cover article

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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 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 “Who was the Generation of Vipers?” In Religion in the News, “Divine Doodling.” We’ll take a look at that story, and examine the question: “Can Atheism be the Religion of the Anti-Christ?” 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, “Will we get another chance at life?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. We are continuing our series featuring Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God, in this first segment of our program, and if the contents of the book sound interesting to you later in the program Gary will tell you how you can obtain a copy. The thesis in the first part of Seeking and Finding God is, life continues after death. And the opposing views of that thesis are one: There is nothing beyond death, two: What lies beyond death is an environment of unconditional acceptance and higher evolution of the species, and three: Death is simply one of the conditions in a continual series of birth, death and re-births. Now, we have addressed the first two opposing views in previous programs, so that bring us to reincarnation, the belief that after a person dies he or she goes through a series of physical births, and Dave, that belief has number of variations depending on who is promoting the idea. And you know, I can remember that prior to becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, I thought the idea had some merit, but that was without really studying the teachings. I just thought, Hey, if I kind of mess up in this life, you know, maybe I’ll get another shot at it, maybe I can do better the next time around. That seems somewhat hopeful, but what would you tell our audience, what could be wrong with that?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, of course we believe the Bible is God’s Word, and this program is Search the Scriptures, and the Scriptures say very clearly, It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment. What is that? Hebrews 9:27, or somewhere around there, I’m usually pretty close, in the neighborhood. Furthermore, there is no evidence of this. Are we on to reincarnation now, Tom? Yeah. Well, I think, probably in the book, but when I’m talking to someone I usually say, I can tell you 3 quick things about reincarnation. Number one: It’s amoral, Number two: It’s senseless, Number three: It’s hopeless. Why do I say it’s amoral? Because, well, if I’m a husband who beats his wife in this life, I must come back in my next life as a wife beaten by her husband. But that means my husband in my next life, he must come back in his next life, you know, as a wife beaten by her husband, and so forth.

            Tom:

Mmhmm. So this is the law of karma, that you’re referring to.

            Dave:

Right, well, the karma which is cause and effect. So, whatever you sow you reap. The Bible says, well, that’s true, whatever you sow you reap, but, there is forgiveness with God. And you, whatever you sow you reap because God, who is watching this, He is going to judge you. You may reap it in hell. You may not reap it here in this life, and the Bible makes that very clear, why do the wicked prosper? Some people—wow, Hitler prospered for a long time, didn’t he? But he’s not prospering now. And so, it’s amoral because rather than solving the problem of evil, it perpetuates evil, because the perpetrator of every crime must become the victim of the same crime, which means there must be another perpetrator, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, it goes on forever. Secondly, it’s senseless because, have you noticed everything’s getting better? What’s the point of coming back again and again? You can talk to, I don’t know how many people, I’ve asked a few audiences, Anybody here remember your last life, or the one before? Well, if you can’t remember the mistakes you made in your prior lives how do you know you’re not going to make the same ones again, or worse? How is this helping you to progress? So, it’s senseless when you look at the world around you, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better, I wouldn’t think so. Okay, so then finally, it’s hopeless. Why is it hopeless? Well, it’s called, The Wheel of Reincarnation. Now how are you going to get off of a wheel, I mean, you’re on a Ferris wheel, whatever kind of wheel you want to call it, it just goes round and round and round and round, and there is no way off except for Yoga. And I think we've talked a bit about Yoga.

            Tom:

We’ve done some programs on it.

            Dave:

Right, so you’ve got to practice yoga, and that will somehow, help you to escape from time sense and the elements and reach moksha, and then you’re clear. But there’s a lot of problems there too, because the whole idea of moksha is—or nirvana or whatever—you now are not going to remember anything, because God-realization, self-realization, to realize that I am God, and to merge into Brahman—to be distinct from Brahma, who is one of the trimurti, the lower gods, I mean the gods just under with Vishnu and Shiva. Self-realization, I am going to be in the position where it will really be true of me, what the Hindu says, that thou art atman individual: the individual soul is identical with Brahman, the universal soul. So now, this is my whole goal, is to become God, to become one with God, to merge into him, as the Buddhist would say, Like a drop of water into the ocean. But wait a minute!  This is what I’ve been working for all these years, self-realization, to realize I am God, when I get to be God, I don’t even know that I am God, I mean, I didn’t know that I came to the point of becoming God, because I’m gone, and there’s nothing left of me, because I’m just a drop of water that merged into the ocean.

            Tom:

Mmhmm. Dave, what’s amazing is that how these ideas, and there are different forms of Hinduism, different sects, different forms of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and so on, but what’s amazing to me is how these ideas, which as you look at them, and as you’ve described, there may be variations on what you’ve said within different groups, Buddhist groups and Hindu groups, but basically they agree with what you’ve said. That’s a problem and a concern. Dave, I know it’s referred to as Samsara, the Wheel of Sorrows, primarily because it’s hopeless, right?

            Dave:

It’s hopeless because what the Hindu—see, what we get in this reincarnation in America, that’s  not what they teach over there, anymore than the yoga over here is real yoga. So, you’re getting kind of a phony version of it.

            Tom:

Although it does lead people into the real stuff because they get excited about it.

            Dave:

Oh yeah, it certainly does. But the Hindu would say, In the beginning the three gunas, that’s what the call it, of the godhead, and they use that term, were all alone in the void, perfect balance, and something happened—no one knows—to cause an imbalance in the godhead, and that began the manifestation, the Prakriti that we’re all part of, this illusion, this Maya. Now if it all began with an imbalance in the godhead, it’s built into this whole thing: Life and death and rebirth and karma and all of that. That is built into the universe! You will never escape! So, it’s hopeless.

            Tom:

Although it is hopeless, and you’ve quoted Ghandi before: It’s a burden too great to bear, he said. Yet we have individuals coming from the East, the Dalai Lama would probably be the most celebrated, and when he comes to town literally hundreds of thousands people come to see  him, or hear him. Now, Dave, he’d be the best example, the most obvious example of reincarnation. He’s called the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and he’s from a succession of Lama’s. By the way, he refers to himself as just a simple Buddhist monk, but he’s called, your holiness, his holiness, okay?

            Dave:

Right, right.

            Tom:

He also is the godman, so I don’t know how that works. But nevertheless he claims to be reincarnated from the thirteenth Dalai Lama, all right?

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

Now, here’s an interesting sidenote; just last year the Chinese government, they outlawed reincarnation. Now how does that work?

            Dave:

And they have control of Tibet.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

Well, it’s like over here, Tom, the United States government outlawed polygamy, but we still have some Mormon sects who practice it, and one of them has been in the news recently. In fact, why wouldn’t they, because Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both said the only way to reach godhood, and that’s what this is about too,—

            Tom:

Sure.

            Dave:

—same thing, only way to reach godhood is through polygamy. Now the United States government outlawed it but it can't change the scriptures of the Mormon church, so they have a real problem. But anyway, the Dalai Lama gets the Nobel Peace prize? What does he get the Nobel Peace prize for? Because he’s spreading peace by initiating them into this Kalachakra Tibetan Tantric yoga.

            Tom:

Right.

            Dave:

He’s going to make them all little Bodhisattvas.

            Tom:

Enlightened ones.

            Dave:

He says, You are gods, you are all little gods, little Buddhas, and so forth.

            Tom:

Dave, let me spell that out, because as I said, it’s surprising that a religious figure from the East would have such a great influence here. And I think the come on is, well, he’s a man of peace, he’s a holy monk, okay, and  he’s a man of peace and people like what he has to say. But I think you have to go a little bit beyond that and see what he’s all about, see what this—for example, you mentioned the Kalachakra Tantric initiation ceremony. It’s called, The initiation ceremony for peace. Well, everybody is in favor of peace, but let me just give you some insights into this initiation. Oh, by the way, in 1999, he was at Bloomington, Indiana, university of Indiana, that’s where it’s located, he initiated 10,000 people into this, through this ceremony.

            Dave:

Well, this peace should have been—give it a big boost.

            Tom:

Well of course. Exactly. But, let me just give you some quotes of—this is a description of the ceremony: the Dalai Lama asks the local spirits for permission to use their home. “Usually the spirits at first do not want to cooperate so to appease them, the assisting monks perform the dance of the earth, making symbolic gestures with their hands and feet. The prayers, music and dance subdue the interfering spirits.” Now, central to the ceremony is the creation of a mandala, a sand mandala, is very colorful, it’s about 7 feet in diameter, in which this becomes, through the ceremony, the home to 722 deities, okay, gods and goddesses basically. Now, “After the dance,” I’m quoting, “the Dalai Lama receives permission to proceed with the ceremony from Tenma, the earth spirit, on behalf of all the local spirits. The mandala will house many of the thousands of deities found in Tibetan Buddhism during the ceremony.” Now, just as we were taping the show, just last weekend in Seattle, the Dalai was there for a conference, and he—they went through this initiation. Now the city of Seattle turned loose, basically, school children, ten thousand school children to attend this. It was labeled as, Seeds of Compassion, to teach our children compassion through this initiation ceremony.

            Dave:

Well Tom, it’s almost beyond comprehension. But it’s not just by chance, because in uh, the book on Yoga, I lay it out, and I don’t know if anybody remembers it but, I happen to have the mimeograph copy of a study by Stanford Research Institute, I think it was still called that, SRI today, it’s titled, Changing Images of Man. And it’s just the bottom line, these are scientists and it’s all about; how can we turn Western rational thinking, rationally thinking man into an Eastern mystic psychic for peace, because that’s the only hope. Well, LSD played a big role in that, and the CIA was involved, and pharmaceutical companies and so forth. So, there was a deliberate—on eighty university campuses LSD was introduced.

            Tom:

Sure.

            Dave:

And that played a big role in this because, you see, the key is an altered state of consciousness. When you—on drugs you get into an altered state, you’ve loosened the normal connection between you and your brain, that allows another spirit to interpose itself, tick off the neurons, that’s where the psychedelic colors and adventures and so forth come from, and what does that do? Well, the gurus they realize, Hey, these druggies over there, they are going to accept what we offer. Why America has been opened up to this whole thing because the drug users were going to Goa beach, and they were following the gurus over there. So it’s uh, an amazing and deliberate process, Tom.

Tom:

Well, it works, just as you said, Dave, it works through altered states of consciousness. You remember Allan Watts. For a decade he was an Episcopalian priest, all right, and he was the one who led the beach generation, got them into Buddhism, all right, Zen Buddhism, and then he, along with Timothy Leary and others, they were experimenting, because they were getting the same thing through drugs that he was getting philosophically and so on. But let me go back to the Dalai Lama and this initiation ceremony. See Dave, on the one hand you have, this is a sort of a philosophical, ideological thing, let’s not talk about spirits, let’s not talk about these entities.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

But at the same time these guys always go back to that.

            Dave:

Of course.

            Tom:

These Tibetan Buddhists, let me give you, there’s a website you can goggle: The Shadow of the Dalai Lama, anybody who wants to check this out. And these are people who are concerned with what the Dalai Lama is presenting, not from a Christian standpoint, just from the standpoint of the contradictions that the Dalai Lama is presenting versus what this initiation ceremony is all about. Let me give you some of the things that they want him to answer. Number One: This initiation, as you move—(it’s like the Masonic Lodge,) you move up through various stages, it glorifies holy war on the part of the Buddhist. Hostility toward monotheistic religions and they name in particular, Islam, okay. The establishment of a Buddhist world emperor and a theocracy. In other words, they want to take over, not unlike, (laughs) not unlike Islam. They have rights involving the sexual abuse of women as energy sources, of course this is tantric yoga, and cannibalism.  And Dave, you’ve mentioned on this program, some friends that have visited the monks in Tibet and they’ve witnessed these things. And here’s the bottom line, for anybody who is initiated who moves up into the secret initiation rites, the Dalai says that they are going to be condemned to hell if they reveal any of the secrets. So, this, in the initial stages, is what was presented in Bloomington, Indiana, in Seattle, Washington, but around the world. He has initiated hundreds of thousands into this ceremony.

            Dave:

And uh, does he always get a good reception?

            Tom:

Dave, it couldn’t be better. You know, you’ve given the example, once you’ve turned your concern—remember, was it in Dallas? Or a Texas station which you were talking about—oh, no, this was in Australia, where you were talking, you wanted to talk about the Dalai Lama and some of these things, and they shut you off.

            Dave:

Well actually, it was an interview from the chief newspaper in the capitol of New Zealand. And uh yeah, oh they wanted me to get all the dirt on Oral Roberts and Jim and Tammy Baker, and so forth. And then I said, Well, let me tell you about somebody who’s really making a bigger impact than that.  I said, We could talk about the Dalai Lama too. Bingo! That shut everything down!

            Tom:

Mmhmm. Well, on the other hand, Dave, to show you the popularity. This conference, which he is the featured speaker, they also have archbishop Desmond Tutu, okay—

            Dave:

Oh yeah.

            Tom:

—incredible, I mean, you couldn’t find a more apostate within the realm of professing Christianity. His theology, his beliefs are just unbelievable. Now, but they also had Rob Bell and Doug Pagitt, two of the leaders within The Emerging Church movement. And—

            Dave:

What was the part they played?

Tom:

Well, they were talking about peace. As we’ve mentioned on the program through our series of The Emerging Church, many of these leaders, they are pluralists. They don’t believe Jesus is the only way, they think there are other ways to peace, they—many of these Emerging Churches would invite Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims to get their view of Jesus, to get their view, their spirituality, which they don’t believe is contrary to their beliefs, and it’s not, because they are pluralists. Basically, they believe that anything goes.

            Dave:

Tom, that’s what Jesus called the broad road that leads to destruction. He said, I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me. He said, Strait is the gate, narrow is the way that leads to life, few there be that go in thereat, but broad is the road that leads to destruction. And these people are on the broad road.

            Tom:

But see, Dave, that doesn’t sell. What you just said, because it’s viewed as being intolerant, narrow-minded. But these are the words of Jesus.

            Dave:

Right, and just logically, Tom, as we’ve mentioned it a number of times; “intolerant?” You want police to be intolerant of crime? Would you accuse doctors of being intolerant of cancer when they diagnosis it, and say, Hey, here’s a way to get rid of this thing? That’s intolerant! How could you talk like that? It doesn’t make sense in any area of life. You know, you’ve got a 350 pound linebacker, and not only does he tackle the guy, but then he pounds on him and jumps on him. And the ref comes running up and is going to throw him out of the game, and this linebacker says, What?! you’re intolerant! There are some rules.

            Tom:

I Know.

            Dave:

And, these people don’t want any rules, and Tom, they’ll use the, well, the silliest ideas, rationalizations.

