Well, I'm composing my answer. Not all of us speak off the cuff. That was your golem face. Well, it has to do with what we regard to be our starting place in how we present the faith and how we respond to questions. Do we start somewhere else or do we believe that God's Word is the sufficient starting place that tells us provides the basis on which we stand. You know, Robert Raymond wrote a book called The Justification of Knowledge, and he said that we need a pusto, a where to stand, then we could move the universe from it if we have a place to stand, because unbelief has no place to stand. But the believer stands on the Word of God, so it's an apologetic application of Proverbs 1-7, that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge. Do you really literally believe that? Or do you think it's the conclusion you draw after a long, lengthy process of evidence and of, you know, of reasoning? But really, it's the starting place of reasoning. Yeah, you know, Spurgeon answered this one, I think, more clearly and succinctly than anybody. And I can't do the British accent. But what he said was, you know, you don't have to defend the Bible. It's like a lion. You just unleash it and it'll defend itself. And that's the basic idea, that we don't need to prop up Scripture with philosophical arguments or scientific proofs or any of that. Just let the Bible speak for itself, and it is its own best defense, and it's a sufficient defense. And, you know, I think a lot of apologetic energies are, or I should say, a lot of energies in the realm of apologetics are wasted trying to convince people that Scripture is true, when in fact it's Scripture itself that is the most convincing argument for that fact. Why don't you define apologetics rather than assume that everybody knows what it is? I was going to say something else, but I could do that. You know, apologetics is, it comes from the Greek word, which I don't know anything about Greek, but I know this Greek word, which means to give a defense, right? To give an argument or an explanation for what it is you believe. So apologetics as a field is where you explain the things you believe to other people, and Christian apologetics, obviously, for our faith. Now, the one thing that I would say about that question is that, you know, Scripture is sufficient. But as Phil so well said this morning, it's sufficient for the things that it addresses. You know, we don't want to take everything the Bible says and then add our postulates and our guesses and our intuitions to it to build other arguments which are supposed to encourage people to believe who and what Jesus is. Jesus walked out of a tomb. And that very day, according to the scripture, he met two disciples on the road to Emmaus and walked it and gave the best sermon ever from all of scripture. So he didn't crawl out of the tomb. He wasn't saved from the tomb or stolen from the tomb. He came out better than he went in. That's our apologetic. If that is who Jesus is, then God. What kind of God raises a man from the dead? Why would he do it? Why would he let him die in the first place? Those are the answers we get from the Bible. So how does sufficiency relate to apologetics? The only thing it can do is create the basis for evangelism. You know, this summer we spent at our church 10 weeks talking about the origins of the English Bible. And our rule there was that we are learning these things for the sake of apologetics, which means we are lovers, not fighters. We're not trying to start a fight. We're trying to answer someone's question so that they can love God's word the way we love God's word. That's what apologetics should be. And that's what… that's sufficiency, okay? The Bible is sufficient for what it's for. You'll never learn to fix your car with the Bible, but you might learn how to fix your heart, how God fixes your heart. Interesting thing I was thinking as you were talking too was when he met those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he had the best evidence right there, but he didn't go to the evidence. Yeah, exactly. They were all sad and depressed because of the failure of Jesus. And he didn't just go, you know, and show them his I'm Jesus card. He went to the Old Testament. This is how I imagine the road to Emmaus. He walks up to them and he's like, why the long faces? And they're like, are you the only person who doesn't know what just happened? Don't you know these things? And he goes like this, what things? And then, right? No, he didn't. He didn't do that. He went to the Bible. He had what many evidential apologists think is the prime bit of evidence right there, and he didn't go to the evidence. He went to the Word of God. That's sufficiency. Awesome. Amen, guys. So, kind of a follow-up question to this. So, what, if any, what role do external resources such as commentaries, Bible softwares, anything... For instance. Yeah, for instance. And so, apart from this sufficient Word of God, I mean, any evidence of scientific or anything, do they have a role in the Christian life in building and sanctifying? Absolutely, but only insofar as they accurately interpret and explain the Scripture, because it's the meaning of Scripture that counts. And there are times when we need help understanding what Scripture means. Scripture itself acknowledges that there are things in there that are hard to be understood. There's a great line in the hermeneutics textbook that I used in college where the author says, you know, every now and then somebody will say, well, I don't need any books or other men's opinions. I just need the Bible itself. And so he lists a lot of terms that are found in Scripture that are obscure and difficult to understand. He says, explain those terms without a Bible dictionary, you know. Tell me where those places are without a Bible dictionary. Atlas. We all need, I mean, there is a role for teaching, and Scripture acknowledges that. People have the gift of teaching, and it's legitimate to be taught by godly men who understand the Scripture. But that still comes back to the point that it's the true meaning of Scripture that's profitable. Nothing else is. So we wouldn't say every commentary is profitable. There's some really bad ones out there that are counterproductive. But any commentary that helps you to understand the true meaning and significance of Scripture, to unfold the truth of Scripture in a clearer light is certainly helpful. And in fact, I don't think anyone can unaided, on his own, just reading the scriptures blind, come to the best understanding of it, because we are all, our understanding is clouded by sin. And so we need the teaching gifts of other Christians and godly men who've gone before, and that's the value of those books and study programs. And the great thing about Bible