a placebo.  It doesn’t matter who he is but just so long as we believe there’s some higher power out there.  But what does a placebo do?  Placebo has no power.  It activates something within you and this is what they’re looking for.  They are looking for—to tap into something within mankind.  So then, they are being led astray.  Rather than being brought to faith in the true God, they’re being brought to faith in some placebo effect.

            Tom:

This also attracts evangelicals, those who claim to be Bible believers because it has a ring of science to it—they don’t take the time to discriminate, that is, to discern the difference between what biblical faith is and what, you know, what they are being offered or sounds like, as you said earlier, it has the terminology of it.  But there is a greater deception here.  For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, when he started out with his spiritual regeneration movement.  It didn’t go over did it?  Because it was too spiritual sounding at the time, but then he changed the name of it.  It became the science of Transcendental Meditation. Now, he was able to get that into places where he was cut off before.  And, people in the church were attracted to it because now it was no longer Hinduism, a Hinduistic technique, a yogi technique.  It became “science.”

            Dave:

Well “science” is the sacred cow.  So, if science says it, why everybody believes it.  But that’s not the way it works.  Scientists are just as messed up in their lives, they have just as many divorces, they commit just as many suicides.  They’re troubled by meaninglessness, purposelessness, unhappiness, misery, you know.  They’re just as much as anybody else because science doesn’t help.  So, then why should I be influenced by science when it comes to spiritual matters?  I’ve got to know God.

            Tom:

But it’s effective, though, isn’t Dave, and I guess that’s my point.  It influences people, it attracts them for reasons that you were developing before—power.  I want this in my life, I want to change this.  I could go God’s way, but this is not “religious,” this is “scientific.”

            Dave:

Well, you hear that all the time, Tom.  People say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.”  In other words I don’t want any dogmas, I just want to do my thing, you know.  I just want to flit out here into some spiritual realm and just experience it and enjoy it.  That’s going to lead you into a horrible destruction.  But, Tom, let me try to illustrate how simple it is to be lead astray.  Most people, I would say, in fact I would say most Christians—I haven’t taken a poll on it, but I think most Christians.  They think that faith is something like, “I’m praying for something.  If I can just believe.”  We probably mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating, “If I can just believe that what I’m praying for is going to happen,” they think that’s “faith” and they try to believe they’re praying for healing, praying for a job, or whatever, and they try to “believe” that this is going to happen.  That’s not faith.  Faith must be in God.  Faith is believing that God will do it.  Well, then, that changes the whole formula.  It may not be God’s will.  It may not be God’s time.  It may not be God’s way.  So, that’s the difference between trying to develop this “higher power” that’s going to activate, going to develop my potential, or recognizing that there is the true God who has communicated to man in His Word.  And He’s told us that our problem is sin and we’re separated from Him and being willing to be reconciled to Him on His terms, and then to submit to His will for our lives.

            Tom:

The objection to that, whether it’s vocalized, articulated, or not, but the objection of the heart, the flesh here, is that, “yeah, but I want to be in control.  I want these things to happen when I want them to happen.  And, if I can somehow make God,” I mean, you know, they may not that, but that’s the heart.  You want to be in control.  Isn’t that the attraction?

            Dave:

I remember when Ruth and I were first married.  We got on our knees, we wanted to surrender our lives to the Lord and we did.  But, I had a fear in my heart, as soon as I say, “God, you can have me.  Do whatever you want with me,”  bingo, He’s going to ship me off to Red China as missionary to be martyred by the Communists, you know.  Because, somehow we think we’re smarter than God and we’re afraid He’s going to be too tough on us,  But, if we only realize, He’s smarter than we are and He really loves us, then I don’t want to be in control, I want God to be in control.

            Tom:

I know, I agree.  But, nevertheless, the occult invasion, it’s because of this, as you said earlier, this hunger for power, this hunger for control.  It’s overtaking not only the world, but to our grief, and others out there, not just us, it’s making great inroads into the church.  And, we’re going to discuss that next week.  We’ll pick up on the Occult Invasion, a book that is very important because it addresses something that is just prevalent throughout the church and throughout the world.

 

 

This is a link to our weekly radio program Search the Scriptures Daily. You may listen to the program by clicking on the "mp3" link above. For more listening options, please see our Radio Page.

Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael, thanks for tuning in. Coming up in today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Is There a Way to See God?”  In Religion in the News, “Dividing God’s Land.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Should Christians Help Restore the Earth?” We hope you can stay tuned. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  Tom and Dave conclude their series of programs based on Dave’s book, Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the question, “What Must We Do To Be Saved?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re tuned in 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.  We are wrapping up our discussion of Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God, In Search of the True Faith.  And, you will notice, if you’re viewing our program, that Dave is not in the studio with me, and those listening will get that idea as they hear Dave what is obviously a phone line.  He’s home recovering from a fractured rib that happened recently as he was recovering from back surgery, which took place when he was on the mend from a prostrate procedure in which was done as he was recovering from a replacement from an earlier hip replacement.  So Dave, I’m almost afraid to ask you, How are you doing? but I dare to do it.  How are you doing?           

            Dave:

Well, and I hate to say it like this, Every day in every way, getting a little better, but it’s a long process.  Ribs, I’ve had a broken rib before.  Very painful, one of the most painful things I have ever experienced.

            Tom:

And it doesn’t help to have just recovering from back surgery.

            Dave:

Well, I tell you, it’s by God grace.  My foolishness that I fell, I was careless, I should not have, and I landed on my back on the edge of a very heavy, unforgiving coffee table, you can hardly move it, and just above where my back surgery had taken place.  So, by God’s grace, He guided me, at least.

            Tom:

So, are you up to concluding our discussion of your book, Seeking and Finding God.

            Dave:

Well yes, sure.

            Tom:

Okay.  For the last couple of weeks we’ve been explaining the biblical gospel of salvation and, hopefully, we presented it simply and clearly.  Yet, Dave, as you know, there are other gospels around.  I’m looking at Chapter 10, of your book, Seeking and Finding God, if you just joined us.  Dave, you give two verses here, well first of all, the title is, “Mercy vs. Works,” and I want to quote the two verses that you begin the chapter with.  This is from Exodus chapter 20, verses 24 to 26:  “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me…And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone:  for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.  Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.”  And Dave, you compare that with this next verse, Genesis chapter 11 verse 4:  “Let us build us a city and a tower (of Babel), whose top may reach unto heaven.”  So, you say, No two tenets of faith could be more opposed to one another.  Now what do you mean by that, Dave? 

            Dave:

Well, grace or works, mercy or works, it’s the tendency that every human being has, I’ve got to do something.  Somehow, I don’t want to just have a gift, I want to do something, I want to be worthy of salvation, and that is the worst thing that one could think.  If God—you see, the problem is we’ve got a problem between man and God, and man is not going to solve it from his side.  We don’t sit down and negotiate a deal with God.  If there is going to be any salvation, it must come from God’s side.  He’s the one who has been offended, more than offended, He has been rebelled against, and we’re going to have to repent.  And unless He is willing to forgive us, and of course He could only be willing to forgive us if there’s a righteous basis.  He can’t just say, Oh well, okay, I’ll forgive you.  The penalty has to be paid, and we cannot pay it.  So we are totally and, we throw ourselves upon God’s mercy.  And if He is not going to be merciful to us, or if He does not have a righteous way whereby He can forgive us, then it’s hopeless.  You can build all the beautiful buildings, you can make the most elaborate sanctuaries, they call them.  The Bible says—well, Paul speaking on Mars Hill, Acts 17, he says:  “God dwelleth not in temples made with hands.  Neither is He worshipped with man’s hands as though He has need of anything, seeing He gives to all life and breath and all that we possess.”  So Paul says,  Wait a minute.  You think you’re going to give God something, somehow you’re going to buy His favor?  You think God needs anything?  He doesn’t need anything from you except your repentance.

            Tom:

Dave, last week, as you remember, we talked a little bit about Cain and Abel.  Well, first of all, go back to the garden of Eden, God covered Adam and Eve with the bloodied skins of an animal.  That pointed to death, that without the shedding of blood there is no redemption, there is no forgiveness of sins.  So, that’s God’s plan, that’s His plan of salvation, that’s His gospel.  Yet when we get to Cain and Abel and they are to bring a sacrifice before God, Abel does, he brings what God desires.  And again, these things were all to point to Jesus Christ, to point to his death on the cross.  But Cain, he brings something of  his own effort, something of  his own works.

            Dave:

From his garden.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

Or vegetables and so forth.  Tom, many years ago, I can’t remember how many years ago, I happened to be in Salt Lake City, and so I went to the—well, they  have two visitor centers, North and South I think, and I don’t remember which one if was, but anyway, I went in and a guide takes you through.  I think one of the first things that we were presented with, well, here’s an altar.  This was supposedly the altar that God commanded Adam to construct and on which he would make an offering.  First of all, it was in violation of Exodus chapter 20.

            Tom:

Right, the verse that I read earlier.

            Dave:

Yeah.  If you can’t scrape enough dirt together to build an altar of earth, then you can make it of stones, but you may not make it of cut stones.  In fact, God says if you lift up your tool upon it, you have polluted it!  In other words, God doesn’t allow man to be involved in His redemption, this is all from God’s side.  For by grace are ye saved, through faith, not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast, and so forth,

Ephesians 2:8-10.  Here are in this Visitor’s Center in Salt Lake City, and there’s this altar, it’s make of cut stone, and would you believe it?  There are vegetables on this altar, and carrots and celery, and you know, various things like that out of Cain’s garden.  And there’s a lamb, very much alive, just lying in front of the altar, comfortably relaxing.  I said to the guide, What is this?  On, well, this is an altar that God commanded Adam to build.  I said, What’s that on the altar?  Well, it’s an offering.  I said, Look, this is Cain’s offering, this is in violation of what God said.  The lamb should be on the altar, having been slain, and so forth.  The guide was a bit bewildered, and I guess there were a number or group of people there, and they were shocked as well.  Well, I’ll—umm—take that up with the higher ups, and so forth.  Well, all I can tell you, the next time I went in there that altar had been removed.  At least they had enough sense to do that.  So, it’s a natural tendency, well, what can I do?  For example, the Philippian jailer cries out to Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  Well, it’s not a do-yourself- kit religion, it’s not what I must do for salvation, I can’t do anything, it’s all abut what Jesus Christ has done!  And until I am willing to believe that Christ paid the full penalty, and that He offers me, as a free gift of His grace, salvation, forgiveness, eternal life, I have not accepted the gift of salvation.  I am not saved, I’m still trusting to my own efforts, and that is one of the toughest lessons for man to learn.  Tom, you’ve been to Europe, you’ve seen  the cut stones, you’ve seen the magnificent structures, the cathedrals that are built, and that’s a violation of what God said, this is man’s efforts. Now we’re going to make it as beautiful as we can, we’re going to make it as elaborate as we can—let’s get some stained glass windows in there.  And, please, I hope the listeners and viewers are not condemning me now—Well, this guy is so critical.  No, I am just explaining what God said, It is not by works of righteousness that we have done, but by His mercy He has saved us.  But everywhere, you see the works of man, the vestments, and, oh, if we could just have some more elaborate vestments!  Tom, you’ve been in a few Catholic cathedrals, you’ve seen the—you go down underneath to the treasury and there is a display of the vestments, some of them so elaborate, some of them with pearls, silver and gold, as though they could somehow impress God.  God is not impressed with our works, it’s not a light thing!

