Hello, and welcome to Ask Pastor Mike Live with pastor and Bible teacher Mike Fabarez, the live call-in program answering your questions about the Bible and the Christian life. Call us right now with your questions at 1-877-913-5357. That's 1-877-913-5357. And now here's Pastor Mike. Well, hello, everybody. It's Pastor Mike, and we are finishing up our week here on the program with you calling me with whatever's on your mind related to the Bible, to Christian life, whatever you are thinking about, and you think I can help you, I would love to be of help to you today. Just call me 1-877-913-5357. Maybe it's a question about the Bible, about theology, about Christian life, about a text of scripture, a sermon, a problem you're facing at your church in your small group, whatever it is, give me a ring and we'll talk about it. 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call. Or you can just text the word ASK to 90398. Text the word ASK to 90398 on your texting app. Or go to YouTube or Facebook and search for Ask Pastor Mike live and you'll find us and then you can get involved in the chat and in the chat you can ask your question. All right. Yesterday, Alan asked a great question that I had to do a little research on and I gave an answer that ended up being what I now am even more determined to agree is the truth. And he asked the question about Alpheus in scripture that's mentioned five times in scripture, Matthew 10, Mark 2, Mark 3, Luke 6, and Acts 1. And what's really helpful is that it's twice in Mark and all the other time, well, let's just go back. Five times in scripture, four of the five times, it is a description of James, the Apostle's father, James, the son of Alphaeus. Well, there's one reference in Mark where we have Alpheus mentioned as the name of the father of Levi. Levi, of course, is Matthew sitting at the tax poll booth. And so I said, I think this is clearly, these are not brothers, this is a different Alpheus. Well, in my quick research that I did, looking up Tal Ilyin's lexicon of Jewish names in antiquity, which I think is the most important thing to do to figure out how common is this name? Even in that work, there are 13 different occurrences of different people named Alpheus. Now, you can compare that to John, there's 84 of those, or Simon, think about Simon the Sorcerer or Simon Peter, there's 122 of those. But yeah, and not to mention, in archaeology, We found some even in Josephus' writings. We've got a political figure named Alpheus. You have two ossuaries where they bury the bones of people, two different ones named Alpheus. So yes, Alpheus was a relatively common name, common enough to where it would go Without saying that what we're dealing with there are two different Alpheus is one as father It was had a son named Levi who is known as Matthew and the other is James and that's not James the brother of John son of Zebedee, which is clearly distinguished in scripture, but someone else. And if you say, well, Matthew and James, if they both have a dad named Alpheus, is it the same guy? And I answered yesterday, no, because I don't think that would be the syntactical pattern of how they're laid out. Because when we see Matthew, he's not grouped with James. And I think there'd be a mention of that just like there is with James and John or Simon and Andrew, who are both brothers, two sets of brothers there. So yes, I stand by my answer. I think it was the right answer. And now upon researching it a little bit deeper. How common was the name? It is common enough, like the name Mary or Joseph or Simon. Yeah, these are names that are common. And these are two different alpheuses. I'm 99% sure of that. All right. 1-877-913-5357. Thanks for that question, Alan, yesterday. I had fun checking that out. Let's talk to Tom. Let's go to the phones now. Tom, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help? Hi, how you doing? Thank you. My question was, in the very first few verses of the chapter 1 in Genesis, when God's going through the creation account, you know, right there at the very beginning, it talks about where he's created light, to let there be light, and there was light. But then further on down, another few verses away as he continues creation, it talks about him creating the stars and the sun and the moon to give light by the day, light by the night. So what was the light that he created in the very first verse? Yeah, well, I think light itself is distinguished from this big ball of nuclear fusion that's pouring out light on this spherical planet that's spinning. In other words, you've got to create this concept of light, this reality of light, the photons we would say, which there's all kinds of sources for light in the universe, and God sets up the reality of time and space, including light itself, and that's what we're talking about when it talks about him saying let there be light. So, yeah, I know some people say, well, you can't have light without the sun. Well, sure you can, and in fact, we need the reality of photons before we can even have photons spewing from this ball of fusion that happens to be closest to the planet. So, you know, when I teach this to kids, I'll often say God creates a shop light and the fabric of light itself and then goes about creation and gives us a light for the daytime that's actually a ball of fusion that's creating energy and light and then at night time he's given us this perfect 400 times smaller sphere called the moon that's got perfect dust that is so reflective that it provides us a nice night light at night and that becomes our night light, our source of light for the evening. So yeah, light is independent from the sun and he creates light which is part of the fabric of reality and You know, that may be too technical, but I don't think it is, because I think everyone would know, even in ancient times, they're not dullards, they're not dumb. There's something distinctive about light, even though they may not be able to describe particles and waves and all the rest that we can today. The idea of light being distinct from the sun is not a problem. So he said, let there be light, which I think is the beginning of creation. And God saw this fabric of the universe and photons and said, this is good. And then he said, okay, we're going to have things that are light, we're going to have things that are dark, we have the absence of photons, the absence of light, and they're going to bounce off of this 3D world I'm making with, you know, real material stuff. And then he creates the Sun, which would be just perfectly distanced from the Earth. to give us a nice warm globe, which I think was very different than the globe we have now, which had a really thick atmosphere, a watery atmosphere that allowed for a greenhouse all over the world, and it was just perfect. And now we can look even today at the Sun being 400 times further away than the Moon and say, wow, that's why we can have an eclipse. They're perfectly distanced from the surface of the Earth. That's not a mistake. That's God's design, and one's a lesser light for us and provides a lesser light, and one is a source