We're on to ask the pastor questions. We're still receiving submittals, and you can do that at info at colonialindy.org, or you can drop one off at the Welcome Center, whichever is more convenient with you. But we'll go through a few of these this evening. And I thought this first question actually made me think quite a bit. The question was, what is a position, if any, that you've held when it comes to a standard or a practice and or a biblical interpretation that you've changed over time due to further biblical study. And I thought about cheating and calling my wife on this one, but I didn't do that, so I'm gonna surprise her with some of these. Actually, I don't think there'll be any surprise to her, but I'm gonna break it apart. I think it needs to be divided into two parts. The first part is, have I made any changes to my standards or practices? And the second part, have I made any changes to my biblical interpretations? I think those are two separate, standalone questions. So I'm gonna start with the one on changes in standards or practices. First, I'll start with a practice with regard to church management or church ministry, ecclesiology. And I can remember exactly when this happened in my mind and who flipped the switch even. So, on the matter of selection of deacons, and this will come up even a little bit later on, in Acts chapter 6, The apostles clearly say to the congregation, choose you out from among you, seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost. And the Bible says in the saying, please the multitude, and they chose. The word chose there is a klego, it means to elect. And I remember hearing Pastor Felber, who used to be down at Burge Terrace Baptist Church, and at the time I was taking a class with him. explained how that in his reading of that text, it caused him to realize the importance of the congregation being the ones who initiate even the decision as to who the deacons will be. And rather than perhaps a nominating committee, now we have no biblical revelation about a nominating committee, and I'm not saying that I'm opposed or convictionally upset about nominating committees, but I do think that if we can get closer to the practice of Scripture, that just makes sense. And so after prayer, I came to lead, I've now done this in two places, to recommend that perhaps the congregation can do its own work by just giving them a blank ballot, if you will. And so the bylaws of Colonial Hills Baptist Church changed, not in my first year, but after a little while. And that would be something that in practice I changed. I wasn't that way earlier in ministry. But I'll give you some on the personal level, too, on the home life and things that I've seen change over the years. Probably our first 20 years of marriage, we didn't really have a working TV. We had one. We'd watch Lawrence Welk on Saturday evenings. I pulled it out of the closet, set up the rabbit ears, and if they worked, it's all good. We wanted to give culture to our kids. Come on, it's Lawrence Welk. So as our boys hit about junior high age, might have been just a little before that, my sons, I don't know where they get this, but they're all into sports. I do know where they get it. It's genetically inherited. My dad, to this dying day, ask him anything about the history of sports and he was all there. I actually went to college as a journalism major, sports minor, and not sports minor, journalism, English major, journalism minor to be a sports writer, that's what I meant to say. And I lost a lot of that affection when God called me to ministry. I want to be this one thing I do person, but my sons have that, and that desire. And so somewhere around the time the boys were, Chad being our oldest, was hitting about junior high, maybe upper elementary, he and I pulled out the television to watch the Final Four, you know, basketball. And I'm trying to get those rabbit ears to work, and there's a fuzzy picture and hardly any sound. I think I got the transistor radio out to match it all up. And I realized, you know, this isn't good. I don't want my children to grow up thinking about the things that they didn't, the privileges that they didn't have because they're preacher's kids. And it caused me to say to my wife, I think I need to look into getting us a little bit more electrified in our home. And we've always tried to monitor that, but it's something that I really didn't have any big desire to be part of until that occurred. Here's another one. So as a youth pastor, I'm from the Larry Bird era, right? So the Larry Bird era is pretty well known for short shorts. I had no compulsions about shorts until I was a youth pastor. And when I became a youth pastor, I realized, oh, you got to teach kids to wear shorts like you teach women to wear dresses. Or ladies, I should say. Any woman could wear a dress, but only ladies wear it right. Same thing with shorts. I really never had an issue with shorts until I was a youth pastor. And then I realized, man, I'm responsible for what's going on here. And let me tell you, I got issues about shorts. That's a long time ago. Those issues have not faded away. And they really, really are related to modesty. Ask any youth pastor, anybody with a sensitive conscience, when you're overseeing ministry and knowing this is happening on my watch, I'm gonna stand accountable for the judgment seat of Christ on this matter. Things changed in my life. And there are many things about Sundays that have changed in my life. So I grew up in a home that was pretty much Sabbatarian. By that, of course, we practiced the Lord's Day, but my father being a pastor, we were on Sunday afternoon pretty much locked down. We didn't buy newspapers, we didn't get gas, we surely didn't travel or go to any restaurants. And I still carry