            Dave:

I know, let’s go back to the other verse that you began the chapter with.  “Let us build us a city and a tower (of Babel), whose top may reach unto heaven.”  Now, we go from Cain’s offering, which God rejects, and now man, big time!  They’re going to work their way to heaven, obviously recognizing that they can’t get all the way to heaven, but still that’s the attempt to reach God through their own works, through their own efforts.

            Dave:

Yeah, we would say it’s, of course in this modern age we know, you’re not going to build a tower that’s going to get you to heaven.  But this is what they were literally, they thought they could do.  I don’t know how high they got, but it’s stupid, okay, it’s just a picture of our efforts—Well, what can I offer you, God? couldn’t I give you a gift, what do you need God?  Well, I’ll put something in the offering plate, or let me give something to charity, or maybe I could—oh, they are going to have a work day at the church.  Well, I’ll show up for that, and I’ll bring my tools and I’m going to work so hard.  That’s good, but that is not going to get you to heaven.  And if you use this works, or whatever, you are giving to God, if you think that that helps your salvation, you have insulted God.  You are really denying the gospel, and that’s the whole lesson here of the Tower of Babel.

            Tom:

Right.  We’ve been saved unto good works, not we have been saved because of our good works, that’s a contradiction.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

Dave, Babel again, this is not just a rejection of God’s salvation, and a salvation program of mankind, but it’s symbolic.  We’re talking now world government, we’re talking about a religious government.  I mean, this is really pointing to the Antichrist, isn’t it?

            Dave:

Well, there will be a world government, there will be a world ruler.  Of course, one day Jesus Christ will rule the world as He is entitled to, but this isn’t what man has in mind.  We are still determined by our own efforts.  It’s ridiculous, it’s incredible, I mean, you know, I’ve used many, many illustrations.  This old nag that can hardly stagger out of the starting gate, has never gotten very far down the track yet, but I go there day after day betting my money on that horse.  This is like man betting his money on man.  We’ve got elections coming up now, we’ve got these conventions going, we’ve got candidates and we’re got promises, and it’s all about we are going to build a new world.  Somehow, we are going to repair this mess that we have made.  What’s the problem with the world?  It’s man!  Now, who are we going to have solve this problem?  Well, of course, man, I mean, we’ve got science and we’re going to somehow build a new world, and so forth.  That is not going to work, but it certainly isn’t going to get you to heaven.  So, Tom, it should be so easy for people to see.  But it’s not easy because pride enters in.  I’m not going to live off of charity, I’m not going to have God just give me a gift and take me heaven, I want to do something for this.

            Tom:

Dave, that’s why it’s really clear in Ephesians, which you have quoted a couple of times, “not of works, lest any man should boast.”  I always had problems with, why would it say to boast, because that’s what we are doing, we’re taking pride in what we think we re doing, or we’re doing this for God, or whatever.  It really is a pride thing, isn’t it?

            Dave:

It is, Tom, unfortunately, and we could look at this from many angles, but one of them is a big discussion among Christians:  Once saved, always saved, or can you lose your salvation? and so forth.  Well, I couldn’t earn my salvation, I couldn’t merit it, so why would I lose it?  It wasn’t mine in the first place.  I think one of the simplest ways of looking at it, Tom, you cannot walk the golden streets in heaven above and say, Well, I know I was saved by grace, that was wonderful that Christ died for my sins, but I kept myself saved by my good works—I lived a life that was worthy of this, and so that’s why I am in heaven—yes, it’s the grace of God, and Christ dying for me on the cross, and so forth, but after all I had a part in this too—if it hadn’t been for my good life I would have lost my salvation.  Now that enters into it as well, and we need to recognize that.  What can I do to please God.  Let me quote again a verse that I quoted earlier:  God is not worshipped with men’s hands, as though God that made the world and all things therein, seeing He is Lord of heaven and earth.  Let me quote it properly:  He doesn’t dwell in temples made with  hands.  Are you going to build a beautiful cathedral?  It really kind of chills me, Tom, when—here’s a Protestant church, maybe a good evangelical church, and they talk about their meeting place as the sanctuary.  Well, let’s get into the sanctuary.  Well, God doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands, He’s not worshipped with men’s hands.  He doesn’t need anything, He is Lord of all.  He gives us life and breath and all that we possess.  Does God need anything from me?  How am I going to impress God?  I’ve got to do something for the salvation.  Well, I think we’ve belabored that enough, but this is THE problem in religion.  What is religion all about?  If we could just build a more beautiful sanctuary.  Can’t we do something for God?  He dwelleth not in temples made with hands, He is not worshipped with men’s hands.  He doesn’t need anything from us.  Now we can please God.  Tom you were quoting the rest of that verse:  We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

            Tom:

Right, Ephesians 2:10.

            Dave:

We don’t get salvation by working, but after we are saved.  I used to tell Jehovah’s Witnesses, back in the early days, I’ve probably knocked on more doors than you have, I’ve knocked on thousands of doors, but why do I do it?  Out of gratitude and love for the Christ who died for me, who bought my salvation at a price I could never pay.  But why are you folks going around door to door?  Because you are trying to earn your salvation.  There’s a big difference.  You cannot earn your salvation, but we can please God:  good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.  We should do good deeds.  Well, the Bible calls us to do good deeds.

            Tom:

Well, it says we are a peculiar people, zealous for good works.

            Dave:

Very good.

            Tom:

Yeah, now Dave, let’s end with this:  What must I do to be saved?

            Dave:

Well, that’s what the Philippian jailer asked, what can I do?  I cannot do anything for my salvation, but I can accept my salvation from God.  It’s a gift.  The wages of sin is death.  You want your wages that you have earned by your sin?  Okay, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  And don’t forget, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  God can’t just give you the gift of salvation except on the basis of the full payment of the penalty by Jesus Christ upon the cross.  So, what must I do?  Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.  The Psalmist says:  What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?  I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.  And you cannot earn a gift, if you try to give something in exchange for a gift, you’ve destroyed the gift, it’s not a gift, it is by grace not works, and I don’t think we could emphasize that enough, Tom.

            Tom:

Dave, let’s just close with this, your last chapter is called, “The Call to Discipleship,” and just one statement you make, I think we all need to take to heart:  “Those who preach the gospel are to disciple those who believe it.”  Those are our marching orders, not only do we receive God’s free gift of salvation, but we preach it and teach it.

 

 

This is a link to our weekly radio program Search the Scriptures Daily. You may listen to the program by clicking on the "mp3" link above. For more listening options, please see our Radio Page.

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 joining us. Coming up in this week’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Do You Thirst after Righteousness?”  In Religion in the News, “A Victory for Home Schooling.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Is Suffering Good for Christians?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  Tom and Dave continue their series of programs based on Dave’s book, Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the question, “Why Must We Obey God?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re tuned in 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.  In this first segment of our program, our topic is, and has been Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God, In Search of the True Faith.  We spent the last few weeks camped out on chapter 9, titled, “What is the Gospel?” in which Dave explains the gospel of salvation.  What I want to do is summarize what we’ve covered thus far in explaining the gospel.  In the first chapter of Genesis, God declares that everything He created is very good.  In Genesis chapter 2, God made Adam’s obedience critical to their relationship by commanding him not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree in the garden.  And the penalty God decreed for disobedience was death, that is, physical death, the separation of his spirit and soul from his body, and spiritual separation from God for eternity.  In Genesis chapter 3, we see that Adam and Eve both disobeyed God and the penalty was carried out.  And the consequence of this first sin affected Adam and Eve and all their descendants.  The death process caused by sin worked its way through the entire creation, all of creation, like some poisonous leaven.  Dave, as we stated last week, mankind has no solution for this condition, that’s the bad news.  The good news is that God has provided a solution, the only solution possible for condemned humanity.  Most Christians know this verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”  And God indicated, as we mentioned last week, His solution to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15, and then He covered them both with skins of slain animals symbolically signifying that it would only be through death that salvation would be provided.  And we quoted Hebrews 9:22, when “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.”

            Dave:

Well, Tom, you said something very important there, I mean, you said a number of important things, but you said that mankind had no solution to this separation.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

Every religion is an attempt to bring a solution.  Why cannot man bring a solution?  Well, because God makes the rules, and the rules are, without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.  The Bible says "The soul that sinneth it must die."  And you explained physical death and spiritual death, separation from God forever.  The only life allowed in heaven is resurrection life, and of course angels have life, God himself is the author of life, but as far as man is concerned there’s no solution except—well, Tom, truthfully there are some people who will not be resurrected, I hope I’ll be one of them, because they won’t die, nevertheless, they will have to have new bodies, redeemed bodies, paid for by the blood of Christ on the cross.  So there’s no way that man can bridge this chasm, no way, absolutely impossible.  There’s a lot of do-it-yourself kits out there, Tom.

            Tom:

Dave, that’s what we’ve been saying over and over again.  You mentioned it earlier that first of all the penalty is an infinite penalty.  So anyone who thinks that, well, I can solve this problem myself, they have to work at it for eternity, paying the penalty for sin.  The wages of sin is death, we find in Romans and the other verses that you mentioned.  So, man can’t pay it, and as you said, all the religions of the world, and biblical Christianity, the gospel is not a religion.  Okay, it’s a relationship with the Lord and it’s His way.  Religion, we can say it this way, these are man’s ideas of how to get to God and the burden is on man to get to God.  Biblical Christianity, the Gospel, God does it, He did it all.  It’s a divine accomplishment as opposed to human achievement, human achievement won’t make it, won’t cut it, there’s no possibility. 

