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 good to be with you again today, answering your questions about the Bible, about the Christian life, as I struggle through a cold here, which I think is going around. That's the time of the year for all of that, but I'm here and excuse all that noise. But I hope you're doing well and hope you're doing better than I am in terms of health. And I hope that maybe today you might give me a call, 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call, 1-877-913-5357, no matter what your question might be. about the Bible or the Christian life, give me a call. Or you can text the word ASK, A-S-K, to 90398 on your texting app, 90398. Text the word ASK. 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If you've never been to our Focal Point page, you can get there by going to pastormike.com. There's a ton, a ton of free material there for you to download. And I was just talking to someone this weekend who has found our Focal Point U stuff. And all that is, I think, helpful for people who just kind of want to get the basics of the Christian life in a more systematized way. pastormike.com. If you look at that website, that's just our Focal Point website. That's a quick way to get there. But if you go to listen, nope, you go to study the Bible, there it is, and then drop down to Focal Point U, it's the fourth one on the drop down menu there. That will take you through a very systematic coverage of everything from the origins of the Bible study of theology proper, who God is, angels and demons, Christology, Holy Spirit, fallen humanity, sin, our salvation, the church, sorting out the end times. Then I've got a section on bad theology, kind of working through world religions and cults and heresies, and then New Testament survey and Old Testament survey. And then lastly, one on apologetics. Now, if you want more on apologetics, I'm teaching a class for the Compass Bible Institute this spring, this next spring, end of January, mid-January, I guess we start our class. And usually J. Warner Wallace teaches that class for us, but this year he's not able to do it. So I'm stepping in to do that class. And that will be papers and textbooks and quizzes and exams, but it's a very good way for you to kind of get all the parts together on what it means to defend the faith in our generation. And I hope that will help you. If you want to sign up for that, just go to compassbibleinstitute.org and you can learn about how to defend your faith in a more formalized way. And we keep the cost down super low for that, but it is something you can take that's accredited and send it somewhere else. You can, if you're getting a degree somewhere, a lot of these will go over to whatever organization you're a part of right now. Anyway, all right, 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Harvey. Harvey, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hey, Pastor Mike, thanks for taking the call. You know, I was thinking about this right now because we're going to the DBR and we're in Jude. And I was wondering, how do we, how do we understand when Jude references the book of Enoch, since the book of Enoch was an apocryphal book? Right, right. Well, yeah, it was worse than apocryphal book. It was actually a pseudepigraphal book, which we call it, which means it's written with the name Enoch as though he wrote it, but in fact, he didn't. So that makes it, it's a whole different category than what we know of as the apocrypha. The apocrypha usually is what we're referring to as intertestamental books that are canonical in a Catholic Bible, but just have been understood for all of church history until the counter-reformation. even though some people dispute that. It certainly was put in place as equal with scripture after the Reformation at the Council of Trent. But this set of books, these are what we call the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, and no one believed that Enoch actually wrote them. And yet here's Jude quoting that. And I'll just quote the section that he quotes, See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, to convict the ungodly of all ungodly acts, which they've done in an ungodly way, and all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken to him." So, this particular quote from the book of Enoch, which if you read the book of Enoch, which if you do, you'll find it's really a compilation of several books. And they are intertestamental in the sense that they're before the time of Christ, obviously, because they're quoted in the New Testament. And they're bizarre. Many of them are just super strange in terms of what they're trying to relay. Issues of astronomy and issues about the world and all kinds of concepts that you're going to immediately look at and go, wow, this doesn't square with scripture. And certainly it doesn't. And because of that, we reject it as a biblical book. And yet here is Jude quoting it. What I would say is just like we have in scripture other biblical writers quoting extra biblical sources, we should recognize that what's being done is simply grabbing a section of a non-biblical work, quoting it because it's relevant to the topic and it speaks truth in the sense that You know, it's speaking about the coming judgment that's coming and God's going to convict ungodly people and judge them for ungodly acts and ungodly words. And all of that is true. It's just, it's found in a book that's full of things that are both true and untrue. Paul does this in Acts 17 when he's there talking to the Athenian professors and he quotes their poets and he quotes people that they know in two different references, some of the Epicurean philosophers, and all of that's done not saying, well, you should all go be an Epicurean and study all those books or believe that they're written, you know, on par with scripture. He's not endorsing the totality of the book. He's just saying, you guys are familiar with this work, and it says this, I endorse this of what it says. Just like your pastor might quote some secular source, it's not in my meaning everything that that work says is biblical or accurate. So that's the pattern. We see it in the Old Testament, we see it in the New Testament, and we see it here in Jude. And I don't think there's any problem with that as long as we know it's not a full-throated endorsement of the source. And I think that goes without saying, goes without a caveat, in most quotations that you hear from preachers who are there to teach the Bible, but they're enlisting other sources that people are familiar with. I mean, if your pastor quotes the Princess Bride, you know, he may quote that because it is relevant to something he's saying, but it has nothing to do with giving it an