software is it just simply makes it easier to retrieve those study aids. I'd say two things briefly. One, if somebody were to try to take the position that, well, I don't need to be taught, I don't need any teaching, I don't need any help, I just need my Bible. Well, if you go to your Bible, you will read in the Bible, submit yourself to your elders and obey them for they keep watch over your soul. And you'll find in that Bible, do not forsake the assembly of yourselves together. And you'll find in that Bible, bear one another's burdens and so forth and so on, none of which can be carried out in isolation, all of which require being part of a church body. And as far as being taught, you'll also find in Scripture things like that somebody who doesn't listen to counsel is a fool. That's what going to a commentary is. I'm consulting with an elder, godlier, wiser brother and getting some help, and that's listening to counsel. And the second thing to just take off what Phil says, you need the light of general revelation to understand special revelation. The Bible doesn't have a Greek grammar built into it. Would that it did. It doesn't have a Greek grammar or a Greek lexicon built into it. Would that it did, it doesn't. You need general revelation for that and to find these place names and so forth and so on. General revelation illuminates special revelation. Okay, as the layman here, okay, here's what I have. Yeah, Bible, good, right? Okay? But let me just put it to you this way. There are times when you need somebody to help you figure something out. Last week in our Sunday school class, we have creeds in our children's church and I'm teaching the grown-ups their children's creeds, okay? And the creed we did last week was creation. And we talked about Genesis 1 and how God forms and then God fills. That's not my idea. It's actually Genesis 1's idea, but that's kind of the standard Bible teaching there, that God forms and God fills. And it's a literary form in the Hebrew that says God was perfectly finished when he was done. He formed it and he filled it, right? I didn't come up with any of that, okay? But I'm teaching adults how to see their Bible so that they can explain it to their children. At the end of the day, you could read Genesis 1 and not know that and still get it, that God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. Why? That's what it says, right? Right? That's not that complicated. All right? But, you know, here's where the rubber meets the road for me. You know, I'm trying to live my Christian life. I'm trying to do more than just, you know, look for the milk, have a little bit of meat, maybe just cereal with my milk, you know, some days. And I come to the, I'm thinking about my life and I'm like, Jesus, what kind of husband am I supposed to be? So I'm reading my Bible, I'm reading my Bible, and suddenly it says, husbands love your wives the way Christ loved the church. Right? Now, that tells me what I have to do. But in order to know what I have to do, I have to understand how Christ loved the church. So what do I do then? Well, I can go to my concordance. Well, what's a concordance? It's a Bible reference tool. Okay? I could go to other commentators. Who else has read this verse? Maybe they've done some of the homework. All right, so the point here is not to become so brainy that you can't do anything with what you've learned. It's to take it and say, holy mackerel, the way we know what love is that Christ died for us. So when Paul says that I should love my wife the way Christ loved the church, I should love her so much that I want to die for her. and not like in the big hairy romantic sense, in the sense that today I'm going to forgive everything she does which offends me because I'm a sinner and die to that so I can love her better. Now look, what concordance did I need to figure that out? Not much, but I grabbed the sufficient word of God that said something explicitly to me that I should understand Right? And now I've got to live that way because I understand it. The responsibility is greater for me because I know it. And now it's on all of you because I just explained it to you. Okay? But that's it. Sufficient means, there it is, the word's going to give it to you. And you can do it. And if you need a concordance to get there, if you need a Bible software, you need blue, you know, what is it, Blue Letter Bible or whatever it is, or Bible Gateway or whatever you got, great. I think that if it gets you to understand the word better so you will do it, win. Yeah, while he was filibustering there, I looked this up. And this is interesting. This is from eight years ago this week. We did a post on the blog. So if you look this up at Pyromaniacs of the blog, you'll find on January 19th of 2007 a post called, Sola Scriptura and the Role of Teachers in Our Spiritual Growth. It answers this question, which is an excellent question, by the way. And this post, you'll definitely want to read because it is like the quintessential Pyromaniacs post. It has a comic book illustration and two versions of our logo morphed into some kind of funny picture. So yeah, enjoy. Brilliant. Brilliant. OK. So again, let's keep probing. Let's keep going down this road. So, hypothetically, I understand the sufficiency of the Scripture, and I get this doctrine, but what role does my feelings, my emotions, my passions, or even my dreams, do those have any impact on my Christian life? In spite of the... He's already calling for the mic. Yeah, absolutely. I'll do this real quick. Absolutely, but your... And in fact, your response to the truth of Scripture should always be passionate. It's subject to the Scriptures, not ruling over it. You don't interpret the Scriptures by your emotions. Rather, you let the truth of Scripture control your emotions. So your emotions, insofar as they're valid, should be a response to the truth of Scripture. It should be passionate. It should be emotional. It should be something that shakes the foundations of your soul. You know, the typical response in Scripture when somebody sees the Lord and understands for the first time is, is fear that forces them on their face. You don't get more passionate than that. How do you love the Lord your God? With all your mind, with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your soul. So you have to love God somehow with your heart. Next. John Frame, I wish I had it exactly memorized, but in his really excellent 700-page book on the authority of Scripture, the doctrine of the Word of God, he says that the definition of the authority of Scripture is its right to demand a response or its right to create a response and responsibility. So that means that when Scripture tells me that I should mourn over my sins, faith mourns over my sins. When scripture