Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bolling is a live call-in radio program providing doctrinal dialogue, cultural commentary, and insightful interviews with some of today's foremost Christian authors and leaders. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. The goal of the church and the radio program is to seek the glory of God in the salvation of sinners and the sanctification of the saints. by the Ministry of the Word. For more information, go to www.knowingthetruth.org. Here with today's edition of Knowing the Truth is Pastor Kevin Bowling. Hey, welcome into this edition of the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. This is Pastor Kevin Bowling, so glad that you joined us on the broadcast today. Well, on Christmas Eve last week or so, a little longer than a week now, megachurch pastor Perry Noble did it yet again. And what I mean by that, doing it yet again, I mean making headlines with an even more outrageous claims and controversial statements. And this time, some of the statements that were made by Pastor Perry Noble went further than just merely embracing a different method of gospel ministry. I've talked about that before on the program. I disagree with the type of methodology that is used. Primarily, I've addressed those points about methodology in the ministry there at New Spring and some of the other things that have been said and done there. This one was slightly different because it doesn't necessarily involve methodology of the gospel ministry, but it actually involved the message of the gospel itself, and not just a side aspect of the message of the gospel itself, but more of the fundamental or foundational aspect of the Gospel message itself. In fact, I would say more of the foundational aspect of the self-revelation of God that is found in the Scriptures. That's what the Scriptures are. The Catechism question asks, what do the Scriptures principally teach? And the answer is, the Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what God requires of man. And so those two things, it reveals to us who God is, and then what God requires of us. And so, when you change the fundamental aspects of the Scripture, you are dealing with the foundational issues of who God is and what he does in order to redeem his people unto himself. This particular statement and teaching that was given on Christmas Eve is at that level in my mind. It impacts the gospel at that level. Well, just prior to the final pre-Christmas service, word went out over the New Spring social media that God had given Pastor Perry a new sermon and that the folks there from New Spring should return to hear what God wanted Perry to say. So this added another element to this message. This wasn't just, you know, that a preacher had said something in a sermon that went awry. This was put forth that God specifically had spoke to Perry Noble, had told him to change his sermon that night And there were even members of the New Spring staff who then gave credence to this, that they said that they agreed that God had spoken to Perry and had told him then to change the sermon. Well, the premise of the new sermon was that Christians had made a serious error in their interpretation of the Ten Commandments. In fact, Noble said that the entire concept of God giving Moses commandments was erroneous, and according to Noble, he said that God had actually given ten promises. So he fundamentally changed the nature of the commandments from an imperative from God, thou shalt not, and so forth, an imperative from God. and change those things fundamentally to promises from God that this is what I will do for you, these types of things. And Nobel based that assertion on a conversation that he had with a Jewish, I think it was a cab driver, he refers to him as his driver, who told him that there was no such word for commandment in Hebrew And therefore, Christians had made a fatal error in their interpretation of passages like Exodus chapter 20, where the Ten Commandments are given, as well as recorded again in another passage as well. But he added that the actual title is the Ten Sayings, which Noble then converts to the Ten Promises. And it's true that the actual title for the Ten Commandments, similar to like you would have with the Beatitudes, the actual title is not given us there. It's called the Decalogue, the Ten Words. And it's true that there may not be a section that actually says these are the Ten Commandments that are given to us. But it's obvious in reading the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20, that they are commandments. And not only that, but there's plenty of other biblical data that calls them commandments as well. We just don't have the official title that is put there. So there's a kernel of truth in what is being said, but from that he extrapolates this entirely new, strange, and erroneous, unbiblical, and maybe even we go so far as heretical, teaching about what God is saying in the Ten Commandments. Pastor Perry proceeded to rewrite the Ten Commandments And the purpose for this, Perry goes on to explain that day when he was given the sermon, is that people will no longer have to worry about obeying the Ten Commandments, thus clearing away one of the major obstacles to them saying, as he says during the sermon, them saying yes to Jesus. And so that's his purpose. So on the program today, My guest is James Duncan. James is a pastor himself. He's an associate professor at Anderson University, and he blogs at pajamapages.com. And on his blog, James has written about this most recent incident involving Perry Noble, and he also has written about a couple of the other things that have taken place there at NewSpring as well, because one of the reasons is James is right there in