Searches every word across every teaching, article, and Q&A on the site.
Searches every word across every teaching, article, and Q&A on the site.
Teacher: Pastor Paul LeBoutillier Pastor Paul: We're back with more of your questions about the Bible. I'm Pastor Paul with my wife Sue, and we're going to tackle some that you've sent in to us here in the last few days. Sue: All right. Again, we have a grouping here of some questions that all relate to what happens after we die. First one is from Gina and she says, “Since Judgment Day has not happened where do people go who are not believers?” I think what she means is people who have passed already. “Because if the person is in hell now wouldn't that mean he would have two judgments?” Pastor Paul: I can see why it probably looks like that. Jesus actually told a story about two men. It's recorded for us in Luke 16. One of the men was named Lazarus. We're not told the name of the other except that he was a very wealthy man. And he talked about how each of those men, when they died, were taken to a place based on the judgment that God made concerning their lives. One of the men who was the diseased beggar named Lazarus went to a place of comfort while the other person went to a place of suffering. So we learn from that story. It's not a parable. It's a story that immediately after death, our destiny, our eternal destiny is already decided because the Bible says it is given unto man once to die and then the judgement. So it is a rather immediate thing. Let me say it this way. At the very end of the Millennial Kingdom, there's going to be a judgement called the “White Throne judgement.” And that is when people are going to stand before the Lord. But the judgement has really already taken place. It's kind of the sentencing, if you will. So people are judged immediately. So I know it sounds here to Gina and to probably others as well, like there's more than one judgement for a single person, but actually that's not the case. Sue: Okay, sounds good. Now, Fortino says, “Do you believe that after the rapture, people who were not raptured will have a second chance at salvation during the tribulation?” Pastor Paul: Yeah, of course they will, because they haven't died yet. People who are left behind, people who remain on the earth after the church is caught up to be with the Lord, absolutely. In fact, the Bible tells us in the book of Revelation, John is shown this multitude of people and it says these are they who came out of the Great Tribulation. And these are people who were martyred mostly for their faith in Jesus, because they came to the Lord during the Great Tribulation and suffered at the hands of the Antichrist. Sue: Barbara says, “I've come closer to knowing and appreciating and loving GOD since listening to your teaching. My question is where is my spirit before I am born again?” Pastor Paul: This is one of those mysteries that God simply doesn't explain. We know that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, a man or a woman must be born again. And we know that the Spirit receives a new birth in a sense. But in what state our spirit is exactly prior to that new birth, it's hard to say. There are passages that say you were dead in your sins and transgressions. Some people have taken that to mean that the spirit was dead. Others have said no, the spirit is just almost kind of like in a … Sue: Coma? Pastor Paul: Kind of like in a coma, place of slumber. Others just say, no, your spirit is there, it's just cut off from God because sin has separated you from the Lord and you need to be rejoined and that term is called born again. The fact of the matter is most of us are just guessing because the Bible doesn't say. We know that people before they are born again, they can have a spiritual dynamic to them. We know that Spiritualism, Spiritism can be very popular among unbelievers. So there's a draw towards spiritual things to some people who aren't connected to the Lord. But how that all works and where or in what state their human spirit is in at that time? We're just simply not told. Sue: And it's best to go not to say that you know something when the Bible is silent on it. Pastor Paul: When the Bible is silent on the subject. Exactly. Sue: All right. Tamara says, “When some people come to Christ, they seem to be supernaturally healed of addiction and never go back to that sin again. But for others it seems to be a drawn out battle to totally release that stronghold. Why is this? I know the scripture “If you love me, keep my commandments”… So does it mean that the person is lacking true love for Jesus?” Pastor Paul: Not at all. I mean, this question reminds me of what the disciples asked Jesus when they saw the man blind from birth, and they said, “Why is he blind? Was it his sin or the sin of his parents?” And we do this. We tried to jump to explanations of why these things might be. And I've met people who have been supernaturally delivered of some addiction or behavior or something. Sue: And it almost seems as though they didn't even put any effort themselves into it. Pastor Paul: Exactly. Sue: It was a work of the Lord in their life. Pastor Paul: I met a guy who said that he was a smoker. And then he came to know Jesus Christ. He said, I never smoked one cigarette since and had no desire. I have heard the same thing about someone who had a drinking issue. And then you've got somebody else over here who struggles for years, sometimes decades, getting free from that particular addiction. We have to be extremely careful not to pass judgement on those people and say, it's because. The bottom line is we don't know. Here's the deal. God knows who can handle that quick overnight deliverance and who needs to just wrestle it out. And sometimes I've wondered if it's a matter of, you took years to get yourself into this addiction and if I were just to deliver you instantly, you'd learn nothing. So this is going to be a battle. God's the one who chooses, but it does not make a commentary on that person's faith or whether or not they are born again. Because I've talked to people who've both been delivered instantly and who have wrestled and battled for years, and I know that I know that I