tells me that I should rejoice because my reward in heaven is great, then I should rejoice because my reward in heaven is great. Scripture comes first, my emotions do lag after, but they're not left out. Scripture is Lord even over my emotions. I grasp the truth and I cultivate an emotional response that's appropriate to the truth. Scripture tells me to fear God, I fear God. So, how does one have the doctrine rule over someone's emotions, someone struggling with depression? How do they make their feelings, how do they make that happen? They might understand the academic statement, but how do they make, how do they feel it? I think the Psalms give a very good model in how to work that through. We're studying through studying through psalms in our church Wednesday nights. And what you see the psalmist do is he's in the grips of despair, of fear, of regret, guilt. He pours that out before God very eloquently, very ardently. He pours it out before God, but then he turns and he applies the word of God to it. And very often in the same psalm, you'll see a psalm start with a lament and end with rejoicing and hope and confidence. He remembers God's promise to him, and he will sometimes defy his own feelings. There's a psalm that I don't remember the reference, but it says, when I am afraid, I will trust in you. Now, that is a decision. I'm afraid, but I will trust in you. I choose to rest on your word. And then often, as Lloyd-Jones points out very well, Psalms 42 and 43, the psalmist preaches to himself. And of course, I've found that that's Very often, I've had a number of people sometimes will come up to me and present a problem as if daring me to solve it. Well, I can't. I can't solve somebody else's problem if they're not working in this with me. But the psalmist, what he does is he preaches to himself. He preaches the word of God. Why are you in despair, O my soul? Why are you cast down within me? Trust in God, for I will again praise him. which is not to say this is an easy process. It's sometimes very difficult. And one of the facts that was often glossed over in the early biographies of Spurgeon was the fact that he struggled frequently with deep depression. He was a frequently depressed, almost melancholy person. You don't always get that when you read his sermons because there's dashes of humor in there and all of that. He did also speak frankly about his struggle with depression. And he worked so hard, it's no wonder he was fatigued. He had gout, so he was in constant pain. And there were a lot of factors that contributed to his depression. But he saw it as a spiritual issue and came to embrace the fact that when the Lord allowed him to sink into various states of despair and confusion and fear and depression, it was always for a reason. It was typically a sermon that he preached that brought him out of the despair, just exactly what you said, except that he's preaching to a large congregation, not only to himself. And he came to learn that often those messages received the best response from his hearers, and often there would be a particular person in the congregation who that message just seemed, you know, cut out to reach. And you see this in scripture, it's the whole point of the opening part of 2 Corinthians, that God allows us to suffer sometimes so that we can comfort others who suffer. And I think the real task here is to see our sufferings, including depression, in the light of scripture. And as Spurgeon did, it may mean that we embrace those trials and realize that, you know, I don't have absolute control over my own emotions, but what I can do is educate my heart with scripture so that I'm not thrown into utter despair by those melancholy emotions. Yeah, I think it's also important to say that depression is probably a pretty complicated example, right? Because depression can, it can really sit on the edge of clinical and go all the way into pathological, right? That you're sick and you need more You need more than just a spiritual physician. You need somebody who can help you medically. So, you know, depression is probably a special case. But one of the things we try to teach our kids is that sometimes your emotions try to lead you, right? But your emotions can only follow what's really true. If your emotions don't follow what's true, you know, it's just a roller coaster ride with no rails. Okay, so the way that this sort of thing works is that you have to take your emotions, and I think that what you quoted, when I am afraid, I will trust in you. That's perfect. God's true. My emotions are what they are. I'm going to look at God. I'm going to look at his word, and that's going to be the reins on my emotions. We're going to pull them around to the right direction. Okay, so kind of shifting gears here, still on the topic of the sufficiency of Scripture, but you guys have blogged most often on the sovereignty of God and heralded that message. And so, if the sufficiency of the Word of God is true and God is sovereign, what role do dreams play today? None. Yeah. Yeah, I would say no role that you have to pay attention to that. I mean, there's nothing in scripture that ever tells us that we're obliged to ponder our dreams or try to figure them out. There are key instances in Scripture where dreams were a source of some special providence, you know. I hesitate to even call it divine revelation. I mean, in Joseph's case, in the New Testament, that was divine revelation. In Pharaoh's case, I would maybe classify that as just a special providence. I did give a message that touches on this subject last year at the Strange Fire Conference. If you look that up, it's called Providence is Remarkable, and I dealt with the fact that sometimes God can use intuitive thoughts or dreams or whatever. Sometimes, I should say, He does use those things to move us to do things by providence, but I think it's wrong and dangerous to look at that as a source of revelation, as if this was God speaking to me. You know, God will use anything. God will use, you know… In fact, God does use everything in the outworking of His providence because He is sovereign over everything, but that doesn't mean that there's a message or a special revelation in the remarkable things that happen that I need to figure out. I became interested in this subject years ago when I was studying the American Puritans. And they had a fascination with—I mean, they were at the dawn of the Enlightenment. They were discovering science. Little known fact that Cotton Mather, who has kind of been made into a caricature by history because of the witch trials and all of that, He was actually keenly interested in science and scientific advancement. He did a lot of study in science. He was actually the first person who brought smallpox vaccinations to North America. And