Anderson, the birthplace of NewSpring, and so he's dealing with a lot of folks that are directly impacted by this. Now remember, we're talking about a church that I think it's at least tens of thousands of people in all of the satellite churches. I've heard estimates up to 40,000 people attending the different services. So this is not, again, just a small influence, but a tremendous influence, especially here in the upstate of South Carolina, but certainly beyond as well. So during our discussion today, I want to compare what Perry Noble said, what his comments, with the biblical record. Let's look at the record and see, is it true that the Bible doesn't speak of these being commandments? But then I also want to take some time to look at the theological ramifications of rewriting the Ten Commandments. What does this do to the revelation of God itself, and what does it do to the concept in the Scripture of redemption, the redemption of God's people? So it's a lot on our plate. We're going to take the full time on the program here to do it, and James, welcome to the Knowing the Truth radio program to talk about this important subject. Well, thank you. I'm happy to be here. One thing I need to say, I appreciate the compliment, but I'm not a pastor. Okay. I thought you were. I study pastors, but I'm just a professor. Okay. I thought I had you listed. I'm sorry. I don't know where I got that from. I appreciate the honor, but I can't claim it myself. Well, yeah, sometimes on the program people call me Dr. Bowling, and I've accepted the honorary doctorate degree many times, so I know what you're saying. Well, let's start right at the very beginning, James. Talk a little bit. I gave a brief summary of what took place, but if you want to fill in some of the blanks or talk about the actual event that took place and how this came about and so forth, feel free to do that. And obviously, I want to make a beeline then for the biblical data and the theological ramifications, but if you feel that more needed to be said about what was done and how it was done, please feel free to go ahead and start that way. I think you summarized it fairly well. It was I think the notable points are that he says this is a message that God told me to deliver, and then acknowledges at the outset that he spent just ten minutes preparing the sermon. It shows. It's actually kind of interesting, given the furor that's erupted since then, that he prefaces the sermon by saying, you may hate this. This might come off really badly, and if you do hate it, don't worry about a comeback another time and i'll have a look at a sermon for you uh... now that some of us are looking at the sermon and saying yeah there's really a a lot here not to like uh... we now with the problem is off for for nitpicking uh... you'd imagine they might be a little bit more space for saying get that they're invested on this one but yeah he is his his main claim uh... he takes it further than to to say there are there's no such thing as the ten commandments he repeatedly says there are no commands which he then applies to the commandments but his his foundational claim is that the old testament does not have any commands because there's no hebrew word for command which is is obviously an error and you can understand how he got that he he got the wrong end of the stick on as you explained that there's no title, formal title for the Ten Commandments, but he's taken it much further than that. And so the problem is, initially, what is it about Perry's internal theological governors that would not stop him to say, there must be something wrong with this? And then since he preached it, for people to online for example to come and say you you got this wrong and here's here's how obviously you got this wrong it's a simple very serious error he really doubled down last weekend by saying i've gone back and looked at this and yes indeed i was right and it really amps up all of the error that was contained in the christmas eve uh... if you come out and said you know i got it wrong i really got it wrong i apologize i repent We would embrace that, but he hasn't done that, and so I think it warrants a lot of the attention that this sermon is now getting, that he continues to embrace that error. Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that there are certainly some side issues here to look at as to why this type of thing is done there. There's a lot of cheerleading involved, of course, associated with the ministry. I follow Perry on Twitter and so forth. And every tweet is pretty much, you know, that this week is going to be the greatest week ever in our time at New Spring. And there's a tremendous amount in it. In order to keep that going, you always have to come up with something new, some new sort of fangled approach to things. That whole mentality breeds this type of teaching where you are constantly looking for something new and innovative, and innovative is not a great word when we talk about theology. And so to be innovative in your approach in that and I think that kind of breeds there I think the whole approach to the to the numbers and constantly the you know that you've got to have a number of people coming forward for salvation is built around that type of of a methodology, I think, breeds this as well. He calls people at the end to salvation, just say yes to Jesus, when there really wasn't a gospel presentation given at all during the service. If you're just talking about, we're going to dismiss these commands as being promises, That's not a salvation message. That's not laying out clearly man's condition before God and then Christ as our all-sufficient Savior to take away the penalty of our sins. And so you're calling them to something that you have never really