            Tom:

Dave, in terms of the promotion of this, not just the Dalai Lama, but Oprah Winfrey, she’s been going through a series with a guru, although he’s German, he’s not Indian, his name is Eckhart Toley, and this again, all of what we’ve been talking about could refer to him, only in a more philosophical way. There aren’t really any rules, sin is just kind of missing what we really need to do, there’s really no salvation, except within ourselves, and so on. So, although Oprah claims to be a Christian, she now, and, well actually, I mean for years and years and years she has promoted uh, a Christianity more akin to religious science. So, but it’s popular, because it’s not, you don’t, you’re not held accountable for it.

            Dave:

Right, anything that will get you away from Jesus—narrow-minded, dogmatic Jesus. And if I dare give one of my illustrations, I’ve probably given it many times, but. Here’s the pilot. He’s coming in for a landing, and the radio control tower says, You’re half a mile South of the runway, turn so many degrees to the North, quick! And he radios back, You narrow-minded, dogmatic, fundamentalist! No, there’s only one runway, if he doesn’t hit it he’s had it! You can’t just make it up, as I often say, you want to make up a religion? Go ahead, it’s going to get you on the broad road, because there are many of these religions, that’s what they are. You want to know the truth?  The truth will set you free, you’d better take it from Jesus who is the truth, and from His Word, which is truth. So, Tom, it’s rebellion. It’s like a little boy, or a little girl: No, mommy, I’m not going to do that, I don’t want to do that! Why can’t I do what I want!? This is what, really the world is. Like that, Well, give me the broad way. It’s like the New Agers, you’ve heard them, Tom: Well, I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious. Meaning, I don’t want any rules, okay? Don’t tie me down with doctrine.

            Gary:

This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call.  Still ahead, answers to your questions in Contending for the Faith. And in Understanding the Scriptures, Dave and Tom will continue their discussion of God’s salvation. In addition to this radio program we publish a monthly Newsletter, which we make available free of charge. We also produce and distribute a wide variety of teaching materials including books in print, e-book and audio book formats, CD’s, DVD’s and other items to encourage the serious study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials, or to get a copy of today’s broadcast, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708.  Call our toll free order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org. If you would like a copy of this broadcast on compact disk, ask for Program Number 1908, and be sure to mention the call letters of this station. And if  you would like to watch Dave and Tom, our weekly broadcast is available on DVD, ask about a subscription when you contact us. You can also download both audio and video podcast at our website. We’ll repeat this information at the end of the program.

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 continue their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “What was the Baptism of John?” In Religion in the News, “Canada Shuts Down Ministry.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question: “How Should we Celebrate Easter?” 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, “Is There Life After Death?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. In this first segment of our program we’re continuing a new series featuring Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God. And later in the program, Gary will tell you how you can obtain a copy. Now Dave, last week we covered one opposing view to your claim that life continues on after death because man’s non-physical parts, his spirit and soul, are eternal elements that are not affected by death. And that opposing view is, there is nothing to prepare for, when you’re dead you’re dead, that’s the end of it all. Today, we’re going to look at another opposing view, that death is followed by unconditional acceptance and it constitutes the next step in our progression, the progression of our existence. It’s really, according to some, it’s a spiritual advancement. Now, that has been, Dave, as you well know, that’s been the gospel that’s common to, and in all forms of communication with spirits, whether it be seances or mediums or psychics, Ouija boards, channelers, through drugs, meditation and so forth.  Now, let’s start with communication from non-physical intelligences. Is that a reality?

            Dave:

Well, I would say that it is. There are probably more fakes than genuine mediums, but yes, Satan does speak to his emissaries, we document that in a number of books.

            Tom:

Satan who is a non-physical entity himself—

            Dave:

Right, right.

            Tom:

—a spirit being, an angel created by God, who rebelled against God, according to the scriptures, according to the Bible.

            Dave:

Right, who apparently has a lot of demons following him now, I presume they are all fallen angels. Well, you have all kinds of mediums all over the world, I mean, this has been going on for thousands of years. And we can document it that the same message—what do we have, more than a thousand channelers in Los Angeles, so they say.

            Tom:

Mmhmm, and that was a number of years ago, are you sure that was the—

            Dave:

Do you think there was more?

            Tom:

Without a doubt.

            Dave:

Yeah, but all over the world you have this going on, and how do we know it’s from some demonic source? Because there is a common message that comes through, and that message conforms to what the serpent said to Eve in the Garden. And probably the major one, I’m thinking of bishop Pike. He was the Episcopalian bishop of California some years ago. His son, who was living in London, was a homosexual, and whether it was because of his conscience bothering him about that, we don’t know, but he committed suicide. This was a great blow to the bishop. He went to London just to check out his son’s apartment, pick up his things, and so forth. Some weird things happened to him when he was there, strange things. The clock would suddenly go back to the time when his son had committed suicide. And so that caused him to think, Well, maybe he could make contact with his son’s spirit. So he went to Anna Twig, a very famous medium in those days, and sure enough, here his son comes through. And uh, well, coming through a female, but, so you couldn’t say the voice was recognizable, but—some of the inflections, and so forth—but, talked about things, Well, dad, you remember when—things that Anna Twig could not possibly have known.  Of course, the bishop thought only his son could know—I mean, this was intimate things between them, things that had happened in the home, and so forth, so that convinced him. Where certain things hung in the home, and so forth. Well, this must be genuine, and his son said a number of things, but to get back to, Tom, what you were talking about. One of the things that his son said was, Dad, I’m not here for just a pleasant conversation, I have a mission since I have come to the other side. And my mission is to let you and others know there is no such thing as death. We just move on, you know, it’s like graduate school. We keep going through higher stages, and I thin Pike asked his son, Well, have you seen Jesus over there yet? And his son said, No, I haven’t met him yet but I’ve heard of him, he’s on a higher level. So here we have the lies coming through, but the same ones come through all over the world. So we know there is something behind this, it’s not imagination. Okay. They’re out there, these are demonic entities, and of course they have been possessing people.

            Tom:

Dave, as we have mentioned, more than mentioned, presented in this series, if we, indeed, are—part of our makeup is non-physical, our soul, our spirit, there is nothing to deny the fact that there are other spirits out there, non-physical entities, intelligences.

            Dave:

Right. Tom, it’s very interesting, and I don’t know to what extent we mentioned it, and I won’t get off on that, but you could say materialism is dead. I remember when I was in school, as a boy, even in grammar school, well, consciousness, even conscience, everything. The psychologists were leading the way in this but the physicists were going along with them. One day we would be able to explain it, just in terms of the brain, just in terms of chemical reactions in the brain, and electrical currents jumping between the synapses, and so forth, and that’s all it was, we’re just matter. Tom, they don’t believe that anymore, and there are physicists, quantum physicists who have been talking about this. They would say, Look, well where is—I  was just reading George Wald, Nobel Prize winner, just reading him today, you’d think he’s on our side because he says, You can’t find consciousness, it doesn’t have any physical substance, it does not have any location. And then he likens it, he says, It’s like in the electron. It doesn’t have any, I mean, it’s just like a will-o-the-wisp. It goes from here to there and it doesn’t cross the space in between, you can’t find the location of an electron. So now we’ve got them into George Wald—well, but there’s a great mind out there. And everything is conscious, even the matter, even rocks, there’s a consciousness in everything. Now we’re moving into real mysticism, a denial of the God who created us, and suddenly the Creator is part of His creation, and is manifesting himself. We’re into Hinduism, Tom, as you know. But this all comes from these demonic entities.

            Tom:

Dave, you alluded to Satan in the Garden of Eden speaking to Eve as a serpent—

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

—and I want to quote that verse. This is Genesis Chapter 3, Verses 4 and 5, “And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” So, on the one hand we’ve been saying that, Yes, there is physical death, but beyond the body dying the soul and spirit continue on. Okay, so in a cense, how does that fit in, You shall not surely die? Are we contradicting the scriptures here?

            Dave:

No, because death is a separation.

            Tom:

Mmhmm.

            Dave:

Physical death is separation of the soul and spirit from the body. Now, man is dead in trespasses and sins because ever since Adam’s fall, he has been spiritually, morally separated from God, and only Jesus Christ can bridge that chasm and bring us back into a right relationship, but it will be even better than Adam and Eve once  had. So, God was talking about physical death. Well, he was talking about spiritual and moral death as well.

            Tom:

Right, which is separation.

            Dave:

Right, and the day you eat that you’re dead. It took a while longer for physical death to take over but they were separated. Suddenly they have lost commune with this God who created them, who used to walk in the cool evening and reveal himself and talk with them. Now they are afraid of him and hiding behind trees in the garden and sewing fig leaves for aprons, and so forth. 

            Tom:

So Dave, in laying this out, the serpent says, Ye shall not surely die. That’s a theme we’ve seen it throughout history, and you point out that evolution is really the perfect set-up for demons. Obviously, the idea being that we don’t really die, we just evolve beyond the need for physical bodies.

            Dave:

Well, we could quote Robert Jastrow, founder and for many years the director of the Goddard Space Institute that sent Pioneer and Voyager and so forth, out into space. He is an agnostic, he would deny being an atheist, but you don’t know what they’re talking about, Tom, because—now what do you believe in? Do you believe in Einstein’s god, who was kind of a deist, deistic god, he starts the thing off and then it’s just going. Or do you believe in George Wall’s god, who He’s in everything, and pretty soon this consciousness is even in rocks. What significance is a man? Well, we can understand a little more, they would say. So, in evolution, if we want to take it a step further, let’s take Richard Dawkins. We’re of no significance, Tom, we are just a corpus for our selfish genes to inhabit, and the genes are really running the thing. So, in that sense you could say, we don’t die, I mean, our genes carry on. But anyway, getting back to Robert Jastrow, he said evolution could have been going on ten billion years longer on some planets than on planet earth. Those creatures would be as far beyond—on the evolutionary scale—would be as far beyond man as man is beyond a worm.  And when we see them they would seem like gods to us, the powers they would have. And then he even says, some of them could have evolved beyond the need of bodies, and they would be what old-fashioned religious people call spirits, souls and spirits. Well, that’s a perfect setup isn’t it?  Now we have them trying to communicate with extraterrestrials out there somewhere. Well, you’re not going to do that physically, because radio waves that go at the speed of light, now that’s very fast, but it would take a hundred thousand years to cross our galaxy. So you would have to have psychic communication. And you know, we’ve got even some people in the military, oh yeah, they’re in touch with these beings out there, and so forth.  So, evolution again, it just carries on this lie in one form or another, but it opens the door for scientists to try to make contact with these spirit entities highly evolved.

            Tom:

Right, which again is a perfect setup for entities that are trying to deceive humankind,

            Dave:

Right, right.

            Tom:

…that are trying to come up with beliefs, to promote beliefs that are contrary, diametrically opposed to what the Bible teaches.

            Dave:

Right, and it carries right on from what Satan the serpent said to Eve.

            Tom:

Right. Dave, there’s another interesting contrast here. Actually you say that there are serious consequences here for somebody who’s attempting to find God, seeking after God, looking for truth. And that is, that if a person thinks that we are temporal beings, then he loses sight that eternity, compared to a temporal time period, it’s like the blink of an eye. So consequently, putting all our emphasis on this temporal world,

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

…we’re making a huge mistake if that’s where somebody’s mindset is. Now let me just give you some scriptures to point out the biblical position on this.  Matthew 6:19-21: “Lay up not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Dave, there are so many verses, let me give you one more, people who are struggling on this temporal time period for them. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:  for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” And that’s 2 Corinthians Chapter 4 Verses 17,18.

            Dave:

Well, the Bible makes a clear distinction between life and physical things. Life is not physical, where did it come from? God created man out of the dust, but he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And as the scientists know, and they acknowledge the Law of Biogenesis, life only comes from life, and they try to get around that, because, well, it couldn’t evolve, it couldn’t have come from nowhere. You can’t, you can’t say it’s a product of evolution or natural selection because there has to be life in order for natural selection to work. Okay so, what is the source of this? Well, John 1, says that Jesus Christ created all things. There was nothing made that was not—that He didn’t make, but that says, In Him was life. So, here we have it, life only comes from life, exactly what science concedes, but they try to get around it every way they possibly can because, as George Wald, I just quoted, the Nobel Prize winner, he says, Well, you’ve got only two choices, spontaneous generation, life just comes, you know, it just happens—well  we know that that can’t happen—or you’ve got to have a supernatural creative act by a supernatural being. And he says, Well, we won’t accept that.

            Tom:

Yeah, one’s impossible, the other is not acceptable, so where does it lead, Dave? (laughs)

            Dave:

He says, Well, here we are, as a result of spontaneous generation. So, very clearly, right there in the second chapter of Genesis, He created out of the dust of the ground, and He breathed in his nostrils the breath of life, man became a living soul. So we have a distinction between something inside of man that came from God, and the body. And, as you were pointing out, and it’s a very solemn thought, the physical body—God was the One who said it, and you hear it at funerals, in Genesis Chapter one, “…dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” But that’s not all there is, there’s something else inside, and God lays it out right there in Genesis, and that something else comes from God. It is not subject to the deterioration, like the body, under the laws of thermodynamics, the second law being the degeneration of everything. No, it doesn’t says that about the soul because the soul is not physical. So all science can deal with is physical things. This soul, what we really are, comes from God, and you know what the scripture says, from God thou art, to God thou wilt return. The dust—your body goes to the dust.  No, no, your soul and spirit is going to go back to the Creator and you will give an account. So Tom, I don’t like to refer to science, we don’t need science to back us up, but on the other hand it’s interesting, science does back us up on this.

            Tom:

Well, true science,

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom

…that’s just recognizing what the Creator has done.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

Well Dave, just to finish this off, we’re told, whether it be by spirit entities or people who had so-called near death experiences,

            Dave:

Mmhmm.

            Tom:

…there’s just something wonderful out there. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, this is a place—as the son of Bishop Pike, and many, many others, supposedly whether it was his voice. I think we can deal with that now. It wasn't! This was a demon pretending to be his son, but he presented the false gospel, what’s called the cosmic gospel, that there is no judgment, that it’s all wonderful, and so on.

            Dave:

Mmhmm. Tom, there are so many testimonies we have from the clinically dead who have come back. They weren’t dead, of course, clinically or otherwise, and that is that they met this being of light, this feeling of love and acceptance. Well, interesting, Paul says Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and just acceptance, and it was so wonderful, I didn’t want to go back, I wanted to stay here, but the voice told me, No, you have to go back, you have a mission. Your mission is to let those on earth know that there is no such thing as death: the lie of the serpent in the Garden.

            Tom:

Dave, which leads us to another opposing view, and that is reincarnation.  The idea being that, Well, we have a physical death but we keep coming back again and again and again, whether it be the Hindu view of reincarnation, the Buddhist’s view of transmigration. Somehow, some way we get to do it over again and get better and better—which we will talk about next week. 

            Dave:

Very good.