of greater light in the daytime, but distinct from light itself. Light is distinct from the sun. Okay, well, I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, Tom. It's a good question and Yeah, it's a good one to talk about and I don't know if that's probably the best analogy But when I teach kids about the creation, I'll say God set up his shop light and created light you know as as a concept and then went about creating sources of light like the stars and He put a star really close to us close enough to be a perfect kind of a giver of warmth and sunlight and all the rest that we need here on this planet. All right, 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Ben. Ben, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help? Hi. Thanks for taking my call. So, I want to say that I'm sorry if this sounds a bit formal. I used catchphrase to help me form the question. Anyway, so, I've grown a lot from your teachings. And I personally believe all the spiritual gifts continue today, though I'm aware some groups have abused that belief. You know, like the charismatic movement and stuff like that. When I recently heard that you may be a cessationist, it raised some questions for me because I've never picked that up from your teachings. Could you share your understanding of the gift and what biblical reasons led you there? It would help me just to continue on knowing how to work through your ministry? Right. Well, first of all, we need to make a very clear distinction. I don't believe that the spiritual gifts have ceased, right? That is an overstatement of my position. I think there are certain gifts that are the breaking of natural law, which is a very small segment of the spiritual gifts that were signs, according to 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12, signs of the apostles. And the apostles were giving us new revelatory truth the New Testament age according to Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 through 4, and they were validating the coming of a new revelation from God called the New Testament, which it precisely echoes what we saw when the first five books of the Bible were written in Exodus. We have the account of how this all came to be when God validated his prophet Moses to write the first five books of the Bible, and it was given as a authentication of his prophetic office, and he was given the ability to do miraculous sign gifts. And miraculous sign gifts, as they're called in scripture, they pointed to the fact that this is not, what he's giving us is not from man. This is, these are words from God. Elijah and Elisha, which were the beginning of this school of the prophets and certainly were kind of archetypal foundational prophets, they had also this another rash of these miraculous gifts. And by that I mean, miraculous can be split into two categories, those that actually suspend natural law. So, Moses and Joshua and Elijah and Elisha and Jesus and the apostles, those are the three Historic rashes of miraculous gifts that actually suspend natural law so all I'm saying in my teaching is we should expect God to keep the rules that he made as it relates to time and space and reality and science and that's how the world functions and When he breaks those rules as he did in three particular Rashes in the Bible if you scatter plotted them that's where most of them are going to be and you're gonna have less than a hundred of them if you count them all up and and they're going to be distributed in three places. And all of those came with the law, the prophets, and the New Testament. And that is why we believe that it's God's word, because they could prove it. Just like it says in Deuteronomy, the idea of whether or not we have a real prophet is that he can do something with his words, writing his words and speaking his words that can do something that normal words can't do. Well, then he's given the ability, in many cases, to do things that normal people can't do, whether it's dividing the waters or throwing your staff down, turning it into a snake. These breaking of natural law, you've got to say, well, this is different. This is supernatural. And of course, the words themselves are supernatural. So all the gifts are functioning And I'm saying that in the sense of, of course, if you scatterplot all of the, not scatterplot, but if you list out all the gifts in the New Testament, which I think is just a sample of the way God works, as it says in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 4, to manifest his spirit in the modern age, only a few of those are listed in scripture as breaking natural law. And that giftedness, I think, was given to the prophets and the apostles, and according to Ephesians 2.20, that's the foundation of the church, not the ongoing work of the church, And the cornerstone, of course, is Christ himself, who was the biggest miracle worker in all the Bible. And so, you know, I'm not saying anything about God not being able to do whatever he can do, but I don't expect God to break the natural laws that he made, because the biggest miracles are not in the time and space, physical, scientific realm. The thing we're looking for is dead people coming to life. And that's the greatest miracle of all that God has commissioned us to do, go make disciples of all the nations. So the reason you haven't heard me banner this is I don't think it's worth fighting about. I just don't like the abuses. And that's, you know, I think everybody dislikes the abuses, even you, right? If we may have a different opinion about the use of miraculous gifts in the Bible, we don't want the abuses. We don't want the craziness, right? The God is a God of order, not a God of confusion. And so, yeah. we're on the same page. Now, whether you think, okay, God's still gifting people to break natural law, I'm just saying, I think, yeah, they had a time and a place and a purpose, and the apostles and prophets were given that ability, in particular, rashes in scripture, and it was all according to Hebrews 2 to validate the truth of what was heard, to attest, that's the word used in Hebrews 2, verse 3. They were given and declared and attested and borne witness to by signs and wonders." So, that's the role I see in my study of scripture for them. Now, can God outside of that do that? Well, sure. And even within those three rashes, you can find some situations in the spans of hundreds and hundreds of years between where occasionally you'll see something like, you know, breaking of natural law. But it's really rare outside of those three periods of time that set us up for the law of the prophets in the New Testament. So that's my view, Ben. Yeah, so, I mean, I've heard many, many of your sermons talk about GT1s and GT2s, you know, the GT2s are the, you know, someone blind and, you know, they're healed, or whereas, you know, Elijah or Paul, someone raised in Jesus, someone raised in someone from the dead is the GT1, whereas you were saying, just isn't in certain places. So, okay, so we are pretty much the same, because as far as God doing things like that, as far as raising people from the dead, of course, a