explained to them during the service. And then I think one more point, too, there is the historical aspect of this, and I never hear this mentioned there, and so I don't know how much of a concern it really is to Perry or the rest of the folks there at that ministry, but this is completely out of sorts with the rest of church history, orthodox view of the commandment. So if Perry Noble is right, then the Church Fathers, the early Church Fathers are wrong. The Reformers are wrong. The Puritans are wrong. The Spurgeon and J.C. Ryle and John Owen and on and on and on and on. They're all wrong. They've all missed it on the commandments. But Perry Noble in Anderson, South Carolina, suddenly has gotten a new revelation from God and he has, you know, got the true story as to what the Bible is actually saying. And that, obviously, I'm stating it that way to see just how ridiculous it is, right? Yes. I think Rick Warren kind of got this whole rejection of historical Protestantism and Christianity even further back than that started. He has this whole creed himself that he goes by deeds, not creeds, which you see in Perry Noble and Stephen Furtick and others of their ilk, that It's kind of a very in-the-moment Christianity, that anything that happened before you were born really doesn't matter. And the creeds that we have from the beginning of the Church, and even the letters of the New Testament themselves, are responses to error. And Paul's epistles and all of the creeds should tell us The Christian faith is a complex thing, and it's very easy to get seriously wrong, and these things carefully bring us back to the truth. And so you've got this new generation of leaders who are saying, I don't need that. And in Perry's case, I don't even need to be educated, so I can reject all of these correcting helps. I don't need to know anything myself, I'll just have these ideas, I'll go and find a verse, and I'll start to preach it. It's no great surprise that they tilt and fall over, and Perry's been tilting badly for a long time. I think what makes this sermon so notable, and a lot of people now paying attention to it, is that very clearly and distinctly he's crossed the line. He's left Christian orthodoxy. And when he had the chance to come back, he wouldn't. You can't make an argument that Perry's sermon is Christian. And what do you do with that, then? You've got this pastor who's revered by a lot of people as being this great, terrific Christian leader, and he's preaching anti-Christian messages that, for the last 2,000 years, would have been quickly and easily recognized as being anti-Christian, and would have been condemned for what he is preaching now. Exactly, and they have built in a mechanism for dealing with any sort of criticism, as you pointed out in the response, you know, that anybody who then critiques the message is viewed as a hater, as somebody who, you know, is trying to attack and destroy the ministry of New Spring. Well, you know, we're told in the Scriptures to be faithful Bereans, and the Bible tells us, and to go to the Word of God, to make sure that it agrees with the Word of God. I just preached this last Sunday morning on the Hebrews, in the book of Hebrews, where It spoke about them remembering what their leaders had spoken to them, and where they had spoken the Word of God. The litmus test for whether or not they were true, faithful preachers sent by God was whether or not they agreed with the Word of God, if they taught the Word of God. And Isaiah chapter 8 says to the Word and to the testimony, if it agrees not with these, it's because there's no light in them. And so we have a mandate from the Almighty to compare every man and every movement to the Word of God and to see whether it agrees with these. And if it doesn't, it should be rejected. And this certainly doesn't pass that test. It should be certainly rejected as a false teaching. And I think that we could have the discussion then about whether he should be rejected as a false teacher. I think that there's a couple of steps there, but one is this unwillingness to repent once you have been shown that what you have taught is unbiblical. And so I agree with you that unless he, when he's shown from others and from the Word of God clearly that this is an unbiblical position that you're teaching and embracing, and then you continue to teach and embrace that and don't repent of it, then we start talking about the idea that this has gone from false teaching to false teacher, and that's a very scary place to be. When I saw this, this was just a thought that came to my mind, but I thought that this is like what happened recently with Mark Driscoll. This is the beginning of the end of Perry Noble's ministry, unless he repents and gets this right about this teaching that he put forth. But that remains to be seen. Let's go to the actual teaching and the idea of commands in the Scripture. You did a great job in your blog, and let me remind our listening audience here, that we're speaking with, James Duncan, and he blogs out at pajamapages.com. We won't have a chance today to go over all that he wrote there, but he laid out very well what the Scripture has to say, first of all, about the use of commands in Scripture, and even more specifically, about referring to passages like Exodus 20 as being the commands of God. So, James, lay the case there out for us. Summarize what you wrote on your blog about that point. Right. And the points, whatever arguments I made, are fairly obvious and very brief, just summarizing what's easily found in Scripture. But the two places that the Commandments are found, Deuteronomy 5, Exodus 2, but especially in Deuteronomy 5, you start reading a couple of chapters before, and then certainly well after that. Moses prefaces