know they're both genuine born-again believers. God chose to deal differently. That's the best we can come up with. And that's what I would say to Tamara. I would say, here's your conclusion. God deals with people differently and that's it. Sue: Good reminder. Jude says, “Hi Pastor Paul, as believers we hear people saying that we got a calling from God to do ministry. A couple of days back I saw a video of the late Pope Francis where it says he received a calling from God at age 19. Also we see a lot of women pastors saying that they too received a calling from God to do His ministry even though the Bible says women should keep silent in church. As believers how are we supposed to understand this calling?” Pastor Paul: The question here is about calling. However, before we get to that and talk about that, we need to address some of the misconceptions and misinterpretations that are in this question. And one of them has to do with women and women particularly in the ministry. This person says, we see a lot of women Pastors claiming they've received a calling from God, and yet the Bible says women should keep silent. That statement that Paul made about women keeping silent has nothing whatsoever to do with a woman and not having a calling or not being in the ministry. It's really funny. The Apostle Paul did say things like a woman should remain silent. He also said that he does not allow a woman to teach and because of that, have authority over a man. And people take those statements and they say, “Women shouldn't be in the ministry. Women can't be Pastors.” And they just make generalized statements that in and of themselves are untrue. First of all, when Paul said a women should be silent, he was talking about the women that were speaking up in church and asking their husband questions in the middle of the service and disrupting the service. And that's why he went on to say later in that section, if they have questions, they should wait and ask them at home to their husband. So it's not saying that women can't speak in church. That's a harsh and ridiculous and unwarranted conclusion. The other thing that I hear people saying all the time is because Paul said that a woman should not teach, or he does not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man, that a woman can't be a Pastor. We may not refer to women as Pastors in our particular church, but they do pastor. They pastor other women and there's nothing wrong with it. Sue: Or children. Pastor Paul: Or children. There's nothing wrong with women teaching women or children. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing in the Bible that forbids a woman from teaching other women. You do it. You are a teacher just as much as I am and have just as significant of a calling as do I. You simply just don't teach men because that's what the Bible says. Because if you were to teach men, you would be taking authority over them and violating the whole headship issue of the husband. So that's the thing about this question that we first of all have to correct. And even though we may not refer to women as Pastors, I don't always reject that title for a woman if she's pastoring other women or children that, fundamentally, even though we don't see women Pastors in the Bible. There's nothing forbidding a woman from shepherding other women or the children that are in the fellowship. Sue: We use different terminology. We say a Children's Ministry Director, but it's really no different position than another church that might call it a Children's Pastor. Pastor Paul: Exactly. Sue: I've known a lot of people who would fit into this mold, like I do feel a calling from. I would hope they feel called by God or otherwise they're just doing a job from a paycheck if they don't sense a calling to minister to children, or to evangelize children, or to minister to women. Pastor Paul: Absolutely. So here's the question, what is a calling? Well, it's when the Lord lays it upon someone's heart that he has a special task within the body of Christ or even outside of the body of Christ if that calling is to be an evangelist. That is what, first of all, what a calling is. Just because God gives a calling doesn't mean that we always hear him perfectly. He talks about the fact that Pope Francis received a calling at the age of 19. I can't validate that or repudiate it because I have no idea. I've never heard that. This person obviously is concerned about that because he doesn't feel like maybe Pope Francis should have had a calling because he's doesn't appreciate what the Roman Catholic Church is all about. I can't speak to that. But what I can speak to is this idea that women Pastors say that they too have received a calling. What's wrong with that, or women in general? Sue: I think you can divide it another way too. And because we know that as you look at the gifts in the New Testament, sometimes they easily fall into two categories, speaking gifts and serving gifts, and we tend to think that only people with speaking gifts have received a calling, but is it not also fair to say that someone with serving gifts have sensed that calling. Someone who has set up communion for their church all the time for the last 25 years. Pastor Paul: We have one of those. Sue: We have one of those. And could we not say, could she not say, I have felt called by God to serve my church body in this way. That is a serving gift or doing landscaping or creating garden spaces for the church property or doing all kinds of serving things. So sometimes we only put calling with the speaking gifts. Pastor Paul: That is a very fair assessment and I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind or we think that calling has to do with church leadership and it doesn't always have to do with church leadership. It could be somebody who works in the background, somebody may have a calling just has a ministry of helps and that's their calling. I believe that God calls some people just within the home or within the family. A calling on the woman might be to pray for her unsaved husband for the rest of her life. That's her calling or the calling just to raise up children in the home, her own children. So we have to understand that