Episode 40

Pastor Paul LeBoutillier Pastor Paul: Hey everybody, we're back with some more of your Bible questions. I'm Pastor Paul, I'm here with my wife Sue, and we have a few more that we're going to do our best to answer today.

You ready for the first one?

I am.

This comes from Bobby and Debbie from Charlotte, North Carolina. And they say,

I can certainly understand where this question comes from what's happening. And as we're recording this, the United States and Israel have been significantly bombing Iran and taking out their military and their ability to attack others. So people are naturally wondering, is there some kind of fulfillment biblically here? Honestly, I don't know. Jeremiah chapter 49 is really a prophecy against Elam. And the Elamites were around for a long time. It says in the book of Acts that when the Holy Spirit fell upon the church and they all began to speak in other languages as the spirit enabled, some of the people that were there were Jews from Elam, they were Elamites. But this is an area that is a portion of the land that we know as the Persian kingdom in ancient terms of the Bible, which is Iran and Iraq for the most part today. And those parts have come under judgment many times throughout the course of history. And, of course, the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Medo-Persian Empire and God has visited judgment in that area before. I honestly cannot say whether what's happening today is a fulfillment of that prophecy. And I got to be honest, I'm not a big prophecy buff from that particular standpoint. I don't listen to pastors who do prophecy updates. I just don't. And the reason I don't is because especially guys who do it regularly, I feel like they got to keep coming up with stuff.

There is a temptation.

Yeah, there is. And I think that the potential is there to kind of bring something into the prophetic picture that may in fact not be. So the other part of their question here is, is this what's happening in the Middle East right now a precursor to end times? That I would say yes, because I think pretty much everything that's happening today is a precursor to end times. I think God has been setting the stage for a long time. I had someone write and recently asked me if the events that were going on today are a significant setting of the stage for the end times. I think that person asked about the Antichrist. And I said, actually, I think the pandemic was even more of a preparation for the period known as the Great Tribulation. This person actually wrote me back and said, I'm interested. Why do you say that? And I said, because during the pandemic, we saw very clearly how easily people can be controlled and how fear can be the impetus for them to surrender their rights and their control. And that's largely what the Antichrist is going to do. So I really think something like the pandemic was very telling in preparation for the end times. What's going on right now in Iran, not so sure. This is an ancient war that's been going on a long time. And how this specifically fits into end times prophecy, I'm not sure.

Alright. John and Susan said,

Well, let's say it this way. It's not unbiblical.

Sure.

There's nothing wrong. In the Bible, in the Old Testament, and under the law, God forbade the Jews to have any kind of a graven image of him, of God, or frankly, any graven image at all. But the whole idea was they were so susceptible to idolatry, which they fell to ultimately in their history. And that's why God gave the prohibition. But he wasn't saying, you can't have any pictures, because you're not bowing down to them. You're not worshiping them. You're not praying to them, or as some groups like to say, praying through them. No, these are just pictures, and there's nothing wrong with pictures. So I don't think there's any issues.

Good for you doing your painting.

Yeah, cool.

That's fantastic. An anonymous viewer said,

I wasn't even familiar with the 9Marks ministry, but I looked it up. And it's a church model that is based on a book that was written by a man by the name of Mark Deaver. I think that's how his name is pronounced. And he essentially came up with a framework of nine basic pillars or elements that he thought the New Testament church should follow. And in the information that I found, what he calls these biblical priorities, which he believes will foster a healthy church are expository preaching, sound doctrine, proper gospel understanding, conversion, evangelism, membership, discipline, discipling, and leadership. And he believes that if a church embraces those nine things, it is going to be beneficial for the church. Here's the deal. Anything can be taken and gotten, get wacky. Anything! Back in the 1970s, there was a movement called the discipleship movement. And at its core, it was a good thing, and it came out of the charismatic movement because some church leaders recognized that with the charismatic renewal, they called it back in the 70s, there was a great deal of splintering and people kind of running off halfcocked. So these leaders got together and said, the church needs to have a better picture of what it means to be discipled in Jesus so that we give people a solid foundation. Who can argue with that? That's good stuff. Here's the problem. The discipleship movement turned into heavy shepherding. That's what we called it because it got unbiblical. It got weird. It got controlling to the point where pastors were telling people who they could marry. When and if they should make a purchase, if they should buy a home, if they should buy a car, if they could go on vacation, or if the pastor refused to let them go on vacation, it was crazy. But remember it all started good. Now, as I'm going through this list of things that he thinks are very important, one of the things he comes up with here is membership. And I think he's probably talking about membership in the church. That's not biblical. There's nothing in the Bible that talks about membership to a local fellowship. We are members of the body of Christ by virtue of our faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. Now there are a lot of Christian churches that incorporate membership and they are just fine. They don't make it unbiblical. They don't make it weird. They don't make it control.

It's a little more practical than anything else.

