Hello and welcome to the program World in Focus. You know what? Tonight, we have an interesting and a lovely program for you because we thank god for this stations, Genesis, Revelation, that god has made it possible for us to go to every length possible to make sure we have clearer understanding of his words so that we can become solid, solid Christians going about spreading things from different angles. So at the end of the day, we have a clear picture of what is going on in the Word of God. Because in the studio with me tonight, two wonderful people. You know what? I asked them for the sizes of their gloves before we started. and they refused to give me one because they're coming from two opposing sides to talk about things of this kingdom of God that we, every one of us, have a clearer picture what is going on. But before we go ahead to tell you what the topic tonight is about, I just tell you who they are. To my right hand side I got I call him right reverend, but he says he just wants to be known simply as Simon Perry. And he's from the Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church. And also with him, another great man of God. I thank God for his life. We've been on the program together to talk about whether Christians should go to war or not. He's still a warrior, and he's still there doing battle for the kingdom of God. And I thank God for his life. He's by the name Brother Dan O'Riordan. He's from Aaron Reformed Baptist Church in Dublin. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. Amen. I hope you guys are ready. Fire it up. You know what? What we're going to be discussing tonight is about whether God, it is man that seeks God or God that seeks man. You know, you go through the Bible and you see a lot of interesting things. You see some statements and you keep wondering, what is this statement about? But tonight, we're just going to explore this possibility that, well, is it man that looks for God? Because, you know, you go to different parts of the world, some people are bowing to stones, some are bowing to trees, and different things. And in other parts, different things are happening. So I'm going to be asking them this question tonight. Is it man that seeks God, or God that seeks man, or God that reaches out to man? So they're going to be talking from different angles, because on the blue corner, we got one man, and on the red corner, the other man. So really, before we go ahead, I just would like you to just share with us, just to encourage somebody. There are some people who are not Christians watching tonight. And they're not born again. So when you say you're born again, they don't even have a clue what you mean by being born again. You know, like Nicodemus said to Christ, should I go into my mother's womb and come back out again? No. So I just wanted to share with us, Brother Simon, how you got connected to the Lord, you were born again, and got involved in what you're doing today. And maybe a bit of background to yourself, because you were in the, was it the Air Force? I was in the Air Force, yes. I did six years in the Royal Air Force. you look at one of those some of those hollywood guys who acted what's that film called the the one the flying the gremlin top gun top gun you know you know no gremlins we're talking about top gun yes you know one of those guys who who were doing dog dog fights in the sky oh right yes well i was probably one of the people on the ground watching them but um No, I was a Christian before I joined up actually. I got dragged reluctantly by my parents to a Christian festival called Spring Harvest in 1986 when I was 16. I heard the gospel presented in different ways on different evenings. I met up with a bunch of people that I knew from my former school. It was quite clear that the message I was hearing made sense and it clearly had an impact on the real everyday life of the people that I knew. So I made a commitment, encountered Christ and that is the moment at which we use the language of being born again. I think for me, there's a sense in which we're kind of born again every day, I think. Every day we're sort of alive to what God is doing here and now. We talk about testimony, we talk about what God is doing today. But yes, I had several years in the Royal Air Force and lots of boring roles. One of my tasks was to protect some of our military installations from possible terrorist attack and I think we'll hear something of the significance of that in a minute. The only terrorist I ever encountered and only ever pointed a gun at was moving around in a hedge and when he appeared it was a fox. It's the extent of my active service, I'm afraid. It's not quite Hollywood. Amen. God bless you, sir. Thank God for your life. And Brother Dan, I know you used to be in the IRA before, but tell us, how did you get know come to know the Lord and then you know and your past as well because it's kind of strange he was in the Air Force protecting the base against the IRA attack that's right and then you were in the IRA itself I was in the IRA that's correct I spent the best part of my life as a member of the Irish Republican Army. Not the provisional IRA, the official IRA. How I came to be saved is a miracle in itself and I think everyone who is saved has experienced a miracle. I had ceased activity with the IRA and had sort of falling out with politics in general, you know, I didn't want to have anything