smallpox vaccinations, a generation later, were what killed Jonathan Edwards. That's just a strange quirk of history. But all that is to say, he was a man hung between, you know, the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment. And he was superstitious on the one hand, interested in science on the other. And he and his father, Increase Mather, were fascinated by what they called remarkable providences. And they would collect and catalog unusual occurrences, lightning strikes and just, you know, a tree falls on a guy as he's riding his horse by and kills him or kills the horse and he survives. And they would try to read meaning into this. What does this mean? What message is God sending? Yeah, things like that. In fact, Mather had this hypothesis that God was angry with the churches of New England because every time there was a lightning strike in towns, and they chronicled all these lightning strikes, it always hit the steeple of the church. Now, remember, he was exactly one generation before Benjamin Franklin. In fact, Benjamin Franklin ran into Cotton Mather in Boston when he was a boy, when Benjamin Franklin was a boy. And his account of that meeting is quite funny to read if you look it up. But all that is to say... It's a foolish thing to try to read the meaning of providence. We'll almost always get it wrong. I don't know what God is doing or why He does it. All I know is that He is working in everything that happens and we can trust Him to do it right. And that goes for our dreams as well. Don't read meaning into it. Yeah, to give a slightly less flippant answer than my first one. Yeah, often we're asked about, are emotions significant? And it sounds like we're, on the one hand, to many people it sounds like we're saying, well, they're not significant. They aren't revelatory. They are significant. Somebody might be talking to somebody and just have a feeling that something's off. I would not interpret that. I have no scriptural basis. I have no authority for interpreting that as God sort of mumbling something at me. But it may very well be my intuition that's picking up on signals that there's something wrong. I don't need to play the God card. I can just say, you know, I got a funny feeling about this guy. Something just seems off. And think, what is it that's given me that feeling? Or I look at a room and something's off and I realize that something's on fire or whatever. It's not revelation. And so likewise, even a dream, like I said, to give a less flippant answer, well, you know, if I'm getting scary, horrendous dreams and that's the kind of movie I watch all the time or the book I read all the time, it might be significant. It's not a revelation. But it just tells that I'm putting my head in the wrong place too often. It's his turn. Yeah, my recurring nightmare is a picture of Frank Turk in his Captain America outfit. I'm sure it does too. You know, I tell people at work this all the time, that luck favors the prepared. And, in my mind, that is a Christian saying, even though it doesn't come out of the Bible, because what it really says is, when you prepare yourself with wisdom, you will know what to do in the situations you encounter. Okay? And, you know, preparation causes a lot of things to happen to you that non-preparation doesn't. So when you prepare your mind with scripture, because it is sufficient, you have wisdom, and you will see things that other people don't see. That doesn't mean you'll see ghosts, or spirits, or visions, but you'll see patterns that scripture has informed you to understand, right? And your dreams, you know, your mind is your mind. And sometimes your dreams will be informed by the wisdom that you have poured into your own mind. So, you know, I don't want to throw a dream. I don't want to say that you should follow the dreams that you get, but you probably have better dreams if you know more scripture. How about that? Excellent. Excellent. And so, again, on the topic of sovereignty, and the sufficiency of Scripture. How does the sufficiency of Scripture affect the cultures for whom there is no translation of the Bible? Is the Bible still sufficient for them? Well, it would be if they had it. But yeah, I mean, since they don't have it, then obviously they don't have sufficient revelation. That's the point. Because the Bible is the only sufficient Word from God. It's the only revelation that shows us the way of salvation. Maybe I will talk about this tomorrow after all, Psalm 19. There are two kinds of revelation, general revelation and special revelation, and this is the main difference. Scripture is sufficient. You just sealed it for me. I'll talk about this tomorrow in my session. We're just going to cut that out. Gee, what was I going to say? Something deep and would it change your lives? Sorry. You have something? What was the question? People who don't have the Bible. Yeah, people that don't have the Bible. Scripture is sufficient for those who have faith, right? And one of the things it tells us is to take it to the ends of the earth. So it is sufficient. We have to take it to them. Right? So they don't have it right now, but what does that do? Does that give them an excuse? No, they have the general revelation problem, okay? But we know they need it. So what are we waiting for? How shall they hear without a preacher? Exactly. But you know, that is our problem. That's our burden. We should do it. Okay? We don't need the 81st English translation. We need the translations in every other language. Yeah. What I was going to say is that, um, I wrote an article in pyro also that talked about the fact I did. Did you know I was a blogger there? I don't remember the title though. It was, it was the point. Sorry. Um, the point was that the Bible is written for the people who can read it primarily. That's why there's so many questions that we can't answer because We're asking about other people who don't read the Bible, like what about children who die in infancy and what about those who never hear? Well, the Bible is not written to them because by definition, if they're reading the Bible, they've heard, you know? And so what the Bible says to us is it doesn't say, those who never hear, God has a special plan for them, don't worry about them. It says that natural revelation is enough to condemn anybody. And it says, you get the word out to them, like you were saying. So there's no, you think you've found it? Perhaps. Actually, I did a Google search for your key terms, and the first two things that came up were the world tilting gospel and your book on the Proverbs. So apparently you deal with it in your books too. So I'm surprised you're not hawking your books, because you do that so much. But that may be the one. That's the third one that came up. Oh, he found it. That's