Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Podcast. I'm Pastor Brian Wolfman there, St. Paul and Jesus deaf Lutheran churches in Austin, Texas, with Pastor Packer, who only has one church, good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is you were hating on Taylor Swift because you have a. You really are trying to get her attention. You're hoping that she'll invite you to be her chaplain for her world tour. Is that true?
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Sure.
That's. That's probably the less weird things that was said about me during all of that, but sure, we'll go with that.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: I gotta be careful about mentioning in that because I don't know what kind of PTSD you've got trauma from. Give us an overview of the swifty controversy.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: I said Taylor Swift had some objectionable things in her lyrics, especially in regards to using religious imagery, and just told parents, hey, you should be aware of these things. And hell hath no fury like a swifty scorned. And they did not like that.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Doesn't seem that controversial of a thing to say. Who knew? Who knew?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I didn't. I didn't think it was controversial, honestly. I just thought, hey, you should be aware of this. And actually I mentioned this in the SHU, et cetera, interview, that one of the ladies who. I found a bunch of her stuff, who was vigorously defending Taylor Swift from all this kind of attacks, she basically agreed with me, but said, you're not allowed to say anything about it. And I'm like, this is all really odd. But yeah, I've moved on from that time in my life.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Well, let's move on to new questions.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: The first one's about. First one's about Taylor Swift? No, first one is about visions of heaven.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: What is your take on people claiming they went to heaven or saw Jesus when they were, had a near death experience and then were revived? Do you believe this can happen?
That's it.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: So I have. So I've been. In fact, just this morning I was reading Luther on apparitions, and I've been thinking about this a little bit, because one of the dangers that we Lutherans face in the theological realm is that they're whole theological systems built on visions, not just, for example, Pentecostalism, which is normally where it shows up, and then light Pentecostalism in evangelicalism as the internal. It's not. Maybe not a vision, but the internal illumination as shown by the popularity of these, like, books and stories of people who go to heaven. Also, the whole of Roman Catholicism is almost all propped up by these visions. And apparitions and stuff like that. So what do we make of them? And I just, I don't think we, I want to say they don't happen, but the problem is they do in the scriptures.
So what I, what I've been saying is, look, we can't expect them to happen. I think that's true. But I maybe want to go a little bit further and say they at best don't matter and at worst are dangerous.
So let's say that the Lord does come and give someone a vision of heaven, for example, and they are now the recipients of a private revelation from God.
What does the stewardship, what does the faithful stewardship of that private revelation entail? Number one, it entails that I recognize it as a private revelation, not as a public revelation that's given just to me. For whatever reason, the Lord wants to give that to me, and it's not. Maybe, hopefully, it's to strengthen my faith in the midst of temptation, but it's not given to anyone else. If the Lord wants to give someone else a private revelation, that's his business. He can give it to them.
The second thing is the danger that comes from a private revelation. And how I have to steward that so carefully is to recognize that I will be tempted to put my faith in the private revelation rather than the word of God. And so there's a way that in order to be a good steward of a private revelation, I have to understand it as none authoritative.
In other words, it has to rest. Its role has to be only to support the things that the Lord has told me in the scriptures.
And even in that way, I'm called to diminish it.
Paul calls when he is almost forced by the Corinthians to discuss the private revelation that he's given, which was the possession of all the prophets and apostles, they were called to the heavenly council. So they all had those revelations given to them, and some were meant to be public and some were private. So Paul's given this vision of the third heaven. He is almost provoked to it. He won't even admit that it's him. And he prefaces it by saying, it's foolish talk. I'm talking as a fool, I'm talking as a madman.
So that, so that, that teaches us that private revelation must be stewarded very carefully as a temptation. So if someone tells me their private revelation, the way that I become a steward of that is by basically trying to forget it as quick as possible, because it's going to come to me as a temptation to not only be under their authority, but to be. To believe the authority of the word of God. And I'll give you an example that I've really been wrestling with, starting with. Starting with Paul's stop in Ephesus on the third missionary journey. If I have this right, he is given revelation that he will be arrested and led to his death if he goes to Jerusalem.
And it's coming over and over and all these different people. And finally, someone says, the Holy Spirit has revealed to us that you should not go to Jerusalem, and Paul does it anyway.
And in that.
In that action of defiance, which is not presented to us as sin, we are taught that we are bound only to the word of God.
And everything else that comes to us is not. Does not have binding authority. And I think that's the key thing for the private revelations that are given to us, is that they do not have binding authority. So if someone has a vision of heaven, then we can say, well, God be praised that he's given you that vision. Please be very, very careful about that.