some of those things in my conscience. And so there have been some changes. I will read a newspaper on a Sunday. I don't do that anymore. I hope you don't either. But I used to. Things like that. I didn't have the same compulsion that I grew up with. But on biblical interpretation, I thought about this and thought, I am really privileged. The lions have fallen unto me in goodly places. I have a goodly heritage. So, you know, I hear people talk about the characteristics of their churches growing up, especially among fundamentalists. And I think, man, that is not the church I grew up in. My dad was always a verse-by-verse expository preacher. and he hammered it into me, you know, if you don't study, you just fill in the place with hot air. You study God's word and you share God's word because you know you're gonna be accountable for what you share. And I grew up with that, I'm thankful for that. And because of that, I haven't had a whole lot of things that I look back on and say, I'm out of line with my early training. I will confess this, in my careful, careful study of the topic of marriage, divorce, and remarriage, I came to conclusions and have come to conclusions that are not necessarily in the same boundaries of my mentors. And that startled and frightened me, and I lost sleep over it. And that's probably 30 years ago, 25 years ago. That was a change. Another one is kind of similar to Acts 6. When I tripped over Acts 14 verse 23 in my study, that passage talks about ordaining elders in every in every city. And so the ordaining there, the Greek word that's used there is kyre teneo, which means kyre is hand and teneo is the word tendon, means to stretch out the hand, and it's a word that's typically used to vote. In that passage in Acts 14, it says they ordained, but the word that's translated ordained is kairteneo. I believe they voted for the elders in every city. And so because of that, when we bring on new pastors at Colonial, I personally always ask the congregation to vote. Now, our bylaws do not require that. The bylaws of Colonial Hills Baptist Church allow for the pastor to make selections with regard to who will be the assistant pastors. But nobody's opposed to having the congregation vote. And from my personal side, I think that that is biblically warranted. But there's a risk involved in that, right? Anybody want to guess what's the risk involved in allowing the congregation to vote for the assistant pastors? You might not want them. Well, I'm not gonna let them be voted for if I didn't recommend them. I'll be honest enough that way, right? We're gonna do some screening beforehand. Okay, so yeah, there can be, when Andy Montgomery was voted for to be children's pastor, I think I've told this before, Chase was sitting right where Linda is. He was about four or five, I don't know, he was little. And the vote was like 200 and something to like three. And loud enough for five or six, Rose to hear, Chase said, who would vote against Andy? I thought that was pretty good. There's always the risk that there'll be votes that are no, I get that. What's the other risk? The other one's bigger. Church division, yes, but what happens if, as the lead pastor, I think that guy's not pulling the plow. I no longer have the authority to say, by the way, you're terminated in the next two weeks. That would require a congregational vote. If they're voted in congregationally, they're only voted out congregationally. Same thing with church membership. Why church membership? Well, you can't have church discipline without church membership. Okay, so that's something that as I did my study in God's Word, my practice came to differ. Have we changed the bylaws of colonial to reflect that? No, but it's not something I've ever talked about before. It's just something we do. The other thing that I can say, coming out of college, I was not as committed a dispensationalist as I am today. And going into seminary, quite honestly, I went to a dispensational seminary with an Like, you're not going to convince me. And I maintained that attitude even when I got out. In fact, I'm the only graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary who got a 96-hour Master Divinity without taking dispensations in his Master Divinity. I didn't do it intentionally. It just never lined up with my schedule. I was commuting from 70 miles out for my last 60 hours, and it never lined up. And so I had to do a graduate level, THM level class, independent study on dispensationalism before they'd allow me to graduate. That's how dispensational my seminary was. And you can't get out of there in the 96 hours without taking that class. I did, but I had to vow that I would take it on the next level, which is master theology level. And so I did an independent three-hour study on dispensationalism. And even when I was done with that, I wasn't really sure. But I am now, okay, and I've realized, wow, the steering that God gave me, I said to Pastor Ben today, I was talking about this with him, every time I've studied through a biblical book and taken that theological grid to it, it always comes out, it's like working a jigsaw puzzle and saying, this really works. And the more I've seen it work, the more I've become convinced of it. Okay, that's my confessional side this evening. Let's move on to number two here. In the 100 plus years that Noah worked on the ark, commentaries state that Noah pleaded for people to come. Did he provide room in the ark if they accepted his invitation? I'm gonna stop at that point in the question and ask you to turn with me to 2 Peter 2. 