endorsement that it somehow is authoritative. And that's what's happening here with the Book of Enoch. All right. Thanks, Dr. White. Yeah, thanks, Harvey. Yeah, that is just part of the pattern that we see, and hopefully that is a helpful answer. Actually, the Book of Enoch is a collection of books. It's written in three different languages, and different sections of it came years and years apart. The first section of First Enoch, which is often quoted the Ethiopian version of it, starts with the first 36 sections of the book being all about the angels. And then you've got 72 through 82, those 11 chapters being about the astronomical books. That's the most interesting part to read. not to mention the sections that go even further in the dreams that are recited after that. But the astronomical books certainly will talk about things that you know just by reading them. Hey, this is not squaring with truth. And yeah, that should be clear. Just like the Epicureans and the Stoic philosophers, you know, you're a reference, but they're not, I mean, they're obviously teaching things that are not in keeping with Christianity, even the core teachings of the Epicureans. All right. 1-877-913-5357. Give me a call. I've got people writing in questions. Let's deal with some of those real quick. Kirk asked about Matthew 24, 19. It talks about nursing mothers during the tribulational period. And so does that mean there are babies that are left behind? in the rapture? And the answer is yes, of course. I mean, that is what's meant. Just like there are babies that were killed in the flood, I do think children are not exempt. Now people say, well, wait a minute. I'm raising my kids in the instruction and admonition of the Lord. They're only three. Does that mean they're not going in this catching up to be with the Lord in the air? And I'm going to say, The Bible doesn't give us any clear description on that, but I would say that just reading passages like 1 Corinthians 7, there's something about the sanctifying effect of parents seeing kids in a different light and different category than your neighbor kids who are raised by non-Christians. I do think that maybe there's some hope in a passage like that, that if we have young children, and their parents, or at least one of the parents, that's how it's put in 1 Corinthians 7, are Christians, then that changes the status of those kids, not salvificly, but in this case, in terms of their own exemption from the time of tribulation. Perhaps, and I can't say that definitively, but it does seem to match the patterns that we see elsewhere in scripture, just like the people that left Egypt in the Exodus, right? The parents took their children along. Well, that was a choice in terms of them making that decision, but God is, I think, going to make the decision probably in keeping with that. All right, 1-877-913-5357. Any question you might have about the Bible or the Christian life. As I was reminded by one gal, she was afraid to call or said people are afraid to call because they think their questions too small or too dumb. And I'm just going to tell you, no question too small or too ridiculous. So let's just hear from you today. 1-877-913-5357. Whatever's on your mind, we'll try to tackle that. All right, let's see, John asked the question, are we body and soul or are we body, soul, and spirit? Find a lot of conflicting answers. Yes, you're going to find a lot of conflicting answers from here till the end of time. because it is very popular to say that we are three parts, body, soul, and spirit. The soul, they would say, is the earthly part of our immaterial part. The spirit is the part that's dead until we become Christians. That is not the view that I hold. I'm a dichotomist in the sense that I think we're just material and immaterial. I do that because of the interchangeability of the word soul and spirit. So often in both the Old and New Testaments, they're used synonymously. Sometimes they're used one over the other in terms of an encapsulating, overarching umbrella term, soul, like we have at the very beginning in Genesis when the body is made out of the dust of the earth, that's the material part. God breathes into the body the breath of life, that's the spirit part. It's connected to the word in Hebrew and in Greek to the word spirit or breath, I should say. And then they become a living soul. They become a soul, just like a you know, a ship conductor might say, how many souls on board? And the answer is, you know, whatever, 225 souls on board. And that means people. It doesn't matter, you know, the state of their body. It just matters that they're human beings. And I think that probably is the best and simplest way to view this. It's simple. And I think that has the right ring to it because elsewhere, when divisions are made between the mind or the strength or whatever, I love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. We're not trying to make hard distinctions on which we build theology, even though some people do. And I know it's popular with very popular preachers, but I'm not of that camp. I'm a dichotomist, not a trichotomist. All right, 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call if you have a question about the Bible, the Christian life, something you're facing, a dilemma, something going on at your church, your small group. If I can be of help, let me get a chance at that. All right. On YouTube right now, Kirk is saying, in your opinion, why were the early reformers post Mill or a Mill? Is there a difference between Reformed Baptist and Calvinistic Baptist? I've heard three C's. I've heard the three. C's, not sure what that is. Okay, I've heard the three C's. Okay, yeah, I need clarification on what you're getting at there. But yeah, the simplest way to view eschatology is to not try and meddle in the details of a pre-millennial, pre-tribulational rapture. This is what we would know of as something you hear a lot on this network and on this station, which is a development of the details of eschatology. and I say development, I think it's a discovery of what the Bible has to say about the distinction between the Church and Israel. I would say the easiest way to describe the end times is just to either blur the millennium into the current age, which is an amillennius view, or to view the coming of God's kingdom as a reforming of the world into a Christian land. And therefore, that's the post-millennial view. That's easier than trying to look at the distinctions that we find and trying to harmonize Zechariah or Ezekiel 37 with, you know, the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, this is a lot more detailed of a view. So just like, let's look at Lutheranism, for instance, at the beginning of the Reformation, Martin