            This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. Still to come, answers to your questions in Contending for the Faith, and in Understanding the Scriptures, Dave and Tom will continue their discussion of God’s salvation. In addition to this radio program, we publish a monthly Newsletter which we make available free of charge. We also produce and distribute a wide variety of teaching materials including books in print, e-book, and audio book formats, CD’s, DVD’s and other items to encourage the serious study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials, or to get a copy of today’s broadcast, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708. Call our toll free order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org. If you would like a copy of this broadcast on compact disk ask for Program #1808, and be sure to mention the call letters of this station. And if you would like to watch Dave and Tom, our weekly broadcast is available on DVD, ask about a subscription when you contact us. You can also download both audio and video podcast at our website. We’ll repeat this information at the end of the program.

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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 join us. Coming up in the next hour in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Who was John the Baptist?” In Religion in the News, “The Graphic Bible.” We’ll take a look at that story and address the question: “What is the Atheist Wager?” 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 address the question, “Is Man Eternal?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon. 

Tom:

Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. Presently in this first segment of our program we’re going through a new series featuring Dave Hunt’s book, Seeking and Finding God. It’s an unimposing book of about 150 pages that he wrote as a follow-up to send to those, those who are interested in the conversations he’s had with people that he meets on his travels, and with whom he’s has had fruitful conversations. Now is the book sounds like it might be interesting to you, or if  you would like to follow our discussion with the book in hand, later in the program Gary will tell you how you can obtain a copy. Now Dave, last week we covered one opposing view to your claim that life continues on after death because of man’s non-physical parts, his spirit and soul, their eternal elements that are not affected by death, that’s your position. And that opposing view is, well, there’s nothing to prepare for, when you’re dead you’re dead, and that’s the end of it all. Now, today we want to consider another opposing belief that death is followed by unconditional acceptance, and it constitutes the next step in the progression of our existence. It’s really spiritual advancement. But before we get into that, I really want to go over something we didn’t get to last week.  

            Dave:

Let me interrupt you, Tom, for a second if I may.

            Tom:

Sure.

            Dave:

Christopher Hitchens, maybe some don’t even know him, he’s one of the foremost atheists, very sharp. I’ve listened to quite a few debates, he’s going around debating Christians. But he comforts everybody with these words, he says, Well, don’t be frightened of death, when you’re dead you won’t know anything, it’s okay. Now that’s the comfort of the atheist, and yet, Richard Dawkins, who is really the leader of the new atheists, he says—I’ve heard  him say it a number of times—It’s a great privilege, I really feel it’s a great privilege to be alive. Well, what does that mean? Is he going to live a hundred years maybe? He might, but what is that in the cosmic calendar? I mean, he’s not even a blip, and this whole universe is heading for death, destruction, and he’s glad to be alive?! I mean, what is the significance of his life? His books will be gone, his voice will be gone, his memory will be gone, nothing left but dead stars out there. I don’t fathom these atheists!

            Tom:

Mmhmm. Dave, the thing we didn’t get to last week, I mean, you sort of implied, and I guess outright said, that man is an eternal being. 

            Dave:

Mmhmm.

            Tom:

Well that’s what I want to go over today. When you say that man is an eternal being, whose life doesn’t end when his body dies, that raises some questions about eternity. The Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to deny eternity, pointing to the end of everything so—well, moreover, it also implies a beginning, which also denies eternity. So, what’s the basis for eternity?

            Dave:

Well, of course Genesis begins, “In the beginning.” Now, that’s not the beginning of God, but it’s the beginning of time, space and matter. And the scientists have finally come to that conclusion. The astronomers, they resisted it for a long time. But you can’t say that energy was here forever, because of what you just said, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it runs down like a clock. The Law of Entropy, it becomes less and less useable. So we know for sure that energy has not been here forever. Now that means that energy didn’t exist before, what they called the “big bang” which in my book, Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny, I give you a whole lot of reasons why there was not a big bang.

            Tom:

Of course, the book’s not available yet.

            Dave:

Right, but—

            Tom:

Lord willing—

            Dave”

—hopefully it will be in a few months. But energy couldn’t have been hanging around forever, to wait to gather itself together into the entire universe about the size of an aspirin pill, and then suddenly explode. It would have entropied before it banged, so there had to be a beginning. But that is a contradiction, Tom, also of the first Law of Thermodynamics, which says, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Well, if it can’t be created, energy must have been here forever. Well, if it had been here forever it would have entropied by now, and it wouldn’t be useable at all, none of it would be useable. So, we have a problem right at the very beginning. What are we going to do? Where did the energy come from? But anyway, we are not only physical beings, but we also—we must be non-physical. You cannot escape that. Ideas, as we’ve explained many times on this program, ideas, thoughts, are not physical. You brain is not running the show! Your brain doesn’t tell you what you want to have for lunch today. Your brain does not originate your thoughts. If your brain—I’m talking about the physical matter in the brain—

            Tom:

Yeah, sometimes people get mind and brain confused.

            Dave:

Right, right.

            Tom:

 They’re just not thinking clearly on that.

            Dave:

If your brain originates your thoughts you are a prisoner of your brain! I mean, what is my brain going to think of next?! I mean, does my brain really want to do this math problem, you know, a student could say. Or, does my brain really want me to be in this school? No, that’s ridiculous! You are the person living in the physical body, but you’re a non-physical being because you have non-physical ideas, and a physical brain cannot come up with non-physical ideas. I mean, this is pretty well established now, logic will tell you that. It’s taken the neurologists and scientists a long time to come to this conclusion. I don’t remember, I think maybe we did quote Sir Arthur Eddington last week. But he puts it very simply, and I like the way he says it. He says, If you say that this idea of calling ideas non-physical is nonsense, tell me what is the physical basis of nonsense? Would you describe nonsense in physical terms? And then he says this, and I love the way he says it; There’s a difference between physical laws that must be obeyed—you can think they don’t have to be obeyed and step out of an airplane at 37,000, feet and say I don’t believe in this Law of Gravity. Well, you’ll find out the Law of Gravity is true. You must obey, you cannot get away from it, you put two chemicals together in a test tube, the reaction that will result—you have no control over it, all right? And he says, There’s a difference between physical laws that must be obeyed, and moral laws that ought to be obeyed. And he says, “ought” puts you outside of chemistry and physics. That’s a very succinct way of saying it. So, I don’t think we can argue with that. So, if we are really non-physical, the laws of thermodynamics don’t have any control over the soul and spirit, have no control over ideas. You cannot give me a basis on which you would say that the real person that is inside the body who initiates the thoughts, the real thinker who made the decisions—I challenge you, give me proof that that person will be gone.

            Tom:

Mmhmm. Dave, when we’re talking about eternity, some people understand that to mean that we have existed forever. So even the non-physical part that you’ve just made a case for, has that existed forever?

            Dave:

No, because it was created by God. God has existed forever. He is without beginning and without end, but we are without end, that is, our soul and spirit. We will go on forever and ever, and that’s a solemn thought, because this is why Jesus said: Those who persist in their rebellion against God will be cast into outer darkness. There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and they will be in torment forever and ever. That wouldn’t be possible if, “when you’re dead you’re dead.”

            Tom:

Dave, you also point out in this first chapter of the book, scientists and even theologians point to a force, or some kind of energy. The, let’s say the scientists for energy, some theologians for a force out there. Couldn’t that have, or—and you’ve already dealt with energy, that couldn’t have existed forever, but what about a force, or a non-physical spiritual entity?  

            Dave:

Well Tom, you have to—it’s like when you’re debating with an atheist, he doesn’t believe in God. Well, I don’t believe in the god he doesn’t believe in either. What are you talking about, what do you mean by this god that you don’t believe in? Okay. So now, what do you mean by a force? What is a force? You see, I wouldn’t know how to define a force. You talking about electrical power? Are we talking about a nuclear force? Well, where did this force come from, and how do we describe it? I wouldn’t know how to do that. The force—see, that’s the problem, Tom, for the atheist energy is god. I mean when you listen to Dawkins or some of these other people—believe me. I was listening to a debate, and the evolutionist, who was a university professor, he said, Nobody believes in Darwinism anymore, we’ve gone way beyond that. Well, you listen to Richard Dawkins, he worships Darwin. This is the whole thing, this is what made an atheist out of him. So, for them, how are we going to explain everything? Energy. Well, energy? Well there was a big bang. Well, why did it bang then, and how do you get all this—well, never mind: energy. In fact they don’t like why, why, they don’t like you to ask that question because they cannot tell you. Now this is one of the things that Stephen Hawkings, the genius in the wheelchair, he asked the question: Why does the universe go to the bother of existing? And Lee Smolin, who is quite a cosmologist and so forth, he says, When a child asks us, What is this universe? Why is it here? We don't have anything to say. So, one of my major complaints against the evolutionist is: Look it’s not fair, you are talking about how things evolve, you can’t tell me what they are! You can’t tell me what energy is, you can’t tell me where it came from.  You say everything is made of energy. You can’t tell me—well, how did a cell—look, don’t talk about the cell now, how it works. The DNA, yeah, who put the DNA, you know, it’s written instructions, brilliant, and the instruction manual for how to build a body, how to do everything to operate the nano chemical machinery. But wait a minute, where did the energy come from? You talk about DNA—and Francis Collins, who unfortunately, he claims to be a Christian, he may well be, still believes in evolution. But he just marvels, Wow, the DNA, that molecule is so fantastic. But wait a minute, where did it come from? So, it’s like they’re trying to build the structure, a high rise without the foundation. I want to know—Look, if you don’t have the foundation, why should I believe any of the rest of this stuff?

            Tom:

Mmhmm. Well, Dave, let’s move over to the theologians. We did a series on, remember, The Secret, and what kind of god were they coming up with?  Well, they called it an impersonal mind, all right, this is consistent with Hinduism. And then later, in this country, the religious sciences, mind sciences, and so on, what about that?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, I don’t know how a mind can be impersonal. A mind thinks, and there must be a thinker. You don’t have some blob of protoplasm that thinks, your nerve endings, or whatever. So, I would have a problem with that. A mind? There must be a mind behind the DNA, because DNA, as we just mentioned, it’s in a written language. It is in writing, it is encoded! And Richard Dawkins—again I refer to him because he’s probably the best known atheist out there—Richard Dawkins says, It is a digitally organized data base! And he repeats it, he says, I mean it is literally digitally organized. Now, it takes a mind to do that, and that lays out thoughts, the instruction manual. Tom, furthermore, while we’re talking about this, because we began talking about the beginning, you have to have the plans before you begin to build the building. You have to have the plans for the body. So, they would say, Well, you know, it began with a little bit of wiggling, in slime or whatever, the soup back there. But wait a minute, this thing doesn’t know where it’s going. Well, it doesn’t have to know where it’s going, that’s the marvel of it, you see. Genes don’t think, they don’t plan, and so forth. Yeah, but you got it written out. Now, you’re going to write this thing out, you’re going to write these instructions out as you kind of evolve? No, evolution, natural selection, cannot write out instructions, it just happens! And it can’t just happen in such a fantastic way. It would take the most brilliant mind in the universe to lay this out, and natural selection can’t do that.

            Tom:

So, we’re brought back to, logically, we’re brought back to an infinite person of supreme intelligence, power, and so on. We’re back to—we’re at God. Before anything was created there must have been a person, not a thing,—

`          Dave:

Right.  

            Tom:

— not a power, not a force, but a person that creates this.

            Dave:

Amen, amen, because He created personal beings. A force cannot create personal beings, and the Bible clearly says; God made man in His image—His moral and spiritual image so that he knows right and wrong, he can make choices, but not in His physical image, because God is a Spirit.

            Tom:

So, the person that thinks, when you’re dead you’re dead, it’s over, and so on, I think we’ve given some reasons, some very good reasons, for them to question that idea. And of course the problem for many of them, all the men that you mentioned, these brilliant scientists, they’re really trying to evade accountability.

            Dave:

Exactly, exactly. And Tom, I remember the nuclear physicist, I probably mentioned it—I’ve never given his name—probably mentioned what he said. But, he was raised—he had a Christian grandmother, he was an atheist, and he was going to commit suicide. But he said the thought came to him: Well, but grandma says there’s a place out there called hell, suppose I get out there and I can’t get back, I’d better hang on a little longer. Now he was going to a psychiatrist, but when he got saved, just not from this psychiatrist but from reading the Word of God and being in contact with Christians, he went to his psychiatrist and he says, Look, I don’t need you anymore, you need me. But the problem was—and Francis Collins, I mean it reminded him again who he is, head of the human genome project, probably the leading geneticist in the world, who at the age of 27 turned from atheism to Christianity, but yet still believes in evolution. Nevertheless, he confesses, it was the fear of what might happen, that maybe this isn’t true, and maybe I’m going to face judgment. That was what gave him pause.  

            Tom:

Now Dave, let’s talk about that just for a second. Some people out there who are listening, watching, may say, Well wait a minute, this is sort of a coercive religion if you’re sort of introduced to it on the basis of fear, and you commit to it on the basis of trying to avoid hell, you know, what’s that?  How worth while is that?

            Dave:

Well that’s what Christopher Hitchens says, whenever you get to that point. You talk about free will, this is a free choice? I don’t think it’s a free choice. If I don’t do this—well, it is a free choice, and they have freely chosen, they hate God. They wouldn’t want to be in heaven, but it’s a free choice.

            Tom:

It’s based on a reality. You know, it’s not like somebody conjured this up to force people in, that is the reality.

            Dave:

Right, you have a choice, but what is the choice? It’s not just heaven or hell, but it’s to be delivered from your self, your self-centeredness, and to get back in touch with God, which Adam and Eve originally were, and to know God. What could be greater than to know God? You know, I was having a discussion with an atheist on a plane coming from New York. And he claimed to be an atheist, he said his wife was a Christian, but it didn’t make any sense. And I said, Your—in fact, he was the head of a research center for a scientific corporation, one of he big ones. And I said, You mean to tell me that if science came up with an absolute proof, they made a discovery, and nobody can deny it, that God exists, that that would not be the greatest discovery science ever made? Well, he said, Yeah, I guess it would be because, he said, it doesn’t really matter, does it? What if there is no God, I don’t see the difference. I said, Look, this would be the greatest discovery science has ever made, and for someone to say, I’m forced into this—What?! You’re forced into knowing the God who created the universe, who is offering you his love and his forgiveness? I don’t see how that could be coercion. What, somebody wants to—they write out a check for a hundred million dollars, and they say, Look, it’s your choice, you can have it or not.  Wow, he’s coercing me into taking this check! I don’t think so. I think they are a little bit warped in heir perception.