It becomes just kind of practical. If you want to have a voice in the fellowship, be a member sort of a thing. Even though something isn't necessarily biblical, doesn't mean it's going to be abused or a problem, but it could be. There are churches who have stressed membership before they'll allow somebody to get baptized. That's not biblical. You get baptized because you come to Jesus, not because you come to this church or that you're a member of this church. Again, I'm not saying membership is necessarily wrong, but anything. One of the other things he mentioned was discipline. Yeah, we read about that. I'm going through 1 Corinthians right now in our small group study that I'm teaching. And Paul talks about church discipline, but that can get really weird, really fast if we get off base and so forth. So, listen, it's not about this particular model of church growth or healthy church type stuff. I would say to this person, and I think this was an anonymous writer. You got to talk to your pastor and you got to say, okay, if I see something wrong here, if I see something that goes beyond what I think the Bible teaches, can I come and talk to you? Because we need to be transparent about these things. None of these things that are mentioned here about the 9Marks model are wrong in and of themselves, but they could be if somebody without a biblical foundation decided to take them farther than what the Bible actually says.

And that's good advice really for anyone that might have some concerns about the direction of their church. You just have to pray and go talk to the pastor, the elders.

That's absolutely the point. If you feel like something in your church is unbiblical, go and talk to your pastor about it. Don't write me. I mean, somebody might write me just for confirmation. That's cool.

Sure.

But ultimately you got to go talk to your pastor about it.

Natalie says,

I can explain by answering and saying they're not getting a second chance. That's their first chance. You got to understand what these people are going to go through because what Natalie is referring to is people who didn't come to Jesus before the rapture of the church, but they did afterwards. So she's kind of saying, gee, all these people are going to just go missing suddenly. It's going to be obvious that the rapture took place. Well, I don't necessarily think so. I think it's going to be explained away in a deceptive sort of a way by the antichrist. But she's saying that kind of gives them an extra second chance to come to the Lord. Listen, these people who do come to the Lord, they're pretty much all going to be martyred. If they choose not to take the mark of the beast, which I'm assuming that believers in Jesus will refuse to do, they will pay with their lives and these are what we call the tribulation saints. These people who come to Christ and who suffer martyrdom because of it. And it's going to be a terrible, terrible time for those people. And they're not getting a free pass with any stretch of the imagination. There's going to be rampant deception. There's going to be a world ruled by Satan through the antichrist, the beast, and it will be terrible. The fact that these people come to the Lord during the tribulation is a miracle in and of itself. And this is not a second chance. It's their first chance.

Very good. Allanah says,

Well, there's a difference between something being not his plan and there's a difference between that being forbidden. And in David's day, there was not a revelation of multiple wives being forbidden. That came later. So David lived during a time when God was bearing with this particular thing, even though it wasn't his plan. And we know that because Jesus made it clear. He said, from the beginning, God said, that the two shall become one, not the three, four, five, or whatever. So that's a revelation that we know and we understand. But it was not something that God pushed in those early days. So this is the way things were allowed to play out in those early days. I don't know exactly why God didn't make this revelation clear in David's day. And before that even, I don't know. God doesn't explain himself. You'll have to ask him when you get to heaven.

Now, there are some areas of the world that really do practice this, practice polygamy right now. And what would you say if they pointed to this as proof that, if it was okay for David, it's okay for us?

I would point to the New Testament words of Jesus, where he tells us in no uncertain terms that that was never God's plan from the beginning (see Matthew 19:4-5; Mark 10:5-8).

Iona says,

It was all about timing. We forget sometimes that there was an expectation at the time of Christ that the Messiah would be on the scene. I mean, John the Baptist. There were a lot of things leading up to the birth of Christ and the ministry of Jesus. You remember that when the wise men came following a star, it says all Jerusalem was troubled by this. So the word got out, and of course, Herod was hugely troubled (see Matthew 2:3), but there was an expectation. And then John comes along and he says, hey, it's time. The one who is coming after me, whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. So get ready. So the word to the people of Israel was get ready, get ready. But here's the problem. They thought they were getting ready for a military leader because they saw in the Bible prophecies related to the second coming of Jesus, and they connected those with the first. They didn't understand that there were going to be two comings. So Jesus knew that if the people became aware of who he was exactly, they would force him. They would literally force the issue. And that would go against God's timing because Jesus was not to take the throne immediately. He was to take the cross in that first coming and then take the throne in his second coming. So it was all about timing. There are times that we read in the gospel that people were ready to take him by force and make him king and go to the Romans and say, ‘Alright, we got a king. So you guys can pack up and leave. Thank you very much.’ And it says that when Jesus got wind of that, he would withdraw and he'd go hide himself so that they couldn't find him. It was all about timing.

He was playing the long game, as we say.

So why did he allow some people? Why did he tell some people? Well, those were mostly people like Samaritans. It was the woman at the well that he told to go back. There was another man, in fact, it was the demoniac, the man of the tombs that he told to go back and tell what God had done for him. But these were outlying areas that were kind of beyond the scope of Jerusalem and Israel.

Well, that is it for today.

Oh, that's it.

That's our last one.

Well, those are good questions. And I know that you probably have more here in just a minute. We'll put an address up on the screen to send your questions to us. We'll do our best to tackle them. But thanks for joining us for this episode. We'll catch you in the next one.