Luther was going after soteriology and making clear what salvation by faith was all about. And because of that, he left a lot to be you know, to be reformed later. Like, you know, it took a couple generations from Luther to Calvin to Zwingli to get around to saying, well, let's work on the Lord's Supper here and what it means and what it doesn't mean. And I think a lot of Protestants, at least in the Protestant ilk that you hear on this station, you know, you got people that are going to clearly say the Lord's Supper is a memorial meal and Christ is not in the elements or doesn't become the elements or he's not, you know, alongside of the elements, right? Christ is the one being honored by the elements and it's just a symbol and a memorial. Well, that took some time because the focus was on soteriology and salvation by faith, not all the other things. And I would say the same thing about eschatology. It took the back seat to what was urgent and important during the Reformation. So that's why I think there is focus, or at least the pattern of more of a post-mill or a-mill eschatology in the Reformers. The difference between Reformed Baptists and Calvinistic Baptists, there's no difference there. If you're saying you're a Reformed Baptist, you're saying you're Calvinistic, and if you're Baptistic, that means you've rejected, and go back to my example, the non-reformed view, and I use that in a non-technical sense. In other words, the reforming of doctrine did not make it all the way to baptism. We just took the Roman Catholic practice of infant baptism and just codified it. Think about it. You've got You've got, in Lutheranism, the Lord's Supper and baptism not being, you know, looked at, analyzed, and reformed. And you have reformed in the sense, non-technical sense, in that it doesn't get changed, it doesn't get adjusted from the Catholic view, at least not much in the Lord's Supper, and not a ton either in baptism. Well, then the Presbyterians and, you know, the Calvinistic emphasis of the, I shouldn't say this, legacy of that movement, right, it worked more on maybe updating, if you will, to the biblical norm of what the Lord's Supper is. And yet, it didn't deal with moving from infant baptism to believers baptism. So there was that lag. And so that if you're going to say though, you're a Reformed Baptist, you're generally going to simply say, I'm Baptistic, I believe you know, in the fact that we need to be baptized as believers. They were early called the Anabaptists because they're being re-baptized, which again, they weren't really claiming that. They were claiming you've got sprinkled as a baby. That's not baptism. So, but we're not going to toss away the reformed view of soteriology and theology proper and those kinds of things. So yeah, it's, yeah, that's, that's the distinction. And Kirk, maybe you want to follow up with the last line and I can deal with that. All right, 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Jack. Jack, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Yeah, hello. I was doing some research this morning. I heard somebody tell me about John chapter 8, verse 24, when the Lord uses, when he says, if you do not believe I am, egoimi, And they were pointing out how it referenced Exodus 3.14, and upon looking at the Septuagint, he also says, Ego eimi hoan. And so I was wondering if you could shed a little light when Christ uses the ego eimi and the hoan, what the difference would be if he had said that, I guess? Yeah. Here's the problem. Some people are going to poke holes in Christ's statement, right, in calling himself the I Am, which I think needs to be another, I think there's too much scrutiny on trying to distance Christ from saying what I do think he's saying, even though the verbiage isn't identical to the Septuagint. Just for our listeners' sake, the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, which most people would believe, and it's rightly believed because a lot of the quotations mirror in the New Testament, the Septuagint wording in Greek. And of course, New Testament was written in Koine Greek. And so they're quoting a Greek translation that at that point was only 200 years old and made popular because Alexander the Great wanted all the great books in Greek. And so Greek is important, the Greek translation of the Old Testament is important, and therefore we're kind of looking for, did he quote precisely Exodus 3.15? And a critic is going to say, well, he didn't claim to be God because he didn't quote it exactly. And all I'm going to say is the concept of the name of the Lord, which certainly God, Jesus, the incarnate Christ clearly knew, is what it really is really saying, what is the word saying, right? The ever existing, the self existing, the eternality of God, which really goes back to what the consonants for the Hebrew tetragrammaton are, the Yahweh. In other words, there's a relation to the verb to be, I am, in the name himself. And so God, the incarnate God, Christ, is, I do think, making a reference to that by saying ego ami. And I think that is clear, and I think the Jews understood that, even in the response that they gave to Jesus and John 8. So, I know, I've heard the kickback, I've heard that criticism, and they want greater, tighter connection to the Septuagint, but I'll tell you this, a lot of what we see Jesus quoting is not direct quotes from the Septuagint, but summaries of the Septuagint. along with the apostles too. A lot of the things that are said in alluding to the Old Testament is just that, it's an allusion and not a precise linguistic grammatical quote. And if you say, you know, before Abraham was, I am, the idea of that is clearly talking about the root of what it means to say, I am who I am. I'm the ever existing one. I'm the self existing one. I am the eternal one, which gets back to the word Yahweh, this sacred name that really encapsulates the concept of being that I am. And Jesus is clearly saying that. And if I said that this is the only passage I have to go on to assert his deity, well, then I might scratch my head and say, maybe I'm misunderstanding that. But there's so much of what the Gospels record that lead me to believe Jesus is divine. This is just one I'm going to say, yeah, it may not be the exact verbiage of the Septuagint, but it clearly is a reference that they understood, that he understood, and if not, it'd be a weird way for him to communicate, and it'd be an odd reaction if it weren't for the fact that he's saying he's one unlike you and I, Jack, who don't pre-exist, and he's forgiving sin for God, and he's talking about coming on the clouds with the angels and the glory of his Father, and all these things that would be absolutely blasphemous, receiving worship, all the things