miraculous, suspending natural law, as you say, that's just not biblical. It doesn't, through the Bible, it's not continued on today, because it ceased with the GT1 thief with the apostle. Yeah, the God thing one for the people that aren't attuned to that GT. GT, I just use as a marker for a God thing. God is involved in, and here's where I may be different from the person that does believe in these suspensions of natural law now. I believe God is massively involved in everything. I think in Him we live and move and have our being. I think down to the atomic level of our own lives, God is involved. I don't, I would agree Obviously with what Jesus said that a bird does not fall a spirit does not fall from the tree apart from your father So I believe that God is involved in everything Everything and and what how is he involved in everything? Well, he's upholding everything by the word of his power Hebrews chapter 1 and I believe all of that right is God's active animating involvement in his creation. So I'm believing that it's not like God just kind of wound it up like the deists believe and then every now and then, as someone might believe that they believe in the miraculous gifts and the suspension of natural law, well then every now and then something gets backed up into a corner and now God has to step in and break natural law to fix it. I don't think that's the case. I think God, of course, is involved in everything, everything that is done. He's doing it and involved in it. And in Him, I live and move and I have my being. And I believe that God animates a cell. I've been there many times when people have died. They're alive one minute, they're dead the next. God is the animating force of life. God gives life to people. So these are things, I don't think that it's as though God is apart from the physical creation. And I think that's where some people would say, well, if you believe in what you just said, then you don't believe God's involved. I believe God's massively involved. I mean, I totally believe that, right? But now do I expect him, right? Once a body dies, right? Let's just look at that. And now I'm going to the funeral and I'm going to conduct the funeral. like we have one here in a couple days at our church, and I'm going to say, well, let's just start with a prayer of resurrection. I'm not going to start the funeral that way. I don't expect God to break those rules. There would have to be a reason, and the reason in Scripture, I find, it's tied to the coming of new revelation. And so that's where the expectation would be. And so when things don't happen, like when I get sick or whatever, I believe God's involved in all of that. Absolutely. And I believe God's involved in healing me. Psalm 103, right? He heals all of our diseases. I believe it. But how does he do that? Right? My mother had cancer and now she's cancer-free. Well, it didn't happen in a split second with the breaking of natural law. It happened, as you've heard my teaching, it happened just like the Israelites overcame the Philistines. Every Philistine that was killed was killed with a thrust of an iron sword from an Israelite. It's just that it wasn't expected. Right? This is an amazing intervention of God utilizing the armies of Israel to overcome and defeat the Philistines. And I believe that all the time. I'm praying all the time for God to heal people. Right? But it's the expectation. And the people that are on the TV or whatever that are saying, well, what I'm expecting right now is an instantaneous reversal like Jesus or the apostles. I'm like, and that's not my expectation. But I expect God to be involved because I know God's involved when I get sick. involved when I get better. He's involved when my mom gets cancer. He's involved when my mom's cancer is in remission. But again, I'm going to expect, just as you would see Paul telling Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach and your frequent ailments, right? I believe in God's usage of intermediate means to accomplish his will, and I'm gonna credit God with that. And therefore, chemo helped my mother get through her cancer recently, and I'm like, praise God. And that's what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna say no, like the Jehovah Witnesses or whatever. I'm not gonna do the blood transfusion if you need one or whatever. I'm gonna trust God, right? So that's my view, and I don't think it's super distant from yours, Ben, I would think. It's just the expectation is, here's what I want. As a pastor in particular, I want to manage people's expectation. And all you got to do is watch a few TV programs with religious leaders, or read a few best-selling Christian books, and you're going to expect the wrong thing. And that leaves a lot of people disillusioned. And they're going to say to me, if you don't believe what I'm telling you, well then Pastor Mike, you have no faith. Man, I got a lot of faith to believe that God is involved in every molecule of my body. So I believe all that. And I just believe that God is going to utilize, you know, work within the laws that he made to accomplish his will, even if that's healing or whatever it might be. No, no, we're, I'm tracking right with you. It was just my, it was just my fault for for, you know, cause I really didn't know the definition, right? So it was just my fault of looking up the definition and being like, oh no, that's what he, but no, okay. We were, we're tracking completely the same. So it's just, yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. No, that's good. It's good. Not just for you. I'm sure a lot of my listeners hear that. That's super good question, Ben. Thanks for calling. I appreciate that for sure. 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Dan. Dan, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hey, Mike, how are we doing today? Doing okay, yeah. Hanging in there. A little sick. I got a cold, but... Yeah, I needed to talk to somebody that has the best mind this side of Francis Schaefer. We've talked about that before. We'll have to find a directory to find that mind, but okay. But I'm here now and we're talking, so I'll do the best I can. Tell me what's on your mind. Yeah, well, Hebrews 7, Hebrews 5, 7. There's some interesting things going on in that verse. In a lot of the commentaries you're reading, or that I'm reading, talks about the idea that he was praying to see if he could get away from or not go to the cross. But in my humble opinion, that kind of just goes against the whole concept of if he is going to be praying that, that's a disobedience issue, because he was obedient to death. And if we're going to be praying that, then that's certainly not... So the question then becomes, what really does that verse refer to? Because it certainly does not refer to a disobedient attitude, nature, a whim, especially when he was tempted by Satan in the desert. So that verse can kind of bring up some interesting exegetical gymnastics going on here. No, I appreciate that. And let's start with the preceding chapter. First of all, let's read it for our listeners who don't have the whole book of