            Dave:

Well, there are a number of reasons for that, Tom, and we don’t want to go into too much detail, I’m sure you’ve got other things there.  We’ve often given the illustration—you see it’s a matter of law; it’s a matter of breaking the law.  Now if you stand before the judge—you’ve broken the law, maybe it’s just that you’ve got a speeding ticket.  Well, you tell the judge, You know, look, I promise you, you let me off this time I will never ever, ever, ever break the law again.  Well, what does the judge say?  If you never break the law again you are only doing what the law requires, you don’t get extra credit for that.  Now what would we do about the fact that you’ve already broken the law, how are we going to make up for that?  You cannot make up for breaking the law.  One of the things that I learned as a little child, it’s horrible when you’ve done something bad, you can’t get it back, you can’t undo it.  So there’s no way that man can undo his sin.  Now what is the solution?  Well then, are we stuck forever?  You said it very well, Well, it’s not what we can do because we can’t do anything, it’s about what God has done, and God himself became a man, and as a man, He could represent all mankind, and He lived a perfect sinless life.  Although He lived a perfect sinless life He was hated, He was mocked and scorned and finally scourged and nailed to the cross.  There He said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”  But Isaiah 53 says, “It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him—Thou hast put Him to grief when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.”  So, Isaiah 53 says Jehovah laid upon Him the sins of us all.  Now, how He can do that, as you said, we could be punished for eternity that would never pay.  This is an infinite debt against an infinite God, infinite in righteousness; you can never pay that off.  How could Christ pay this infinite penalty for all mankind?  We believe, we’re not Calvinists, so we believe Christ didn’t die just for a few, the elect, He died for all.  For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him….  So, any way you look at it, Tom, someone who is infinite in power, who could carry this heavy load of sin, and be punished for it, that’s the only possible solution.

            Tom:

And it tells us that not only must Jesus have been a man, the perfect man, the sinless man, but representative of mankind, but He also had to be God to experience—  The Scripture says that He tasted death for every man.  So, only God could do that.  We can’t comprehend this, Dave, but we have the verses.  You quoted from Isaiah 53, the Hebrew prophets telling us about the Messiah, the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.

            Dave:

Now Tom, when you deal with unbelievers, especially atheists, hard core atheists who hate God are determined to do away this with.  Well, they throw a lot of things at you and you need to be ready for them.  Well, this is not justice for the guilty to go free, for the innocent to suffer for the guilty, that’s not justice.  Well, it’s not, it’s not right, but it’s a gift.  The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through—unless you go through Scripture and see how many times it says, in Christ, through Christ.  This only comes through Christ, and not because He’s the Son of God up in heaven, but because He came to this earth and pay the penalty for our sins.  So, then the problem arises, well, how does this pay the penalty, and what changes?  What about these people who Christ died for them, what keeps them?  Even in heaven you have that question.  Well, how can you be sure?  Now if we have free will, it’s not going to be taken away from us.  How can you be sure, that even in heaven you might rebel?  Well, the Bible has a number of solutions to that.  We are new creatures in Christ Jesus, we are born again, and we are transformed.  But I like the way Paul puts it:  “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”  So, now we’ve got another problem.  Well, but the Bible says we are new creatures in Christ Jesus, we’re transformed—you experienced that, Tom, I experienced it, something happened.  When I received Christ, something happened, miraculous happened inside of me.  I had different desires, different ambitions, and so forth.  I had been a very obstreperous person.  I think I have sometimes said I was in a thousand fights before I was very far into my teens.  That was changed in a moment.  The last fight I was ever in, it was my fault, and I could not double my fists to hit back.  I had no desire to hit this guy.  It was my fault, and my friends were bewildered.  Well, we just saw what you did to that other guy a few weeks ago.  Well, he was attacking me, and pushing it.  You didn’t even double up your fist!  I couldn’t, something had happened inside of me, I had no desire to hit somebody.  But it’s not just that transformation, but something happened that changed me for eternity and made me fit for eternity.  And you know, Tom, I hope I haven’t said it too often on this program, but I often give an illustration.  Well, it’s not an illustration, and I won’t go to the trouble of letting people try guess who I am talking about.  But there was a man, and this is a true story, an illustration, he was on death row.  The day of his execution had arrived, he heard the footsteps of the jailer coming down the corridor and the key turns in the lock.  He’s going to be led out to his execution, and he says you’re free; another man is dying in your place.  Well, everybody that knows the Bible knows who that was, it was Barabbas.  But did that change Barabbas’ life?  Did that make him a new man?  It set that criminal free to go out and live he pleased, and that is not the gospel!  That is not—there are a lot of people who think well, now if I’ve got eternal security, you’re telling me that I can’t lose my salvation, I’ll just live the way I want to, I can sin all I want to because I’m home free.  No, that would prove that you are not a new creature in Christ Jesus.  But Paul said, in contrast to Barabbas, I have already quoted it:  “I am crucified with Christ.”  So, the person who really comes to Christ, really believes in Him, accepts His death as his own.  This is what I deserved, He did it for me.  We have a chorus:  “After all He’s done for me, How can I do less than give Him my best and live for Him completely, After all He  has done for me.”

            Tom:

Dave, you know, the two of us, the Lord has had different things for us to do.  Not only have we been dealing with physical issues, but in terms of our work, you have been working on a book dealing with atheism—militant atheism.  These guys are humanists and evolutionists and so on.

            Dave:

They hate God.

            Tom:

They hate God, and they are out to undermine and attack the gospel.

            Dave:

And they are best sellers on the New York Times list, never happened before, Tom.

            Tom:

I know, but that’s been your thrust.  What the Lord has had me doing, as you well know, is dealing with what’s going on in the Evangelical church for the last two or three years.  Dave, this is shocking.  Twenty some years ago I got to help you with a book called, The Seduction of Christianity, and I remember a couple of years after that, with regard to the church, we thought things can’t get any worse.  But now what we are seeing, you know, there were fringe elements, you know, they were the hyper-Pentecostals, hyper-Charismatics that were into the Word Faith, Positive Confession stuff.  We dealt with psychology as well, but Evangelical Christianity was different, there were still people hanging in there with the Word of God.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

Now, as I mentioned, I think,  a couple of weeks ago, the Pew Foundation did a survey of forty some thousand people in religious movements, and so on, and 57% of those who claim to be Evangelicals said that they believed that Jesus isn’t the only way!

            Dave:

That means He’s a liar.

            Tom:

What have we just described here?  The gospel, it’s impossible for man, only Jesus could do it, only He could pay the full penalty for our sins.  Yet, those who profess to believe in the Word of God, thinking, No, there are other ways.  It’s irrational, it’s illogical, it’s apostasy, Dave! 

            Dave:

But it’s pride, because man is going to do it himself.  But how often is it said, how often did Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  Now, if you believe that, you cannot possibly think that there is any other way.  Peter said it very well:  “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”

            Tom:

Dave, I think the thing that’s looming largely over the church right now, if you have 57% of the Evangelicals, those who claim to believe in the Bible saying, No, there are other ways, this is going to gain momentum because that’s what the world wants to hear.  You know, the religious movement, of all the religions coming together and working out problems and doing this and doing that, if you say, No, there is only one way, that the gospel is exclusive, it's free, it's a gift.  It’s not like, Hey, we’ve got this club and you’ve got to go through this ritual to get into the club, or you’ve got to do this or that.  It’s something that God has provided as a free gift.  And you know, the other thing about it, they say, you guys, you know, you fundamentalists, you’re narrow-minded, you’re Bible thumpers, and you say you’ve got the only way, Dave, we were like that!  You just described yourself before coming to Christ.  I was like that!  It’s not like I can say, I’m so different, I’m so unique.  No, it’s by God’s grace, it’s by God’s mercy, it’s by what He has done.  And to reject that or if, you know, as the world says, Well, it’s a matter of your arrogance.  Dave, Jesus said, “I am THE way, THE truth, THE life, no man comes to the Father but by Me…” you quoted it earlier.  Is that arrogance?

            Dave:

It’s the truth, and if the medical doctor—I just had a change of diagnosis—for 8 years I’m examined and they are concentrating on my hips.  Finally, we got one doctor who kind of got slipped in there and he looked at the x-ray and he says:  It’s not your hips; you’ve got a back problem.  And there was a disk that was impinging on the spinal column, and so forth.  Now, would I say to this doctor, Well, look at all these other guys, they wouldn’t say that, they’re talking about the hips, and are talking about—you are really arrogant, to make a statement like that.  No, he spoke the truth.  Okay?  Tom, if we have just enough time here let me quickly slip over just a little bit.  We’ve got something called theistic evolution out there, and I won’t go into details about that, but these people believe in evolution, they believe that this was the way that God created man.  All right, now we’ve got a very serious problem.  They are literally defying God; they are rejecting what the Bible says.  For example, Romans 5:12, “—as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.”  Well, wait a minute.  Are you trying to say that nothing died before Adam sinned?  How could you dare to say that?  Why we’ve got millions and billions of years out there, we’ve got evolution going on and that’s what we are looking for, fossils and—that’s the evidence of death, it’s everywhere.  The Bible says, No, there was no death until Adam sinned.  Now, if you want to call yourself a Christian, and well, I’ll mention Francis Collins, I’m sure a good man, I’ve heard him on the radio, and he does a good job defending the Christian faith, I guess, one of the world’s greatest geneticists, but he wrote a very good book The Language of God, he says, Look, that’s the language of God, can’t get away from it, but he’s an evolutionist.  So what kind of a Christian are you if you believe in evolution?  Well, I mean, if you are going to believe in evolution, death has been here before Adam sinned, that is a rejection of what the Bible says.  You just cannot reject the Bible.  Yeah, but science says, and what about this?  No, I’m sorry; everything else is going to have to fall in line with the Bible because the Bible does not make any mistakes.  So we’ve got problems like that in the church, Tom that you referred to.  Well, yeah, I know Jesus did say, “I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes to the Father but by me…” but that’s so narrow.  You’re excluding so many people out there, what about the heathen who never heard about it?  God will deal with them according to His justice.  He has given them the evidence and creation and in conscience.  If they are not obedient to that, then that’s it.  There’s no sacrifice for sin that would cover willful rejection of God’s grace.  So, Tom, we’ve kind of got into a lot of things here, but I think they are very important when we are talking about salvation, because people say, Well, what about this, what about that.  We are going to go by the Bible first of all, this is God’s Word, and everything else must fall in line.

 

 

This is a link to our weekly radio program Search the Scriptures Daily. You may listen to the program by clicking on the "mp3" link above. For more listening options, please see our Radio Page.

Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael, we’re glad you could tune in. Coming up in this week’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “How Do the Meek Inherit the Earth?”  In Religion in the News, “Who Wrote the Serenity Prayer?” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Is Christianity Really the Only Way?” We hope you can stay tuned. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  Tom and Dave continue their series of programs based on Dave’s book, Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the question, “How Could One Man Bring Death to Everyone?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re tuned in 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.  We have been going through Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God, subtitled In Search of the True Faith.  And, currently we are in chapter nine, titled, “What is the Gospel?” in which Dave explains the gospel of salvation.  And by explain, I mean that Dave, you give information to help people understand what man did that separated him from God forever, and what God did, and only He could do to reconcile mankind to Himself, and of course what mankind must do to obtain the salvation that God has provided.