that we find in the Scripture, calling people you know, to worship Him just as you worship the Father. So yeah, it's a cumulative argument, and it's as close as we're going to get to Him saying, I am Yahweh, because of the reference and the allusion to the verb to be in Hebrew, which of course is stated in Greek. But yeah, I've heard the argument, and it doesn't bother me too much because it's not the only text I look at when I look to figure out whether Jesus was claiming to be God. So, I think you spoke very clearly on the reference when Christ used it. Could you just probably tell me a little more where the Hebrew says, Eieh, Esher, Eieh, and then our English says, I Am, Who I Am, exactly why the Septuagint pronounces the last I Am as Ho-On, trying to say the existing one. How do they see that like that? Right. Well, it can be translated in Hebrew, which is not as precise as Greek. I am what I am. I am. I will be what I will be. I mean, there's different ways to translate that. And I have a source that is great at dealing with the Septuagint. And I will say I need to dive back in to that to probably get the best answer for you, Jack, because you've looked at it recently. And so let me do that for tomorrow's program. What's today, Tuesday? Yeah. And I'll start the program that way. talk about the Septuagint and the use of the Septuagint here in John 8 and why the translation is the way it is. But remember this about the Septuagint. The Septuagint is not done by, you know, the reverential scribes and rabbis or, you know, those who were given the sacred task of copying the text. Matter of fact, it would have been very distasteful for even for the Jewish scribes to think about it being translated into other languages, And this was done by the prescription of the Greeks, the Grecian Empire, not the Jews. So here's what I find in terms of a lot of the Septuagint, though it's often quoted and sometimes it's modified and paraphrased in the New Testament. It's not where we send kids to school to say, well, we see the Septuagint as authoritative over and above what we have now, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Old Testament. So let me dig deeper on that for you tomorrow, Jack, and I'll start the program with that. If you can listen in tomorrow, or even if you want to call back tomorrow, we can engage after I give you what I give you tomorrow. How's that? Yes, I'll be looking forward to it. Okay, Jack. All right, we'll go deeper. All right, 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Jane. Jane, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hey, Pastor Mike. I attended a lecture by David, what's his name, Lindsey. Is it David Lindsey? Hal Lindsey? Hal Lindsey, thank you. The other night at a church, and he talked, and I've seen this before a lot, too. He referred, kind of as a matter of fact, about Gog and Magog being Russia and the Middle Eastern countries. I didn't ask a question, there were a lot of questions, and I don't remember if I've talked to you about this before. Maybe Mark Hitchcock might have said the same thing, and I might have called you. I just can't remember. What's your take on Dag and Magog, on the countries? Yeah, I don't know if we have talked about that or not, but yeah, Mark Hitchcock certainly is going to say, Hal Lindsey, by the way, died November 25th. I was just looking that up of last year, so. Wait a minute, well, it wasn't Hal Lindsey because he was in person, so I'll tell you. Yeah, that would have been quite remarkable, but yeah. Jeff Kinley, Jeff Kinley. Oh, Jeff Kinley, hmm. Yeah, anyway, I didn't have to look him up, even though I'm looking him up, because it is a common relation, Gog and Magog, to the... Hold on, I'm gonna look up what... I'm going to look up here what Hitchcock says, because yeah, if you've read him, I'm sure he gives the reference that we have to the connection to Russia. And that's the real question, right? Well, pretty much. And he also, Magog, he assigns to the other Middle Eastern countries. Yeah. But yeah, Gog being Russia, yeah. Right. And here it looks like Hitchcock is referencing Josephus just in terms of where this is. In other words, the Scythians inhabited the land of Magog. That's a reference from Josephus in his first century history of the Jews. The Scythians were nomadic, northern nomadic tribes inhabiting the territory of Central Asia. And then, of course, that is going to be on the southern steeps of modern Russia. That's the connection. So Magog today, here's how Hitchcock puts it, which I would assume he would, probably represents the nations that would at least inhabit the geographical territories of the former Soviet Union, all the Stans, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkestan. And I think all of that, it's got to be, as I'm looking at his footnote here, a lot of that is tied to how Josephus in section 1.6.1 is talking about where we can find some information about Magog. And Rosh is also mentioned in the passage there in Ezekiel. And because a lot of people have tried to identify Rosh, which I want to say in Hebrew, Rosh, with Russia, because of the connection to the word, I don't think Rosh is the proper name, I think it has to do with the word, and the word in Hebrew is head, like Rosh Hashanah means the head of the year. And so that's where I depart with some of the older commentaries that want to say, you know, this is clearly some linguistic connection to Russia, this word Rosh, because we have nowhere else to go. Like, what is this talking about? And a lot of times in the prophecies, We struggle because we don't have the historical connection. So all I'm going to say, and I often say when I deal with this passage and others like it, we will know clearly in the rearview mirror. When this is happening and goes down, we're going to say, I know why now this is referenced this way. Because it's always that way. With the fulfillment of Christ and all the illusions, not to mention the specific prophecies of Christ, it's clear once they happen. And I do think Rosh has to do with one that's the leader, the one that's the head, the chief. not the one that, you know, is connected to the word Russia. So, yeah, that's my take. Okay, I just wanted to know where that came from, yeah. Yeah, Josephus, and then the word that I think is sometimes conflated with Russia linguistically, which I'm not going to say. So does Ezekiel or in Revelation, do they actually refer to that area, that geographical area? Well, here's the problem. All of these passages will talk about invaders from the north, but historically every invader, if it's not Egypt, is coming from the north because they come from the east. In the east, you don't travel through the deserts. You have to go through the