Hebrews memorized. It says in Hebrews 5.11, In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers with supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. And then verse 8, which I'm sure is in your mind as well, Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Okay. That, yeah, that can be jarring, right? Because you're thinking, wow. But let's go to chapter 4, which leads into chapter 5, obviously, where I'm told in verse 15, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who is in every respect tempted as we are yet without sin. Okay? And later on in chapter five, right, verse two, he can deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward for he himself was beset with weakness, right? Talking about the high priest and that's the paradigm saying, okay, well, that's the same thing with Christ and he shares in the sympathy of the weakness and therefore we run to his throne to pray and we know that he can identify with the weaknesses of humanity. even down to him being thirsty in John 4 or, you know, dying, even dying, right? God can't die, but Jesus dies on a cross and he's hungry and he cries as a baby and all those things. So yes, we're going into chapter 5 with a whole concept of this concept of, this whole concept or idea of He can sympathize with you and you should be able to run to Him and know that it's not just this distant, disconnected God who doesn't know what we're dealing with. So, then it deals with, in our passage that we're talking about, is he was crying out with loud cries and tears. I don't think there's anyone that's going to disconnect this from what's going on in the garden, which you've even set up the question with that, right? He's in the garden of Gethsemane and he's praying. And we know what he prays because we get the text itself telling us, let this cup pass for me if it's possible, yet not my will but yours be done. So here is his flesh crying out. And that's the point, right? In his humanity, and this is the great thing about the hypostatic union, his humanity and his divinity both not commingled, right? They're distinctive in the sense that one is divine and one is human, but they're not two, right? This is one hypostatic union. This person who now has this ability to get tired, to get weak, to feel drained, to sweat, you know, so profusely that it's just dripping off his forehead as though it were blood, right? This Jesus is praying, let this cup pass from me, but he's without sin, as it said in chapter four, because he was obedient. Well, how did he learn that obedience? I think verse 8 is going back to Matthew 4, where we get to the end of Matthew in chapter 5, verse 7 of Hebrews, that he's crying in the garden. But where did he learn to be obedient? Well, he learned through what he suffered. And the window we have into that, though we don't have a lot of the subsequent windows, although we have some, I suppose, but he went into the wilderness and he fasted and he stayed true to God's word and did what he should have done, even though he was deprived of food and now he's being tempted to turn stones into bread. And he says no. He does what he knows he's supposed to do, even though he's suffering. So as a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And the suffering started, at least in a formal way, in being led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. So, here he has, I think, two bookends of his public ministry. The end of it, or almost the end of it in the garden, and the beginning of it here in his suffering in the wilderness. And he's saying, he knew how to deal with the problem of saying, I don't want this, this is the worst thing I can think of. Not just physical death and physical torment, but the whole concept of taking on the sin of the world and being the target of the Father's wrath. And he learned to say, not my will, but yours be done and really mean it. Some of us say it, we don't really mean it, but he really meant it and got off his knees and went to the cross because he had learned to obey through all the things that he had suffered. And it doesn't mean that he was disobedient before that. It just means he worked out in the gym of temptation and saying no to sin and was able then in the biggest temptation of his life, which was not going to the cross, right? You can be tempted and that's not sin. And that's the whole point of chapter four, verse 15. He was tempted, but not sinning. So I think we got to give more credit to the humanity of Christ in this. And I think Bruce Ware has written a good book, The Man, Christ, Jesus. If you haven't read that yet, it really helps us. It helps us because especially at Christmas time and even at Easter, as we head into Christmas, We so think of him as the divine that we kind of downplay the humanity and we can't. We've got to keep the humanity and the divinity both on the table and that helps us recognize that he felt amazing pain even in his greatest temptation, but he learned to conquer that temptation through all the things he'd suffered earlier in his public ministry and even in his childhood, I'm sure, which we don't learn a lot about. Does that help, Dan? Yeah, it does. Because I've been going through many a commentary, and I disliked when he talked about the fact that this is a verse that showed that he flinched. And I'm like, no, I have a hard time with that one. Because I think you're right, the fact that he didn't flinch There isn't an element, but it's an interesting, as I said before, just the verse itself can be, for me, interesting and getting the mind kind of moving along a little bit. No, I get it. This is pushing this humanity to the limit. And this is the limit of it, right? That he cried and had tears and he moaned and loud cries. And he said, save me, right, from death. And yet, not my will, but yours be done. and he did it. He did it, but his humanity was tested all the way to the end in the garden. And I think that's why our discomfort with that, that's why I recommend Bruce's book, Bruce Ware's book, because I think spending, you know, 150 pages or whatever that book is, thinking about his humanity will really help us. And it will really, I think, as the book of Hebrews says, it will make us draw near to him in a more like comfortable way, not that we're ever comfortable with the divine, but he knows our weaknesses. He knows what it is to feel the full weight of temptation. And as others have said, think about it, we don't know the full weight of temptation because we give in at some point, but he never gave in. So he had the full weight of temptation. And I know this verse, it is jarring and I get it. But the antagonizing reality of the garden, I think, is the most extreme example of this internal conflict. Just like he had an internal conflict, you would agree, in saying, hey, I could eat bread right now and I'm hungry. I've been fasting for 40 days. I could eat, right? That's an internal conflict. But no, I'm not going to because I know God has called me to this fast and I'm not going to break it just because Satan is tempting me. And he was tempted in the garden in the same way. This is a much bigger temptation. because being hungry for another day was not as bad as dying on a cross and being the target of all of our punishment. So the cross-reference really is the garden of Get Somebody Then. I think so. It wouldn't be applying to anything else. And I can't find anything else. If there was going to be anything else that I would have been replying to, I'm confident that you would have brought that out. So it does, it's definitely, I was hoping it might be in relationship to something different, but I don't think so. It's not working. Yeah, no, I don't think so. Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, John 12, that's what we're dealing with here, I'm quite sure. And yeah, that's, but yeah, I certainly recommend that book, The Man, Christ, Jesus, and I think it'll be Works for me, no, but thanks a lot. That's great. All right, Dan. That's a good question. And I love these calls, particularly because they take some of the passages that are the most uncomfortable. And you guys are a great, great audience. I mean, the people that listen, those are the passages we've got to grapple with. And that is one of them, for sure. 1-877-913-5357. That's the number if you want to get involved in the program today. Let's talk to Kerry. Kerry, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Yeah, hi. My question is in regards to losing your salvation, because I've always grown up being taught, you know, we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, and once saved, always saved, if you are truly saved. But what about in Revelation chapter 3, where he talks about blotting your name out of the Book of Life? Well, that passage doesn't say that he's going to, right? Matter of fact, it's the point that he's not going to do it, right? I mean, that's what's being said in verse 5 of Revelation 3. I will never blot his name out of the book of life. Now, one thing I think that helps every time I have to deal with this question get to deal with this question is the fact that the book of life, right, is not a new, just, it's not new to the New Testament concept. All the way back to Exodus 32, we have this concept of God having a book of life, so to speak. I know this is all poetic and analogous to the reality of something else. And the reality that it's speaking to, the book of life, is that you're alive. And if you're alive, right? In life, in this planet, right? You're in the book and when you're dead, you get blotted out of the book. Your time is up. It's like scratching something off of a list because, you know, we don't have it anymore. It doesn't work. It's broken. I'm going to take this out of the itinerary or the list of things I have. Well, that's the picture in the Old Testament. Psalm 69, Exodus 32, some of the Psalms beyond that talk about this concept. So that's great. In the New Testament, we have this additional concept of it's not just life that we're dealing with. Now Christ comes and talks about eternal life. And it's not just death. Now the Bible starts talking about the second death. And so now all of a sudden we have the book of life, like, amplified and upgraded to, you know, the Lamb's book of life. And so when it talks about never being blotted out of the book of life, that's like crazy talk. Everyone gets blotted out of the book of life. If you're an Old Testament saint reading the New Testament, you'd think that everyone dies. But that's just like what Jesus says, and he's standing there in John 11 saying, you know, if you trust in me, even though you die, yet shall you live. And if you believe in me, you'll never die. That's the concept of eternal life. God is going to take death, as 1 Corinthians 15, off the table, and we will be impervious to death. We'll never be subject to death, and we're going to live forever in his presence, as Psalm 16, verse 11 says, and it'll be a joyful place where there's fullness of joy. So, I don't want to read the New Testament ever without having in mind the Old Testament, which is always assumed as the predicate for the New Testament. And so when you see, I will never blot your name out of the book of life, the idea there, at least the first reference of this that anyone would think of is, oh, you mean I'm going to live forever? Yes, that's exactly right. Anyone who is a Christian will live forever. And it's not just the quantity of life, it's the quality of life. And we know that, right? There is a second death. That doesn't mean you stop existing, but the lake of fire is the second death, right? You don't get to enjoy the blessings of God. And you get cast into outer darkness where there's weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, as Jesus said, or as Paul said to the Thessalonians, you're away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power. That's the second death. You don't want that. Okay, well, there's one death we normally think of, and the Old Testament, that's often the focus. And the life that we're talking about in the Old Testament is like physical, biological life on this planet. But the New Testament ups this. Now, later in the book of Revelation, it talks about the Lamb's book of life. And that, you know, is when you're standing in Revelation 20 and you're standing in line, making sure that you belong there. Well, your name is not in the Lamb's Book of Life. So we're conflating, in my mind, when you read the idea of not blotting out, that he makes a statement, I'll never blot your name out of the Book of Life. That's a statement about eternal life. Now, if you know you're in the line for the great white throne judgment about to get cast into the lake of fire according to what you've done and your deeds are going to be evaluated and what kind of punishment you're going to have, right? Well, we see that description is your name is not found written in this Lamb's Book of Life. Okay, well that's the point. I get to become a Christian, and now I have this association with the Lamb of God that was slain on my behalf, and I'm never now subject to the second death. And I will never be blotted out of the Book of Life. I will live forever. So, I'm reading Revelation 3, 5, Even though I wanted to think about it as the Lamb's Book of Life, he's still making the promise, you're never going to be blotted out of it. There's no place where it talks about being blotted out of it other than the Old Testament when we're talking about dying physically. And I think Psalm 69 verse 28 is a great verse because it talks about, it's so clear, being blotted out of the book of the living. That's the concern. Don't let me die. And that's how they said it poetically, right? And then go back to Psalm 139. Every day of my life was written in a book before there was yet one of them. And the point is, You have a log, this is the poetic way of thinking of our life, that God has sovereignly laid out, and you get born at the time he decides, you die at the time he decides, and all of those days are there. And when you're done, you quote-unquote get blotted out of the book of the living. Well, Christians don't ever get blotted out of the book of the living, because we are in the Lamb's book of life, and we're going to live forever. And we're going to live forever not only in agony, we're going to live in joy, in the fullness of joy. At his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. So that's my reading, Carrie, on that. Does that help at all? Yeah, it does. I'll go back and read it for myself. I wrote down all these passages that you gave me. Can I ask you one more quick question? Let me pick one more passage. Make sure I'm thinking of this right, Daniel. Chapter 1. Yeah, it's related. At that time, Michael shall arise, a great prince is in charge of people. There shall be a time of trouble that has never been since the nation until that time. That's the tribulation. But at that time, your people shall be delivered. Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And I think that's our first reference to the concept of something that is salvific and transgressing into eternity. So you can add that kind of like Revelation 3 is looking back and transgressing into the Old Testament. I think Daniel 12 is starting to look toward the New Testament. There's another book, there's another concept of eternal life secured in an eternal place where God is going to say, you're my kids, and you're never going to, you're going to be saved. And in that case, we're talking about Israel in Daniel 12. All right, go ahead. Next question, Carrie. Say if a person who claimed to be a Christian all their life and now they're saying they're not, and they did profess that Jesus Christ knows their Lord and Savior for years, went to church, did all that, you know, that everything that a good Christian should do, and now all of a sudden they've done the 360, and they don't believe any of that anymore? Is it safe to say that that person was never truly saved? Yeah, see, and here's the thing. The people that agree with my view are going to say, well, they had it and they lost it. But yeah, I'm of the view that says, yeah, they never had it because I think that's how Jesus describes. And again, I don't want to make a big divide here between people that disagree with my theology on this because we're still saying the same thing. Those who are Christians will abide in Christ, right? If you bail out and you become someone who renounces all this, the Bible talks about apostasy, you're an apostate. An apostate is not saved, right? Judas is the classic apostate. He's the archetypal apostate. But even as John talks about, he was pilfering while he was, you know, going into villages and talking about Christ. So I don't think he ever had a right heart before God, and he bailed out because he was never really with them. Oh, he was with them physically, just like a lot of people in our church are with us physically. I've been pastoring now for 40 years, I think this year. No, next year. I don't know. Soon. Almost. Now, I guess it's been 38 years in this same area, right? And I've seen so many people come with this springing up like the Jesus's parable of the soils. They got an excitement about Christ, but then something comes, either it's trials or troubles or persecution because of the word, to quote Christ's words, and they, quote unquote, fall away. they don't bear fruit. Okay? And the point is, they're not fruitful. The real Christians, according to Hebrews 2, they're Christians, they're fruitful, they bear fruit. Chapter 3 goes on to talk about the fact you're of him, you're in his house, right? If you endure to the end. The reality of real Christianity is going to be proven by enduring in the Christian life. And the flash in the pan, or the people that are on in it for a long time, and there are people, I find Sometimes people have been in church for a long time, and often it's precipitated by something. Maybe their spouse dies or whatever. They're like, now I'm out. And I realize, okay, you're probably in this because of your spouse. And now you're out. You're not interested anymore. But there's a category in scripture for this. It's called the apostate. And it's the person that went along with us. It's the weed and the tares. It's the sheep and the goat. And in the end, you'll be able to know them by their fruits. Not at the beginning, when it looks like they embrace the Word with joy and spring up and look like they're all excited, but do they bear fruit? And the fruit we're looking for, as Jesus said to the apostles in John 15, is the fruit that remains. And fruit that remains, it continues to bear fruit. And we're going to abide in Christ all the way to the end, as John 15 says. And that's what we're looking for. And again, I can sit here with someone who has a different view on the perseverance of the saints, and it's okay because we're saying the same thing when it comes to you cannot claim to walk in the light and in fellowship with God, and yet your life is antithetical to that. or you don't go to church, you don't pray, you don't read your Bible, you don't care about anything. Well, that shows, right? Your actions speak louder than your words. You'll know them by their fruits. And that's all we both are saying, regardless of what our underlying theology might be or how we will articulate it. And there's two ways to articulate it. He had it and he lost it, or he never had it. And that's how I would describe it. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for answering my questions. I really appreciate it. Thank you for all you do. Yep. Thank you. That's a great, great question. And I appreciate it. 1-877-913-5357. All right. Let's go to some of our questions here online on YouTube. We got some coming in. Cindy says, is forgiveness a once and done decision or is it an ongoing process? And I think Cindy, what you mean is coming toward us, right? If that's what you mean. And I would say this, forgiveness of our separation from God, your sins have made a separation between you and your God, Isaiah 58 verse 2. That concept, right, is a once reality. In other words, God takes us and says you're no longer an orphan in this orphanage. Now you're my child, you're in my family. That's a one-time thing. It's once and it's done, to use your words, right? But is it an ongoing process? Well, of course it is. Just like a child who is adopted into a family and they're out of the orphanage, right? Now there's a lot of stuff that goes on in that secured relationship that needs forgiveness You need to say I'm sorry and there needs to be Confession and there needs to be a reconciliation of the relationship doesn't mean you get kicked back to the orphanage That's what I believe even as Carrie was just saying on the on the air on the phone call That's I that's not I don't think that's what happens you get back in the orphanage now You're back in the family around back in the orphanage you're back in the family. That's that's not the point. I The point, though, is if you're talking, Cindy, about forgiveness coming to us from God, it is a once and done when it relates to our positional relationship with God. And then it's an ongoing process as well. So, yes, it is. But it is, in a sense, not because we're kicked out of the family, but