            Dave:

He has to receive it.

            Tom:

Exactly.  We’ve been doing this for a number of weeks  now, but let me recap what we’ve covered thus far.  In the first chapter of Genesis, God declares that everything He created is very good, Genesis 1 verse 31.  In Genesis chapter 2, God made Adam’s obedience critical to their relationship by commanding him not to eat the fruit of a certain tree in the garden.  He told Adam that the penalty for disobeying Him would be death, that is, his physical life would come to an end and his spirit would be separated from God forever.  In Genesis chapter 3, we’re told Satan seduced Eve into disobeying God’s command, and Adam likewise disobeyed God.  And last week, and this is where I want to bring us to, last week we started discussing the consequences of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, the separation.

Now let me read Genesis chapter 3, verses 7 and 8:  “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.  And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day:  and Adam and his wife  hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.”  We have separation beginning right here.

            Dave:

Yeah, well, Tom, let me go back just a little ways.  Adam was not deceived, the Bible tells us.  Eve was deceived, she was in the transgression, but Adam had a greater transgression because he knew what he was doing.  Eve was deceived, Adam was not deceived.  So he, with his eyes open, willingly disobeyed.  We can guess about the motive.  Well, he didn’t want to lose Eve, because he knew what was going to happen, they would be separated forever.  And that reminds us of the fact that women have a power over men.  It wasn’t just David, it was Bathsheba.  What was she doing out there showing herself off, and so forth?  So, the sin was not that there was something special about this tree.  There was nothing special about it, we discussed that in the past.  It could have been an apple tree, a pear, a peach, who knows what it was.  The significance was the disobedience.  God said, Don’t eat of this tree.  Eve believed the lie of the serpent, you know, the serpent has something better to offer than God has.  I often tell young people, if Satan has a better deal for you than God has, follow Satan.  Why not, why not take the best deal?  But you would only think it was the best deal if you were badly deceived, and you were looking at things from a temporary standpoint.  For example, well, Christopher Hitchins, atheist said, “When you’re dead, you’re dead, you won’t know anything, what does it matter, so just live it.”  And Richard Dawkins said:  “Live life to the fullest.”  Well, what is life for him?  Well, you’re just a lump of protein molecules, you are nothing.  He even says that it is nothing, that is, there is no purpose, no meaning.  So, here is the lie.  On the other hand, the Bible says, “It’s appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.”  So, which are you going to believe?  Are you going to go for the bait, the pleasures of this life, or are you going to obey God and have eternity with Him?

            Tom:

Dave, this separation…God is serious.  He gave them the command, His standard is perfect, His justice is perfect, but this separation was something else.  Well, not something else, this is the consequence of their sin.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

Genesis chapter 3, verses 23 and 24:  “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.  So He drove out the man; and he placed at the East of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

            Dave:

Yeah, it’s a bit mysterious.  Was there some, we said there is no magic power, there was nothing about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was the fact that you disobeyed.  What happened to this tree of life?  Where is it today?  Well, we come back to it in the last chapter of the Bible.  And man is back in the garden, there’s The Tree of Life, there’s the Water of Life, the river or the water of life flowing out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb.  But let’s go back again, if we can, just a little bit.  What was so bad about being naked?  Why did they know they were naked? I mean, they were naked before, weren’t they?  I think the only explanation we can have is that Adam and Eve were perfect beings, without sin, made in the image of God, and they were to reflect the glory of God.  I believe there was like a glow of glory about these two beings that were created by God, and here they are, suddenly, wow! nothing like this has ever been seen, and the angels don’t have that kind of a glory.  I think their sense of nakedness was, suddenly they lost that.  It wasn’t physical nakedness so much, they had lost something that they had before.  And now, what are you going to do?  You’re going to cover it with fig leaves?  Try to hide  your nakedness?  No, that’s not the problem.  So anyway, it’s just symptomatic of what man has been trying to do all the time, they are trying to cover up their nakedness.  But there’s no way you can cover the nakedness, and one day we will be brought back, we will be brought into the presence of God in glory again, clothed with glory in the image of Christ, who is the express image, he’s the brightness of God’s glory, the express image of His person.  And when we see Him we will be like Him.  That’s the only way that this can be restored, it’s the only way man can be brought back into a right relationship, and I guess that’s what you want us to talk about today.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, again, consequences—today people are thinking, oh, this is way too harsh, this is unfair, why didn’t He just rap them on the knuckles?  I mean, where is divine forgiveness here, where is leniency, where is clemency, or penance?  Maybe there is something they could do, some kind of reparation they could bring forth to get past this problem.

            Dave:

Maybe they could promise to do better the next time.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, as you know, and you talk to most people, those who do believe in an after life and a heaven, and so on, and most will tell you well, I’m a better person than I’m an evil person.  Yeah, I’ve done some things wrong, but I’ve done a lot more things right than I’ve done wrong.  Why didn’t God go for that?

            Dave:

Well, it’s not a game of points, how much good have you done?  First of all, you can’t do any good, there is none good but One and that is God, this is what Jesus said when—

            Tom:

Romans chapter 3, and in other places in Scripture.

            Dave:

Right.  When the rich young ruler came running up to Him and said: “Good Master, what good thing can I do to inherit eternal life?”  Well, Jesus didn’t say: well, you can’t do any good.  Jesus made it very clear.  Jesus said, “Why do you call me good?  There is none good but One, and that’s God…” Oooo, now we’ve got a standard that isn’t in set.  Man has sinned, but the standard hasn’t changed, and God will one day send forth His Son in His image who will rescue us, deliver us, not by just setting an example, which we could never follow, but by redeeming us.  He’s going to give this perfect life in payment for our sins.  So, people say:  Oh, Genesis 1-3, some people say even 1 through 11, is  just mythology.  No, this is history.  And here we see the basics laid out of the problem, as you expressed it, Tom, the problem between man and God.  And it doesn’t give us the whole solution yet, but we’ve got the lambs being slain, and we’ve got the skins being—Adam and Eve being clothed with skin.

            Tom:

Dave, as you know, and I’ve mentioned it on the program, having been Roman Catholic, I grew up going to confession.  And I can tell you this, if I went to confession and I said to the priest that I had taken a cookie, or maybe a piece of fruit before dinner, and I wasn’t supposed to.  Well the priest that I know would have thrown me right out of the confessional, why am I taking up his time, there are people behind me, people with serious things, and so on.  Yet here we have a sin, it’s some kind of fruit, a piece of fruit, but it changed the entire universe.  Dave, as you know, it’s  not just Adam and Eve, but all of their progeny, all of their descendants.  Also, I want to read from Romans chapter 8, verses 20-22:  “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”  That’s because of Adam and Eve’s sin, isn’t it?

            Dave:

Yeah, it wasn’t just Adam and Eve and their descendants who suffered the consequences.  It was the whole universe.  Now Satan has already ruined everything you could say, but he still has access before the throne of God, and he is the accuser of the brethren.  But there’s no way that man can claw himself back, or build a stepladder.  Now of course when we get to the Tower of Babel, this is exactly what man is trying to do.  Let us build us a tower with steps that will reach unto heaven.  I mean, what a stupid idea!

            Tom

Dave, some things about the situation of mankind, certain circumstances, the Bible lays it out, it’s very simple.  God is the only one that can solve the problem.  We’re going to go to Genesis 3:15, in a minute.  But as you said, man has been trying from the beginning to work it out himself, to come up with a game plan, and it’s all based on works, all based on what man thinks that he can do to achieve, whether it be heaven, or Valhalla, or you know Moksha, the afterlife in some way, the  third heaven for Mormons, and so on.

            Dave:

Yeah, it’s not just somehow wiping the slate clean, doing a better job from now on, we’ll behave ourselves, and so forth.  You’ve got a bigger problem than that because man was made in the image of God, that has to be restored.  It’s sin that brought death, separation from God.  Now you know, Tom, as well as I do, we talk about “do it yourself kit” religions and so forth.  But what are they about?  Well, they can’t solve the problem of sin, once you have sinned you’re a sinner.

            Tom:

Right, that’s your nature, are you going to change your nature?

            Dave:

Right, no.  So, you could say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  It won’t work, and you see it in everyday life.  We see it in little children as they grow up.  You’ve had 5 children, you and Peggy, you’ve seen it work out.  I wrote the autobiography of a man who was the chairman of the Federal Parole Board.  An enlightening book to read, because what did he learn?  The would-be parolee will promise the moon:  I’ll never do it again, just let me out of here, I promise you I’ll never be back here again, I learned my lesson.  No, it doesn’t work that way.  It’s not man’s willpower, it’s not man’s:  I’m going to turn over a new leaf.  How many times have we heard that, and it doesn’t last very long, something more basic has to occur.  The glory in which  man was originally created, that has to be restored, and only God, as you said, can do that.  This is a serious problem, and most of the religions out there—well, let’s do more good deeds. Can’t we do some more good deeds, can’t we do wonderful things for other people, and can’t we wipe the slate clean?  Nope, nope, you will never wipe the slate clean.  That’s one of the most solemn things that I learned as a little boy, maybe 7 or 8 years old.  You can’t get it back!  You can’t change the past!  And I was in a situation, I won’t go back into that, but I just groveled on the floor before my father, he didn’t have to spank me, I  had such a conviction of sin.  I had borrowed, I didn’t intend to steal it, ten cents, but I was going to put it back, going to go to my kiddie and put it back the next week.  No, no, there is no way I could change the past.  You can’t wipe out the past, you can’t wipe the slate clean, only Jesus can do that.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

When He paid the full penalty, and people say—they say a lot of things, Tom, and I don’t want to prolong this because you want to move on, but it’s not right for an innocent man to die in the place of the guilty.  Why should an innocent man suffer the consequences of the guilty, that’s not just!  This gospel doesn’t make any sense.  Why would Christ die for us?  We deserve to die, and yet out of that comes redemption?  Well, it’s what Paul writes about in Galatians 2:20.  If we know the Bible we’ve got to answer to all the questions.  And Paul says, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.  Well, you’re  not going to do that by turning over a new leaf, furthermore this isn’t just an innocent man dying in my place, which they would say, It’s classic injustice.  No, this is something that goes deeper.  I have been crucified with Christ, I’ve been transformed, I have been made a new person.  You experience that, Tom?

            Tom:

Absolutely!