northern trade routes, which is always going to bring all your enemies from the north. They're mentioned. by name in Revelation 20, right? It talks about this great battle at the end of the tribulational period, the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog. That discussion is revived in Revelation 20, but that's in a whole different time period, right? This is a time at the end of the tribulational period, which we're assuming has already, you know, it's already hit the prophetic scene, but is revived here at the end of the of the millennial kingdom, this rebellion that takes place. So they're named by name in Revelation 20, but I'm just going to say all the references to the invaders from the north just doesn't narrow much down for me when I'm looking at prophecies to figure out what did they have in mind? What was God revealing about who these people are? Yeah, the north. Okay. That's it. Okay. Okay. That's it. All right, Jane. Thanks for the call. Yep. And just as it relates to prophecy in general, you know, one of the problems I think is all of the people who sell a lot of books, and I know I'm not talking about Hitchcock in this manner, because he's careful to nuance everything with probably and maybe, and some people say this, but a lot of the people that have really hit and splashed big in biblical prophecy have been far too specific in trying to make connections to the headlines. And in doing that, unfortunately, they're tying themselves in, putting themselves in a bit of a straight jacket as to how this must go. And then, of course, in time, it doesn't go that way, particularly when they start setting dates. And it's a disgrace to Christianity because people have said way too much about the end times. The end times, we don't have all the details. We get a framework, and even that framework is debated among Christians in a kind of intramural debate that we have. But I think we just need to be gracious in trying to say, I do know in retrospect God's truth will be affirmed and confirmed and authenticated by the fact that all these things will play out in history and everything will look and align like it was a perfect fit with all of Scripture. And that will be clear. And we'll see that. All right. Okay. Thanks so much. That's good. All right, Jane. 1-877-913-5357. 1-877-913-5357. Let's talk to Darla. Darla, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? Hi, um, um, I, um, I've been a Christian all my life and, um, I was talking to a friend of mine who I grew up with who also lives in Texas. Um, and I was talking to him about being a Christian and he said he wasn't going to be a Christian because this is going to sound ridiculous, but, um, he, uh, says that all of them are aliens, Jesus and God, and they want He's not going to worship anybody from another planet, from outer space. And he was talking about it like that. And I said, no, it's not like that. And he keeps going, yeah, it is. He said Jesus even said his kingdom is not of here. And they're just all coming back to destroy the earth. And he was talking about everything. I never thought about it in that way, but it's been bothering me since I talked to him. So, I had to call you and see what you thought. Yeah. Well, in one sense, right, to say he's an alien is not wrong, right? I mean, God is, let's just start with God the Father or the triune God from eternity past. He does exist in a different domain, right? He dwells according to 1 Timothy 6, an unapproachable light, which no one has seen or can see. So, in that sense, I get it. You can say, yeah, God is an alien, but he's an alien. Here's the word we use in theology because he's transcendent. He's apart from his creation. And in that sense, he's not subject to his creation. He's apart from it, but he rules over his creation. And one thing God did that is super unique right, in the sense that he's giving us something that's different than the holy, other, complete, transcendent, triune God as he has his son, according to the Bible, of course, take on human flesh and dwell among us. And as we understand what the Bible has to say about that, we have to affirm in good theology that he's not only 100% deity and God, but he's 100% man and human. So, in that sense, right, we worship, as it says in the book of John, we're supposed to honor the son just as we honor the father. Yes, I do worship an alien in that sense that he's, you know, God is of another category. And Jesus, though, shares in my humanity. So, in that sense, he's the king of my, you know, earthly, you know, existence, along with all the other earthly people I preach to every week and talk to on the radio. We are all of this earth, but Christ is now taken on all the essential definitions of humanity. And so he is, even as the book of Hebrew puts it, our elder brother. He is part of us. He is our brethren. And because of that, I have full connection and identity with him. I don't have to view him like I would view the triune God before the incarnation and think, well, he's completely other, he's out there, he's of another domain. And you're right. Jesus did say, as he stood before Pilate, that his kingdom was not of this world. If they were of this world, they would fight to make sure you didn't crucify me. And the point is, we're not about taking out swords and killing people in this culture or on this planet to establish Christianity. Christ is going to establish Christianity when he comes back and the kingdom of God is going to be on earth. And here's how it's put in scripture in Revelation 21 verse 3. It's not like the aliens are going to turn us into aliens. It's that Christ, the Son, who now shares in humanity, is going to put his dwelling place on earth among us. It's put this way, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. So I know this. You're right. It's really weird right now for us to talk about our relationship with God because you can't see him, can't touch him. He's in a different domain. And even Christ went back to sit, Hebrews 1 says, at the right hand of the father. So at one sense, Darla, your friend is hitting on something I can identify with. I have a relationship with someone that's not here. And in that sense, the only way I have that connection is through his spirit that he says he is going to send to give me comfort that this is all fine and is all working out, even though I see through a glass dimly as it's put in 1 Corinthians 13, because I have the spirit to give me comfort that this is really a good thing, and that his spirit and my spirit, they confirm together that I'm a child of God, even though I'm not in his domain, and he literally physically is not in my domain. But one day he will, and that's the whole hope of the Christian life. He will bring