it by saying, I'm going to give you commands, and they're God's commands. He uses words like statutes and rules, and then he puts them all together right before the Ten Commandments. These are the commandments, the statutes and rules that the Lord commanded me to teach you. If you take Perry's argument seriously, because remember he said it's not just about the Ten Commandments. There is no Hebrew word for command. He repeated it often. And this last Sunday, he wouldn't even correct that. There is no Hebrew word for command. You kind of turn the Old Testament into a sieve. You take out very common words. Psalm 119, every single verse in the longest chapter in the Bible, is an ode, a praise of God's commands. And Psalm 119 uses different words in each verse, but it's a pattern. It's a, let's embrace this. So if you insert Perry's interpretation of this, that this is promise, then some of the verses in the Old Testament become farcical. You take Deuteronomy 8.1, for example, the whole promise that I promise you today you shall be careful to do. Well, promises aren't something I do, promises are something that I receive, you know, the proper verse is the whole commandment that I command you today. You can't interpret your way out of that, to say, this is not commandment. One other thing I really haven't talked about on my blog, but the more I think about it, you get a very dangerous perception of Scripture, if you agree with what Perry says, that we can go back and change the meaning of the word. that when you look at the word commandment, it really doesn't mean what you think it means, that we're just going to go back and arbitrarily change the meaning of it. Well, if I can't trust that when the Scripture tells me that this is command, I can't trust anything in Scripture. No word in Scripture has any meaning that I can put any faith in. And so the very foundation of our faith, which is God's revealed Word, Perry has this, really, it denies Scripture itself by saying, you can't trust it. The obvious meaning of Scripture, you can't trust. And in fact, what you see is the very opposite of it. Well, I thought, too, that his reason for—and he lists this at the beginning of the sermon—for wanting to talk about the commandments and rewrite the commandments, restate the very nature of them, is that people have expressed to him that they are a stumbling block to them coming to salvation. I would say, amen. You know, they're designed to be. This idea that the gospel message is offensive to people, and we need to then tweak the gospel message to make it non-offensive to people, is the problem. That's really where the real problem is. And we got to see this in graphic illustration by what Perry did on Christmas Eve. He basically said, well, if that's a problem, well, let's change then what the Word of God says so that it makes it less of a problem, and then you can say yes to Jesus. But that's not what we're supposed to do, and certainly nobody truly gets saved that way. When we look at the Ten Commandments, I put them under three different headings as to what the purpose of the moral law of God is, or the Ten Commandments. Number one, The purpose is that they are designed to show us that we are accountable to God. We are not autonomous. There is a standard of right and wrong, and God, as the Creator, has given us that standard, and He has every right to do that as our Creator. And so, you know, when Perry changes these to promises because he doesn't like, he speaks about commandment with disdain, as if, you know, God doesn't have a right to do this to his people. He can do whatever he deems his right to do. He is God. Let him be God. And as God, we are accountable to him. Secondly, it shows us the only standard that is acceptable with God. The only thing that God is going to accept is absolute, perfect obedience in every thought, word, and deed. When we look at the commandments, they go deeper than just the outward expression of them. Every aspect of it, our heart, our mind, our will, our emotion, everything is going to be judged by God. It's a deep level here, and the Lord shows us we're not left to speculate what standard is he going to use. The standard is clearly laid out. And when we see that inflexible standard of God, It drives us then to an all-sufficient Savior, even the Lord Jesus Christ, because we realize immediately we don't measure up to the Ten Commandments, but there's One who did, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is His righteousness that we are resting in and that is imputed to us by faith to give us a standing before God. So to change the idea of all of that, which then is foundational throughout the rest of the Scripture—Book of Romans, Galatians, all throughout the epistles and so forth—it destroys the representation of God, who He is. These are not just 10 things that are separate from God. This is an expression of His holiness, His very being, and then it destroys the redemption that God has provided. It changes the very nature of it. Would you agree? I agree. You're absolutely right. But hearing his preface to this was really heartbreaking, because I'm going to just read a couple of lines from him, but he talks about this response that he gets from non-Christians, and they say, they tell Perry, I don't feel like I could keep all the rules. I don't feel like I could keep the commandments. And so because I can't do it well, I'm not even going to try, and I'd rather not try than to try at something and fail. There's the gospel teed up for you perfectly. You couldn't get it any better. Right. Somebody said, I can't keep the commandments, so I'm not going to try. Perry says, it's okay, you don't need to keep the commandments. The gospel is, you've already failed. Yes. You've