            Dave:

It’s amazing what happened to me when I came to Christ.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, you’ve just laid it out for us.  The man is in a hopeless condition/situation that only God can provide the solution.  We go back to Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, we find the first indication that God is going to solve the problem for mankind.  Genesis 3, verse 15:  “And I will put enmity—(now here we have the Lord speaking to Satan in the form of a serpent)—and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed—(that is, the followers, enemies of God, really, the followers of Satan, those who are in rebellion against God)—and her Seed;—(her seed being Jesus, the seed of the woman)—it—(that is, Jesus, the seed)—shall bruise thy head, and thou (Satan)—shalt bruise his heel.”—(That is, Jesus’ heel.  So, this is an indication that Christ is going to—I rather doubt that Adam and Eve understood it at the time, but we can certainly see it—looking back from the Cross, this side of the Cross, looking back to God presenting this—certainly the heel of Jesus was bruised by Satan, and Jesus being on the cross.  But Satan is dealt by the Cross, a death blow.

            Dave:

Amen!

            Tom:

Yeah, he’s still out and about, but his time is coming.  So Dave, we have, you referred to Genesis chapter 3, verse 21, we have another indication.  You mentioned earlier that Adam and Eve tried to hide themselves, and then cover themselves, cover their nakedness with fig leaves.  That won’t do the job, will it?  But there is something that will cover, and has covered their sin, our sin, and that is the blood of the Lamb.  So, what does God do?  Genesis 3:21:  “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them.”

            Dave:

Well, Tom, again, it doesn’t make sense to the mind.  He’s clothing them now, and the animal lovers wouldn’t like that.

            Tom:

No, PETA would  be up in arms.

            Dave:

Right, but blood had to be shed, and that skin became their covering.  Something happened at the Cross that has changed history.  All of history looked forward to the Cross, all of history now looks back, that was the dividing point in history.  I am trying to think of a hymn…I know not why God’s wondrous grace, To me He has bestowed, Nor how unworthy, yet Christ in love…He chose me, redeemed me, and bought me.  Why would He do this, it is amazing!  But tell me another solution—no other solution.

            Tom:

Without the shedding of blood there is no remission, that’s Hebrews 9:22.  God had to pay the full penalty for our sins.

            Dave:

And only He could do it.

            Tom:

Right.  Dave, next week, we’re out of time now, but next week we are going to go from there, from the garden of Eden through Old Testament history and give some examples of how God gave indications, gave types, symbolisms that relate to the solution to mankind’s problems, the death of Jesus on the Cross, throughout the Old Testament.

 

            Dave:

And they are beautiful, and you can’t explain it away.

 

 

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Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael, we’re glad you could join us. Coming up in today’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “What Do the Beatitudes Really Mean?”  In Religion in the News: “McCain, Obama and Rick Warren.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Can Sin Dwell within You?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  Tom and Dave continue their series of programs based on Dave’s book, Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the question, “What is Satan’s Greatest Ploy?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re tuned in 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.  In this first segment of “Search the Scriptures Daily,” we have been going through Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God: In Search of the True Faith. And, last week we began chapter nine, titled, “What Is the Gospel?”  And Dave, as I said, I believe it’s the most important chapter in your book, because in it you explain the gospel of salvation.  What I mean by explain, is that you give information to help people understand what man did that separated him from God forever, and what God did, and only He could do to reconcile mankind to Himself.  Of course what mankind must do to obtain salvation God has provided, which is what we are going to talk about.  As a recap of what we went over last week, we noted in the first chapter of Genesis, God declares that everything He created is very good, that is Genesis chapter 1 verse 31.  In Chapter 2, God made Adam’s obedience critical to their relationship by commanding him not to eat the fruit of a certain tree in the garden.  He told Adam that the penalty for disobeying Him would be death, that is his physical life would come to an end, and his spirit would be separated from God forever.  And sometime after God’s command was given Satan seduced Eve into disobeying it.  Now Dave, it’s worth going over the seduction because Satan, from the beginning, hasn’t changed his basic approach to deceiving mankind, he in fact, has expanded upon it.  So let me go to Genesis chapter 3, we’ll go through verses 1 to 6, but you stop me at any time before your comments.  Now the serpent, this is Genesis chapter 3, beginning with verse 1:  “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.   And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”

            Dave:

Tom, you said to stop you at any time.  We’ve dealt with this in the past, but a lot of people will say, a talking serpent? To begin with I mean, this is fantasy, this is fiction, but I would mention that we’ve got scientists, serious scientists who are studying chimpanzees, trying to teach them the alphabet and how to communicate.  There are others who claim they are communicating with porpoises and so forth.  The serpent was more subtle.  It’s not talking literally about a snake, however, probably Satan spoke through a snake, but this is symbolic of Satan or to that, and somehow, we have commented on it in the past.  Why does Satan love to be called a serpent?  I mean, he doesn’t shun this, and he has serpent worship going on all over the world.  We won’t go back into the details of that, but this is everywhere, this is the primary object of worship all over the world.

            Tom:

Right, and Dave, this has to give credibility…we believe it, but it has to give credibility to the Genesis account, because not only is the serpent worshipped, as you said, but the serpent becomes the healer.  It’s the absolute opposite of what the Word of God teaches, and that would follow true.  If this was a lie, if this was a deception of Satan this is what his program is all about.

            Dave:

The serpent has become the symbol of wisdom, not only wisdom by the salvation, the serpent has taken the place of God.

            Tom:

Right.  Dave, as we’ve also mentioned, there’s a ploy here on Satan’s part.  He has seduced—this is the process of seducing mankind, and it hasn’t changed from the beginning.  It’s just as I mentioned earlier, Satan has expanded upon it, but it begins with, Yea, hath God said?  So, the objective here is to—God spoke, He gave the command to Adam, and then to Eve, and we now have—oh, we’re going to massage it around.  Did He really say that, is that what God meant?  That’s an interpretation that some people are giving it. But really what that means is undermining the Word of God is what is going on here.

            Dave:

Well, Tom, when we read—you would just have to read Psalm 119, what it says about the Word:  Thy Word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.  We are saved through the Word, Jesus is the living Word, and the Word of God is under attack.  There are, once again, and I won’t get off on that subject, but as you know I’m writing a book at the moment, Cosmos, Creator and Human Destiny, and one of the things you realize, this is all about atheism.  Evolution is about atheism.  Richard Dawkins, the chief atheist in the world says, oh, he was once upon a time he was a good Anglican Christian boy.  By the age of 15, 16, it was Darwinism that turned him to atheism.  It’s an attack upon God.  You don’t need God; in fact they come right out and say it:  You don’t need God to create anything.  Nature does it.  So they’re taking us back to nature worship.  Now Satan, in a sense, was kind of leading them in that direction.  Here we’ve got a serpent this is a part of nature, and you can see how the whole thing hangs together.  But Satan is behind it because—we’re talking about salvation eventually when we get to verse 15 back there, if we get that far.  But if we go to 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 23 through 25, it says that we are born again, and Jesus said you must be born again.

            Tom:

Must be born again.

            Dave:

Right.  We are born again by the Word of God.  Well, if that’s the case, Satan is going to do whatever he can to destroy the Word of God.  Then it goes on, well, without going into the details, the verses in between.  Verse 25 says:  “And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”  So here we find out why we must preach the gospel, because if you don’t believe the gospel you are lost, you can’t be born again except through believing the gospel, it’s that simple, this is what the Bible says.  So, the importance of the Word of God…we are to earnestly contend for this faith that comes through the Word of God.

            Tom:

And Dave, what we are seeing today, and of course it’s a good example where you have it right here in Genesis, is that, Well, let’s dialogue about the gospel—Let’s get into conversation about it, and so on.  Not in seeking truth, but the strategy is to undermine the truth. 

            Dave:

Well, first of all, if you’re going to dialogue about something obviously there’s a question as to whether it is true or false.  You don’t dialogue about mathematics, we don’t dialogue about the law of gravity or the laws of aerodynamics while pilots are up there, pilot, and co-pilot…I wonder, let’s have a little dialogue about this.  No, but you dialogue about the Word of God, they say, in order to undermine it.

            Tom:

And they were going to see this in picking up with Genesis Chapter 3, verse 2:  “And the woman said unto the serpent, (here we are in dialogue) We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:  But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”  Now last week we pointed out that God didn’t say, neither shall ye touch it, okay.   So, right away when you are in dialogue things get massaged around, ideas are added, things are taken away, that’s the problem.  If it’s the truth there can be no change.

            Dave:

Let me make a little comment here, Tom.

            Tom:

Sure.

            Dave:

This is what Eugene Peterson does.  Eve is giving her version of the Word of God, and she’s adding a few words of her own.  Eugene Peterson does that all the time.

            Tom:

He, by the way is the author of, The Message Bible.

            Dave:

Right.  But it began way back there with a man that we all respected, and it was The Living Bible.  And how that began was, well, his children couldn’t quite understand the King James, I guess he was reading it to them, so he kind of re wrote it, added a few things, but he kept pretty close.  He was really trying to give you what the Bible said.  Eugene Peterson, he just introduces his own ideas, he literally—well, I get angry, and I had better forget about it, but he literally trashes the Bible.  What he says is, God, you didn’t know how to say this.  In fact, there’s a few things that you missed here and there, and I’m going to put them in there to help you out because you didn’t foresee the kind of a society we would be living today, and let me straighten that out for you.

            Tom:

Yeah, well, even if he didn’t have that intent that’s the end product, that’s exactly what he did.  You can only say, rather than thus sayeth the Lord, the best you can say is, thus sayeth Eugene Peterson.

            Dave:

Any yet he is praised for this.

            Tom:

I know.  Dave, picking up with Genesis chapter 3 Verse 4:  “And the serpent said unto the woman, (after this dialogue in which he, as we said, he’s undermining the Word of God) Ye hath God said—

            Dave:

Yeah, well Tom, I’m sorry.

            Tom:

Go ahead.

            Dave:

They’re discussing now, well, let’s have a discussion now.  You say you think this is what God said, but let me tell you, I’ll give you a new twist on it.  So now, incredibly, this is the first committee to discuss the Bible and see if they couldn’t rewrite it.

            Tom:

But there’s always a goal, there’s an objective, there’s an agenda, and we know he has it, and we hear it in verse 4:  “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:”  So, bottom line is he’s rejecting what God has said, he’s calling God a liar.  Now it’s not just her interpretation, but he’s going right after God.  This is atheism; this is the new atheism, the militant atheism, right?

            Dave:

Well, it’s also modernism, it’s also, I don’t know, Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, well, and a lot of Baptists do the same thing.  The Bible is old fashioned, it really doesn’t apply, furthermore, there are things in the Bible that we don’t like.  It had to be wrong on homosexuality, and it had to be wrong on this and so forth.  So, they redo it according to what they want it to say.