to do with anything. But the drug situation in Dun Laoghaire, the area I come from, and in particular Sally Noggin, where I live, in the state where I live, the drug situation got out of hand. And the provisional IRA set up a front group called the Concerned Parents Against Strokes. And we used to march on pushers' houses and warn them to leave the area or we take drastic action against them. And we did intend to take drastic action in knowledge meaning. Two brothers, we used to be pushing drugs in the area and we marched in their house and we gave them a week to leave the area or we'd come back to deal with them. And at the end of that week, The two brothers knocked on my door, and they were carrying Bibles. And they said that they weren't real Posh's, but that their brothers had been. And I thought this was sort of trying to weasel it away. But on the Sunday, Sunday afternoon, The pastor of a little brethren church, it was Northall Brethren Church in those days, came up to the house, introduced himself and said he was there to confirm that these two lads were Christians and it was brothers and the brothers had already left the area, you see. This man's name was Terry Price, and they all left to Terry. Terry then said to me, how do you feel about God yourself, Dan? and I remember clearly saying to him look I accept that there is a God which I never doubted at any point but I said the Jehovah's Witnesses tell you one thing and they are able to come through the Bible and give you scriptures to prove it and I said the Mormons come along and they tell you another thing and they are able to go through the Book of Mormon and the Bible to prove it I said, I don't know the truth. So I said, I'm going to be the hurler and the ditch. I'm going to be totally neutral. And he says, but what happens when you die? Well, I said, then I tell God himself, well, look, it's you made the confusion, not me. It's your problem, you see. And he said, well, you know, he says, the Bible is clear in that. And he suggested that he come and we have a talk about the Bible on a Wednesday. And just for politeness sake, I said, OK, come. I didn't want to insult him. He came the following Wednesday and he came the next Wednesday and he was giving me the gospel message and going through scripture with me. And I was welcoming him back because I was thinking in my mind, while he's away now I'll go through this myself and when he comes back I'll be able to tear him to bits. But as I studied with him, nothing traumatic happened but over a period of time I realised this is the truth. I'm a sinner, I'm lost, I'm without hope. and I need a saviour, and that saviour is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that became Sion, as a result, you know. Now, the extraordinary thing is that there are two individuals here sitting side by side, right? And we may argue, not argue, but discuss different viewpoints of some scripture. But yet we're brothers in Christ. Yet he was an enemy that I would not have had the slightest hesitation in putting a bullet in the man's head. Now, only through the grace of God is a bullet in Christ with me. And the Reverend Ian Paisley, you might have heard of him in the North, and the PUK, Democratic Unionist Party, and the Free Presbyterian Church. He's a figure that was hated in the South, and he was hated by me too, to be honest with you. But I in fact was up, less than a year ago, in one of his churches, giving my testimony. That in itself was a miracle, you know, because, now when I say I was a Republican, I was an out-and-out Republican, and though I consider myself a freedom fighter, I was the terrorist that you would have considered me to be like, you know, because one man's a terrorist and another man's a freedom fighter. But I was prepared to shoot, kill, maim for political gain, for freedom as I saw it. And I didn't realise that the only real freedom that exists is the freedom you get through God's truth. When the Lord said, you know, My freedom will lead you to it. Wonderful. Thank God. God bless you, sir. That's fantastic. The only true freedom. That's right. Is in Christ Jesus. That's right. Praise God. God bless you, sir. You know what? As we proceed with this program, if you want to send us an email, just send it through to live at talkgod.com. We'll make sure we read them out. Whatever contribution you might have, if you have a question for them as we proceed, Just make sure you send them through. You might have some scriptures that we might have overlooked in the process. Make sure you send them through live at talkgod.com. God bless you. My question to you both, really, I just want you to come from both sides. Is man capable of seeking God? I'll start with you, Brother Dan. Okay. Well, can I reach out Man by his fall into a state of sin has wholly lost all ability of will to do any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So as a natural man, being altogether averse from good and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto. I accept that as the spiritual condition of man before God. And there is scriptural support for it. Romans 3, 10-12 reads, chapter 3, 10-12, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless. There is none who does good, there is not even one. And I would feel, and then I'll leave it over to my brother beside me, I would feel that very black and white scriptural statement about man's spiritual