already failed, and you are hopeless. God is your enemy. Yet, there's hope. Yet, Christ. And so by taking away the commandments, you take away Christ. How do you, yeah, like you said, how do you point us to Christ without showing that the commandments have ruined me already? that's so sad that this pastor doesn't see the opportunity right there? Exactly, and that's what the Lord Jesus Christ did when the rich young ruler came, and he said, all these things I have kept from my birth, and the Lord Jesus Christ could look into his heart and see. First of all, he's got a problem with lying, but He went into his heart and he said, sell everything you have and give it to the poor. He could tell he did have an idol in his heart. He was breaking the second commandment. He was trusting in the first commandment and trusting in things that had a God above God, which was mammon. and the Lord exposes this to him, and then he walks away sad. Now, Christ didn't say, as Perry said, well, you know, don't worry about the commandments. You know, they're actually not commandments. Here's a perfect opportunity. Oh, those are promises, and you don't even need to be concerned about them at all. No, he tells them what the command is, and to bring a person to the end of themselves, when the person says, I can't keep the commandment, then you say, that's right, you can't. But there is someone who did, and that one who did is none other than God's Son, the gift of God Himself that came in order to earn for us a perfect righteousness and to pay the penalty for our sins upon Calvary, and that's the gospel message. I want to talk more about this, James, but we're going to take a quick commercial break. When we come back from the break, we'll pick it up from there. I want to talk then, we've already delved into it a little bit, but into the theological ramifications of this. How does this impact the gospel itself? How does this impact the revelation of God, you know, who God is? What does this turn God into? I think it really is damaging to the Lord himself and the way that he depicts himself, his self-revelation in the scriptures. We'll talk a little bit more about that with James Duncan when we come back from the break. Stay tuned. You're listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. For more information about today's program, the radio ministry, and the resources we offer, go to www.knowingthetruth.org. To be sure, the principal attack of Satan against the holiness of God is against the authority and the inerrancy and the infallibility of the Word of God. A battle for the Bible. But there's only one problem. When you come to believe as a people that the Bible is inspired, you've only fought half the battle. The major question following that, that must be answered, is the Bible sufficient? The 2015 G3 Conference, January 22nd through the 24th in Douglasville, Georgia, where the subject will be, The Bible is the Word of God. Featuring speakers Paul Washer, Stephen Lawson, Richard Owen Roberts, Votie Bauckham, H.B. Charles Jr., James White, Tim Challies, David Miller, and Josh Bice. Sponsored by The Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically Study, with an exclusive first look at the Logic on Fire film. Register today, online, at G3conference.com. Many evangelical Christians today are asking if the theory of evolution can coexist with a high view of scriptural authority. Increasing numbers of scholars have been making the case that biblical fidelity does not rule out evolution. According to Dr. Richard Phillips, this view is tragically mistaken. Dr. Phillips will address the Creation Study Group on Thursday, January 15th concerning the question, Can the Bible and Evolution Coexist? His presentation will focus on three key topics. Does Genesis 1 teach history? Can the Bible's teaching concerning Adam be made compatible with the theory of evolution? And what effect do the necessary implications of evolution have on historic Christian doctrines? Join us in person at Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Greenville or watch the live webcast of this Creation Study Group presentation and emerge well informed and prepared to defend the Bible against the advocacy of evolutionary theory. Welcome back to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Information regarding the resources referenced on today's program can be found at www.knowingthetruth.org. Now here to continue with today's program is Pastor Kevin Bowling. Hey, welcome back into the second half of the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. You just heard a couple of commercials there. I didn't even realize just how appropriate the first one was coming from the G3 conference that's coming up. I got some sad news for you. The conference's registration is closed. It's all filled. The good news is I'm going. No, just kidding. Sorry, but I'll be there and I'm going to be trying to do some interviews with some of the speakers that are there, Voti Bakum and Steve Lawson and Paul Washer and others are all going to be speaking at that conference. Here's the good news for you. The conference is going to be streamed live at that website. So you can go to the G3 conference website, and when you go there you can watch the conference for free. So there's a great resource for you. They talked about that Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, the release of the documentary that they've put together, we're going to get to see that for the first time, is going to be shown there as well. And the subject of that conference was, The Bible is the Word of God. Well, isn't that an appropriate topic for what we're talking about today? That fits very, very well. Let me tell you, another commercial you heard on there was for the