            Tom:

And Satan’s scheme here is, not only is he attacking the character of God; rejecting what God said, calling God a liar, but he’s withholding something from Adam and Eve.  This is verse 5:  “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

            Dave:

We mentioned that last week, I think.  He doesn’t say, You will be God.  This is not how to become God, in fact he puts her a notch lower.  He said, I will be like the most High, but he says, You shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil.  So, well, that was an introduction of polytheism.  He did away with one, I mean how many most high’s can you have?  Obviously, Satan is not so stupid that he would dare to try to push onto the human race these are the most highs.  No, you can only have one most High, but that becomes questionable as to who the most high is.  And again, I don’t want to revert to this too often, Tom, but the atheists now say, Wait a minute, Creator?  Well, now we are in an infinite regress because who created the Creator?  Doesn’t the Creator need a creator too?  You’re going to explain everything by the Creator?  You’re going to say He’s the one who explains everything else because He created it all?  Yeah, but who created the Creator?  We won’t even get into that, Tom, its stupidity.

            Tom:

It’s absurd, of course.  Well, Dave, what I find absolutely amazing here is, this is the lie, Satan offers the lie to Eve, in this case, something that he deluded himself into believing when he was in heaven as Lucifer, right?

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

And we find this lie working its way throughout Scripture.  At the end we have the Antichrist setting himself up in the temple of God, to be worshipped as God, that he is God, that’s the lie, isn’t it?

            Dave:

Right, yes.  You can be a god, and ultimately you are God because you could rewrite the Bible.  You can redo whatever you want, and God has been pushed out of the picture.

            Tom:

So we not only have this in many religions, the idea—well, we have it in Mormonism, that every Mormon male wants to achieve godhood, to become a god having his own world, and so on.  But we have that, Dave, in psychology.  To me there is God, the Creator God transcendent and self.  Once you push God out of the way, which all of these approaches are attempting to do, then you’re left with self, and self is God.  So we have, not only self love, self esteem, all these selfisms today through psychology, but it all leads to self deification.  If there is no God, then we are God, right?

            Dave:

Well, this is literally what Carl Rogers said.  That we have forgotten this God, pushed Him out.  By the way, he studied in a seminary.

            Tom:

Yeah, Union Theological Seminary, this is Carl Rogers in psychology.

            Dave:

Right.  But he said; Now we look within to find the god within, and we worship at the altar of self.  Pretty clear.

            Tom:

Yeah, and again, it’s the lie, the lie that began in heaven, Lucifer claiming to be as the most high, and then offering that lie to Eve, and we have it throughout history.  Dave verse 6, now, does Eve reject this?  Well, I’ll read it for us.

            Dave:

Well, it’s a pretty great idea for her.

            Tom:

“And when the woman (this is Genesis 3 verse 6) and when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

            Dave:

How could you argue with that?  It’s beautiful, it’s delicious, it’s nutritious, and it will make you wise.  What more could you want?  So, forget this Bible.

            Tom:

Or obviously, she’s looking at it and Satan must be right, God was withholding all of these things from her.

            Dave:

Yeah, so here we are, here’s how man became separated from God, because God cannot allow this kind of rebellion in His universe, these are the first two that He has created.  He gives them the easiest command He could give.  You’ve got, I don’t know, thousands, millions of trees, take your pick, eat your way through every one of them.  You can have any one you want, but there’s just this tree here; and I think it was like any of the others, nothing special, no power in this tree, there wasn’t some magic in this tree.  No, the problem was, disobedience, and God gave them a test, just don’t eat of this one tree, okay, and they failed the test.

            Tom:

Dave, the consequences, separation, which God said, we went over this.  This is Genesis chapter 2, verses 17 and 18.  He said, “the day you eat thereof you shall surely die” and as we mentioned, this is separation from God.  This is physical death as well as spiritual separation from God.  Now, how did they respond to this, after recognizing right away that they had sinned, that they had disobeyed God?  Genesis chapter 3, look at verses 7 and 8:  “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.  And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.”

            Dave:

Tom, Let me just go back to—“the day you eat thereof, you will die.”  Sorry, I can’t get these things out of my mind because there is a book I’m writing and I have to know what these people think, and so forth.  But they don’t know what life is.  You see, you read something about evolution, oh yeah, Darwinism, oh, that’s how we find out, you know, how the species developed.  Wait a minute!  Darwin’s first book was titled, part of the title was:  The Origin of Species.  He doesn’t tell you the origin of any species, because that’s a problem.  Where did the first species come from?  And what is life?  How can you talk about something evolving, you don’t know what life is.  John 1 tells you of Jesus, He created everything.  In Him was life!  Science cannot tell you what life is, they just cannot!  So now we’ve got—how are you going to introduce life into this universe?  God is life. “I am the way, the truth, the life—in Him is life.”  Okay.  So now—the day you eat thereof you’re going to die.  That means, this life is in God’s hands. It came from Him. He can take it away from you.  But He’s going to take the very heart of this life away from you, and that is Himself, the relationship with Himself.  And being cut off from God, you’re cut off from life.  So now we are dying, the species, every species is dying, and unless they come up with some new discovery, as far as I know, doctors cannot tell you why.  The moment we’re born we begin to die.  Why?  Because the source of life has been removed.  Although we have physical life, we do not have the source of that life within ourselves, and we’re going to have to get it back from God and by entering into a right relationship with Him.

            Tom:

And Dave, this was God’s command that they broke, they disobeyed.

            Dave:

Tom, can you imagine the hootspa, not just hootspa—

            Tom:

Which is Yiddish, meaning “nerve?”

            Dave:

I mean, you’re thumbing your nose at the Creator.  You’re saying, well I don’t have to do what you want me to do.  It’s incredible, it’s beyond comprehension!  This puny little creature, who thinks he can defy the living God!  That’s what disobedience is, and that’s what Adam and Eve did.

            Tom:

Dave, we’re out of time for this segment, but next week we are going to pick up here, and you would wonder, Well, why didn’t God just rap them on the knuckles or kind of forgive them or say, Well, you know, it was a small deal, you know… It’s just a piece of fruit, and no big issue, we’ll work it out.  Well, God is perfect in every attribute that He has and one is divine justice.  So, the penalty had to be paid, and next week we will see how that was accomplished.

 

 

This is a link to our weekly radio program Search the Scriptures Daily. You may listen to the program by clicking on the "mp3" link above.For more listening options, please see our Radio Page.

Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael, we’re glad you could tune in. Coming up in today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Why Did Jesus’ Fame Spread So Fast?”  In Religion in the News: “Man Injured by Holy Spirit.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Should The Shack be Attacked?” We hope you can stay tuned. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  Tom and Dave continue their series of programs based on Dave’s book, Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the question, “Has Your Love Been Put to the Test?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re tuned in 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.   Our topic for today, in this first segment of “Search the Scriptures Daily,” is Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God, subtitled In Search of the True Faith.  We’re beginning chapter 9, titled “What is the Gospel?”  And Dave, I believe it’s the most important chapter in your book, and in it you explain the gospel of salvation.  And even though the gospel, as you know is the heart of Christianity, rarely is it ever explained.  And I can only think of a couple of times in my experience, you know, 30 years of, you know, attending church and so on, but only a couple of times  have I had the gospel explained from the pulpit.  So, by explaining what I’m really talking about is being given information to help me understand what man did that separated him from God, and well really, separated from God forever, and what God did, and only He could do to reconcile mankind to himself.  So we’re going to camp out, we’re going to camp out on Chapter 9 for a couple of weeks.  Now Dave, let’s start with what went wrong with God’s perfect creation?  Throughout the first Chapter of Genesis, as you know, God says over and over again, It is good, It is good, and then, chapter 1:31, He says, It is very good.  So, things are hardly very good today, so what happened?

            Dave:

God gave man the easiest test he could give him.  He just pointed to one tree in the garden, there must have been thousands, maybe a million, I don’t know, and God said, Don’t eat of that tree!  Now you couldn’t ask for an easier command.  This was a test to see if man would obey.  You’ve got all these other trees, and some people think it was a special tree.  No, I don’t believe it was a special tree, it could have been an apple, peach, pear, I don’t know, but I’m sure that there were many other trees of the same kind of fruit.  It wasn’t the fruit.  That’s  materialism.  Matter does not create spiritual problems.  So, it was that they had been commanded not to eat of this particular tree, and they disobeyed.  So they rebelled, this is rebellion.  Now, the Creator of the universe can’t have rebellion in His universe, I mean, that’s obvious!  He can’t have—well, it’s happening now, rebellion, but that was a poor start for Adam and Eve, and because of that they were cast out of the garden.

            Tom:

And Dave, just go back to this test, people say, Well, what was the point of the test?  The point is really simple.  Jesus said, If you love Me, keep my commandments.  He wasn’t talking about the Ten Commandments, He was talking about everything that He taught, everything that He said, and isn’t that a demonstration of love?  If I love somebody, if I’m a child and I love my parents, shouldn’t I obey them, wouldn’t that be a demonstration of my love for them, obedience?

            Dave:

Yeah, it would be, but I don’t know that love even entered into this, because it was just simply, Don’t eat of that tree!  That’s a command, and there’s nothing about loving God, and so forth, although that would come later.  But He couldn’t have had an easier command.  One tree, thousands of trees, could have been hundreds just like it, same fruit!  This particular tree right here do not eat of that tree!

            Tom:

Well, let me read the verse.  This is Genesis chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, since we are going to go through this, since we’re going to camp out on, not only the gospel, but explaining the gospel, and I mentioned. Genesis chapter 2, verses 16 and 17:  “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:  for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”  So, we have the command and the consequence.

            Dave:

But they disobeyed.  So, in the day you eat thereof, you will die.  They didn’t even know what death was, they had never experienced that, they had never seen it, no animals had died, because the Scripture says:  Romans 5:12:  By one man sin entered into this world, (that was Adam) and death by sin.  So, that simple command, and that statement in Romans, has some very serious consequences, and some interesting repercussions.  There are people, for example, today who don’t believe in the Genesis account of creation; they are what we call theistic evolutionists.  These people may be the real Christians, they say, oh yeah, we believe that God created Adam and Eve, but they weren’t the first creatures.  Like, I think I have quoted  him often, Cardinal O’Connor at St. Patrick’s in New York, he was the Cardinal of New York, he said that Adam and Eve were a couple of anthropoid apes, ape-like creatures, and that evolution, because the Catholic church teaches evolution, they believe in it, that, well, he followed this evolution, you know, and by the time they got close enough to what  man would look like, then He put a human soul and spirit in them.  And Pope John Paul the 2^nd said, we will not compromise on that, that’s where God got involved in this thing!  Well, you’ve got a problem because you’ve got Adam and Eve standing on a pile of fossils, dead creatures, death has happened before Adam sinned.  That is absolutely contrary to the Word of God.   So, death came by sin, and Adam and Eve—I don’t think God explained it to them—the day you eat thereof you will die.  Maybe they knew, but they couldn’t possibly know because they had never seen it.  If they had seen animals dying, then they would have known.