true. The title is Unanswered Bible Questions and the Need to Know. That's right, exactly. So I talk about the fact that I give two premises. The Bible tells us everything we need to know as Christians. The Bible does not tell us everything we want to know. So I agree with me. That's an old one. That's May of 2006. And guys, we really appreciate, too, the fact that you're answering the questions, you're divulging, rather than, read my blog. It's on the blog. It's on the blog. We appreciate you being able to point us to different sections on the blog so that we can read it more in depth and maybe get to some of the nitty gritty answers. And so. We're answering our questions and giving documentation. There you go. No extra charge. All right. Citing his sources. All right. So. Another thing that you guys do on the blog, and you did so well, was talk about the new trends, the relevant today's issues, the current events. And we know that the sufficiency of Scripture impacts those events. To what degree does a proper understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture impact or change one's view on the recent race issues? that we've been seeing, the protests, the issue that just happened in Ferguson. What does the sufficiency of scripture have to say, or how does that change our views of those things? Yeah, well, let me just say this real quickly. I think a proper view of the sufficiency of Scripture would do away with 99% of the trends, the popular trends that have swept over the evangelical movement over the past, well, I've been an evangelical for 40 years now, and 40 years of wave after wave of trend, and I really can't think of one that was entirely good. I just can't. And I think at the root of practically every bad fad is a lack of appreciation of the sufficiency of Scripture, because if we really believed the sufficiency of Scripture, we wouldn't keep running after whatever the latest fad is. Like, preaching the Bible isn't enough for evangelicals today. They want their pastor to be savvy on all the latest movies, and it's good if he preaches on those movies rather than Scripture. You know, that's simply… I mean, that's maybe even worse than just a lack of understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture. but built into that perspective that causes people to do that, to chase fables and fads rather than listening to Scripture, built into that is a lack of conviction that Scripture is sufficient. And, you know, in a sort of lateral way, I see that same thing sort of feeding the recent trend that where all of a sudden the big issue is racial reconciliation. Although, you know, that's something we've been talking about for years, and I really think evangelicals are generally in absolute agreement that racism is wrong. That's the thing everybody wants to focus on, and they're doing it with arguments that are not drawn from Scripture. And so, again, it is a reflection. The fact that something like that could overnight become such an instant, flash-in-the-pan fad like that does reflect the fact that our movement has absolutely no anchor or confidence in the Scriptures because we don't believe, or the movement as a whole doesn't seem to believe the Scriptures are sufficient. Yeah, and I would add that you speak to it as a person who believes in the sufficiency of Scripture by going to Scripture first to see what it says about the problems. For instance, you go to Scripture and say, does Scripture say anything about reconciliation of races and what the basis of that is? Yes, it does in so many words. It exactly says, first of all, actually you've got to go back to the beginning and question whether the concept of race is a biblical concept. And you find no, actually no, there's just the one race. And spiritually there's just two races. And so we all come from the same grandpa. Now what do you do with, what's the problem then? The problem is hostility, bitterness, resentment. Does Scripture speak to that? I think it does. Does it speak to people who abuse other people and abuse their power over people? Yeah. Does it speak to people who get in trouble with the law, disrespect the law? Yeah, I think it does. To the family? Mm-hmm, I think so that too. And just a whole host of other issues, but you start with Scripture and apply it as you go along. Otherwise, if you start somewhere else, you end up feeding resentment, feeding division and feeding just the cycling of the same problems that led to the problems in the first place. Alright, excellent. So, kind of on the same topic here. There's another trend that's been in the news rather recently that even caught the opinions of one of the former retired bloggers up here. And so how does the sufficiency of scripture impact or change one's views of someone going to heaven or going to hell and coming back? Yeah, I mean, that's an easy one to answer because scripture, Scripture pretty much says in John 3 that, you know, people don't go to heaven and come back. And, you know, all the examples you have in scripture are basically visions. They're not people who had near-death experiences. Even the Apostle Paul says he's not really certain whether he was there in the body or out of the body. He's clearly describing a vision, not a post-mortem trip to heaven and back. And the people who you would expect to be talking about that, like Lazarus or the boy that Elijah raised from the dead, there's zero information there about what happened to Lazarus those four days in the grave. Scripture doesn't want us to probe into those things. In fact, we're commanded not to try to dig into the things that God hasn't revealed. And there's absolutely no reason to think that this recent wave of stories about people who claim they went to heaven and came back are true. They aren't true. They're all lies. And in fact, it started outside Christianity with New Age people. That was a fad in the New Age movement 20 years ago, and it's one of those fads that evangelicals saw and said it might be profitable, and so they picked it up. And if you read Scripture, you'll get everything you need to know about heaven, and if you know what Scripture teaches about heaven and compare that to any of these tales, You'll discover there's no way to reconcile what the Bible says with what the stories these people are telling. And how I got into this was I basically made that point in a blog post. These stories cannot be true. And the mother of one of the boys who had had a book written about him saying he went to heaven called me that day. I got a phone slip saying she'd called and I kind of expected an angry woman saying, how dare you question my son's life story, but it was just the opposite. She said, you're exactly right. This whole thing is a fraud. It was cooked up by a book agent and her