            Gary:

This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call.  Still ahead, answers to your questions in Contending for the Faith, and in Understanding the Scriptures, Dave and Tom will continue their discussion of God’s salvation. In addition to this radio program we publish a monthly Newsletter which we make available free of charge. We also produce and distribute a wide variety of teaching materials, including books in print, e-book and audio book formats, CD’s, DVD’s and other items to encourage the serious study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials, or to get a copy of today’s broadcast, write to us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708. Call our toll free order number 877-882-4253, that’s 877-88Bible, or visit our website at www.thebereancall.org. If you would like a copy of this broadcast on compact disk, ask for Program #1708, and be sure to mention the call letters of this station. And if you would like to watch Dave and Tom, our weekly broadcast is available on DVD, ask about a subscription when you contact us. You can also download both audio and video Podcast at our website. We’ll repeat this information at the end of the program.

Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon.    I’m Gary Carmichael; it’s great to have you along.  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 “Why Did Joseph Choose Nazareth?”  In Religion in the News, “Are Wiccans Wicked?” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Is the Bible Too Constraining?” 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 new series of programs based on Dave’s book: Seeking and Finding God.  This week we focus on the topic, “The Necessity of Certainty.”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. In this first segment of our program, we are in our second week of going through a new series featuring Dave Hunt’s book: Seeking and Finding God.  Now, it’s hardly an imposing book of about 150 pages, but its content is life-transforming.  Dave, last week you gave our audience kind of an overview of what the book was about, and why you wrote it—but would you just again tell our listeners, our viewers why you wrote the book.

            Dave:

Well, Tom, I am given the privilege by the Lord to meet many people one on one, many of them on airplanes, and the Lord, amazingly, leads me to people who are, generally not always, when they’re not interested that makes the other ones all the more amazing.  But generally, those who are searching, really searching and thinking.  And so I have the opportunity to present the gospel to them, to reason with them, as we are told to do, to give them a reason, and those who show, when it comes time to part, a real interest.  I mean, they’ve been showing the interest, but if that continues and I ask them—I don’t just send something to them, I’ll say, Give me your address and I’ll send you something.  No, I say one of my books is called, Seeking and Finding God, would that be of interest to you?  Very often they say, oh, yes, yes!  Well, I’ll be happy to send it to you.  Okay, here’s my address.  So, I really wrote it because I didn’t know of anything that was proper follow-up. We have that sort of thing, The Reason Why, for example, a tract written a hundred years ago, I guess.  We have a lot of things from the past, but I don’t know of anything that really deals with the way people think today.  So I wrote this, hopefully it will lead people to Christ, but it would be a tool for those of you out there listening to us.  I would recommend you read it, every Christian ought to read it, give you some ideas how to reason with people, and I think it would be very helpful to you to give to others if the opportunity arises.

            Tom:

And, if they’re at least Dave, those who enjoy listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, sometimes it can be helpful to have the book that we’re going through, and we do that quite often.  We take some of your books and go through them chapter by chapter.  So, to have the book they can just follow along.  So, Gary, later in the program will explain how they can obtain a copy if they wish a copy of the book Seeking and Finding God.  Now Dave, the first chapter has an interesting title “The Necessity of Certainty.”  Now, went over that a little bit last week, but just that phrase, what do you mean the necessity of certainty?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, we can’t always have certainty.   If you’re going to make an investment, oh, this looks like a good piece of property here, let’s buy that one.  Well, it may turn out to not be a good piece after all.  You had better read the CC&R’s, what are the conditions, covenant restrictions, and so forth, or what is the zoning?  I mean there are many things. You had better be certain, as certain as you can be, before you jump in and do something.

            Tom:

Sure.  Just every day purchases, especially if they are a little spendy, a car, a refrigerator, you want to make sure you’re checking out, maybe Consumer Reports to see that you are getting something of value.

            Dave:

But there’s one thing about which you had better be certain.  Tom, I know you like to play golf, never get the chance, but—

            Tom:

Well with five kids, I switched to fishing, Dave.

            Dave:

Right.  The difference I used to have—I like golf, I’ve played a bit of golf in the early days, but I preferred tennis because if you hit a bad shot off into the rough, or behind a tree or something in golf, and it’s going to cost you.  But if you hit a bad shot in tennis and you run fast enough you can recover, maybe, and get this thing going again.  But you can’t do that when you die.  “It’s appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.”  So, I think you had better be pretty clear about this, you can’t take a chance. 

            Tom:

What lies beyond?  Is that what you are saying?

            Dave:

Yeah, you can’t take a chance; where are you going to end up when you die.  And I don’t think we mentioned it last week, did we? Pascal’s Wager?  Pascal, if you know who he was, a brilliant philosopher, he was a Christian.  He said look, (he’s arguing with an atheist), if I’m wrong in following God all my life, and you’re right, when it ends when I die I’m dead.  I haven’t really lost anything, I was happy during my life anyway, I loved to serve the Lord, and if you think that was an illusion, okay.  But if you are wrong, and you say, oh when I’m dead I’m dead, and you’re not dead because the Bible is true—“…after death the judgment.”  Wow, you have lost everything!  And so Pascal reasoned, well I think that’s a bad wager to make, I just wouldn’t go for that kind of a deal.  You had better make sure.  Look before you leap, in other words.

            Tom:

Right.  So, you give three opposing views.  Again, talking about, “the necessity of certainty” the idea that I can really be certain what’s going to take place after I die, but there are three opposing views, one you just mentioned, when you die that’s it, coffin closes, you’re in the ground, and it’s all over, nothing, period.  And then there’s a view that says death and unconditional acceptance is the next step in the progression of our existence.  It’s a spiritual advancement, and that’s what some people think.  We’re going to talk about that, but also, a third point is death is followed by physical rebirth that improves one’s life through a continuous cycle of death and rebirth.  So, these are ideas that people have, and we’re going to look into the certainty.  Can you be certain, that’s the way it is?  But let’s pick up with, again, we mentioned it, we went over it a bit last week, but let’s pick up with, …death ends it all period.  Why isn’t that the case, Dave? 

            Dave:

Well, again Tom, I can reason this very quickly with someone sitting next to me on an airplane.  Materialism is dead:  In other words, materialism, an atheist is a materialist.

            Tom:

Right, in other words, nothing exists but matter and that’s all.

            Dave:

Right, a big bang, energy, they don’t know where the energy came from, they don’t know what energy is, but nevertheless that’s all they have.  So you’re an atheist, you’ve got nothing else so you are stuck with matter.  Well then your body is everything, that’s all there is to you, just a body.  I’m thinking of Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the language of the DNA.  He said:  “Your hopes and dreams and ambitions and your marriage and your education and all, that’s just an illusion of your genes; you’re just a bag of molecules.”  And he called that book The Astonishing Hypothesis.  Now, you wonder why he called it astonishing—because nobody really believes this.  And Richard Dawkins, for example, a leading atheist, will say well, this is counter intuitive, but these are the facts, and so forth.  So, materialism that is falling by the wayside.  You cannot explain purpose, and meaning, and hopes and so forth, justice.  How much does justice weigh, what does it taste like, what does it smell like, what’s its texture?  It has nothing, all of these things in fact, the things that are most important to us.  Let’s take Irwin Schrödinger, Nobel Prize winner from Austria, he said:  “Science can give you a picture of the physical world, they can tell you about a sunset, it can’t tell you why it’s beautiful.  But when it comes to that which is most important: Why am I here? Where am I going? What is truth? What is justice?”  Science has no answer to any of these questions, and he says these are the most important questions!  So you’re going to have to look outside of physical science.  So, my brain does not think:  my brain cells, (this is what the atheists say) he’s stuck with it. So he’s got to see, well, how did the brain evolve?  And then they’ll take apes, or whatever, and they will try to examine their brain, or they’ll take a schizophrenic and try to examine the brain.  No the brain, and I quote, I think, in this book, a few, maybe a Nobel Prize winner, Sir John Eccles, who says the brain is like a computer that a ghost can operate.  You are the ghost that operates your brain.  Your  brain doesn’t think, it doesn’t originate your thoughts, otherwise, well, I wonder what my brain wants for lunch, I wonder if my brain wants me to go this university or that university.  No, you sit down and you rationally consider—you make the decision, okay.  So, if your brain is not making the choices and decisions, who is?  You are the thinker, and you make the choice, you decide, you activate the neurons in your brain to follow what you want to do.  When you die your brain is dead, it’s rotting, but you—the thinker—you are still alive and you will face your Creator in judgment and give an account.

            Tom:

So, Dave, you have an interesting phrase here, I know you give some friends of ours credit for this, but you write: tissues know nothing about issues.

            Dave:

Yes, well that is Martin Bobgan, and it’s a well put saying.  Matter is just tissues.  Do tissues know anything about issues?  But issues are what really, that’s what life is involved in, issues and choices, and so forth.  So, there again, materialism is dead, and I would say most scientists, except for hard core atheists—and by the way, I think most scientists are not hard core atheists.  For example, what book was I just reading?  Well, by an atheist, I think you would find god in there a hundred times at least, in this book, and then towards to the end he says:  “You know looking back and reflecting on this, I find this word, god, in there all the time.”  Well, but he doesn’t mean the God of the Bible.  Or you could take Stephen Hawking, the genius in the wheelchair, in his book A Brief History of Time.  Stephen Hawking says and this is an interesting phrase, he’s not an atheist, he will tell you that, he’s an agnostic at this point, I think he may become a Christian.

            Tom:

So, an agnostic would say well, I’m just not sure, I’m not dead set against the idea of God; I’m just still confused about it.

            Dave:

Right, but in that book, Stephen Hawking says, You would be hard pressed to explain the universe, as we have come to understand it, without a God who created it.  Now, maybe he is aiming for Einstein’s god, because you have to be careful when you quote these people.  I know I’ve read quotes about Einstein, he talks about God, and oh wow, see, he’s on our side.  No, you had better look a little further, because Einstein very clearly says, I do not believe in a god who interferes in our lives, who has plans for individuals, and so forth.  He would call himself a deist.

            Tom:

Which many of the founders—those who came out of the Enlightenment, the founders of this country, Jefferson, maybe Benjamin Franklin to a great degree.

            Dave:

They would talk of providence, and what they mean is, God who created everything, we believe that all men are created equal, but then what happened?  Well, this creator, he just kind of let things go.  It’s up to us.

            Tom:

Sure, God helps those who help themselves.  That’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, by the way.  I used to think that was a scripture verse, Dave, before I was a believer.

            Dave:

So, I would say you would be hard pressed to—well; there are not many top scientists who don’t believe in that kind of a god, and that’s the kind of a god that Stephen Hawking believes in.  But that’s not the God of the Bible, and that god really doesn’t make sense, because why would God, who has the power to create the universe and individuals within it—well, they would say he used evolution.  It’s the most cruel, inefficient means—to get from here to there you’ve got to have so many intermediary forms, I mean, to get an eye, for example, and it’s not going to work this way because an eye that doesn’t work will not help your survival, so it would just be thrown out.  Natural selection would throw it out, but they insist on this.  Natural selection would just leave so many bodies of imperfect eyes, imperfect noses, and imperfect digestion.  Oh, well, it’s working up to it.  No, it would be a cruel, inefficient way and take millions and millions of years.  Why would a God—so this is what I have against theistic evolution.  By the way, Francis Collins, probably he would be looked up to as the greatest or the most knowledgeable geneticist, he’s in charge of the Human Genome Project that is mapping the whole human genome, a billion letters, he’s a theistic evolutionist.  He believes in God, but a theistic evolutionist, he’s still hanging in there with evolution.  Why would God, who could create everything, why would he go through this laborious, costly process?  It doesn’t make sense.

            Tom:

Dave, somehow, something falls out here.  You mentioned Crick earlier, co-discoverer of the language for the DNA, but a confirmed atheist!  What happened there?  Language, intelligence, how does he miss that?  And now you’re talking about Francis Collins who is brilliant, and yet what you just articulated, something very simple.  Why would God put us through a process like this?

            Dave:

And furthermore, a process cannot come up with language, you make a good point.  Language has meaning; it can only be designed by an intelligence.  So anyway, Tom, materialism is dead.  When you’re dead you’re not just dead, your body is dead, but you’re not dead, and you will continue forever in heaven or in hell.

            Tom:

Right.  Well, there are some other points, Dave; I think they’re worth going over, that you mentioned.  What about conscience?  How does materialism explain conscience?

            Dave:

Well, I can tell you how Dawkins would explain it, or Hitchins, probably one of the best known, the two best known atheists out there, they are both brilliant.  Well, you know, at the beginning when we kind of swung down out of the trees, and came out of —

            Tom:

Primal soup?

            Dave:

Oh,  no, no, no, this is much later than that, Tom, and we did develop a language and somehow.  We lived in small clans, and we—well we discovered, I mean, if you help one another things work out better, and this is not morals, this is just built into our genes because we learned that if you are kind and cooperative, that then things work better.  So, that’s all it is, and we can reason about this, and we can say see, there is no God, you don’t have to have a book, you don’t have to have a God, they would say, we can reason about this.  Well, Tom, as you know, that doesn’t explain why—let me give you a current example.  Tom, it’s interesting that Michael Vick, who sat around discussing?

            Tom:

Michael Vick, the NFL football player, who is now being prosecuted for—

            Dave:

Well, I think he has been prosecuted, he’s probably in prison, I’m not sure, Tom, I haven’t kept up with the case.  But anyway— Who sat around, what society sat around discussing, well, what do you think about dog fighting, and training dogs to fight, and the cruelty of this, and so forth?  No, it was just unanimous!  You didn’t have to have a discussion, the whole world condemned him.  He had nothing to say in his defense.  I mean, there are other examples like that.  Tom, it surprises me because you know the immorality in movies, and in Hollywood.  We’ve got the governor of New York—woops, going to prostitutes, wait a minute!

            Tom:

And now we have his assistant—

            Dave:

Lieutenant governor who now has taken over.  Well, he has had multiple affairs and his wife likewise.  Well, there’s a sense of morality that is in all of us, and you cannot explain it in evolutionary terms because again, tissues know nothing about issues.  How do we explain it?  The Bible says, Romans 2, verses 14 and 15, I believe that’s the proper verses, somewhere around there—that the Gentiles, who have not the law, and yet they do the things that are commanded in the law.  They recognize, and they accuse or excuse one another, they bear witness to God’s law written in their conscience!  So, there is no other explanation for it, Tom, and that conscience, I believe, will torment the damned in the Lake of Fire forever and ever.

            Tom:

Dave, let’s end this segment, but also this issue of, when you’re dead you’re dead; let’s end it with Lennon’s dilemma.  Why don’t you explain that?  We touched upon it last week. 

            Dave:

Well, Lennon, of course, was a scientific materialist, that’s what he called himself. He did not believe in God, he was an atheist.  But then, he wonders, where did this idea of God come from?  Now, Lennon believed, as a materialist you cannot even think of something that doesn’t exist.  Where would the thought come from?

            Tom:

Sure, because everything is a response.