Part of being careful about it is not telling anybody about it. Maybe your pastor, your closest christian friends, to help you to be a good steward of that revelation and to be very wary of the dangers of it. It's certainly not given to you. For you to make it public and to make a private revelation public is a dangerous thing, because now, if my faith is strengthened, because there's a kid who went to heaven for ten minutes and came back and told the story about it, then my faith is going to be severely weakened when I find out that it was something different happening.
So I think that there's. This is the realm that I'm thinking about is that instead of just saying, no private revelations, but saying, okay, if the Lord wants to give a private revelation, fine, but how are we to be stewards of that particular revelation? And I think the scripture has a lot to say about that and a lot of warnings.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: What do you think about that? I think the thing with Paul is interesting because they tell him not to go. They say, the spirits revealed to us, this is going to happen to you, but they seem to make the inference that he's not to go, like on their own, because they're worried about him. And Paul tells them, look, I'm willing to go and die, right? So they see this revelation to them as to be a warning to stop him. And Paul basically says, I don't think that's why you're given that revelation.
You know it's going to happen. But I'm still going. And now I know it's, I've been told repeatedly this is going to happen, but it strengthens his resolve to go much like right. And I think Luke does this intentionally.
Paul's life reflects Christ in so many ways. In the book of acts, the trial scenes, all of that kind of stuff. And also right in Luke, we're told that Christ set his face to go to Jerusalem knowing what was going to happen. And then Paul does the exact same thing. He's told you're going to die. And he says, I know, but that's what has to happen so that the gospel can go out into the world.
But back to your first couple of points. That's very similar to what Chemnet says in the examination of the council of Trent, that if these are from God, then they're in line with scripture, which means they're superfluous. We don't need them. They're not necessary. So if someone has a private revelation of what heaven's like and it matches up with the scripture, then we have what scripture tells us. So it's an unnecessary addition that we don't need. And the second thing is, if it's out of line with scripture, then we know it's not from the Holy Spirit. And if it's not from the Holy Spirit, then we, it's not lining up with scripture, then we know it's not from the Holy Spirit, so we don't have to listen to it. And so he basically says, either unnecessary or it's not from the Holy Spirit at this point. And I think that's helped me to look at those things, too. Like, okay, maybe that did, like you said, maybe you did have this private revelation, but what does it add? Is it teaching us anything new? And if it's teaching us something new that's out of line with scripture, then, then we can immediately question if it's from the Holy Spirit. If it is from the Holy Spirit, then it's going to tell us what's in the Bible. And I don't need your additional private revelation to teach me that it's already there. So I found that very helpful with those things because, I mean, like you said, it's not that these things can never happen.
It's just, it's not the norm. And then people start to think this should be normal for me, for my christian life, that I get these kind of visions, that I get these kind of things and that I must have them really to be a Christian. I've met people like that that think if they're not getting these kind of things, and they're not really, you know, a super spiritual Christian. This should be a normal part of their life, which. That's not biblical either.
We haven't.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: I was gonna say, we have increased periods of that in the Bible.
Right. It's like we talked about the miracles. There's no. Nothing in the Bible that says miracles are normative. You have, in increased times of miracles, during specific things in the Bible, you have increased times of specific visions, things like that, during specific times.
It's not like they walked around every day having tons of this stuff happen. That wasn't the norm for most christians, and it's still not the norm for the vast majority of christians. So.
That's right. That's where I would kind of leave.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: It at and recognize that. What? So that. That Paul is given the thorn in the flesh for the. For the explicit purpose of. To keep him from being too elated for the visions. In other words, even though that's also. This is this recognition that there's a fantastic, a fantastic risk in all of these things. I'm looking. So this will be next week's worldwide Bible class. So that'll be the worldwide Bible class on April, the next week, whatever that day is.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: 15Th.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: 15Th or May 15. Sorry, what month are we in?
[00:11:58] Speaker B: We're in May.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it is May. So Luther's time. So this would be Luther's works, volume six, talking about. He's talking about Genesis, Jacob wrestling with God, and he's talking about the false worship of the papists who want worship to be connected to the bones of the saints and these particular churches and chapels. And he says that we don't institute our own worship. God does. It's a baptism, absolution, the Lord's supper, where the word is preached. There the word is blessing. And I think probably a student asked a question because he passed that, but he goes back to it and it says, concerning apparitions, however. So someone said, well, what about the visions of Mary and the visions of Jesus at these places? And these visions, he says, I've spoken about this in a general way in several occasions. It's necessary to know not all of them are to be believed only if they're of the analogy of faith. So the first question is, do they support the doctrine of the scriptures? I will cling to the word of God and be content with that. By it I will die, and by it I will live. There is sufficiently abundant protection in the promises of God, not only against the devil, the flesh, and the world, but also against this lofty temptation to worship somewhere else or to put our faith in something that God hasn't given. For if God sent an angel to me to say, don't believe the promises, I would reject him and say, depart from me, Satan, etcetera. Or if God himself appeared to me in his majesty and said, you are not worthy of my grace, I'll change my plan and not keep my promise to you, I would not have to yield to him, but it would be necessary to fight most vehemently against God himself.