a city down from heaven, he will put his throne among us, and he will be the person we can look at, and pictures of him, and eyeballs, and hair color, and all that. He's going to be here, and he's going to live as our king. So in that sense, I just think, yeah, he is alien, but he's an alien who's going to come and set up his kingdom among us, and he already, 2,000 years ago, lived among us for, you know, three and a half decades, and did his work to redeem us. And then I get back to the biggest issues of all with your friend, Darla. There's no way for you, I would tell your friend, as a sinner, to be right with your Creator unless you trust in the only provision He's given us, and that is His Son. He came to live a life we should have lived and died a death that we should have died. But instead, he's offering that great exchange of his resume for our resume. I can take my sin and have it laid on his cross and he can take his righteousness and lay it on my account. And now I can be acceptable before God. And one day he's going to come and set up his dwelling among us. That's the whole point of John 14, right? I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, you may be also. So I would tell your friend, Darla, it may feel that way now, and there's some truth to what you're saying, but here he's taken on humanity and he will one day live among us. as our king. And he's the one who makes us qualified to share in a perfect place that you're going to really not want to miss out on. And you need to put your trust in Christ to qualify for this. And I keep leaning on him to become a Christian because that's what he needs to do. And though it's something that he struggles with because it's altogether different and he's way out there in another domain. Yeah, I guess that's the thing. God couldn't solve the problem through us as human beings. He had to solve it through his own son. And in that sense, I await for the king to arrive again. And as Jesus said, one day he's going to return on the clouds in glory with the glory of his father and the angels with him. And he's going to set up a kingdom. And I can't wait for that. And Darla, you got to keep telling your friend to put his trust in Christ and get ready for that because one day he'll meet his maker and he's going to want to be right with his maker that day. Well, I have one more question. Yep. What about the invisible war with Lucifer and Satan. Does that mean he's also an alien that they're fighting in the spiritual realm? I just wanted to ask that question. No, it's true. In that sense, I can say again, I can give some willingness to say, yeah, the angels are very different than us. But here's the thing. The whole focus of this is on us. It says in Hebrews chapter one, that the angels themselves, they're all created to be ministering spirits for those who are going to inherit salvation. The problem is a third of them rebelled. And so there was war in heaven. And there was a war that took place and the focus though was on this earth. They cared about us. Demons want to take us off track. Angels want to keep us on track. And it's all about being connected with God. So yeah, they may be a whole different, you know, a whole nother realm we can't see, but it has an effect on us now. And it's like your friend, Darla, who can't see germs, you know, but those germs have an effect on how we live and our health. And so it is with angels, You can't see them, you know, with the naked eye. One day we'll see them with spiritual eyes, but we right now can't see them, and yet they have an effect on our lives. They work to tempt us and draw us away from the truth, and in that sense they come to kill, steal, and destroy, or their angels are trying to minister to us to keep us on the track. And that's what we are, we have to let that go in the background. I can't focus on it. According to Colossians, there are some Christians that get hyper-focused on angels and it leads them astray. They start focusing on exalting angels and all that. We don't want to do that. But I just want to accept the fact that almost every book of the Bible mentions the angelic class. And because of that, I know it's there. I know it has an effect on this life. I want to keep seeking the Lord, denying temptation, seeking God. And yeah, all I can tell you is it's not like we're made for their domain, right? They care about our domain. And one day Christ is going to live among us and the angels are going to cheer us on because that's what they're made for. They're made to serve God and God is ultimately wanting to serve his redeemed people. And as Hebrews says, he's not going to redeem angels. He's only going to redeem humans. So the focus is on earth. It's a focus on us. And that's where I'd tell your friend, Hey, you want to be on the right side of history. You got to put your trust in Christ. Right. Okay. Alright, Darla. Good questions. I know we sometimes struggle. You hear a word like alien, and you think, ah, I'm not gonna, aliens. Well, if you understand what the word means, I guess, okay, yeah. God is alien to us, right? Well, I went and looked it up, and it says something not of this world, you know. Right. That's what it says in the dictionary. Right. And then he's quoting a passage where Jesus says my kingdom is not of this world. But what I tried to quote immediately in Revelation 21 is his kingdom is coming to earth. Right. His kingdom is coming. That's how he taught us to pray in Matthew 6. Right. Pray your kingdom come. Your will be done. on earth as it is in heaven. So one day heaven and earth are going to collide in that Christ is going to bring his kingdom and his presence down to earth. And I can't wait for that. And that's the thing he should hope for because he should look around at this world and say, this is not the world that I want to live in eternally. But there is one that he does want to And it really just, it goes down to the heart of his basic desires. All of us desire, right? Sin to be gone. All of us desire suffering to be gone. All of us desire for the right things to be right and to dominate. And they will one day. As he goes on to say in the very next verse, I'll wipe away every tear, no death, no mourning, no crying, no pain. The former things will be gone. And that's what I'm looking for. And the promise is the promise in Christ. There's no other way. There's no other promise. There's nothing else I can hang on to but that. All right, Darla, thanks for the call. 1-877-913-5357. That's the number to call or text the word ASK to 90398 and we'll get your question. Let's go to some of those questions. Jimmy is asking right now, clearly we are physical beings in a physical world. animated by spirit, which God gives to each human being, but is there a distinction between our mind, emotions, spirit, and body? Component parts. And that's what I'm trying to say. And being a dichotomist, I'm not neglecting that there's distinctions between my strength and my mind. Okay? Let's just look at it that way. I do think, though, they're all, as a composite, they all have an effect on one another. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, right? My mind and my strength, I can say, well, there's a distinction there. I'm sick right now, as you can probably hear. And so my strength is less than it should be. It's less than it normally is. And when I get older and older and older, it'll continue to deteriorate, I assume. And so I know that part of me is not what it was. And certainly being sick this week is not what it was a week ago. So I struggle with that part of my life. But my mind, I hope, is sharp. I hope my mind... So there's distinctions there, clearly. And even emotions. You can talk about your emotions. And yeah, there's a distinction between your feelings and your volition. How you feel and what you think you should do and what you choose to do. They're a distinction, but it doesn't remove the fact that I'm going to say the easiest way, the most understandable way to look at scripture is that we're material and immaterial. We're physical and we're spiritual. Now, what are the component parts? Even what I said about strength, that's really more tied to a definitional connection to my body, to the physical part of my body. And mind, right, even that word is interesting because the word heart is usually used in old, you know, 2000-year-old Hebrew idioms to talk about the center of my thinking and my decision-making capacities. And yet, in the influence of the Greco-Roman world, the word mind creeps in there, and we get that sense of thinking and mind. And, of course, we would use words today like even brain to describe the physical hard drive in the middle of our head, between our ears, and we'd say, well, Okay, what is that? How does that compare to our mind? And I just think clearly there are distinctions that we can make, some that associate with the body, some that associate with the spirit. But at the bottom definition, I'm going to say, I do think as the Bible says, a body does not come to life without the spirit, right? Or when the spirit leaves the body, as it repeatedly says in scripture, then that's called death. even down to the illustration in James chapter 2, right? When the body without the spirit is dead and that there are two basic components and all of it goes with it. All your mind, all your thinking, all your emotions, all your feelings, all your strength, right? All of it goes because the spirit's gone. So in essence, there are two parts and those two parts have all kinds of composites that you could distinguish and tease out. I got no problem with that and I think that Jimmy maybe I nailed it for you. If I didn't, then write me back. All right, Christine, let's go back to some of our questions here. Christine, you said, how do we explain our birth and our death that are written by God in his book, as it says in the Bible, Psalm 139, in the case of an entire plane crashing and everyone on the plane dies? Did everyone on the plane have the same death date or does God allow others to die that were not yet supposed to die? Yeah. Yeah, great question. Here's the thing. If Psalm 139 verse 16 means anything, it certainly means that there's no surprises. There's nothing outside the purview of God. Like it says in the Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus says, there's not a bird that falls from the tree apart from your Father. I mean, the point is, if God didn't want that bird to die today, it wouldn't have died today. And if 200 people die on a plane at the same time, then of course, yeah, that was their death day for all of them. You don't outlive, you know, the time that God has allotted for your life. And that's what Acts 17 says. He's picked the place and the time that you were going to live. And it says clearly you can't by worrying add a single hour to your life. So I know that God has this clearly laid out. This is the problem, of course, of trying to reconcile the sovereignty of God with my decision making. Because what if I choose to kill myself? which I should never do, right? But let's just say that theoretically somebody kills themselves today, aren't they cutting short their lives? They're not supposed to die then. Well, you're right. They're not supposed to die because self-murder is murder and you shouldn't do it. But that clearly was a part of the plan in the sense that it's sovereignly decreed. And I'm not going to say because of a plan that it's supposed to. There's a difference between God's decreed will right? What happens, and God's revealed will, what should happen. And that's the distinction, Christine, you're ultimately getting to. In other words, when God says you should not, you should not covet, you should not lie, you know, well then you shouldn't covet and you shouldn't lie. People have died because of coveting and lying though. right? You shouldn't do a lot of things that God in his plan has allowed to happen in the timetable that he's allowed for it to happen because a bird didn't fall from the tree, whether it falls from the tree of old age or whether a bullet goes through it because some hunter went out and shot the bird. All I'm telling you is that this is God's, you know, ultimately, nothing's outside of his sovereign purview. And because of that, I just think you can look at tragedy and recognize even in the book of Job, It can be the worst possible tragedy and still say, the Lord is given and the Lord is taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. This is where Job starts his response to God. It deteriorated from there, but that's how it started. All right, Christine, you've asked really one of the toughest questions that we have to try and jam two parts of it into our brain. hope that helps. Trevor asks, the Bible instructs us to pray for our leaders. What are your thoughts when we have a bad leader, and you quote the new mayor of New York, how do we deal with that? Okay, well, This is a great question that's answered in part by looking at how God takes people that are godly, like Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel, takes them off to Babylonia. Babylonia is led by Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar is a bad king. He went out and just destroyed the temple, did terrible things through his armies to the temple. and to Jerusalem, killed a bunch of people, and now he's your boss. Well, okay, I can't capitulate to do what he does because I don't want to be unholy. They weren't even willing to eat from the king's