this whole idea doesn't just apply to leadership gifts in the church. So there's a lot about this question that really needs to be corrected and understood from a true biblical standpoint. All kinds of people can have all kinds of different callings and there's nothing wrong with that as long as they're not doing something that they shouldn't do, such as women teaching men. That's something we know from the Bible that a woman shouldn't do. So, if a woman says, I received a calling from the Lord and now she's teaching men, I would say, “Well, you kind of misinterpreted your calling a little bit.” I'm not saying you're not called, you are called, but your audience needs some adjustment, that sort of thing. Sue: Our next question just is another branch off of this tree, “Can a woman have a YouTube channel to teach?” Pastor Paul: You mean, will YouTube let them? Sue: Presumably this person is asking, is it appropriate biblically for a woman to have a YouTube channel to teach? Pastor Paul: That would be the better way to say it, wouldn't it? Is it appropriate for a woman to have a YouTube channel to teach? I'm not going to say yes or no and judge her because that's not my place to do that if a woman decides to share the Word of God. Here's the other thing. There are a lot of women on YouTube and frankly, Instagram and elsewhere, who aren't teaching, but they are sharing and they're just sharing their faith. They're sharing what the Lord is doing in their lives. They're sharing just things the Lord is showing them. And they're not necessarily teaching at all. But I think some people might look at that and say she's teaching and she shouldn't be doing that because women or men are going to tune in. Sue: The question would be, is that her responsibility? Pastor Paul: Exactly. Is it appropriate for a woman to have a YouTube channel to teach? I don't know. I hate to fuzz out on that one, but it's just not my job to judge. And I would really encourage other Christians to take on that same attitude and just say, you know what, the Word of God is being shared and I rejoice that the Word of God is being shared. Sue: Excellent. Here's our last question. Grace has two questions. Pastor Paul: Okay, let's take this one at a time. Sue: All right. “Why is God so different in the Old Testament? He sounds mean and then in the new one he's so loving and caring.” Pastor Paul: Do you know what's interesting about this kind of assumption is that I had a note from a gal probably a week ago or two weeks ago who wrote to me and said that she had finished going through the entire Old Testament with my teachings online. And she wrote and said, I always thought that the God of the Old Testament was so rigid and mean. And now that I've been through the Bible, I no longer think that. I see the mercy and the grace and the kindness and the goodness of the Lord as a consistent thread through the Old and the New Testaments. So I would say to, Grace, study through the whole Old Testament, not just read it, study it. And if you have a troublesome time kind of studying and understanding things, then use my archive to go through it through my Bible teachings. And I believe that once you do, that attitude will change. Sue: I believe it too. So her quest second question is, “Why are there so many different churches that believe so many different things?” Pastor Paul: Well, because there's different interpretations of verses. One person interprets this that way and another person interprets it another way. We were talking recently about water baptism and how over the years different beliefs began to spring up concerning the efficacy of water baptism. Whereas some people believed and as we believe that it's a symbol, others began to take on the notion that, no, it's more than a symbol. It actually does something to the point where we got over here and they said, actually, that's what saves you. So, it's different interpretations of the Word of God. It doesn't mean that both of them are correct. It just means that we have different interpretations to the way things are given in the Word. Some people come up with the wrong interpretation and whole denominations are created on that error. Sue: Don't you think that interpretations often give way to traditions? Pastor Paul: Yes. Sue: And then the tradition is what carries the movement forward… Pastor Paul: Yes, carries it forward. Sue: For decades and the interpretation has kind of gotten forgotten about. It's just now a tradition. Pastor Paul: Why do you believe that? It's the way we've always done things. So that's why there are so many different churches that teach so many different things. If somebody gets a hold of an interpretation that they believe is correct and they're good at communicating their particular opinion, they're going to draw a crowd and other people are going to be convinced. And then we're going to start a church and then we're going to plant churches. And pretty soon you've got a denomination that is based on this person's interpretation. And this has happened throughout the years, or it's because churches have given too great of an emphasis of prophecy and somebody comes along and gives a prophetic word that starts a whole new belief system. It's just dizzying and a little bit exhausting as well. There is safety, I've said this many times before and I'm going to say it again, there is safety in taking a whole Bible approach to interpretation. Don't interpret single verses. We interpret verses according to the rest of the Bible. We take the whole counsel of God's Word and there is such incredible safety in that because it keeps us from having an excess, getting fixated on a particular single topic or issue because we're going through the whole Bible and that's why we encourage people to study through the entire Bible. Sue: Best piece of advice we've gotten all week. Pastor Paul: All right. Well, that's all the questions that we have for today. We're going to be back next week with more. If you have a question you'd like us to cover, just send us an e-mail to questions@lifebibleministry.com and we'll get to you just as soon as we can. Thanks so much for joining us today and we'll see you next time. God bless.