because we need to be in right relationship. It's like a marriage, Cindy. Let's put it that way. In a marriage, there can be a once and done, like we're now husband and wife. But is that relationship perfect from that point on? No. Is there a lot of forgiveness and confession going on? Of course, there has to be. And it's the same in our relationship with God. Alright, next question. Does God ever mention separation in marriage for any reason? Yeah, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, if you're going to take a prayer fast, you can separate at least from physical intimacy because you're going to pray for a week or a day or two days or whatever it is. But that's, then it says, come back together, lest Satan tempt you. So yeah, we shouldn't separate. And that's because what God joins together, let no man separate. That's what the Bible says. Now, when it comes to people saying, well, what about, what about, what about, what about, what about? And I get that all the time, I say, well, let's hear your what about. And so many times the what about should be, let's pick up the phone, let's call 911, let's get the deputy sheriff out here, and let's get this guy arrested or this gal arrested. There are times, of course, that there's going to be a mandatory separation. It's not gonna be because you pack your bags and go to your mom's house. It's gonna be because someone has really done something here that's wrong. And there's so many felonies taking place in marriages that I think are often overlooked. And we need to stop with all that because this is not how a relationship should be. And thankfully, according to Romans 13, the government is there and it bears a sword for a reason. And that sword is just to enforce the rules and the rules can be as often is the case. saying you're no longer going to be able to do those things to your spouse, and that domestic violence needs to stop. So that is a separation that's going to come because there's a third party involved, which should include your church and the government, and the government's going to do the incarceration and the pastors, I hope, are going to walk you through that. but that's a separation. The only other separation is the one I started with, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, or the other one, of course, I hope you know this one, but in the Bible it says if you have a spouse that is violated this covenant through sexual immorality, well then of course, yeah, you have the option here depending on the person. Of course, God is pro-marriage and there's I hope in many cases, probably people listening to me, there's plenty of forgiveness and reconciliation and God's pro-fixing marriages and trophies of His grace can come out of some really bad things. But, you know, certainly with an unrepentant adulterer or adulteress, yes, you have the right to separate, not only separate, but to divorce and remarry. And the Bible is clear on that. All right, is God's Word the only counsel needed? Is God really the answer to every conflict, even how to handle hypothetical future situation trying to, yeah, resolve conflict? Well, yeah, I gotta be careful with this. The principles of God's Word have to govern everything we do, right? It gives us everything we need for life and godliness. But in principle, there are things like if you said, here's a conflict I have. I got a conflict with my retirement fund or with my savings account or with HR at work. Yeah, there can be plenty of counsel that you need, right, that's not going to come directly out of someone reading the Bible to you. But the principles that govern all of that, every counsel needs to be weighed against the truth of God's Word. And it starts with, let's put it this way to make it really simple, Cindy, it starts with, do you fear God? And people that are giving you counsel that do not fear God, well, that's a counsel you should never listen to. And I mean that whether it's your financial advisor or whatever, your doctor. And sometimes you have a financial advisor or a doctor that doesn't fear God, and all I'm saying is you're going to have to inject, well, how much of this can I take as counsel, assuming that there is a fear of God and understanding that there's a God that oversees the whole world, And, you know, God is a factor in this counsel. So sometimes we have to inject that. We get a lot of counsel from a lot of people. Could be, you know, a business consultant or whatever. So yeah, I'm all about counsel from an abundance of counselors, as the Bible says in Proverbs 15. I want that. But I want to make sure that all the counsel I receive is filtered through the principles of Scripture to find out whether or not this is good counsel or bad counsel. And there's plenty of examples in Scripture of people giving bad counsel. All right, Cindy says, God is a God of order. That's true. Why is there so much disorder in a relationship where both people are doing their best to follow him? Well, because we're sinful, fallen people, and there's a lot of work of Satan in people's relationships and in their homes. So this is an ongoing battle. And so all I'm saying is we never can let our guard down and think it's going to be easy to raise kids, to have a marriage, to have a dating relationship, whatever it is we're talking about here. it's going to be a constant battle. That's why in Hebrews we talk about the armor of God and making sure that we're looking in every situation to extinguish these fiery darts of the enemy that's going to try to mess up everything there is. If you really look at demonic work in Scripture, it's not about making your head spin or projectile vomit and turning you green. It's about doing things within, often, the family or in churches that are going to disrupt what God wants, which is harmony and peace and unity and all the rest. So, yeah, people are held captive to do God's will, I'm sorry, to do Satan's will, Paul says to Timothy, and we need to pray that God would fix those things. But it's a constant battle. There's no pastor that doesn't identify with what I'm saying, and there's probably no married person that doesn't identify with what I'm saying, because there's always going to be an onslaught. 