            Dave:

Right, stimulus response mechanisms are what we are.  Well, if you can’t think of something that doesn’t exist, where did this idea, “God”, come from?  Well, those preachers, they instilled that insidious opiate of the masses.  Where did the preachers get the idea?  That was a problem, and I think it’s something that whoever is listening to us, or you might want to bring that up to somebody else.  Think about it!  You can’t—oh, I can think of anything.  Really!  Come up with a new prime color for the rainbow.  You cannot do it!  Then where is the idea God, and it is common to all people everywhere.  They may have perverted it, but they still have that concept.

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 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 “When was Jesus Born?”  In Religion in the News: “The Super Church Bowl.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Why Are Evangelicals Going Catholic?” 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 addressing the spiritual movement known as “The Emerging Church.”  This week we focus on the question, “What is Post-Modernism?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.  In this first segment of our program, we’re winding up our series on “The Emerging Church” movement, a development within evangelical Christianity that’s having a major influence on young adults from age 18 to 30.  And Dave, what I would like to do over the next couple of programs is recap some of our major concerns regarding “The Emerging Church” movement.  I have a list of critical points we covered in detail the past week, so if someone wants to have more of an explanation of the things we are going to capsulate here, you can go to our website where our programs are archived.  What we are going to be addressing, I think we need to qualify some of this, may not be evident in every Emerging Church, or Emerging Church wannabe, but they are certainly representative of most of the leaders and writers of “The Emerging Church” movement.  So, I want to start with—and Dave, you can expand on anything that I bring up here, and just jump in when you feel led.  I want to start with a general definition of “The Emerging Church” movement, and it’s pretty simple.  It’s an attempt to reach today’s culture with the gospel, a culture that is identified as characteristically postmodern.  The appeal is primarily to those between the ages of 18 and 30, but Dave; I’m finding that many people are being attracted to this movement regardless of their age.  Here are some characteristics of what is a postmodern generation all about?  Well, I think people, when I mention these things, or go over these things, you will recognize, whether it be your children, if you’re in this age group, your peers, and so on.  But one characteristic would be a person that disdains authority, particularly religious authority.  This would be an individual who has a pension for rejecting absolutes, or authority.  They would believe that truth is something relative, and it’s only acceptable on a pragmatic basis, that is, whatever works for a person, that would be their truth.  Logic and reason, within this movement that would be, logic and reason, they would say, No, that’s a modern generation, which supposedly, developed out of the enlightenment.  We’re going to use logic, reason, science, solve all our problems, and so on.  But in the postmodern generation, they are beyond that.  They said, Science, reason, logic, didn’t solve any of the problems, it created, actually more in their view.  So they would say that we’re going to move toward the more experiential, the more subjective, and so on.  So, logic and reason are not as dependable, according to them, as feelings, which are the primary arbitrators of what’s right and true.  In other words, how can it be wrong when it feels so right, you’d hear that statement.  Then, visual imagery is much preferred over written or spoken words.  You are in a visual generation, you hear that from everybody, and of course, when you have something visual, it’s going to be more subjective, more experiential.  People go to movies—well, get ten people together and have them tell you what they got out of a movie.  You’ve going to get 10 different views, 10 different opinions, it’s very subjective.  And there are some other things that are worth noting in this characteristic of the postmodern generation.  One would be an individual because it’s subjective and experiential.  They have no problem and their pension is not toward logic or reason, so they have no problem carrying contradictory thoughts or ideas at the same time.  Sensual pleasure, self gratification, that’s a part of the postmodern generation.  In other words, they are high priorities.  They say, well, come on— if it doesn’t right, it can’t be good.  So, it’s all based on, again, self-gratification.  It’s a very consumer oriented generation.  So you come up with something that brings pleasure, whatever, that’s going to have a priority.

            Dave:

Tom, I’m just going to jump in for a few comments.

            Tom:

Go ahead.

            Dave:

They must have some reason for preferring this.  They must have some reason for wanting to go in this direction.

            Tom:

But it’s not based on logic.  It’s based on feelings.

            Dave:

No, but still, you can’t escape—well, my reason is, it feels better, but still it’s a reason, okay?  Now, the Bible, God says, “Come now, let us reason together.”  If you went to Acts, I don’t know how recently we’ve done that, but Paul reasoned everywhere.  He went in the synagogue, he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, Three Sabbath days he was there, and he reasoned with them in the marketplace, in fact, he argued with them.

            Tom:

Dave, didn’t he says, Well, come on, guys, how does this make you feel? Don’t you feel good about this?

            Dave:

Yeah, I mean, that’s of course, is ridiculous, as any person who thought about it.  So you have to think, you have to come to some conclusions.  And I don’t think it’s a long time, is it Tom, I know I just quoted it in my debates at the church where I was speaking in Toronto.  But Allan Bloom? I don’t think we’ve mentioned Allan Bloom on this program in a while.

            Tom:

Not in a while.

            Dave:

Well, it’s worth refreshing our mind.  He was, until then, a rather obscure philosophy professor at the University of Chicago, and he wrote an interesting book called:  The Closing of the American Mind.  These guys minds are closed, you can’t reason with them, in other words.  Where did that title, fascinating title, The Closing of the American Mind where did that come from?  Surprising, if you haven’t read the book.  He says, the one virtue in America is openness—before these guys came along, but this has been a plague in mankind for a long time.  The one virtue in America is openness,—you wouldn’t say something is wrong, you might hurt their feelings, and you might shatter their fragile self-esteem.  So, Allan Boom says we have become so open to everything that we don’t seem to understand something might be right and something might be wrong.  That rules that out, if you’re open to everything, if I tried to say to the Hindu in this debate, well, if God is everything, then God or no God there’s no difference.  So you’ve lost the significance of God.  So now we have no significance.  What’s the significance of pictures, these icons and candles, and so forth?  Tell us, how does that work, what is the value, and don’t give me this—well, it feels good, I mean, oh this is what they used to do back then.  Since when is that the criteria to truth?  Well, that’s what they used to do back then.  I guess Paul said well now, I wonder what they used to do back then.  Maybe we could get a new start on this.  Jude said, this is the gospel once for all committed to the saints.  It doesn’t change.  Jesus Christ, what is that? Hebrews 13:8, somewhere around there, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.”  And Tom, as you know as well or better than I do, they are reinventing Jesus, reinventing the gospel, reinventing the whole thing, so it no longer is God’s Word, it no longer is settled forever in heaven, and it no longer calls us to obedience.  We don’t follow the Lord, we follow our feelings; and what did the ancients do, so-called. 

            Tom:

But you remember, I’m going to paraphrase this a bit, Jesus speaking to the Pharisees: You say, but what I tell you.  In other words, they had added their own to God’s Word, to God’s laws.

            Dave:

He said you have made void the Word of God by your tradition.

            Tom:

Yeah.  Well Dave, in this approach, this trying to accommodate, we’ll go back to the thesis from many of the writers in the Emerging Church movement.  The thesis is we want to bring the gospel to this generation.

            Dave:

Tom, let me interrupt.  Maybe we’re going to go on to say it; we want to bring the gospel to this generation.  What gospel?  They’ve changed the gospel.  Tom, they’ve changed it in order to get it to this generation.  So, when you get it to this generation, you haven’t gotten them the truth because you don’t believe.  We began, Tom, this program saying there’s no absolute truth, absolutely no absolutes!

            Tom:

All right, but let’s just go back to the intention by some—they want to reach the lost today.  Now, the question is, how far do you go; this Emerging Church movement, how far will you go in terms of attempting to relate to the postmodern culture?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, see, I’m about to say I get angry, but I will stifle that thought.

            Tom:

So noted!  Strike it from the record.

            Dave:

Right.  How do we reach this generation?  Well, that assumes, (A) this generation is, somehow they have a different relationship to truth.  Truth never changes.  So they’ve got a different relationship.  Somehow, these people have managed to place themselves in a position with relationship to truth that truth no longer reaches them unless you give it to them in a different way.

            Tom:

And the way is, to really deny truth, deny absolute, to get into relativeness.

            Dave:

Absolutely!

            Tom:

So, again, I know because I’ve had discussions with young people who say my church isn’t like that, we do this, and we do that, we have community, we have relationship, we have so on and so forth.  But all we’re asking here in this program is to search the Scriptures, evaluate everything that’s going on in your so-called movement on the basis of the Scriptures.  You know, we quote Isaiah over and over again:  “To the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”  So, a church that wants to move in this direction, that recognizes some issues, cultural issues within the evangelical church today and there are many.  We have gone over these things, Dave, for years almost, whether it be seeker-friendly, purpose-driven, all of these things that are contemporary attempts to reach people through, what?  Well, the seeker-friendly and purpose driven.  That’s marketing, that’s the marketing approach to reaching the culture.  So, we recognize that there are problems, but are these churches that want to be emergent, what are they jumping aboard here?  And we’re trying to lay out as much as we can from the writers, the leaders of this movement, what are potential problems?  I mean, really big time problems; we’re going to go over these things. 

            Dave:

Emergent? That’s a catch phrase, that’s marketing, emerging from what? Yeah, they are emerging from the Word of God, the truth, into their own ideas.

            Tom:

Yeah, you know, again, it’s somewhat philosophical.  They are emerging from a modern way of doing things.  The modern, in the sense philosophically of reason, logic that we’re going to understand the Bible intellectually, and without the mystery involved, and so on and so forth.

            Dave:

Tom, that’s based upon some assumptions.  The assumption is, the Word of God, living and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, the sword of the Spirit.  Somehow, it’s just not sharp enough; it’s not properly designed for these people.  That has another assumption to it.  Well, the Bible, that’s an old-fashioned book or it wasn’t written in the proper way, you know, it needs an updating, it needs a revision.  And we’ve talked about it before Tom; the heart of man is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked.  The heart of man has not changed, human beings have not changed, they still need love, they still need compassion, they still need nurturing, and they still need the Word of truth.  They need the Word of God like any other generation did, and Tom we are robbing them of that.

            Tom:

Well Dave, one definition of the postmodern generation that I could throw in there, and I think it’s just as legitimate as anybody else’s, and that is, it’s the latest rebellion against God and his Word.  So the questions is, how do you accommodate that, and that’s our concerns.  We’ve been pointing these things out, trying to accommodate the culture means the culture becomes the basis in which we work out our theology.  Now, how bad is that, Dave?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, it just denies the whole purpose of the Bible.  Why do we even have a Bible?  Why don’t we just sit down, generation after generation, and if this is what really counts is what people feel they want to believe, and what makes them feel good, and what appeals to the modern person, I don’t think you need the Bible.  You should have just—well, okay, the next generation, well, let’s discuss it, and every generation gets wiser and wiser.  So, if you’re a postmodern you must really be right there, but who needs the Bible anymore?  And Tom, they’ve trashed it, they’ve junked it. 

            Tom:

Dave, I find this interesting; 25 years ago, you know, I had the privilege of helping you with, The Seduction of Christianity.  Now what did that address—not just what was going on in the church, but it also addressed the New Age movement, right?

            Dave:

Um-huh.

            Tom:

Now, I don’t remember, help me here, I don’t remember evangelicals trying to become like the New Agers, or identifying so much with the New Agers to the point to where they adjusted their theology, they adjusted their way of going about things, to address this movement, which was massive.  I mean, I think it was probably a spiritual renewal for the materialists to go about their lives.  But how many people do you remember, who called themselves evangelicals, became New Agers, or like the New Agers, to minister to the New Agers, did that happen?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, it just shows that they didn’t really understand the approach they needed.

            Tom:

But some people would argue:  Now wait a minute, you guys are so far off the mark, you don’t understand, we are not changing the message, we are just changing our mode of operation so that the lost can receive the message.  Now, the biggest name, the most notable individual within the Emerging Church movement is Brian McClaren.  Let me give you his quote.  He says, “It has been fashionable among the innovative emerging pastors I know to say, ‘I’m not changing the message, we’re only changing the medium.’  This claim is probably less than honest, he says—  “In the new church we….”

            Dave:

Tom, I would take out “probably” this claim is less than honest.

            Tom:

Well, I’m just quoting him, okay.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

“In the new church we must realize how medium and message are intertwined.  When we change the medium, the message that’s received is changed, however subtly, as well.  We might as well get beyond our naïveté or denial about this.”  And of course, he’s right on this.  So, again, is the culture dictating what is going on here within these Emerging Church leaders?  You read their books, and I’ve read too many of them, to be honest with you, Dave, and I see them trying to become so much like the culture that I couldn’t tell the difference between those who are, supposedly bringing the truth to the lost, and the lost who are among the postmodern generation.

            Dave:

Yeah, Tom, it’s a tragedy that is happening, but it’s just one of those things that are very similar to the errors that the church has fallen into.  You want to study philosophy, you want to study anything—the ideas of men they’ve come and gone, they change— well, we can improve this.  But basically, you get down to it you have the same thing to deal with.  We have to deal with sin; we have to deal with God.  I often, Tom, say to people, on an airplane, or whatever, they say, you know they think I’m too narrow-minded, or they’ve got their own way.  Well, I was talking to someone just, was it yesterday or the day before, I can’t remember, it must have been yesterday, that’s when we were flying.  Well in fact, he asked me this:  I’m trying to live a good life. I’m trying to be a good person, and I think I’m a better person than a lot of those Christians.

            Tom:

One of your debaters in Toronto, Dave, those are the words right out of his mouth, but keep going.

            Dave:

So, I said to this young man, very intelligent, very interested, by who’s standard are you living a good life?  Now, we’ve got to set the criteria.  Who makes the rules?   But these guys, these New Agers, I was going to call them, these emergents, they don’t want to let God set the standard because God, somehow He just didn’t know, He dropped the ball, He didn’t foresee the kind of—the new generation and what they would think, and He didn’t really give us any ammunition, and so we are going to have to wing it ourselves.  No, you can’t do that.  You may, for example, atheists, Richard Dawkins for example:  Well, we don’t need some book to tell us what’s right and wrong; we know what’s right and—what’s their standard?  Well, it doesn’t hurt other people, if it seems to work, if it binds society together; we all get along a little better.  But underneath it all, Tom, we’ve got an evil heart, a selfish heart, self-centered, and that’s what God tries to deal with if we are willing to let Him do it.

            Tom:

Dave, the next item that we’re going to capsulize and address.  I believe it’s the most evil, the most wicked thrust of the Emerging Church movement, and that is how they view and handle the Scriptures.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

We’re going to see that many who came out of evangelical backgrounds now are destroying the Scriptures in terms of, you know, you can’t destroy the Scriptures, okay, but in terms of how the people they are influencing are receiving their teachings, it’s absolutely devastating.  Really, to me, it goes back to Satan’s, whether they are witting or unwitting instruments in this; it goes back to Satan’s grand scheme.  Genesis chapter l, he begins with Eve, and he says: “Yea, hath God said?”  In other words hey, we’re not talking absolutes here, I mean, you misunderstood, you’re not really getting the idea here, this can’t be what God had in mind.  And that, which we are going to see, or we will touch on a few quotes before we close out here.  But that is the thrust, that God’s Word—well, yeah, it’s God’s Word, you know, we’re not going to throw it all out, but what’s really important is how you feel about it.  I’ll give you a there’s a pastor of Emerging Church, and he says, we need to rediscover what it means to read the Bible existentially and experientially.