Creation Study Group and their upcoming session that's going to be with Dr. Rick Phillips, who's right here in second downtown Greenville as the senior pastor. I've requested for Dr. Phillips to be on with me tomorrow. We haven't confirmed yet, but he may be on with me tomorrow to give us a little sneak peek at that presentation about creation versus evolution and why that's such an important discussion and why we should look at what the scriptures have to say, of course, and hold to what the scriptures have to say about creation. And then I want to let you know that on Thursday, Reggie Kimbrough is going to come back and join me on the broadcast to talk about the rapture. In light of the Left Behind series, Reggie is going to come on. He's just written a new book. And in that new book, he talks about what the Bible has to say about the rapture. And specifically, we're going to be looking at it from a historical premillennial position on the broadcast. And so it's going to be interesting. On Thursday, we're going to take the full hour with Reggie to talk about that subject. And so I think you want to tune in to hear what he has to say about the rapture on Thursday. Okay, with that, let's go back to our topic for today. Our topic today is really the commandments of God. Are they commandments or not? The Scripture clearly speaks of them as being commandments, and they're an expression of who God is himself, is primarily focusing on the attribute of the holiness of God, which is part of all of his, as somebody texted me about a question for the broadcast, I think, but as a part of the holiness of God. And this is so important that we see it that way. And secondly, it is obviously foundational to the entire redemptive story that we find in the Scriptures itself. We're speaking with James Duncan about this. James has blogged about a statement that was made by Pastor Perry Noble on Christmas Eve at his—not just a statement, but an entire teaching that the commandments are not commandments, that they're actually promises of God. Perry goes on then to restate each one of the Ten Commandments and the restating of them is woefully lacking, if I could put it that way. For instance, let me read to you just the opening commandment. It says this, Exodus chapter 20. I'll read the introduction to it as well, but it says, And God spake all these words. That's important. I should point this out. The Lord felt that these things were so important and so foundational that he spoke them himself. God spoke them himself. And they were written with the very finger of God in stone. We have a saying where we say when something is transient or not fixed, you know, we say, well, it's not written in stone. Well, these were written in stone. And these were written in stone by the very finger of Almighty God. And God spake, not through Moses. He spoke audibly to the people that were there. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God. which has brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, thou shalt have no other gods before me." Here's what Perry says that that is actually saying when he translates it to a promise. He says, it's not, you shall have no other gods before me. That becomes, you do not have to live in constant disappointment anymore. I'm not kidding. That's actually what he changes it to. You shall not live. You talk about a man-centered theology. The I am has become you do not have to. So, James, your thoughts on the translations here? Well, the typical way of considering the Ten Commandments, so we break them up into first four, which are about orientation towards God, and the final six are about our orientation towards our neighbor, Perry turns them all to God's orientation towards me, or my orientation towards me. So he denies them, and I guess it's not surprising that in denying them, you turn them inside out. You make them exactly what they're not. And just to pick up on a point you were mentioning before the break, the Commandments teach us two things. They teach us the nature of God, and the nature of man. God's holiness, and in contrast, our absolute fallenness. And what Perry's done is rewritten them where both of those become covered up, both of them become hidden. We don't see who God is. You shall not live in constant disappointment anymore. That says nothing about anything. And so it says nothing about God's holiness, and in contrast, nothing about my fallenness. And in so doing, you remove the need for the gospel, which is the central point here. Amen. When we look in the New Testament Scriptures in 1 John 2, 3, and 4, we hear things like this, and hereby we know that we know Him. if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him." So there's a pretty clear statement about the importance of the commandments. Now there it's talking about the use of the law, the third use of the law afterwards in the Christian's life, but nevertheless, We see that the commandments of God are not abrogated, that grace doesn't lessen the Christian's obligation to the law. It actually increases it. Paul said it this way in Romans 3.31. He said, do we then make void the law of God through faith? God forbid! He uses the strongest possible term. God forbid! yay, we establish the law. And a little bit further in Romans 6, 15, what then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid that we should do this. So Paul is adamant about the idea of keeping the law, and I think that what really is reflected here is a complete misunderstanding. He doesn't get what the purpose of the law is in the Scriptures, and so often... He's embarrassed by it. It's worth watching how he actually presents the biblical text from that first commandment, because he mimics God, and he's wagging his finger as if God's