            Tom:

At the beginning I said I believed that this test was a demonstration of their love for God or not love, because, look, Eve had a choice here, she could either do what God said, or go lean toward her own self.  We’re going to get into that in a bit, you know, the seduction here.  So, to me it makes sense that it was God testing to see whether they would do what He wanted, and I don’t know how you can do something that somebody else wants unless you’re either in fear of them or you love them and you want to please them.

            Dave:

Okay, Tom, I won’t argue with you on that, but I don’t know that the concept of love would even enter, I don’t know, it’s possible.

            Tom:

You don’t think they had a real personal relationship?

            Dave:

O, yeah, they surely did.

            Tom:

Well anyway, let me move on from that.  Dave, Acts chapter 8, verse 30.  What we’re trying to do, if you have just joined us: we want to explain the gospel.  As I was looking through Acts, I take a very good example of the teachings of the Lord being explained.  So, here we have Phillip, I will just pick up with verse 30:  “And Phillip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest  thou what thou readest?  And he said, how can I, except some man should guide me?  And he desired Phillip that he would come up and sit with him.  The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth:  In his humiliation his judgment was taken away:  and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.  And the eunuch answered Phillip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other man?  The Phillip opened  mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.”

            Dave:

Well Tom, it’s an amazing prophecy.  It tells us of the sufferings of Christ, and well, He’s led as a lamb to the slaughter, they hadn’t even seen that.  They are going to be clothed, I think, in sheep skins probably—

            Tom:

You’re talking about Adam and Eve.

            Dave:

Adam and Eve, after they have sinned and they are cast out of the garden, and they realize they are naked.  I don’t think it was a matter of clothes, as we have already mentioned.  I believe they were clothed in the glory of God, and suddenly it’s gone, and they are just creatures.  So, He is led like a lamb to the slaughter.  Well, they were going to have to slaughter a lamb.  And when we get a little farther in the next chapter in Genesis, we find that there’s a little problem between Cain and Abel.  Cain wants to bring an offering of the vegetables, he’s a gardener, but that is not a picture of Christ who will come to die for the sins of the world.  So. his offering was not accepted, but Abel offered from the flock, and this is where they were introduced to death and a substitute would die for them.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, that’s why you said there are people who reject Genesis, but with a little diligence it’s all laid out for us.  We started off by my asking you the question, What went wrong?  Obviously, sin entered in, disobedience and it changed everything, absolutely changed everything, and so what have we got today?  We have the results, the consequences of their sin, and then everyone who followed after them.  We  have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but Dave, going back to the test.  In Genesis chapter 2, verse 16 and 17, which we read, God lays out the command for them and they disobey.  Let’s talk about the disobedience here, failing the test.  The serpent:  now, to take us back a little bit with regard to this, we have this serpent that really is Satan, so we know that sin really didn’t start with Adam and Eve.  We have sin in heaven, don’t we?

            Dave:

Yeah, in Revelation chapter 12, it’s very clear …this is that old serpent called the devil, who deceives the whole world.  And Satan, it’s rather interesting, he doesn’t shy away from being called, the serpent, but he kind of likes it, apparently, because you’ve got serpent worship all over this world.

            Tom:

And dragons, he is also called the dragon.

            Dave:

Right.  You go to India, China, places like this where the gospel of Jesus Christ has not penetrated, or hardly  has, they worship serpents.  You’ve got the Hopi Indians, they have their annual snake dance right here in Arizona, to bring rain, and so forth.  You’ve got Quetzalcoaltl, the feathered serpent of the Myans, and Aztecs.  Well, you have the cosmic egg, for example, it was a symbol of the cosmos, and wound around it was a serpent.  Or you had the Oracle at Delphi, and on three on a tripod, and every one of those had a serpent wound around it.  And the Oracle at Delphi, believe it or not, was consulted from, I don’t know how far they could walk in those days and how far they could get, but many, many miles away. They came from everywhere to consult this, and it was, of course, demonic.  And to think of the serpent, people say, well the serpent, I mean, talking in the garden, you’ve got a talking serpent?  Well, we had a serious scientist who was trying to teach the alphabet to chimpanzees. Or even to porpoises because if you want to pay any attention to what Richard Dawkins, the leading atheist in the world says, There is no difference, there is nothing that distinguishes man from a fungus, or from an ape, or from a microbe, because they all have the same DNA in us, and he says, oh yes, sometimes they say we act like animals.  No, says Dawkins we are animals!  So, there is a rejection of the book of Genesis, I mean, the beginning chapters, and Tom, I’m going on here a little bit but you have a Bible out there called, The Renevaré Spiritual Formation Bible.  It is, supposedly, it  has commentaries by 50 Bible experts.  Some of them are, supposedly, evangelical Christians, and what does it say about the first 11 chapters of Genesis?  It says, These came from pagan myths that were passed down and they were kind of revised and given a monotheistic expression.

            Tom:

Right, when in actuality, you talking about the serpents and so on, we  have the story, the fact the history of Genesis being corrupted here to the extent that now the serpent has become the  healer, the savior, and as you pointed out, Dave, we find that in all religions.  We have the reverse—outside of biblical Christianity we have the serpent as the savior.  It’s incredible!  Voodoo, it’s called, Voodom, by some, that’s really the healer within Voodom.

            Dave:

Yeah, well, we could get a little closer to home on that, we have the Caduceus, the symbol of modern medicine.  That comes from the temple of (Esculapious), a Greek or Roman god.  There were temples for him, he was worshipped with serpents.  Why was he worshipped with serpents?  Because of an ancient story that said (Esculapious) the god, as you were intimating, Tom, a healing herb from the mouth of a serpent.  So, a serpent is the healer, instead of the destroyer in the Bible.

            Tom:

Well, let’s get to the Scriptures on this.  Genesis chapter 3, I’m going to read verse 1, and we’ll go on from there, Dave:  “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.  And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”  If people want to know, this is the grand scheme of the advisory Satan to undermine what God has said, right from the beginning, his first words to humanity.  But Dave, I don’t think we answered the question about Satan and sin taking place in heaven.  Can you address that, just briefly?

            Dave:

Well, if you go to Isaiah 14:12, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?”  And the Bible explains that Lucifer, which is Satan, conceived in his heart, he exalted himself.   He said, I will be like the most High.  Now you notice Satan was not so stupid as to say, I will be the most High, because you can only have one most High, and the most High already existed.  But Satan said, I will be like Him, I will have His power.  And if we read Genesis chapter 3 more carefully we see that Satan didn’t promise Eve that she could become a god, he promised her, You can become as the gods.

            Tom:

Well, let me read that.  This is picking up with verse 2:  “And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:  But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and  ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

            Dave:

Yeah, so already we’ve gone from one most High, we’ve gone from monotheism one true God, and now we have polytheism.  It was Satan who introduced polytheism.  And yeah, oh there’s a lot of gods now, I’m one of them, you can be one of them too, just join my side.

            Tom:

Yeah, so the lie that began in heaven in Satan’s rebellion, Lucifer’s rebellion against God, he brings to earth and introduces to mankind.

            Dave:

Absolutely, and that was the fall of man.  Man chose, there was a choice, Don’t eat of this tree.  Well, you have to be able to choose, and man has the power of free will, and he chose to disobey God.  It’s right there in the very beginning, Tom.  Those who says, No, God determines everything, well no, we have the power to choose.

            Tom:

Dave, I want to read one other point, and we are just about out of time, but when Eve says, Neither shall ye touch it, I don’t remember that being in God’s command.  But what’s interesting here…when we get into dialogue…okay, see…Satan began:  Yea, hath God said, with the idea being that, Let’s get into conversation, let’s dialogue about this.  So, you immediately know that we’re going to either add something or take away something from God’s Word, and that’s what happens, that’s what happened here.

            Dave:

Well, you take away or add, there’s a penalty for it.  This is God’s Word and we don’t change it.

            Tom:

And we don’t dialogue about it.

            Dave:

Right.

This is a link to our weekly radio program Search the Scriptures Daily.You may listen to the program by clicking on the "mp3" link above.For more listening options, please see our Radio Page .

Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael, we’re glad you could join us. Coming up in today’s program in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will resume their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “What is the Gospel of the Kingdom?”  In Religion in the News, “Chinese Crackdown on Home Churches.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Do you have a sub-conscious mind?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD.  You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge.  We’ll let you know how to order later in the program.  Now, this week’s Cover Article.  Tom and Dave continue their series of programs based on Dave’s book, Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the question, “Does God Answer Everyone’s Prayers?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re tuned in 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.  Today in our first segment of Search the Scriptures Daily, we’re continuing through Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God, In Search of the True Faith.  We are concluding the chapter 8 titled: Concerning Prayer, which we explained that for some people prayer is their first attempt to seek and find God, especially if they are in a crisis situation.  Today, however, we’re going to discuss some conditions related to God answering prayer that are given in the Bible.  Dave, let’s start with God answering the prayer of an unbeliever, one who hasn’t been reconciled to God through belief in the gospel.  Does God answer such a person’s prayer? 

            Dave:

Well, the Scripture says He doesn’t hear the prayer of sinners, especially when he brings it with a wicked mind, but if he’s crying out for salvation, God will hear that and answer it and help him to understand what that really means.  You can cry out in desperation, you just want to get out of a situation.  We’ve mentioned that that’s one of the reasons why when you get in hell in the Lake of Fire you can’t get out, because well not as though you ever could because this is an eternal sentence.

            Tom:

Right, an infinite penalty.

            Dave:

But why couldn’t you get out?  Because it’s not a sincere prayer, you just want to get out of this situation, that’s all.  You don’t want reconciliation with God.  And so that kind of a prayer will not be answered on this earth either.  Someone—who some disasters have come or threatening his life and he cries out in desperation.  He just wants God to bail him out.  He’s not concerned about heaven and hell, he’s not concerned about the will of God, he’s not concerned about believing in Jesus.  Now I can’t make a hard and fast rule, Tom, because sometimes people who are in that situation cry out and God hears their prayer and that’s what brings them to Christ.  You will find a verse in Scripture for example that says the grace of God leads to repentance.  Well, you would think, No, his discipline, you know, He’s going to spank you a little harder.  No, sometimes it’s seeing the grace of God, his mercy and his love that breaks the heart.