2 Peter 2. In 2 Peter 2, We read something about Noah. The Bible says, by way of warning in verse 4, if God spared not the angels that sinned and cast them down to hell, delivering them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment, and spared not the old world but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. turned the cities aside of the moral." Okay, we pause there. Indeed, Noah is called a preacher of righteousness. So if he's a preacher of righteousness, I'm sure he's preaching the gospel in Old Testament times. By the way, what's the gospel in Old Testament times? Man's a sinner, we need to be saved. That's right. Romans chapter 4 tells us that Abraham, by faith, was willing to offer his son. And it says, and by that he was demonstrated to be righteous. So righteousness in the Old Testament is the same as in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, looking to the promise of God to provide for our sins and by faith believing. In the New Testament, looking back to the accomplishment of God on the cross and by faith believing. In both Testaments, salvation is by faith. It's by faith both ways. There's no salvation in the Old Testament by the keeping of the law. The keeping of the law proves us only to be sinners. Galatians makes it clear the law is a schoolmaster. It's drawing us to understand. I can't do it. If we can't do it today, they couldn't do it in the Old Testament either. We can't keep the law of God. Noah was a preacher of righteousness and so I'm assuming that as a preacher of righteousness he's giving a sincere offer of salvation to anyone who will enter the Ark. So, we don't have a specific Bible verse that says, yes, there was room in the Ark for all those who would come in, but we have an understanding of the reality that Noah could not have been preaching sincerely and not building enough room in the Ark for others beyond the eight who were in his family. Now, there's another part of this question. So let me just pause there and make sure that we're clear. Do I believe there would have been room in the ark had anyone other than Noah's family wanted to come in? Yes. And by the way, you know that question skates really close to a real Calvinism, Arminianism type consideration, right? But yes, I don't think it's a bogus offer. For 120 years, Noah wasn't saying, hey, if you want to come in, you can be saved from the flood. Wink, wink, nod, nod, there's no room for you. He wouldn't have been a sincere preacher of righteousness had he been doing that. Did all but the eight Noah's family perish is the next part of the question. Well, we've turned to 2 Peter 3. It says, 2 Peter 3, with regard to the flood, whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished. And in 1 Peter 3 and verse 20, it says that Noah while the ark was preparing wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. So we know that eight were saved in the flood. Did all but the eight in Noah's family perish? Yes, all but the eight in Noah's family perished. But the question continues, did they all perish and go to hell? Did they all perish? Yes. Did they all perish and go to hell? I don't know if I can answer that. I don't know if I can answer that. There's a difference between God's temporal judgment and God's eternal judgment. There's a difference between that judgment in time and that judgment in eternity. It's appointed unto man once to die, finish it, after this the judgment. So those who perished in the flood, they had their appointment with death. There's an after this. And in the after this, 1 Corinthians chapter 4 says, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and manifest the counsels of the heart. Only the Lord has the capacity to declare whether they who died in that temporal judgment will also be doomed to an eternal judgment. So by comparison, you could say this. How many people came out of the wilderness wonderings and entered into the promised land? How many lived of that generation? Two, right? So when you ask the question, how many died in the wilderness of the generation that have been cursed by God, all perished. That was a temporal judgment. They all perished except for Caleb and Joshua, okay? But all those who perished during the temporal judgment in the wilderness, did all of them die and go to hell? Well, let's expand the question a little bit. So I'm thinking about a guy who went up on Mount Pisgah and looked over into the promised land, but he never went in. Moses, did he go to hell? Did he die in the wilderness? Yes. Okay, Aaron, first high priest of Israel, did he die in the wilderness? Yes. And many others. So similarly, we can say, did they die in the flood? Yes. Do we know they went to hell? Not necessarily. Did they perish in the wilderness? Yes. Did they all go to hell? Not necessarily. Dori? What about the children? That's a really good question. You know, in my devotions today, I'm gonna turn to the book of Job. This is a passage I looked over in the book of Job this morning, and I made some notes. But that's a really good question. What about the children? You know, we have our sense of justice here on earth, and of course we think, all those little ones, who died in the flood. Pastor, are you saying all those little ones died in the flood? Yes, that's what it says. Only eight didn't perish. Look at what Job says in Job chapter three. I know I've read this many times, but it just struck me fresh this morning, and I wrote some notes in it. So Job, you know, has now lost his children, and he's lost his wealth, and his wife is telling him to curse God in chapter two in verse nine. He's in a miserable condition. And we come to chapter three, and in chapter three, he's bemoaning his situation. He says in verse nine, let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark. Let it look for light, but have none. Neither let it see the dawning of the day, because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from my eyes. So he's bemoaning his birth. Look