being selfish and unreasonable. And just the body language says I wish God hadn't said this. This is so unreasonable. I can understand why people don't like this God." Well, it's hard to judge the motives there or what he's actually thinking, but it does fit with—he had also started by saying that there was two reasons that people don't come to Christ. One is—and he does this constantly—is Christians, so he bashes the Church. And, you know, this whole idea of using that as part of the stick there, you know, the methodology of ministry is to bash the Orthodox Church and to call everybody who disagrees with what's going on at New Spring as being religious but not really having a relationship with God. That is just, that is a defamation of character. and he's speaking poorly about the church that Jesus Christ died for. And we're never encouraged in the Scripture to use that as a method of evangelism, to talk about how bad the church is. I wouldn't allow it if somebody came in and to my home, and while I was sitting in the living room with them, and my wife was in the kitchen, to allow them to then badmouth my wife that was in the kitchen, I'd drag them out the front door for doing it, and I can only imagine that Christ and His bride, He's not pleased with the idea that the bride of Christ is constantly used as a punching bag, and then used as a methodology for reaching out to the lost, to say, hey, I'm with you, I don't like Christians either, And so I'm one with you, and we're not like those Christians. It's very elitist, and it's very arrogant in its approach, and I think it's just time that we call him out on that as well. But basically with these commands, the way that he has reworded them, He makes them into just something that is hindering man's full potential or purpose in life. You know, just the consequences of their life. You want to have better consequences and make better choices in your life, that these are somehow divine suggestions that are given by God. These are God's holy commands. These are His absolute standard that you're going to be judged by. And I think so he completely misstates and misrepresents God by putting these things in such a flippant manner. Would you agree? I agree. You take the Ten Commandments as giving us a glimpse of the very nature of reality, and you kind of Osteen-like just boil them down boil, actually, all the flavor out and make them as tepid as possible to being, this is how you have your best life now. There's nothing eternal about them. There's nothing transcendent about them. It's all about how I'm going to feel at work tomorrow. There obviously is application of the Ten Commandments to our temporal life, but when you restrict their meaning to just that, it's really It's sad. It's really small. It's such a small conception of God and a small conception of what Christianity is and what the Gospel is. It really, you know, we're concerned about souls and the souls of the people that are there listening to this type of teaching and now are being encouraged to come to his defense. I saw pictures now of, I think it was of some of the staff members there saying, we've got your back, Perry, and so forth. to, you know, now to call these people to rise up and defend this unbiblical teaching is just extremely sad. And to give people a false sense of security, their eternal security, by telling them that based upon what he preached in this sermon, that they had heard the gospel expounded and had actually given their life to Christ. God is sovereign, and he can work in spite of what the preacher says, and he has. He's worked in spite of what this preacher has said and done in the pulpit, and I understand that. But we still have an obligation before God to speak the truth and to give people an assurance that just saying yes to Jesus the way that he called them to do without actually explaining the gospel message properly That's the very height of easy believism and cheap grace, and you end up, I think, leaving behind a lot of carnage and a lot of casualties of people who think that they have received Christ when they've done nothing of the sort. And that's a really dangerous thing. And your point before about this constant depiction of anybody outside newspapers being mean and haters and he used those terms and in describing the criticism of the sermon is that you create this mentality of it's us against the world and so therefore it you know in the last week what you can do then is to say this criticism about what i said we suggest the haters And so a lot of the defense, and I have a lot of new springers who are coming onto my blog and commenting, and they're, you know, you just hate new spring. You just, you know, why don't you come? There's nothing hateful about it. If somebody gave you an incorrect message or somebody taught you error, the hateful thing would be to let you wallow in that error, to let you believe that error. We're saying, we think you were pretty sure, but you were taught error. That's a kind thing. That's a loving thing. It's kind. The accusation of hate is just so lazy, and it's not true. I don't hate Perry Noble. There's love all the way around here. There's love for God and His Word. Yes. But that's what we're arguing about. That's the highest form of love. That's what we should have in common. We love God's Word. I think you got it wrong. We'll have a conversation about this if you want to, but I think you got it wrong. Second, it's love for God's people. You're being taught falsely. We want you to get it right. I want to be taught right. I'm going to look, and like the Bereans, I'm going to examine. It's love for God's people. I think you need to know what's true here. And it's love for Perry Noble. It's a warning for Perry Noble. Perry, we think