            Tom:

Dave, I have to admit that’s the way, to a great degree, it worked in my life.  I was just an arrogant, thought he knew it all, having growing up Roman Catholic, and so on—thought I had all the—even though I wasn’t a practicing Catholic at the time, I just thought, Nah, I don’t need this stuff, you know.  I had 30 years of it, it’s good for you guys, but I don’t really need it.  And people would argue with me, not argue with me, but try and give me information and I would debate them.  Not like I really knew anything, but just for the sake of keeping them at bay.  Finally, they just stopped, they said well, we’re going to pray for you, and they got everybody they knew to pray for me, and they told me so.  And what was interesting about that is they expected God to drop me in the gutter.  They expected that I would be down so low that I would have to cry out for help.  But actually, the reverse happened, that God worked some things in my life and really increased the kind of work I was doing, opened up doors of opportunity, and so on.  Everybody who was praying for me thought, oh man, this is going to lead him right down to the primrose path and he’s going to go to hell in a handbasket because of all these things that doors were now opening for me.  But you know what it kept me looking over my shoulder.  And I finally said, because they told me they were praying and I saw the answers to prayer, to their prayers.  Maybe not in the way they saw it, but it brought me to the fact that there is, you know, I knew there was a God.  I never, you know, denied that, but the reality of a God who answers prayer and wanted to work in my life and was drawing me to Him.  So, that was certainly an answer to prayer, although I wasn’t the one praying it, but it was an answer to prayer on their part, and it really had a great affect in my life, brought me to salvation.

            Dave:

God is merciful.

            Tom:

Yeah.  Well, on the other hand, Dave, there are some Christians who are somewhat oblivious to the fact that there are conditions.  Conditions exist on God’s part that influence whether or not He’ll answer someone’s prayer.  It’s like they bought into the popular idea that God is a God of unconditional love, meaning He will do whatever we want, who will look at how we are living our lives.  And I am talking about Christians, those who profess to be Christians.  Well, first of all, what’s your view of unconditional love?  Is that biblical?

            Dave:

Unconditional love…if you love me you will keep my commandments.

            Tom:

Sounds like a condition.

            Dave:

If we pray according to His will He hears us.

            Tom:

Condition.

            Dave:

He’s not going to answer the prayer of the wicked.  In other words, if I’m not living for the Lord…and we’ve given various illustrations of this before.  The little boy who is disobedient, and is not helpful all year, but when it comes to Mother’s Day…  So, on the one hand you would say that the mother surely loves her son no matter what.  If he gets in prison, she still loves him.  On the other hand, she can’t reward him with her love when this is the way he is, and he thinks he can buy her off?  Now you know that there are people out there who think there’s a little formula, or positive—if you’re just positive, you make this confession, God will have to answer.  That’s not what the Bible says.  So, there are conditions for God answering prayer as there would be for any parent.  Here comes little Johnny and he wants a favor from daddy.  Yeah, but you’ve been disobeying me all week, why should I do this for you now?  That would only reward you in your disobedience.  So there are a number of conditions for prayer.  God is love.  That doesn’t mean that love is God, you can’t turn it around that way.  So, this is part of His character, He will never stop loving, but that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t discipline.  That doesn’t mean that He won’t send someone to hell.  He doesn’t want them to go there, He loves them in spite of everything, but you have purchased your own ticket to hell.  God doesn’t want you to go there.  Now that’s the difference we have with Calvinists.  They would say He has predestined some for hell and some for heaven, not true!  So, just because God sends someone to hell doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love them.  He doesn’t want them to go there.  The father spanks a child—well they don’t do that anymore, that’s child abuse—it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love.  And that’s one of the parents out there who might be listening, you must be very careful that when you discipline a child, particularly if  you still use what the Bible says  you should, the rod, you don’t do it in anger, you don’t do it like you hate this child now.  No, it’s in love.  Whom He loves, He chastens, the Scripture says.

            Tom:

It also says He scourges.

            Dave:

Right, and scourges every son whom He receives, that’s right.

            Tom:

It’s for our good.

            Dave:

Absolutely.

            Tom:

Dave, I think one of the reasons that Christians get lost in this is that there’s such an emphasis today on God’s love, and as you said, He is love, that’s what the Scriptures tell us.  On the other hand He’s also a just God.  Justice has to prevail He’s perfect in all His attributes.  And when we, as we see today, we push an attribute beyond, not only what the Scripture says, but something that we feel good about or more comfortable with, and so on.  We get a distorted image of God, we get the wrong idea about loving. 

            Dave:

Tom, an illustration I often give from the pulpit, but I don’t think I have given it on radio.  If my son, I’m the judge and my son, my only son is standing before me and he has been found guilty of multiple murders, and so forth, somebody sitting in the back of the courtroom says, yeah, but Dave, he really loves  him, I know I can see it in his eyes, he really loves him, he’s not going to sentence him to whatever.  No, I would become a partner of his crime.  My heart is tearing in me, I love him, but I can’t go against the law and he is going to have to suffer the consequences for what he has done.

            Tom:

Now, for those people who are thinking, well yeah, they talk about conditions, but what are the conditions?  What I would like to do now, Dave, is take you through some of the Scriptures and you comment on each one as you feel the Lord leads you.  Let’s begin with Psalm 80 verse 4:  O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of they people?

            Dave:

Well—

            Tom:

Ai is a good example, I believe, of this, because the Israelites had such great victory over (Jericho), they thought this thing would happen over this small town.  And they got beaten pretty badly, the Israelites did.

            Dave:

They fled.

            Tom:

Right, and of course that threw Joshua off.  They repented in dust and ashes and got down on their knees and face before God, and so on.  And what does God say to them?  He doesn’t want to hear their prayers, he says, Get up, there is sin in the camp.  So this would be God being angry against the prayer of thy people because they weren’t doing what He told them to do.

            Dave:

Yeah, in other words it was not the time to pray, it was the time to repent.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

And I have things in my life that are I know I’m in disobedience to the Lord, and I still think He is going to answer my prayer?  Now it’s not going to help if I grovel on the floor and cry out, it’s not going to help no matter how loud I plead.  That’s not the problem, the problem is that there is sin in my life that must be confessed.  Otherwise, God would be rewarding me for my disobedience.

            Tom:

Dave, these next two verses, again, this is what the Word of God says, it just reinforces what you’re getting at.  Proverbs 15:29:  “The Lord is far from the wicked:  but he heareth the prayer of the righteous.”  And then,

Psalm 66:18:  “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:”

            Dave:

Yeah.

            Tom:

We’ve got to come to grips with that.  We are deluding ourselves if we think that, oh well, there’s an open door, there’s always an open door for repentance.

            Dave:

Well, I can’t make God a partner in my sin.  That’s what I’m asking Him to be, I’m asking Him to bless me even when I am in rebellion against Him.  So, there are conditions to prayer, it’s not just any time—O come on, ask me anything  you want, I’ll give it to  you.  Absolutely not!

            Tom:

Proverbs 28:9, again we’re talking about conditions.  God has his conditions related to whether he will answer your prayer or not.  Proverbs 28:9 again, “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.”

            Dave:

Right, so I would say the law includes all of Scripture.  If you read Psalm 119, it talks about the statutes, the Word, and so forth.  The law is not just 10 commandments, this is what it is often called.  The law was given by Moses, the Law of Moses, and so forth.  Well, that includes all 5 books of Moses.

            Tom:

And from a New Testament standpoint, you quoted it earlier, Jesus said:  If you love me, keep my commandments.  He wasn’t talking abut the Ten Commandments, He was talking about everything that He said, everything that He taught.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

Isaiah 1:15:  “And when ye spread forth hands, I will hide mine eyes from you:  yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear:  your hands are full of blood.”

            Dave:

Yeah and then He tells them to repent, Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord.  Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, those be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.  There is a remedy, God says, but I’m not going to hear your prayers until you get right with me—you come into a right relationship with me.  I mean, Tom, nobody can argue with that.  Why should God reward our wickedness?  Why should He give us the wrong impression?  Well, it doesn’t matter, you know, you can just do anything you want because I’m so loving and gracious I’ll just pat you on the head, okay, sonny boy, that’s all right.  No, it doesn’t work that way!  It doesn’t work that way in life—well, for some people it does, unfortunately—and it doesn’t work—

            Tom:

Not in the long haul.

            Dave:

No, not in the long haul, right, it will catch up with you.

            Tom:

Yeah, and I hope no one in our audience are thinking, Well, these guys are being very negative, they keep giving these Scriptures about how God will not answer prayer under these conditions, and so on.  Hey folks, if you’re thinking that, recognize what God is saying here and rectify the problem, and you will have access to God for him to answer your prayers.

            Dave;

In other words, Tom, it’s not some kind of a formula.  The witchdoctor can get a lot of things to happen, there’s a power out there, satanic power, but what does it depend upon?  Well, the formula, you say the right formula—well, Satan wants a little obedience also, but it works by, it’s like automatic….  People like Copeland and others—It’s by the law, there’s the law of faith.   Pat Robertson says, You follow the law, but it doesn’t mean a righteous law, it doesn’t mean someone—a pilot in a plane doesn’t have to be a Christian, he doesn’t have to be living a righteous life, he must follow the laws of aerodynamics, and if he does that he’s okay.  So, you don’t get God to answer your prayers by following some formula.

            Tom:

And Dave, that’s a good point, because all of these verses that we have just gone over, they point to a personal God.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

And the relationship of the living God to us as believers is really important, and certain conditions apply here which we have covered.  Isaiah 59:2:  “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”  That should be a very sobering verse for people.  O Yeah, I can walk in sin, God loves me and, you know, he’s still going to cover me this way or that way.  No, God may be merciful, but grace is not going to follow disobedience, can’t happen!

            Dave:

Furthermore, I don’t know what the relationship of this person, they could not even be a Christian at all, but they are thinking that God will be merciful and gracious, there comes a time when it’s too late.  God will not plead forever, He will not be patient forever, He will not overlook sin forever.  There comes a day when He’s going to: that’s it!  In the Bible it tells us something about that often.

            Tom:

Dave, I have a couple of other verses from the New Testament.  These are very practical things that maybe we don’t think about, but we need to.  Again, conditions with regard to God answering our prayer or not. 

1 Peter 3:7: “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, (that is, our wives) giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.”  It tells me very simply, there again there are conditions and maybe as a husband to my wife, maybe I may have to check that situation out and see if I’m doing, in terms of my relationship with her, doing what the Scriptures say.

            Dave:

Well, if I’m not gracious with others, it’s talking about the husband and wife there, but it means others as well.  You get into the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts or our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  It’s like the illustration Jesus gave, you remember?—of the man who owned, let’s say, $10,000,000 to his creditor, and his creditor just forgave him.  And then he turned around and he found a fellow servant who owed him $5, and  he took him by he throat and said, Pay what you owe me or I’ll throw you in jail!  Now, God came back to that guy and that was it.  So, I cannot expect--like in the so-called Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And then if you went to Mark 11:25:  And when ye stand praying, if you have ought against anyone, forgive.  Otherwise, your heavenly Father isn’t going to answer your prayer.  Why should He answer your prayer when you are holding resentment and anger in your heart against someone, an unforgiving spirit, it’s not going to work.

            Tom:

Dave, one last verse, and we probably don’ even have to comment on that, just let our listeners, our viewers think about it.  James 4:3:  “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”

 

 

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