condition, that in of himself he is unable to seek God. Now having said that, you were talking about people bound down to stones and trees and all the rest of it. There are those who apparently are seeking God. But they are seeking a God that fits in with their own philosophy on life. They are not seeking the sovereign almighty God who says this way or no way. You know, shut up. That's it. Wow. But you know, somehow in this Western part of the world, when we look at people like in Asia or in Africa, serving those strange gods, we tend to think that they are actually seeking God in those things. But in reality, it's not so because it's a spiritual experience. For instance, we know in the third world, in Africa, the so-called third world, that spirits possess inanimate objects. And spirits can speak through those objects to people. So for instance, you're on the farm, working on a particular day, and a tree starts talking to you, and it gives you instructions. Do this, do this, and do that, and this will happen. And then you do it, you get the result. And then as a result, the tree says, start worshiping me. But in reality, it's not really the tree. It's not because the man is connected with nature. It's because there's a spiritual force that's been able to deceive him that that is the true God. So that's, I just thought I'd just throw that one in. But before you deal with that one, let me just come to Brother Simon. So what's your take on this issue? It's quite interesting. In the first instance, I'd like to tie it in with some of the discussion that we've just been having about terrorism. You mentioned about the terrorism-freedom fighter issue. It's interesting that in Scripture, if you go straight to the Gospels, there is Jesus occupied a cross that belonged to a particular type of person. The word used to describe him is a word in Greek, leistes, which means somewhere, something between a freedom fighter and a terrorist. The cross is the kind of execution implement that's used for rebels against Rome, political rebels. So when Jesus is arrested in the middle of the night, he comes out and he says, if you come to arrest me with swords and clubs as though I were a What's the word? I think it says robber in most of our translations. It's the terrorist freedom fighter. And then you have Jesus going into the temple, he is livid with what's been going on there and he says this is the house of prayer for all nations but you have turned it into a den of again it's that same word for freedom fighter stroke terrorist and actually the temple was the one place where the resistance movement could store its arms because the Romans weren't allowed there and then of course you have Jesus is crucified between two other You could translate it as terrorist, but there's an ambiguity surrounding it. And the death that Jesus died was somebody utterly innocent of that desire to create God in your own image, which was part of the kingdom that everybody wanted when they shouted, release Barabbas. We want the king that we want, which kind of confirms a lot of what you were saying, and I think there's a strand that runs through scripture that endorses much of what Dan says. I would disagree with it in various ways. The quotation from Romans, for instance, is a quotation from the Old Testament and it's a context-specific statement about Israel, about nobody in Israel. I don't believe that means the whole of humanity. Paul is mounting an argument throughout Romans about who Israel is. But I think the question that I have for Dan, just in a very straightforward text, for instance, there's the Old Testament, there are the injunctions to seek God while he might be found, choose you this day whom you will serve, you know, in the earliest days, and in the Gospels themselves we're told not just to seek God but to seek First, the Kingdom of God. And by the Kingdom of God, again, the Kingdom of God simply means the kingship of God. It doesn't mean a place, it doesn't mean heaven. It's God's authority, God's sovereignty to be established in your life. And I think the reason why I can't go all the way with Dan is simply that there are these injunctions, these commands in Scripture that we should seek God. You want a question or you want to say something? On what he says about the Old Testament verses, you see, the Lord is speaking to his chosen people. He is not speaking to the nations. He is speaking to people to whom he has already revealed himself and they have gone astray. and he is appealing to them to come back. So really I don't think that can be used as an argument against it, because he did reveal himself to them. Now he's not addressing this to the nations around them, it's specifically to the chosen people of Israel. And in the New Testament, where he's making appeals like that, he's also talking to believers, some that have gone cold, but nonetheless believers, people to whom he revealed himself, you see. But I think what the question deals with is the natural man, in the sense the carnal man, the unsaved man, right, can he Now there's not only the one that I read out, there's 1st Corinthians 2.14. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. Now it doesn't say he may reject them or he may not like them. He says he cannot understand them, and then he explains why he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. And Ephesians 2, 1-3, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Well, he was talking to people here who weren't physically dead, you see. So when he's talking about them being dead, he's talking about them being spiritually dead, you see. Now, I heard many a preacher say, look, you're suffering from a terminal illness called sin. and you need a healer. Or they describe it as you're falling into the ocean, and you're tossing around in the water, and you're going down for the third time, and somebody throws you a rope, and you have to grab it. But I wasn't terribly ill, and I wasn't drowning. I was dead, and I had drowned, and I wasn't capable of using that rope. Yeah, but what do you say to someone like myself, for instance? I was a Muslim. Yeah. And somewhere along the line, I said, I thought to myself that this religion is not the right religion for me. So I need to seek the right religion that belongs to God. So I went from the Moonies, to the Jehovah's Witnesses, to the Moonies, to the Mormons, to the Scientologists. And finally, On a particular day, I found myself in the church where I finally gave my life to Christ. But somehow I was seeking, I was looking for this God. So what do you say about that? You know, if you said, you know, it's not man who seeks, but God that seeks. Because I think God led you to the truth. You see, a mistake people make is they believe that. Once you believe, you're born again. The reality is, Nicodemus was mentioned, I'll come to that in a second, the reality is you have to be born again before you believe, you have to be quickened by the Holy Spirit, you have to be given spiritual birth and then you're not like the natural man anymore that you cannot understand. You can understand, you now have the ability and there are those who sort of criticized the reformed viewpoint by saying, oh, you're telling me that they're grabbed, taken and screaming into the kingdom of God? No. God puts a new heart of flesh into us and we willingly go. God bless you, sir. Brother Simon, what do you got to say to that? There's quite a lot of things to respond to there. I have to say, again, with much of it I would want to agree. In that, I think that the texts that Dan mentioned, I think, do say that we are hopeless without God in the world. Equally, I believe that our reaching out for God is divinely enabled, but nevertheless, I believe that God has created us in such a way that we have a responsibility, and that means an ability to respond. Part of being human, I think, means having this freedom to respond. or not to respond. I don't see anywhere where it says that our individual choices are pre-programmed. But do we have biblical support for man's inability to seek God? If it's simply In some ways we have the Tower of Babel which is almost human beings trying to become God and building their tower up to heaven and God getting quite annoyed by it and so we all have these different languages and so on. That's the story, I think it's Genesis 12. but equally God has created human beings with a set of responsibilities and there are commandments and calls to seek God and simply the existence of those things suggest that there is room for human decision to be made and that's part of the way that God has created us as humans. Well, I would agree, you see, in this sense, this is a very negative agreement. I would agree that there is a responsibility on everybody to repent. There is a responsibility on everybody to seek God. But not everybody is capable of seeking God. And the support, you know, I just thought of John 10. And this is talking about how Christ saves us and how we are quickened. And it reads, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep, and I am known by my own. As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. and other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd. But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. As I said to you, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." Now, he doesn't lay down his life for the goats. He lays down, and it's scripturally clear, he laid down his life for his sheep. the believers. You can't do anything for unbelievers. We were unbelievers, right? But we were a special breed of unbelievers because we were in God's grace. And I came into the knowledge of God very late in my years, right? And, like, why? Don't ask me why. If I was God, I wouldn't save me. That I guarantee you. There's no way I'd save me. But tell me, if it's God that seeks man, why then do we as Christians have to evangelize? Why? Someone, talk to me. God is interested in revealing who he is to people and bringing salvation to people. Salvation, I think in scriptural terms, does not simply mean that you go to heaven when you die. It's a full-blown present encounter with God that engages every dimension of our human life. Evangelism, I think, is simply announcing to the world that God is in the business of bringing wholeness and restoration and true humanity and salvation to all people. I do believe that there is a human involvement here. If I offer a gift to my children, for instance, if I give my oldest boy some pocket money and he puts out his hand to take it. There's a sense in which he's involved. Now, what he can't do is say, well, I'm involved, you know, half of this gift is down to my ability to receive it. It just involves him in the process and a choice that he makes. His involvement doesn't mean that he's not a grateful person.