husband and the publisher, and they've basically been exploiting this boy's paralysis. She has tried everything she could for three years or longer to make that story known. She's been telling the truth and putting it online and talking to reporters, and for some reason it suddenly went viral last week and people are finally paying attention. But it's not really news. But that to me is significant. Here's a woman saying in Christian forums on the internet, where there are Christians, on her Facebook page, on everybody's page, John MacArthur put this story in his book that was published two years ago. So the story's out there, but shallow evangelicals read that, and they actually would prefer to believe the lie. And you know what Scripture says about that. When someone would rather believe a lie than the truth, it's not a good thing. But that is all about the sufficiency of Scripture, sorry. That's the whole issue here. If the Bible's sufficient, we don't need some little kid's visions of heaven. Well, and I love the way the first article ended quoting you, that you said the Bible says people like fables. And I was just thinking, listening to you, that the trend is, and reflecting on 2 Timothy 4, that the trend is that people are all fascinated in things that the Bible says little or nothing about. and have no interest in what the Bible says everything about. Sure, you bet. 2 Timothy 4 just warns the man of God to expect that, and not to try to come up with better fables. Now that's what evangelicalism does. They see that people want fables, so they try to come up with better fables, more interesting fables. Jesus fables, exactly. There you go, plastic fish, we're good to go. So, what they say is, people don't want information transfer. They don't want lectures. They don't want information from the pulpit. They want this, they want that. So, we'll give them that. Well, the world's already doing a much better job doing that. Plus, and more fundamentally, that's not our commission. That's not our commission. Not to compete with the world and try to be a better world than the world except in the church. Our commission is to preach the Word of God, and if we believe that that is sufficient, why, we're good with that. We will just do that and stick with that. I think the thing that's most frustrating to me is over the past week as this story's come out, the best and most thorough stories about it have been written in the secular newspapers. Christians have left it alone. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to know that this is not true. And so the task has been left to newspapers like the Guardian and the Daily Mail. These are ungodly newspapers. I wouldn't normally even recommend that you read, but on this story, they have it right. And the evangelical movement as a whole seems to be sticking their finger in their ears and just saying, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, I don't want to hear it. So who loves fables now? Do we not value the truth more than that? And that is the result, that is the direct result of abandoning the principle of biblical sufficiency. That's the fruit of moving away from the principle of sola scriptura. The immediate fruit is a kind of unbelief that prefers fables and stories to the truth. And why wouldn't we rejoice as Christians that the truth came out? So let me play devil's advocate here for just a moment and say, I understand what you're saying, but I read this book. I read Heaven is for Real, and it impacted my life. I've started reading my Bible more. I've started going to church again. I've started doing these things. That book helped me get on the right path. How can that be evil? How can that be false? Yeah, I would say that is a pragmatic argument, number one, so it's fallacious from the start. One of the first things we learn as Christians is that truth is not determined by what works, what makes us feel good, or pragmatic considerations like that. Truth is tested by the Word of God. That's the principle of Sola Scriptura. It's the highest test of truth. It doesn't matter how it made you feel. It doesn't matter what it might have motivated you to do. But I would say for those people who say, well, this book got me into the Scriptures and this is why I'm interested in religion, I would say then you really need to examine your heart because whatever curiosity you have in going to the Scriptures, if it was sparked by a tale like this, it's probably a carnal curiosity rather than a genuine faith. We've often poked fun at the what you win them with is what you win them to, because in so many of our cases that isn't true, or when one is we were saved as Arminians or this or that, but the Lord taught us better. But I think this would be a case where that applies very well. If someone is won to Christianity because of an interesting false fable, that may indicate that his faith is on poor grounds. It wasn't the authority of God's word. It wasn't the truth of the gospel. It was something else, and that's likely to be an ill-founded faith if he doesn't repent and change his foundation that will come to a bad end. Yeah, and that principle applies to all of those things. You know, there are lots of people who come to Christ under Arminian preaching and all that. I rejoice where the gospel is preached and people come to Christ. There's absolutely no… I wouldn't back off that a bit, but that doesn't justify the Arminianism, you know. or any other untruth. There are people who come to Christ, I've actually met people who told me it was something they saw on Benny Hinn's TV program that prompted them to get into the scriptures. Well, I'm glad they got into the scriptures, but that does not legitimize Benny Hinn. So, on the same subject, but shifting gears a little bit, What about the cultural argument? I understand the sufficiency of scripture and everything, but that was for that culture. Now, they used to not have loving homosexual relationships, but now they do. Now, they have a genuine love for one another, a monogamous homosexual relationship. So, the sufficiency of the word, it's not there, oh boy. So, it's not really there just yet. What would you say to something like that? I can't say it in public. Okay? Now listen, the problem with that argument is that somehow the universe has changed so much over time that the formative principles of all things have now either been voided or remade. Okay? At the end of the day, the specific argument, the specific situation you're talking about says that somehow sexuality was not made by God for a purpose, and that it does not have any spiritual bearing. That's what that says. That is patently false according to scripture. Okay? Now, you can say I don't believe scripture anymore, and I'm fine with that. I would prefer that