what he says, why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me or why the breast that should suck? For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept. Then I would have had rest. with the kings and the counselors of the earth which built desolate places for themselves, or with princes that had gold who filled their houses with silver, or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together. They hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there. I underline that seventh verse. There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary be at rest. Is Job here saying, I mean, he's clearly saying, it would have been better if I died at the day of my birth. Better? Better? If Job anticipated an eternity in hell, would he have ever poetically written it would have been better? Better to die on the day of my birth and go to hell than live here with the boils and the losses? Job, it seems, had an understanding that I think is found elsewhere in Scripture. That understanding is God has mercy upon the infants when they die. I do believe in an age of accountability. What's the age, Pastor Phelps? Depends on the child. I do believe there's a time that there's a moral knowledge, and I tend to think that that moral knowledge comes alongside, if you're a parent you'll understand this, comes alongside when shame sets in and a child learns not to run around naked in the house after a bath. Don't look at me like that, you've had that happen in your house too. There's a time when little ones kind of grow up and realize, ooh, I should have a towel around me right now. I tend to tie the age of accountability to then, and in my biblical thought on that, I tie it back to the garden, that when they understood sin, they understood their nakedness. Okay? So that can broaden our age of accountability, can't it? Beyond infancy and into preschool years, and it depends on the child. We've raised six of them, and when they come to the towel age and they're like, oh, I forgot my towel, they're reaching the age of accountability. That's how I think, and I know I'm simplistic on it. So back to the question, Dori, what about all those little ones who died in the flood? They're all in heaven, can't wait to meet them. Job was saying, wouldn't it be better that I'd be in heaven right now, having died when my mom gave birth to me, than going through what I'm living through right now? Really good question. Yes, Jennifer? Yes. Right. Yeah, there are people who take that position. I appreciate that. Jennifer said, so Noah is described in Genesis 9 as being blameless. Should we tie that in to the sons of God who were having relationships, it seems, with the daughters of men? And does that mean that only Noah's line was unpolluted? There are some who take that position, okay? So we're talking about the Nephilim, the angels who cohabit. And I think there's merit in that consideration. And I think there's New Testament merit to that consideration. The Bible says that when women cover themselves or show themselves to be in a submissive spirit, they do so because of the angels. What does that mean? And we just read in Peter that the angels who kept not their first estate, and some tie that back. There are a lot of different places that we can pause and talk about what's going on in Genesis 9, right? So I don't think, however, that Noah's family exclusively is untainted by cohabitation with the Nephilim, and here's why. So if Noah's family was indeed the only untainted line, I've got a number of challenges and problems. One, his three sons married and they didn't marry their sisters. Two, Noah offered a genuine offer of salvation. and he was giving a genuine offer of salvation, and because the women cohabited with the Nephilim, you have a corrupt line, would there ever be the opportunity for a genuine offer of salvation to be given to such beings? Finally, I do believe that what's going on there is Satan's attack on the promise that was made in Genesis 3.15. So God promised that the seed of the woman would destroy Satan, and I believe that what's happening in Genesis 9 with regard to that cohabitation and the desire of the angels with the men, I think it ties into Satan's desire to attack, and he continues to attack and attack the promises of God, specifically that our Savior would come and destroy him. And we see that even played out when you get to Matthew chapter 2. And Rachel is crying because her children there in Bethlehem have died. He's still trying to attack the promised son. That's a really good question that you asked, Jennifer. And I'll have one follow up and we got to get out of here. Mary, go ahead. You're good. Who were you talking to? Oh yeah, good. That's really good. I love that. Thank you, Mary. That's really good. So if you didn't hear that, she was saying in talking to Dr. Whitcomb once about this, this tension point, his answer, and of course he spent years meditating on those 11 chapters of Genesis. And his answer was, can you imagine how many people turned to the Lord when the raindrops started falling? I think that's a beautiful thing to consider. Remember, we serve a God who's merciful, long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, so ultimately his desire is for salvation. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Mary. That's a wonderful thing to end on this evening. Father, thank you for your Word. We will never be able to wrap our arms around all of it. and our minds absorb, but we forget, and we go back, and we pray that you'd help us to be line upon line, precept upon precept, solidly foundation, so we can stand even against the wiles of the devil. Dismiss us now with your blessing this evening, and we'll thank you for it in Christ's name, amen. God bless you as you go.