you've stepped over the line here. We really want you to come back. If we ignored this, Perry preaches this, and we just keep our mouths shut. Just Perry himself. This is a loving thing. This is the whole idea. Church discipline is not designed to punish people or to hurt people. It's designed to restore people, and even excommunication. The Protestant understanding of excommunication is we don't damn anybody by excommunicating them. We warn them because we want to bring them back. Now, we're not excommunicating Perry. I don't want to misunderstand that, but to warn Perry You're sinned here in the way that you have presented God's Word, and it troubles us that you're not coming back here, and you have dug in your heels and you said, I'm not coming back. There's still an opportunity for Him to do it, and we pray that He will. Exactly, and I think that, and I can prove this from the Word of God, that we have an obligation to confront those that are teaching error or that are involved in error. This is the whole idea of admonishing one another. For anybody to want to read a full explanation of that, you can read Jay Adams' book on Competent to Counsel, and it deals with that whole subject about admonishing or lovingly confronting one another with the truth. I love the idea that you brought out, and this is where we'll be ending the broadcast today, that on the subject of love, Romans 13, 10, says that love is the fulfilling of the law. Love is not apart from the law. It is the fulfilling of the law. And the Lord summarizes the Ten Commandments with one word. He summarizes them with the word love. In Matthew 22 it says this, and one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus, notice first of all he mentioned the commandment, and then Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like undo it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, And on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So the commandments come down to loving God and loving our neighbor. And so we're interested in love, but we're interested in love the way that God has revealed it to us. It's defined by the law, the law of God. And so we want the true expression of the love for God and love for others to come forth. And that's not going to happen if we go out and we tweak the law of God or rewrite the law of God to say that it is saying something completely different. We've got to do it in keeping with the way that God has revealed himself to us and the way that he speaks about redemption. Let me give you the last word, James. What do you want people to do, and what do you want people to think as they walk away from our broadcast today? Go and read the Ten Commandments. That's really all I would argue, is go and read the Bible yourself, whether it's Perry Noble or your own pastor, assuming you're not a newspringer listening. If it's your own pastor, everything that your pastor says has to be defended by Scripture. And if it's not, you should lovingly confront your pastor. You should get it right. And Scripture is really what matters, and we don't have the right, nor should we have the inclination to try and change that. And that's our standard. That's what we all have in common. And it matters that we get it right. It really matters. Amen. Well, that's a good place to end it on. James, thanks so much for your writing. Thanks for taking time out today to talk about this important subject and the spirit in which you're talking about it. I really appreciate the work that you're doing, and thank you for being on today. You're welcome. It was good to talk to Okay, that was James Duncan again. I put on the blog that James is a pastor. I'll correct that on my blog, but he's an associate professor at Anderson University, and I think he teaches communications. And he blogs out at www.pajamapages.com. That's pajamapages, that's all one word, dot com. And you can read his blog post on the initial statements and service that took place on Christmas Eve. And then there's been some updates since then that Perry Noble and Newspring have sent out a few things, and Perry has said some things from the pulpit as well. And you can read all of that out on James's website, pajamapages.com. Let me just echo what was said there at the very end that James said, you know, I'm interested in the integrity of the Word of God. I'm interested in that we maintain the purity of the message of the gospel of our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'm interested in that in my own ministry. I made that very same claim to my own people from my own pulpit that I was preaching on Sunday, that if something is said From this pulpit that doesn't agree with the Word of God, you have every right and a responsibility to confront me about it. And I'm happy to sit with the Word of God and open it up with you in order to see what God's Word said. That should be the standard for all of us. And I hope other Christian leaders will stand up and take note and speak about this as well. Remember, Jesus said this, He said you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. We'll see you next time. You're listening to Knowing the Truth. To keep this ministry strong and coming your way, you can make a financial gift at knowingthetruth.org by clicking on the donate button. You've been listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bolling. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. For more information about the church and radio ministry, visit us on the web at knowingthetruth.org. The opinions expressed on today's program are those of the announcers, their guests and callers and do not necessarily represent those of the staff and management of his radio network, the Radio Training Network or Clear Channel Communications.