they say that, because then we know who we're talking to. But to say that scripture doesn't say that, or it doesn't apply to us anymore because of X, Y, and Z, that's, you know, there are no good English words for that in mixed company. It's ridiculous. I have an English word for it. I do too, but you know I don't want to use it. Yeah, I have one I can use. That is, when you asked the question, my thought was, well, that's not just somebody who doesn't believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. That's someone who has rejected the authority of Scripture, and he may not admit it. So what I would call that is a deceptive denial of the authority of Scripture. He may not admit that he doesn't believe Scripture, but somebody who says that doesn't believe Scripture. He may not even realize that he's denying Scripture. He may be self-deceived, but he is either deceived or deceiving, and the root problem there is he's not a believer. He doesn't believe what the Bible says. He's rejected the authority of Scripture. Both really good answers. I'd only add to it that I would just reject the category. I would say that You don't create a new sin by saying that it's not a sin anymore because you're doing it in a loving way. By definition, if you are bringing someone into your sin as an accomplice, you don't love that person. The fact that he's a willing accomplice doesn't mean that I love him. If I'm involving him in something that's already sending me to hell, I don't love him, and I'm not doing it out of love. Like the thief who loves money, the fact that he loves doesn't make that not a sin. He's loving the wrong thing. He's loving something he's forbidden to love. No, if I can work with your example, if he convinces himself that he's actually loving the rich person by teaching him how not to value his wealth so much by taking it from him so that that person can learn about what's really... You see, this is not that different from that, is it? To come up with that kind of rationale? I'm really ministering to the wealthy by teaching them what's really important in life. By taking away what... I'm starting to convince myself. and uh... no i mean what what what is the difference between nothing has stopped uh... but anyway see that that's the i could say well see now that's a different kind of theft scripture wasn't talking about that kind of theft it wasn't talking about my humanitarian theft you know this actually does have a political hashtag s o t u That already is political, but yeah, that's right. That's right. I didn't even, I didn't even know that when I was saying it. I was thinking as an individual, of course, when government does it, it is virtuous. No, no, it's not. Okay. And so what, what if that person responds with, with something like head coverings and says, see, look that that was something that was commanded and you guys don't abide by that today. Cause that was cultural. What now? That's yours. Yeah, that's exactly like homosexuality. Well, my interpretation of Romans 11 is not what everybody holds, but I think actually the Greek is kind of clear that when Paul is talking about head covering, he's talking about feminine hair. He expressly says that a woman's long hair is given her instead of a veil. So I don't think he's talking about a veil at all. That's the way I read the passage. So somebody who thinks it is talking about a veil would have to answer to that. Wow, we've got so much that we've been going through. Just a couple more questions if you guys would be so gracious. So now shifting more to the, yeah boy, well we'll double the price of the admission right? Exactly. Okay, three times two. So How would you guys view the regulative principle in light of the sufficiency of Scripture? There's always a geek in the crowd that asks that question. Some theology geek. The regulative principle, let me explain that. The regulative principle was an idea that was held to by virtually all of the Reformers, and it had to do with worship specifically. It's often called the regular principle of worship. And the idea is that we are not authorized to do anything as an act of worship except what Scripture prescribes so that, you know, we pray and preach the Word of God and sing and those things are prescribed in Scripture as acts of worship. Burning candles and incense, which I see you're doing here, is... That's our pyrotech. Okay, so this is not an altar set up for worship. This is a reference to pyrotech. Yes, that's right. Except Methodists do. And, you know, sometimes the burning of candles and stuff like that is seen as a kind of sacramental act. That's not what this is about. I was joking. Whoops. I was just joking. But no, if you see candles or incense or whatever as a sacramental act, you have to acknowledge that this has no foundation in anything that is commanded for the church. And so the argument of the reformers and the Puritans was we need to simplify worship because Roman Catholic worship had become just overburdened with all these ceremonies and priestly vestments and all of that stuff, and the Puritans especially, took this argument and it was one of the reasons the early Puritans got kicked out of the Anglican church because they refused to wear the priestly vestments. They said this is not commanded in Scripture and therefore it's not authorized. They were using the regulative principle of worship to make that argument. Our Scots Covenanter friends took the regulative principle to a really strict interpretation and said, all right, the only thing we are authorized to do as far as music in worship is metrical psalms, no instrumental accompaniment. And there are churches to this day that believe the only legitimate music that should be done in the church is psalms in metrical form sung without any kind of accompanying instruments. That's the strictest application of the regulative principle. And over the past two decades, this tends to get argued in every reformed forum on the Internet. My impression is that this is one of those issues that would never come up At least it wouldn't come up widely in this day and age if it weren't for the internet, people trying to sort of revive the Scottish Covenanter's ideas and all of that. I'm okay with being conservative, but there's a point in which this gets legalistic. And in fact, I've never really quite been able to swallow the argument that musical instruments are forbidden because if we're going to sing the Psalms, Psalm 150, lays out an entire orchestra and percussion instruments and mandates those for worship. So I don't see the consistency of the argument, but it's one I don't like to argue about. It seems to me that, I mean, my inclination would be to put music styles and things like that in the category of Romans 14 and say let everyone