table. So we're all about being distinct, but should they care about the leadership of Babylon and should they pray for him? Well, sure, praying for him doesn't mean I hope they're absolutely blessed in all that they do, right? You may hope people pray that way for you, but that's not how I pray for ungodly people or terrible leaders or people that stand on all kinds of platforms that are unbiblical. I'm going to pray for God to change them, to convict them. I'm going to pray for them, but my prayers for them are going to be governed by Scripture and what scripture tells me I should want in all of my leaders. And when they went off to Israel, here's what God told them. You should seek the welfare of the city to where you're going, because in their prosperity and their good is going to come your prosperity and your good. So when Paul tells them to pray for their leaders in 1 Timothy chapter 2, and we should pray for our leaders, he didn't tell us What specifically to pray for but the Bible is going to inform us in that regard But he is going to tell us to pray for them because you know if our leaders Right are if God is responding to our prayers and our leaders are being shaped by our prayers It's certainly going to go well for us, which is the whole point in 1st Timothy chapter 2 We want to live quiet lives as it relates to our government at least I don't want any issues between me and the government I'd like City Hall to stay in their building and keep out of our mess and not mess with the church and And I don't want the government to mess with the church. And that's the point of praying for my leaders, that they would do the right thing. So yeah, I'm praying against a lot of leaders, right? I want a lot of the leaders that I disagree with and that have their platforms built on ungodly things, I want them to be done away with. I am against the ideology of a lot of the leaders in my state right now and in Sacramento, but I pray against them. That's how I'm praying for them. Like praying for your enemies. When Jesus says in Matthew to pray for your enemies, well, it doesn't mean I pray they have a great day. I pray everything they do is blessed. If they're going to go rob a bank, I pray they get away with it. I don't want to pray that way for my enemies. I want to pray for my enemies to not be my enemies anymore. I want to pray for my government not to be against the church anymore. I want to pray for them to align their platforms with life and not with killing the unborn. These are the things we need to pray for. So Trevor, I just think when you hear the word pray for your leaders, you may think that we're just asking that everything they do is blessed. That's not the only prayer you can pray or should pray. You certainly shouldn't pray that for ungodly people. Right. John asked the question about Matthew, about John the Baptist. Yeah, that's funny. How did John the Baptist escape Herod's decree if he was about the same age and lived in the same region? In other words, Herod the Great, plenty of Herods in the Bible. We see successive generations, four generations of the Herods. It starts though with the Herod that dies just after Jesus's birth. And of course he encounters the Persian leaders that come over and they're looking for the baby because Daniel had left the prophetic information about the coming of the Messiah. And so he says, I'm going to kill all the babies two years and under, which is probably overkill. Obviously it's overkill and ridiculous and terrible and horrific, but it's overkill probably even in the timeframe. So they, They told him when they saw the star. And so we probably have a baby that was probably months old, maybe a year old, whatever he kills the two and under. Okay. Well, Luke chapter one locates John's family in the hill country of Judea, right? Not Bethlehem proper, although you could say maybe he is somewhere near the targeted zone of Herod. We learn by verse 80 of Luke chapter 1 that he's living in the wilderness, which may mean his family was living in the wilderness, and that's certainly not in the clans or villages of Ephrathah or Bethlehem. I'm just going to say he escaped it, even if he was somewhere near there, because just like you would want to protect your kid, Zachariah would want to protect his young son, John the Baptist, and probably do whatever he can to avoid that, just like Joseph did the next time when he found Archelaus was in charge, the son of Herod. He didn't want to go back to Bethlehem after his flight to Egypt. I mean, the whole point of leaving to Egypt and then going to Nazareth was to avoid having the baby killed. So maybe John the Baptist's parents did the same thing and where they lived in the hill country is not specified. So maybe it wasn't even near Bethlehem proper. All right. Hope that helps. Okay. Kimberly asked about divorce and remarriage. Yeah. Here's the thing about divorce and marriage, just for the sake of time, because I don't have much time left. I'm going to say this. Obviously, God is against divorce. And if you're looking back on your life as you are, Kimberly, and saying, I had some divorces here that were sinful and I shouldn't have, but now I'm married and I've repented. Okay. If you're married, you're married, right? If you're married to your 15th husband, you're married and you should be faithful to your 15th husband. And nothing I can do about that. The debris along the way, I'm sure you've already encountered, and that is leaving a trail of broken promises behind has not been good and it hasn't been helpful and you wish you could have done it differently. So lessons learned, but now you have to be faithful where you find yourself. And it's just like if I defaulted on 15 loans on houses in the past, if I become a Christian, I had to be faithful on this particular mortgage and pay it fully. and pay it till the end, till it's all paid off. And in terms of marriage, that's a lifetime commitment till death do us part. So be faithful. Don't look back other than to confess your sins and know there's a full pardon in Christ. We move forward and God can take broken situations and make good things out of them. So keep leaning in that direction and God will be gracious to you. I'm quite sure I've seen it many, many times in people's lives. even here at Compass where I pastor. All right, 1-877-913-5357. That's the number for tomorrow. We're going to start with a little bit in-depth question about the Septuagint tomorrow, and I'll try to make that as simple and understandable as I can. Until then, I hope you keep reading your Bibles, and if you come across a question, save it till tomorrow. We'll talk about it same time. Mike Fabariz signing off. Bye-bye. If 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.