            Dave:

Paul didn’t anticipate that, I mean, why didn’t he anticipate this kind of stuff.  Because he just says, Preach the Word, and he says the Word of God is for doctrine, reproof, correction that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished, may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work.

            Tom:

And what if he doesn’t like this thing, Dave, he doesn’t really feel good about—

            Dave:

Well, then that’s man’s problem.

            Tom:

Yeah, it is.

            Dave:

My dear friend, Jack Worsen, used to say—well, he used to quote Billy Sunday, and he said:  Well, you’re combing the cat’s hair against the way it’s supposed to go, and it’s really upsetting the cat.  Well, Billy Sunday would say:  Well, tell the cat to turn around. 

            Tom:

Yeah, and again, we have the issue here, and it’s best to quote Proverbs 14:12, 16:25:  “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”  We’re going to get into this more next week Lord willing.

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 broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Why Was Jesus Born of a Virgin?”  In Religion in the News: “Muslims and the Millennium.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “What is A Course in Miracles?” 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 addressing the spiritual movement known as “The Emerging Church.”  This week we focus on the topic, “Following Hermits and Mystics.”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.  Our topic for this first segment of our program is our continuing series on the Emerging Church Movement, a development within evangelical Christianity that’s having a major influence on young adults ages 18 to 30.  Last week we addressed the roots of this widespread and growing movement that seems to indicate that it’s more than just a fad or trend among our young people.  One underlying support for this movement, the Emerging Church movement, is what’s called The Ancient-Future Faith, and former Wheaton College professor Robert Webber, who died last year, is considered the father of this comment.  Now, Dave, by support, I’m really talking about, this is not just something that is superficial and has kind of come along and then it’s going to blow away after a while.  I think there are some foundations for it, some deeper roots that have, not only have sustenance but given its quote unquote, scholarly aspects, so it’s not just the youth fad, that’s what I’m kind of getting at here.

            Dave:

It’s one support that the contemporary promoters, today’s promoters of it, use.

            Tom:

Right.  Some of them, to be honest with you, Dave, they are not even aware of it, but as you look to what’s been going on in the evangelical church for the last 30 years or  more, you find these foundational ideas that they’re just kind of building on.  So Webber writes in his book, Ancient-Future Faith:  Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World, and I’m quoting him:  “Currently, Western society is in a transition from the modern world to a postmodern world…shifting us toward the affirmation of new values…resulting in a whole new culture and raising new questions about the way a biblical Christianity is to be understood and communicated.”  Now, I want you to comment on that, but let me add one other quote.  This is from another book, he writes:  “My argument is that the era of the early church (A.D. 100-500), and particularly the second century, contains insights which evangelicals need to recover.”  So this is Ancient-Future Faith, we’ve got to go back to the 2^nd century, between the 2^nd century and the 6^th century to find things that are gems of treasures, things that really are going to help this new generation of evangelicals.

            Dave:

Well, I guess I would have the same suggestion that I’ve given many times, why don’t we go back to the Bible?  I would say that’s a little older than this stuff.  If you want to get back to the beginning I would go back to what Paul would use in his day, and he faced many cultures.  Why do we think that our post-modern, or whatever they want to call it, culture is so unique?  The hearts of men are the same, the needs of men are the same, the Bible hasn’t changed.  Of course we’ve got all kinds of people changing it, like Eugene Peterson rewriting it and calling it, The Message, and so forth.  But I don’t see what could have happened, or what could happen.  What are we going to do tomorrow, or next week when they come up with some new post-post-modern, or whatever?  I thought the Bible was written for all people at all times.  I think we ought to go there to find what God has to say about the situation.  The gospel hasn’t changed, has it?  I don’t think the gospel has changed and that’s the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.  This was the message Paul preached.  Paul preached Acts 20; it says everywhere he went he preached repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

            Tom:

Dave, this reminds me of the problem that Mel Gibson had when he was trying to put together his script.  He was the writer of the script for “The Passion of the Christ.”  Now, again, a very talented director, yet he had a problem, and the problem was he tried to go by the Bible.  But when he went to the Bible, there wasn’t enough for a movie.  He didn’t have details, he didn’t have descriptions, he didn’t have all of these kinds of things.  And that’s similar to what we are hearing from Robert Webber and others.  In other words, where are we going to find all kinds of liturgies?  Where are we going to find the clerics, the clergy class versus the laity?  Where are we going to find these mystical ideas?

            Dave:

Not in the Bible, so I guess the Bible is deficient, from their way of looking at things.

            Tom:

Well, Webber refers to this as “Classic Christianity” in which devotion, rituals, all of these things enhance, enrich the faith.

            Dave:

Tom, I have a simple question for Mr. Webber, but he’s gone now, he’s in heaven, we trust.  If we can’t find these things in the Bible that he apparently feels we need to embellish Christianity, maybe we don’t need it.  Maybe we need to get back to the faith of Paul, the apostles of Jesus Christ, and presumably, of the early church, although he had to write epistles to correct the early church.  But I think that’s the kind of correction we need, and help we need.  How does he have the right to call this “Classic Christianity”?  It’s the divergence from the Bible; I would call that classic Christianity.

            Tom:

Yeah, but Dave, he’s turning to individuals, and again, Robert Webber is just one individual, although he has made a significant impact in this whole movement.  But you could turn to Richard Foster, we’ll get into some of these individuals, but as I mentioned last week, I quoted a professor from Baylor University who said that the hot ticket among evangelicals today is to go back and study patristics, meaning to go back and study the early church fathers.  Now, Dave, as I mentioned last week, this is a mine field of heresy!  Not that they were all heretics, but you know, when you begin to look at their lives and their teachings—I’ll give you some examples here.  Well, first of all, who are these early church fathers?  Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clemet of Alexandria, Cyprian, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, and others.  Well, what do they believe?  Now again, these are the individuals whose lives and doctrines and teachings, writings that we’re going to mine, looking for gems.  Well, Origen was a Universalist, and he taught that God’s going to save everyone in the end.  He believed that Mary was a perpetual virgin.  Irenaeus believed that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Jesus when consecrated, as did John Chrysostom and Cyril of Jerusalem.  So, Dave, you know, I could go on with these guys, but let’s take Augustine.  This would be somebody that, you know, even the Calvinists turned to Augustine as one of the heroes of the faith.

            Dave:

Well, he was almost a foundation of what John Calvin taught.  Every few pages you’ve got the name, Augustine:  Augustine says, and, I rely on Augustine for this, and so forth.

            Tom:

Right, so you reconcile this for me.  He’s the principal architect, a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, the principal architect of Catholic dogma.  Well dogma, what am I talking about?  The doctrines, his support of purgatory, baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, mortal and venial sins, prayers to the dead, penance for sins, absolution from a priest, the sinlessness of, the Apocrypha for Scripture and on and on and on. 

            Dave:

Well Tom, that’s exactly what I pointed out in, What Love is This? and a Calvinist got very upset.

            Tom:

But again, coming back to our point here, why would this be a hot ticket for evangelicals to go and search these men out, trying to find some gem within their writings, their teachings, when, as I said, this if a mind field of heresy.

            Dave:

Why didn’t Webber and these others warn us about this?  If they say, well, we’re going to go back, but why didn’t they say, well, we know that they had a lot of heresy but we’re going to find the gems that are mixed in there.  They don’t even say that.  Tom, you’ve read their books.  I haven’t read their books, I’ve glanced at them.

            Tom:

Again, because, as Christianity Today, we’ve been talking about the article from Christianity Today, the February 2008 cover story: “Lost Secrets of the Ancient Church” and how Christianity Today is promoting this idea.  See, because they believe it’s a really good thing, that we are going to enrich the faith, enrich our, what’s called, “spiritual formation” by looking to these individuals.

            Dave:

But no warning, no hint that these men were heretics?

            Tom:

Certainly not in the Christianity Today article, and many of the books that I have read.  We went through a book by Tony Jones that dealt with these mystical techniques, no warnings whatsoever.  Dave, the Emerging Church is into these church fathers, but I think it is actually worse, because we are also being directed, we being the evangelical church by Robert Weber, by Richard Foster and others.  We’re being directed to the Desert Fathers, or the Catholic mystics.  That’s whole other category altogether, because they are into mystical techniques.  We’ve gone over that in prior programs, but let me give you some examples—

            Dave:

Tom—

            Tom:

Go ahead.

            Dave:

Mystical techniques to what purpose?  To get in touch with God, to get in touch with Jesus, to have Jesus become real by visualizing Him, and so forth, and they’ve got various chants.  Tom, these people were recluses.  Instead of going into all the world to preach the gospel, as Jesus said, they holed themselves in a cave, or whatever—

            Tom:

A tomb.

            Dave:

Yeah, some of them—to what end?  It’s all self-centered so that they could, within themselves find this formation, that they wanted a spiritual formation, find this closeness with God.  That’s not what we read in the Bible.  Now, Paul said, Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.  He said that twice in his epistles.  This is not the life Jesus lived.  Jesus didn’t go off in a cave somewhere.  Jesus was with the common people.  He went to weddings, He went to feasts, the Pharisee invites him to a feast in his home.  He was there where He could have some interaction and some impact in society.  Now, we’re going to follow these guys who did just the opposite, who did not follow Jesus?  Tom, I’ve been aware of this for years, and we’ve written about it, but as you go over it again, it is shocking!

            Tom:

Dave, for me, someone who has grown up in Roman Catholicism for 30 years of my life, who looked upon many of the men that we’ve mentioned, these saints as heroes of my faith then, to be delivered from that, and then to see it come into the evangelical church, I’m stunned, honestly!  Now, let me give you some examples, because we’re speaking about these church fathers, particularly the Desert Fathers and Catholic mystics, in general terms.  Let me give you an example or two.

            Dave:

The Desert Fathers were a big inspiration for Richard Foster and his book, Celebration of Discipline.

            Tom:

Without a doubt.  Among others, certainly it’s a major part, as I said, of the Emerging Church movement.  But let’s give a couple of examples.  Anthony the Great—Now, he’s known as the Father of Christian Monasticism, you know, like monasteries and so on, and he’s the most revered of the Desert Fathers, so he would be a good example.  Well, according to Athanasius, now Athanasius is looked upon as an apologist for the Catholic Church, or one of the heroes of the faith.  Anyway, according to Athanasius, the devils fought Anthony the Great by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, phantoms of women, which he countered by becoming a hermit and isolating himself for years in the tomb.  Now, he communicated with the outside world through a crevice that allowed him to receive food, and sort of give advice to people that came along.  Supposedly, the devil, upset with his holiness, would come and beat him unmercifully.  Now in weeks past you talked about men who went to Mount Athos, same things happening today among the Eastern Orthodox monks and priests.  Well anyway, so that would be the biggest name in terms of the Desert Fathers, but later mystics were no less bizarre, and more critically, they were not biblical, as you pointed out.  Benedictine nun Julian of Norwich—now she’s a favorite of evangelical mystic wannabes and also “Christian” feminists.  She referred to God as Father/Mother God.  But she believed in universal salvation, she was a pantheist, she believed that God was in everything, and she experienced many visions of heaven and hell and so on.  Now, here is something interesting, particularly related to our past programs on “The Secret” the positive mental attitude approach to getting things that you want.  Anyway, she said:  “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 

            Dave:

Well, Tom, it sounds like Émiel Coué now—“every day and every way I’m getting better and better.”  What does she mean, “All shall be well”?

            Tom:

Well, she was very positive, Dave, in some of her writings.

            Dave:

Sounds like Norman Vincent Peale, or his chief disciple, Robert Schuller.

            Tom:

Yeah, Dave, also like Anthony the Great, who spent years in the tomb, she had herself walled off from society, living for 20 years in a cell attached to her church, where she had a small window that she could access food, obviously.  And then, she also had a view of the church altar and a view of the Eucharist.  And Dave, we could go on and on.  Theresa of Avilla, Padre Pio.  We’ve mentioned some of these individuals in the past.  Francis of Assisi.

            Dave:

Well, Padre Pio is a contemporary.

            Tom:

Yes.  That’s what I’m saying.  Later day.  Well he was just sainted by the Catholic Church.  He could levitate, supposedly, and then have the stigmata.

            Dave:

But, he was in the 1900’s.

            Tom:

Right.  Theresa of Avilla, again, goes back to the Reformation times.

            Dave:

Tom, can I just interrupt and say a word about Padre Pio?

            Tom:

Sure.

            Dave:

Because the late Pope John Paul II, he just thought he was the greatest of the Catholic Church honors him.  Padre Pio said, well he had the stigmata about 45 years, I think,

            Tom:

Also levitated, supposedly.

            Dave:

Well, it could be seen, supposedly, by a number of different people in different places at the same time.  He claimed that more spirits of the dead visited him in his cell in the monastery than living people, and the other monks said they heard multitudes of voices talking with him and he said that these people were coming from purgatory on their way to heaven thanking him for suffering for their sins to get them out of there.  In fact, as a novice, he asked the superior, when he first became a monk, he asked him for permission to suffer for the sins of the world and he was granted permission.  So, the stigmata was supposedly his suffering.  The suffering of Christ was not sufficient but he had to add to it.

            Tom:

Dave, these are, again, strange people.  Not only is their theology, in many ways, so contrary to the Bible, rejecting, if they believe in purgatory, then they’re rejecting the Gospel, right?

            Dave:

Tom, they’re having experiences, spiritual experiences that do not come from God.  They either come from their imagination or from demonic beings.

            Tom:

Right.  Again, some of these experience, as I mentioned, levitation, trance states, out of body experiences, ecstatic visions, and visions of heaven, visions of hell.  Now, and then you find out how they’re honored later.  For example, let’s take St. Theresa of Avilla, lived in the 1500’s.

            Dave:

It seems to me; didn’t I see a finger of hers in a church somewhere?

            Tom:

You probably did.

            Dave:

In Europe?

            Tom:

Well, listen to this.  Her best friend was Father Gratian.  Now after she dies, they exhume her body and they find out it hasn’t corrupted at all.  He cuts off her left hand, but takes a finger for himself where he wears around his neck for years.  That’s where that ended up, Dave.  But, they continue to bury her, exhume her body, cut off more parts for relics.  Now, is this what the Emerging Church wants?  Is there where evangelicals need to go?  Well, according to Richard Foster, according to many others, that’s what we’re seeing.  And that’s what they’re encouraging.