1 Peter 5, Satan is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. And if we don't respect that and armor up and really care about how we're walking with the Lord every day, we're going to be seeing more and more disorder continuing to pile up. So yeah, that's the problem, Cindy, is you're probably in a relationship with a sinner. And you, of course, are a sinner. So whoever you're talking about is in a relationship with a sinner. And so the problem is the sin allows for all kinds of chinks in the armor that cause a lot of disorder. All right. What do we got here? Let's talk about this one. I wanted to ask you about... I want to ask you, what do you think about a church that allows women to teach? Is that a church I should join? Yeah, if I understand what you're saying here, yeah, the Bible's really clear about this and I know it's really hip and trendy and everyone's liking to quote Acts 2 and Joel 2 and all that about, you know, your sons and daughters prophesying therefore. We're going to have women pastors in the church. That's not what the Bible allows and there's no way around it. I don't care how much you want to capitulate to the culture. God is crystal clear. One day you're going to stand before God and he's going to show you all these passages that you overlooked because you wanted to, you know, not have the hassle that I have. And that is to get on the radio or get in front of my people or get next to my Christian friends and say, yeah, the leadership of the church and the exercising of biblical teaching, the office of teaching within the church is given exclusively gender specific to men. And that's just the way God has planned it. And you know what, I think even women, if they understand this properly, can be really thankful that the men are stepping up to teach the Sunday school classes, and by that I mean of adults. The Bible is really clear that women are especially gifted to teach children, and that's good. We have a lot of women teachers in our church teaching children, and as Titus 2 says, teaching other women. So we have a lot of women teachers in our church, but we have even more men who are teaching, and they're teaching in those mixed crowds and to men alone, but they're doing that as a part of the leadership and the exercising of the leadership within the church that God expects us to have. So it's a gender-specific thing, and I wouldn't join a church that looks the other way on that. And sadly, that's going to make your list of possible churches get smaller and smaller because today, it's a lot like the early 19th century, churches are falling left and right and capitulating on this. And they capitulate on this, it's just one step before they start capitulating on other things like same-sex marriage and a lot of other issues because you really use the same hermeneutic to figure this out. If you start saying, well, this is cultural when they talked about, you know, men leading in the church and men being pastors and men teaching, and, you know, it's cultural. Kind of like, well, you know, as long as you're in a committed, loving relationship, it doesn't matter if it's with, you know, the same gendered person or a furry or whatever it is. Stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. We've got to stop and say, how clear is scripture on this? And I find people that are ready to overlook all of these things, even though they claim they're scholars or they've read the Bible or It's just they do a lot of fancy footwork to get out of these passages. And if you had no axe to grind and you had no culture to compare your conclusions to, I think most people would have no problem understanding what God is asking us to do. And that is male leadership in the home and male leadership in the church. And even a kind of male leadership, though not always exclusive, but a male leadership in the culture as well. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing for everybody. And I got a lot of very strong, intelligent women in our church. I think that will give a hearty amen to that as they see men in our church stepping up and in homes and in the church, right? Not to be a whatever. I don't even want to give the caveats because, yeah, you know this is not about, hey, I'm more important or listen to me. I'm the taskmaster. I love to call the shots. I'm the quarterback. know, it's not about that. It's someone has to lead, take responsibility for the decisions, and the teaching is a big part of that. The horatory, we would say, the horatory role of exhorting the church and saying, rebuke and correct, you know, and admonish people in the church, that's a role for men who are gifted and qualified and trained and educated to do that. And it doesn't mean women can't be trained and called and gifted to do all those things, because I got plenty of them lined up here that are great teachers, but the context needs to be not in a mixed adult audience of men and women. All right. Laura asked about the branches being cut off and thrown into the fire. That's from John 15, and I think the fear of this, which is certainly with these passages, not only in John 15, but in the book of Hebrews, which goes several times in a cyclical pattern of warnings. These warnings are supposed to keep us abiding, right? The whole point is real Christians abide. We have a lot of temptations not to abide. And when God throws out these things about people that don't abide, they're lost, right? We think about that more in terms of time, like real time, like a real time reality. Like if I know the concern is if I say I'm saved, then I could not abide and then I get cut off and thrown into the fire. No, I believe people that don't abide are cut off and thrown into the fire. I believe that a hundred percent, that's what the text says. But as I tried to say, I'm using the tense of Hebrews chapter three, verse three right now, that we are his house, right? If we remain faithful, right? We are, I said verse three, but it's not verse three. Hebrews chapter three, Let me get the right passage here. Here it is, verse six, sorry. Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his house if indeed we hold fast, in other words, the concept of faithfulness, to our confidence and our boasting in our hope. In other words, that's the whole point is that we are proving our fruitfulness in our abiding and remaining in this. And he says it again later in the text. He says, verse 14, for we've come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our confidence to the end. Now, the point is, the tense of these verbs, we have come to share in Christ. You have come to share in Christ if you hold to the end. Now, you think, well, if I hold to the end, then I get to share in Christ. That's not what it says. And I think that's an important distinction to make. And I hope the nuance of that was not lost in this quick talking ending segment of the program. Hey, it's been great to be with you another week. Go to pastormike.com if you want to learn about next summer's cruise. We're going to take a cruise together on a ship. We'll eat together, hang out together, play shuffleboard, whatever. Do our our excursions, September 19th, I think through the 26th, a week-long cruise out of Boston up into Canada. I'm going to teach every day, a couple times a day, in some cases based on the schedule, do morning devotions, preaching through Proverbs, a lot of different sections in Proverbs, at least thematically, and we'll get some time to do some Q&A on the ship. So check it out. PastorMike.com. Love to have you vacation with me next fall, and I hope you can join us for that. Until next week, we'll see you. Bye-bye. You're listening to Ask Pastor Mike Live with pastor and Bible teacher Mike Fabares. For more straightforward Bible teaching from Pastor Mike, listen to our Focal Point broadcast on this station. And you can look up our full broadcast schedule on PastorMike.com. This is Dave Druey for Focal Point Ministries, hoping you'll join us next time for more Ask Pastor Mike Live.