be persuaded in his own mind. If you want to sing Psalms only without an accompaniment, I'm happy to let you do that. I'll worship with you. I'm good with that. But to impose that on every church I think goes beyond what Scripture commands and in a way is a violation of the regulative principle because, as I said, that Psalm, you know, prescribes instruments. So it's a difficult principle to apply consistently, and yet I think it's an important principle and one that we ought to strive to at least use as a general rule of thumb. I mean, if churches in general respected the notion that it's God who should tell us what our worship should be and we should, to the best of our ability, follow what God prescribes and not add our own stuff, then most of the the idiocy that was going on in the emergent church movement where they had all kinds of, they would do, you know, finger painting as an act of worship, stuff like that. That is just thumbing your nose at anything that's valid in the regulative principle. And what people then are doing is making up their own worship. Worship is an act that we offer to God, and so He ought to be the one who governs what we do in worship. That's the idea behind the regulative principle, and I affirm that wholeheartedly. But I think too many people And the reason this is a big issue is that it's, I think, probably the inclination of every fallen heart to want to redesign and reinvent our own style of worship. And so we want worship that pleases us. And that really is a significant problem in the evangelical movement. It's why people go church hopping. They're looking for a church that meets my needs. They're not thinking of the Sunday service as worship offered to God. They're acting as if this is entertainment for my benefit and therefore I have every right to choose whatever kind of entertainment pleases me. And this time of year it's always a big deal because people want to actually, literally, Christian churches want to turn the Super Bowl into a worship service. That, in my view, is an abomination of the sort of magnitude you would expect almost from the Antichrist. You're going to think I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not. That absolutely just shows me that the evangelical movement in America has come to the point where the people in charge, the people who you know, make the fads and lead the way in all these fads, actually have no clue whatsoever what they're doing. And they're, for the most part, leading the church astray. Okay. That's, well, that's fine. We're all entitled. It's a rant. Okay. Now, before Phil started all that, who here knew what the regulative principle was? Okay. About a third, maybe, maybe half. I'll give you half, Phil. Okay. So the other half didn't. Okay, of those of you, now everybody sitting here, who has ever heard of 1 Corinthians 14 where Paul tells the Corinthians that everything should be done in worship in good order? Who's heard that? Okay, so you knew the regulative principle, right? You knew that already. So when you walk into a place and there's a clown show going on up on this, you know, you know that's not right. Now, those of whoever wanted to ask this question about the regulative principle, here's what I want to put down for you. If today you didn't love somebody that you were supposed to because God's word said you should, you have a bigger problem than the regulative principle. Whether or not you're going to come to a church like Dan's, which really does do things in good order, or someplace that's got a circus tent and a Ferris wheel out in front, Your bigger problem is that you do not understand the weightier matters of the law. That's where sufficiency comes in. Because eventually, if you're following sufficiency, your heart's going to get to the place where I should love people and I should love people. And you walk into a clown show like that, they're not loving anybody. They're loving themselves. It's a performance. You're going to look for a place where the word of God is honored. And they're looking for to change the lives of the people who hear it. Okay, that's the deal. So we get bundled up in things like regulative principle. We lose sight of what's really got to happen in the Christian life. Yes, things should be done in good order when we get together as Christians to worship. But that is not all of it. And we do need to do the all of it part. There's my rant. Yeah, one other thing. I always have one other thing, don't I? I think it's unfortunate that these online debates about the regulative principle have descended into where the key issue is, do we allow musical instruments and sing psalms or not? That's a pretty narrow application of the principle. And what the evangelical movement as a whole needs to understand, first of all, is simply the broader principle that worship is for God's sake. It's what we offer to God, it's not what He does for us. Excellent So we're about out of time Sorry, Dan, but we're about out of time here. We will have a full-out question-and-answer This was just a gracious time of getting to talk getting to pick their brains about some subjects that are going on in today's church and have to do with the conference theme and so We'll be around here for next few minutes, but we'll be doing some teardowns so we can get the volunteers out of here Dan would you mind closing us in prayer? Heavenly Father, thank you again for our brothers and sisters giving so much of their time to be here as we gather around your Word and put our minds on things eternal. Thank you for all of those who've sacrificed their day, even a day of work, so that they could serve here and give and support this conference. Thanks for those who've sacrificed by coming from far away and even from near to be here and gather around your Word. Father, we pray that you would grant us all to be hearers and doers of your Word and not hearers only, as we've seen if we've been called by the Gospel. There may be people here who are not saved, who've heard the Gospel again and again and again, and they just heard Charles Spurgeon's sermon calling them to repent and to trust in Jesus Christ and be saved. Grant that they would do that, and if we've been touched by the Word about loving our wives or our involvement in church or any specific thing. Father, that's the sufficiency of Scripture. It's your voice speaking to us. So don't let us go away thinking that we just learned some nice facts that we can use to beat our charismatic friends over the head or other people of any sort, but that we've learned some facts by which you speak to us, to our hearts and lives. And we pray that the Spirit of God will apply his word to transform us so that we will glorify our Lord Jesus by the way we think, the way we live. In Jesus' name, Amen.