            Dave:

They are getting inspiration from the actions and teachings of these people and this is supposed to be a new era in Christianity, post-modern Christianity that is really going to recover the real Christianity for the church today.  Well, Tom, I think the church is being led astray, badly, and that anyone would go for this is astonishing.

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 today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will begin an in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Is Mary the Mother of God?”  In Religion in the News, “Heaven from the Other Side.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “How Does God Guide Our Lives?” 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 addressing the spiritual movement known as “The Emerging Church.”  This week we focus on the question, “Should Christians Dig up the Church Fathers?”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.  In this first segment of our program we’re continuing our series on the Emerging Church movement, and last week we addressed something that is foundational to that movement.  It’s called “Ancient Future Faith,” a term credited to Robert Webber who died last year and for about three decades was a professor at Wheaton College.  Now Webber writes in his book, Ancient Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Post-Modern World, I’m quoting, “Currently, Western society is in a transition from the modern world to a post-modern world.  Shifting us toward the affirmation of new values, these shifts are resulting in a whole new culture and raise new questions about the way a Biblical Christianity is to be understood and communicated.”  Dave, I’ve got another quote by him, but what do you think of that?

            Dave:

Well, Tom,

            Tom:

Affirmation of new values?

            Dave:

Re-thinking evangelical Christianity.  Okay and how are we going to re-think it?  Are we going to go back to the Bible and say, Hey, guys, we missed it, this is what the Bible really says, this is what Paul preached, this is what the early church stood for, this is what happened in the Book of Acts, and so forth.  “Oh, No, No, we’re going to look at culture, changing culture.  You’ve got all kinds of cultures in this world out there already going from one culture to another.  Furthermore, cultures have been changed and we’re not living in ancient Greece now, we’re not living in ancient Rome.”  The Bible was written to all people at all times, and to say, “Oh, my gracious, we’re in a postmodern age, I guess we’re going to have to re-think the whole thing.”  Well, I hope you get back to the Bible.  That’s your problem in the first place!

            Tom:

Well, as you will see, you don’t go back—in some cases they do, but generally speaking the thrust here is not to go back quite that far.  Here is another quote:  “The solution for Christianity to be viable (according to them) in this cultural transition— Here’s what Weber contends: “We need to recover the universally accepted framework of faith that originated with the apostles, was developed by the church fathers, and has been handed down by the church in its liturgical and theological traditions.”

            Dave:

Yeah, well, we have big problems with that, Tom. “We need to recover the—what does he say at the beginning that was….?

            Tom:

“Recover the universally accepted framework of faith.”  How did that ever happen?

            Dave:

I don’t know about framework, I never heard of a framework in the Bible.  There’s one faith, one Lord, one baptism, Ephesians 4, but it doesn’t say there’s one framework, or we have a changing framework, or we’ve going to have to keep up with changing times.  Now why am I so dogmatic about this, Tom?  Because it’s the Bible that tells us about Jesus, tells us about God.  The Bible is God’s Word, God’s inerrant, sufficient Word.  Now, I can’t change that, this is the foundation of the faith, and we’ve quoted it so many times, Tom, but I’ll do it again.  All scriptures is given by inspiration of God.   Okay?  This is the Scripture, inspired of God—it is profitable, or to be used for doctrine—well things have changed, you know, times have changed and we’ve got this postmodern, and maybe we ought to—can we massage that doctrine around just a little?

            Tom:

Make it a little more acceptable?

            Dave:

—profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness, and then it goes on and it says that the man and that would include the women or boy, or girl, child, that the man of God may be perfect.  That doesn’t mean without sin, without flaws, that means mature, complete, one God.  God said to Abraham, Walk thou before me with a perfect heart.  What does that mean?  Well, it means that Abraham wanted God’s will; he is willing to obey God, that’s what it means.  Okay?  But it goes on and it says:  “…thoroughly furnished unto every good work.”  Well, until you get to a postmodern age, I mean, the Bible didn’t foresee that, and the Holy Spirit, you know, wasn’t really up to dealing with that back then.  No I mean, Tom, it’s an insult to God, to the Holy Spirit, it is bordering on blasphemy, because it says—Well, God couldn’t possibly have foreseen all of this.  Or I guess we have to have a new way of interpreting—you can’t get a new way of interpreting the Bible, the Bible is very clear.  You can’t just make it say what you want it to say!  So, that’s how denominations and all kinds of errors came in.  And you know, Tom, I’ve talked to so many people, I’ve heard their whining, and their complaints.  What am I? 81, I can’t believe it.  Well not quite all of my 81 years, but at least 70 of them—“Well, you just can’t understand the Bible”—that’s what the Emerging Church is saying, or, “Well you can make the Bible say anything you want it to say.”  Really?  Well, I tell people, look, if that’s true the Bible would be the most amazing book ever written, because we do have grammatical construction, we do have words that have meaning, you argue this in court.  We have courts of law, so you can’t say you can get anything out of it you want, but they don’t like what it says, and they are trying to find a new way of looking at this.

            Tom:

Dave, as you know, if maybe some of our audience or listeners, viewers that haven’t followed the past programs, we have been—as we’re speaking about the Emerging Church, we’ve been using, particularly for the last couple of week, the latest issue, that is February 2008, of Christianity Today cover says, “Lost Secrets of the Ancient Church:  How Evangelicals Started Looking Backward To Move Forward.”

            Dave:

Now Tom, let me just interrupt, I’m sorry.

            Tom:

Sure.

            Dave:

They had secrets back then—whoa!

            Tom:

Well, these are gems that need to be, I mean, what’s on the cover?  You have a shovel, you have dirt and you have a figure unearthing a cross, but it’s not just a wooden cross, it’s a very stylized cross with, you know, like a gem.

            Dave:

Yeah, so if these were secrets were they in the Bible?  How do we know that there were secrets back then, they had been lost?  You’re not going to dig in the ground to find them, what would you dig up?

            Tom:

I’ll tell you what you dig up.

            Dave:

Yeah, the church fathers, right.

            Tom:

The church fathers, that’s where we’re going on this.

            Dave:

Right, and Tom, I’ve always said, I’m really not interested in the church fathers.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, let me give you some information, maybe I can change your mind here.

            Dave:

Alright.

            Tom:

Well, first of all the question is, from this article, is there really an interest in the church fathers, or just a few guys, scholars and so forth, interested in this?  Well, here’s a quote:  Baylor University professor D. H. Williams, author of Evangelicals and Tradition, testified at the conference—now the conference that they are talking about, this is at Wheaton College.  They had a conference dealing with these issues in which they were going to dig up some of these liturgies, ideas, teachings, how the early church went about, not only their worship, but evangelizing and so on.  Well anyway, he goes on to say:  “Who would have thought, a decade ago, that one of the most vibrant and serious fields of Christian study at the beginning of the 21^st century would be the ancient church fathers?  There has been an opening of new avenues created by the almost overnight popularity of bishops and monks, martyrs and apologists, philosophers and historians who first fashioned a Christian culture 1,500 years ago.”

            Dave:

Fifteen hundred years ago, that’s when they first fashioned it, but Jesus—

            Tom:

But again, this is very popular according to this professor.

            Dave:

I understand.  Tom, it comes and goes just like this.  I’m going to be as brief as I can.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned Academicus, William Law, maybe I have, but a brilliant Christian, way back then.  His most famous book was, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.  That will knock you out of your chair, changed the lives of John and Charles Wesley, and shook the world in his day, 1729.  He says, Academicus, you know, they told Academicus, you don’t understand Christianity, you’ve got to get back—I mean, you’ve got to read the church fathers, and you’ve got to understand how it was back then.  I won’t go on and on into that, but he says, I lit my candle early and I blew it out late, and  he says, I found myself wandering through a wilderness of contradictions and it wearied me.  And he says, Finally, you know what, I forget the old ruminus or  whatever, some old guy that’s not scholarly, he just goes by the Bible, and  he got a hold of me and he said, You know, why don’t you get back, really get back to the early Christianity, back to the guys who just followed the Bible?  And so Academicus says, you know, I decided I’m just going to get back there before all of these books were written by the church fathers and so forth, and I’m just going to study the Bible.

            Tom:

Dave, this is such common sense.

            Dave:

Right.

            Tom:

You said, either last week or the week before, I don’t remember, these guys, going back to this ancient faith, they didn’t go back far enough, they’ve missed it by a hundred years.  Dave, they like to hunker down in the 2^nd century, what about the 1^st century.  Well, first of all, people say well, wait a minute, these church fathers, they knew some of the apostles, there was a close relationship between them.  What does that guarantee?  That doesn’t guarantee anything, does it?  You’ve mentioned before, and I know most of our listeners probably know this, hey, the New Testament, the Word of God, the Bible, this is inspired of the Holy Spirit.  Which one of these individuals, church fathers, were inspired, Dave?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, I’ve said it a number of times, and I’ll say it again.  Paul, in Acts 20, he calls the elders of Ephesus and he says: “I know after my departing grievous wolves will enter in not sparing the flock, of your own selves will men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them.”  Okay.  Now, if some of Paul’s hand-trained, I would say his favorites at Ephesus, he doesn’t have a great deal to correct in the epistles of the Ephesians.  If he said they were going to go astray too after his departing—well, I’m not I impressed, and I’ve said it so often, by Ignatius of Antioch, who knew Peter or studied under James, or whatever—no, Paul’s hand-picked and trained for 3 years at Ephesus the elders, and he said some of you are going to go astray!  Well now, think if we could just get back and we could read a book written by one of the elders at Ephesus, who was really trained by Paul, wow!  Well, how would we know whether he had gone astray or not?  Well, very simple, go back to what Paul taught, read the epistles, read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, it’s the only way, Tom.

            Tom:

You know, again Dave, this really simple stuff, in terms of logic here.  Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you quoted it, 2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God….”  Well, what about 2 Peter 1: 21, 22: “No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”  So, Paul is inspired of the Holy Spirit, now which of these so-called church fathers can say as Paul said: “Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do and the God of peace shall be with you….”—that’s Philippians 4:9.  Which of these individuals that are being promoted here can say that?

            Dave:

Well, Paul was writing Scripture, and Tom, let’s just go back to Jeremiah—as quickly as I can here.  I can quote it but I want to be absolutely certain—Jeremiah 14.  In Chapter 13, Jeremiah, no, he didn’t inspire the Holy Spirit, this is Scripture that he is writing.  Verse 10:  “This evil people which refuse to hear my words (this is the Word of God) which walk in the imagination of their heart….”—of course, we’ve got all that imagine Jesus, visualize, I mean, this is where we are today, Tom.

            Tom:

Mysticism.

            Dave:

Right.  “…which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods?  Okay.  Now, go to chapter 14, verse 14:  “Then the Lord said unto me the prophets prophesy lies in my name.”  Remember, Matthew 7, we go back to these Scriptures again and again, Jesus said: “…many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophecy in your name, in your name we cast out devils…”and so forth.  “I will say I never knew you!”  So, the Lord is saying to Jeremiah: the prophets prophesy lies in my name.  Now notice, there are three things here, “I sent them not.”  Have these guys been sent by the Lord to bring us back to this re-emerging church?  I don’t think so.  “Neither have I commanded them.”  Any command in Scripture that we’ve got to do this?  “Neither spake I unto them—they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination and a thing of not and the deceit of their hearts.”  The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Paul said I don’t have any confidence in the flesh!

            Tom:

I’d like to give our audience, because they probably think, well, who are these church fathers and what are they about?  Well, first of all, these are men, primarily the 2^nd century, 3^rd century, and 4th century AD.

            Dave:

Okay.

            Tom:

There names like Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, and others.  These were men that had some things right and some things wrong.  Okay?  But all you have to do is read about them. Not that I am recommending that, but you will see their flaws and certainly their heresies.  Now let me just take you down through some of these:  Irenaeus believed that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus, as did John Chrysostom and Cyril of Jerusalem; Athanasius taught salvation through baptism.  Actually, most of the others did as well.  Tertullian became a supporter of the Montanist heresies, and a promoter of a New Testament priesthood, similar to the Old Testament Jewish priesthood, as did his disciple Cyprian; Augustine was the principal architect of Catholic dogma that included his support of purgatory, baptismal regeneration, and infant baptism, mortal and venial sins, prayers to the dead, penance for sins, absolution from a priest, the sinlessness of Mary, the Apocrypha as Scripture, and so forth.  And again, it’s not that these men got everything wrong, some of them certainly went against the Catholic Church in terms of Catholic dogmas and so on, but overall, this is like a heretical mind field, so why would we seek them out?

            Dave:

Yeah.  Tom, in preparation for some debates that I just had, I had to listen to many debates, listened to debates by Christians that are really brilliant, and they are debating atheists, or debating Muslims, or whatever, and the thing that I notice that they all fall into; they’re just quoting the experts.  Well, this expert said, you know, and he thinks that this was who really wrote this book.  I remember one debate I had with Bob Funk, Robert Funk, Ph.D. the head of The Jesus Seminar, they had the secular radio.  And he’s carrying on, you know, and I didn’t ask for this debate.  He was going to just destroy me, I guess.  So, the first thing I said to him was, Bob, you’ve got a problem, you were born 1900 years too late!  We have eyewitness testimony.  Who are you—sit there with your colored beads, you know, and vote on whether Peter said this, or whether this really happened, and he got so angry.  He just slammed the phone down.

            Tom:

That was the end of the radio program?

            Dave:

Well, it shouldn’t have been.  I said, Well, wait a minute, I didn’t slam my phone down, could I just say a few more words?  Oh, no, no they’re not going to let me talk.  They wanted him to wipe me out, and it didn’t happen.  So, Tom, what are we going to do?  You remember my debate with Karl Keating?

            Tom:

Catholic apologist and they are of the Roman Catholic Church.

            Dave:

Right.  He got very angry with me in the middle of the debate.  Because, I think the debate was about: “What is the Ancient Church Like?”  Is it a Catholic church, or so forth, and he thought I would go to the church fathers and I would talk about history and so forth?  I went to the Bible!  Where better to find out what the ancient church was like, and should have been like, in the Bible.  Well, he got really angry about that.  Tom, I find that in books between atheists and creationists, creationists and evolutionists, they are arguing with scientific—I can argue with scientific arguments, but the Christians don’t go to the Bible!  In fact, a lot of them, Tom, are evolutionist Christians, and that has been a bitter disappointment to me.

            Tom:

Well, Dave, in this realm, you said it earlier, if I go to the Bible and I take it for what it is, what it claims to be, the Word of God, thus saith the Lord, then I’m accountable, I have to respond to it.  But if I go to the church fathers and you say, well, Origen said this, and I said, Well, Augustine said this, and so who is my favorite?  You know, who is going to give me enough information so that I can do what I want to do?  I can certainly be more ecumenical, say well, let’s disagree to disagree and we can move on from there.

            Dave:

Tom, that’s a very good point.  I don’t want to judge hearts, but why do they want to go to the church fathers?  Because they don’t like what the Bible says, they don’t want to be stuck with the Bible because it is very convicting and very confining.  The same thing with the atheists.  I would say to an atheist, your problem is not a scientific problem, it’s a moral problem.  You hate God and you do not want to be in submission to Him.  And I’m afraid, Tom, there are many Christians leaders, scholars in the world of academia, they don’t want to be tied down to the Bible doctrine, you know.  Let’s get scholarly, let’s look into history, and so forth, and the church fathers, and I think that’s what happening. 

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 be here.  Coming up today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will begin an in-depth study of the Gospel of Matthew, and “Why is the Lineage of Jesus so Important?”  In Religion in the News: “The Stars on Scripture.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question:  “Were the Seven Letters Written to Today’s Church?” 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 addressing the spiritual movement known as “The Emerging Church.”  This week we focus on the topic, “Christianity, from Classical to Post-Modern.”  Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.  You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. We’re picking up where we left off last week in this first segment of our program.  We’ve been discussing the Emerging Church movement and last week we addressed something that is really foundational to that movement.  It’s called “Ancient-Future Faith” and the term and concept is credited to Robert Webber, who died last year, and who for about three decades taught at Wheaton College, a prestigious evangelical institution that has led the way in reconciling evangelicals to the Roman Catholic Church and Webber certainly had a big hand in that.  He talked that the church needs to search out what he calls “Classical Christianity,” a style or practice of Christianity that was utilized in the early centuries of the church and re-presented to our postmodern world of today.  He believed that as the church was confronted by cultural changes it had to change to be successful and those in leadership that did not change ceased to be effective for the gospel.  We’re told we need to find a cultural situation from church history that reflects our current generation, a culture that post moderns can identify with and learn how the Christians of that time period handled it.  So, picking up where we left off last week—

              Dave:

Tom, may I make a quick observation here, interrupt you for a moment?

              Tom:

Sure.

              Dave:

Most of the epistles, well, probably all of them at least to some extent, and some of them it’s almost the whole thing that the apostle is talking about are for correction.  He is already correcting the early church.  I don’t recall, and of course Jesus was correcting in his letters to the seven churches, I don’t recall that Jesus was concerned that they were missing cultural changes, or that they hadn’t kept up with the times.  I don’t recall any commendations for being culturally relative.  I don’t recall anything about tradition—well, I do recall some things about tradition—

              Tom:

But they are not good.

              Dave:

No, Jesus in Matthew 15, he rebuked them.  He said by your tradition you have made void the Word of God.  There’s a lot of tradition that the Jews had, the Rabbis, Pharisees, and so forth, I don’t find Jesus ever commending any of that, none of it.  So, we’re going to get back to the early church?  We’re going to find back there some culture that’s kind of like ours?  Well, there aren’t any, really, but we’re going to find one and we will then proceed on the assumption that these people had it all right when they don’t have any biblical basis for it because the Bible doesn’t tell them how to relate to their culture.  That’s not what it’s about; it’s our relationship with God and with Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit bringing the gospel to others.  And Tom, I’m sorry; these people are way off base.

              Tom:

And Dave, as we will see in addition to what you’ve mentioned, it really gets worse.  It isn’t just a matter of some things that they did, but it’s the whole thrust toward this that is, as you mentioned, it’s not Biblical and worse, as I will explain.

              Dave:

Biblical is the word, Tom.  What they will accuse us of, people that don’t like this program, or whatever, a lot of people don’t like this for many reasons, I’ve been told that I am old-fashioned.  I’m old-fashioned to the extent that I go to by the Bible, but that’s too old-fashioned.  They want to get back to the early church and their tradition, but not to the Bible, unfortunately.

              Tom:

Well, Dave, as we mentioned last week, I started going through the latest issue of, Christianity Today, February 2008.

              Dave:

That’s a shocker.

              Tom:

Well, I think it will be a shocker to some people, but you and I who have been following, not just this magazine but following trends in the evangelical church; they are right up to speed with what we knew they had been teaching.  But now they are so blatant about it.  I think that’s what’s shocking.  Well, we’ll get into that.  Anyway, this is the February issue, 2008 of Christianity Today, on the cover it says:  “Lost Secrets of the Ancient Church:  How Evangelicals Started Looking Backward To Move Forward.”  Dave, I want to go through the article, and then just get your comments.  The title of the article, I read the cover but the title of the article is: The Future Lies in the Past, Why Evangelicals are Connecting with the Early Church As They Move Into the 21^st Century.  Now we’re told by the editors of Christianity Today, that this approach, not only is it a good approach but it’s something they have been practicing, many of the editors have been practicing for years in their Episcopal Anglican churches.  Now does that surprise you, Dave?  You know the history of Christianity Today.

              Dave:

Well, that is what you would assume by reading what they write and the articles that they promote.

              Tom:

In other words, they haven’t gone fully Catholic, although they have been promoting Roman Catholicism for years and years and years.  People say, What are you talking about, this is an evangelical magazine. No, I would challenge those out there who think that I’m making this up, just go through the list of contributing editors,  the senior editors, all of that.  You have—most of them have been signers to ECT, Evangelicals and Catholics Together.  For example, the senior editors: J. R. Packer, Timothy George, Thomas Oden, and then you go down the list of contributing editors and you find Chuck Colson, you find Roman Catholic priests, again, another contributor to this Richard John Newhouse.  So, they’ve been into this—I think you could go back to Billy Graham and his ecumenism and his leanings toward Roman Catholicism.  Dave, am I out of line here?

              Dave:

You’re just telling us the truth, Tom.  But what could be wrong with being in with the Roman Catholic Church and we won’t go into details about that, but we’ve done it before.  It has a false gospel, a false Jesus, the wrong Mary, by all means, and a false view of the crucifixion, of the remembrance of Christ.

              Tom:

The Eucharist.

              Dave:

We’ve been over this before, Tom, but the tragedy is that the gospel is being tampered with; it’s being changed and diluted. 

              Tom:

Right, Dave, these are non essentials, these are just peripheral things, style things or whatever, but all of these things relate to the gospel.

              Dave:

Right, and that’s why Paul rebuked Peter.  He said in Galatians 2:14, But when I saw that they walked not honestly according to the gospel.  It wasn’t a matter of tradition, it wasn’t a matter, well, you’re not associating with Gentiles, that’s not nice.  No, he challenged him on the basis that this was a denial of the gospel which is to every person—go into all the world and preach the gospel.   We don’t have a different gospel for different people.

              Tom:

Now Dave, I want to go through this article again.  The title of the article in Christianity Today, if you want to get a hold of it, it’s the February 2008 issue.  The article begins with a description of a conference held at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College giving snippets of really what took place including, taking the audience through prayers from the Gelasian Sacramentary—now, what’s that?  It’s a fifth-century book of Catholic liturgy recommending—well, it contains really the priest’s part in celebrating the Eucharist.  And the recommendation is for us today, for evangelicals, for Protestants, the recommendation is that we use this in our worship in, it says, Protestant churches.

              Dave:

Yeah, isn’t there a verse in the Bible that tells that this is what we are supposed to do that it would really help?  I remember, Jesus said they that worship the Father must worship him in spirit and in truth, but I don’t recall anything about this book.  Well, it hadn’t even been written then.

              Tom:

Well, Dave, “a priest’s part in celebrating the Eucharist” that’s an abomination before God, according to the Scriptures!  One speaker promoted the medieval fourfold hermeneutic—well, what’s that?  Largely, that’s the medieval times again.  Catholic, you know the Roman Catholic Church and their approach to interpreting the Bible, which is primarily a non-literal interpretation of the Bible.  That’s recommended, and we’re seeing that throughout the Emerging Church.  And also, Dave, this is a sad one, and another “gleefully passed on the news that Liberty University had observed the liturgical season of Lent.”

              Dave:

Well, Tom, I don’t want to keep repeating myself, but well, they want to get back, going to get into the future by going into the past, but they don’t go quite far enough.  Let’s go back to the Bible!  What’s wrong with the example of Paul, or of Jesus, or of Peter?  Why don’t we take what the Bible says instead of, well let’s go a few centuries farther because they were so close to the early church, and maybe we can glean something from their liturgy and their traditions.  Jesus condemned tradition, had nothing good to say about it.

              Tom:

Dave, you just quoted from Galatians.  Galatians is—I mean, I know it as the Catholic Church being the Galatian heresy, what does that mean?  It means that that church that I spent 30 years in, okay, turned to rituals, to these ceremonies, to the things just as the Galatians turned back to the law and the Law of Moses and so on, to what?  Perfect their faith?  First century church?  As you pointed out, most of it was written to correct heresies that had already infiltrated the body of Christ.

              Dave:

Right.

              Tom:

Now, after going through what this conference is about, the writer of the article then asked:  “Had Catholics taken over?”  Meaning, in this bastion of conservative evangelicalism?  As the answer is, a definite No!  This Wheaton College conference was simply the evangelicals looking to the past for “rich biblical, spiritual, and theological treasures to be found within the early church.”  Now Dave, you know that I followed Wheaton’s college ecumenism for almost a decade now, and Catholicism has all but visibly taken over there.  Now, years ago I sat in the school’s chapel and listened to the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal George, teach to a standing room only audience in their chapel about apostolic succession. 

              Dave:

Tom, it’s almost incomprehensible!  They do not want to go to the Bible; they do not want to follow the Bible.  Let me read a paragraph from an editorial by Mark Galli, the senior managing editor of Christianity Today introducing this article.  He says:  “Some of us have been basking in the warm glow of liturgy and tradition so long that the glow has worn off.  We know the ancient church in itself is not the answer to evangelicalism’s problems.  If liturgy can revive, it can also deaden.  If tradition can give us fresh perspectives, it can also bind us to an anacronistic way of thinking.  Liturgy is another worthless work if not infused with faith and the Holy Spirit, and tradition is a noose around our necks if it isn’t held up against Biblical revelation.”  Now, Jesus condemns tradition, he says they are dangers in tradition, could be some real problems there.  But, you know, we’re going to look at tradition with faith and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is not guiding you to look at tradition.  The Holy Spirit will take you back to the Word of God.  “Tradition is a noose around our necks, if it isn’t held up against biblical revelation.”  Why do I have to hold it up against Biblical revelation?  Why don’t I take Biblical revelation itself, which never suggests that it should be supplemented with tradition?

              Tom:

Dave, what did Paul mean when he—he did say something affirming tradition, you know, he said, Follow these traditions.  What was he talking about?

              Dave:

Well, that’s in 2 Thessalonians, and you see, at that time the epistles hadn’t been written.  He was in the process of writing them, he called it traditions, but these were the teachings.

              Tom:

The oral traditions?

              Dave:

Right.  Whether by word or our epistle, this is what he says.  Now, what he meant was the example of the apostles, what they had taught and what they had practiced.  In fact, Paul says, twice he says be followers of me, even as I am of Christ.  But he is not recommending Jewish tradition, he’s does not recommend—they’re not in the process of creating some new tradition.  The Bible was not intended to create tradition!  The Bible is the Bible, it’s to be followed, but until that—Tom, it’s like this, the Apostles Creed—well the apostles never heard of the Apostles Creed.  Why must it be in writing?  For example, Peter in his 2^nd epistle says:  “I will endeavor that after my decease you will be able to keep these things in remembrance” so he’s putting them in writing.  Until they were put in writing Paul is saying follow what you have learned from us.  Okay.  But look, the traditions of the early church—well, let’s say the oral teachings of Paul—why do we have it in writing?  Well, supposing we had a tape recording, or a DVD even, CD or something of Paul speaking.  I wouldn’t recognize him, I wouldn’t know his voice, I would have no way of proving that that was really Paul.  If it’s some actor saying these things you could really get confused if we pass down oral tradition from one generation to another.  That’s why it is put in writing, and this Book the Bible, is unique and it is fantastic and you can prove the Bible from the Bible.  This is how they preached the gospel.  So it all ties together; you can follow the themes, you can see the consistency, you can see the revelation as it unfolds, and the epistles were put into this Book—God’s Word, and we do not honor oral teachings, oral traditions.  It is not logical and it’s not Biblical.

              Tom:

Well, Dave, at this conference, again, at Wheaton College, which this article in Christianity Today addresses, let me give you another quote here, because this is a major thrust.  Baylor University’s D. H. Williams, author of Evangelicals and Tradition, testified at the conference to “the recent upsurge of evangelical interest in patristics (the study of the Church Fathers) in the first 7 centuries of the church.  I’m quoting him:  “Who would have thought, a decade ago, that one of the most vibrant and serious fields of Christian study at the beginning of the 21^st century would be the ancient church fathers?  There has been an opening of new avenues, (especially among Free Church Protestants) [created] by the almost overnight popularity of bishops and monks, martyrs and apologists, philosophers and historians who first fashioned a Christian culture 1500 years ago.”  Going to the church fathers, Dave, we want to talk about that.

              Dave:

Well, Tom, we’ve mentioned it a number of times.  First of all, church fathers—who were they?  A number of heretics among them, they even—

              Tom:

Depending on which side you are on.  If you took a Catholic view—they were okay—if you took a Biblical view, they had a problem, or if they took a Biblical view, the Catholics would refer to them as “heretics.”  It’s so confusing, Dave, you read these men.

              Dave:

I think, last week I mentioned you would have to know ancient Syriac, you would have to know all kinds of dead languages.  There’s a truck load of church fathers, now which one will you go to?  On what basis will you decide which one is right and which one is wrong?  Why don’t we just go to the Bible, because, as I mentioned, Paul said to the best elders, as far as we know, the Ephesians elders that he had hand trained:  After my departing, grievous wolves will enter in, not sparing the flock, of your own selves will men arise speaking perverse things.  So, now lets take somebody—oh he’s only a generation removed, oh he is just two generations, he’s way back there in the 2^nd century, let’s study the church fathers there.  No, they were already going astray, that’s what the epistles were written was to correct that they had already introduced into the church.  And this is not solid ground, this is sinking in the mire of tradition that was being developed.  This is not Bible!  We need to get back to the Bible, and these people are taking us away from it, away from it. 

              Tom:

Dave, not only do they have some heretical ideas, theologically speaking, but the thrust of turning to them is not really for their theology, it’s for rituals, it’s for liturgy, it’s for how they supposedly practiced their faith but in terms of religious ceremony, that’s the heart of all of this.

              Dave:

And show me a chapter in the Bible that says, oh this is very important now, you’ve got to get this right, and we’re going to give you an example by some of these early church fathers.  It’s a delusion Tom; I could say it’s a passing fad.  Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but they are certainly working it hard for all they can get out of it.

              Tom:

Dave, I don’t think it’s a passing fad, in my own opinion, I think it’s bringing mysticism into the church, which is a glue that brings about unity, but it’s not Biblical unity, I think it’s Antichrist unity.

              Dave:

I would agree with you, Tom.