Now, that's the kind of passage from Luther that the Catholics pull out and say, look, Luther admits that he's fighting against God. Well, this is the point of Jacob, right?
If God appears in the vision of his glory and says, I don't love you, you don't have it. You reject that.
You hold on to the word in spite of whatever the apparition or the vision is telling you.
If job says, though he slay me, yet I will hope in him, if he should cast me to the depths of hell and place me in the midst of devils, I would still believe that I would be saved. Because I have been baptized, I have been absolved. I have received the pledge of my salvation, the body and blood of the Lord in the supper. Therefore, I want to see and hear nothing else. But I shall live and die in this faith, whether God or an angel or the devil says the contrary. So here comes I see something else, and it could be in this life, or it could be from God, or it could be from the devil or whatever. I see something else, an apparition. And I have to say, I don't want to see it. I have all that I need in the word. But here I see it. What am I going to do with it? It's either going to support the word or fight against the word. And that sets me how to think about this apparition, is that it? Everything is understood by the word.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: That's why I think there's reports sometimes from some of these predominantly muslim countries where someone reports having a vision of Jesus or something like that. And it's very interesting because in the ones that sound legitimate, they're told to, like, go find a Bible. Like in this one story, I read it in this book that had a lot of different biographies in it. The man was directed to a store to buy, I think it was a blue book, and it was a store full of qurans, and it was the only Bible in the store. So he wasn't directed in words to himself, he was directed to the word. Same with another man who was sent to find this pastor that was like, it's like a ten mile walk from his village to this other village to find this pastor. And the pastor thought he must be part of, like, the secret police or like, someone to arrest him. And the guy's like, no, no, no. Jesus told me you would. You would tell me about him. So he's directed to the word, right? So those I look at and I'm like, that, to me, sounds legitimate because they're driven to the word. They're not driven to their own thoughts. Like, inwardly, they're driven to go find a Bible, to go find a pastor. So when I hear things like that, I'm like, that, to me, sounds legitimate. Like, I can look at that. Like Luther's saying, where is it pushing you? Where is it directing you? And in those cases, it's always like, to a pastor who's going to tell them more about Jesus, to the word of God so they can read more about Jesus. It's always directing them outward to the word itself. And it's not like they keep having those. They have this. They're moved in this direction, and then they continue with the word or being taught the word from somebody who has the word. So I like the way Luther puts that there. It's very helpful.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Yep, that's great.
Perfect.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Ready for. Ready for. Next question?
[00:16:36] Speaker A: I'm ready. Next question.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: It's kind of two questions in one. They're both related to apologetics.
The one question is, does Hebrews eleven mean that no matter what apologetics we use, ultimately faith is required as apologetics can't prove 100% of God by reason alone. And related to that, there's a question of, what's the role of. I'll summarize it. What's the role of philosophy in apologetics? Does it have any role, those who do apologize in a very philosophical way, is that helpful? So where do these things fall? Since the Bible does require faith, as they pointed out, how do we see the role of apologetics as Lutherans?
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
So apologetics comes from just this greek word apologia, which means to argue or to defend. And there is a we. So it's helpful to think about this, is that Christianity is an argument. It's an assertion and an assertion and an assertion that has a conclusion that makes another assertion that has another conclusion. And that's an argument. It's an argument for.
Well, Christianity is making an argument for that. The God, who created the world, is the one who redeemed the world and will bring the world to glory in the resurrection. And he does all of those things through Jesus Christ. So there's an overarching argument of Christianity, and so every Christian is making an apology or defense. Every time we open our mouth, we're doing something like that.
I think apologetics, as a kind of a technical term nowadays, is the defense of the faith. And I think it happens.
There's probably three places where apologetics is helpful, or maybe four.
The first is for the Christian.
As the devil comes to us and tempts us to doubt things that the Lord would say are true. For example, that the Bible is true, that the world was created by God, that Jesus rose from the dead, that as the devil tempts us to just not believe those things, we can go and look at it as an argument, say, okay, here the devil is making an argument. What is the counter argument to it? And I think that this is really helpful for strengthening the faith of Christians to know that it's not just kind of like dropped out of heaven. A list of things that you must believe, but that this all fits together well. And so apologetics, I think the chief purpose is to, is to strengthen the faith of Christians.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Do you know who else said that?
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Who?
[00:19:22] Speaker B: John Calvin. Therefore, everyone's gonna say, I'm just kidding. Everyone's gonna say, your closet calvinist. Hey, you agree with Calvin on something. There you go.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: I accidentally quoted John Calvin the other day. You know, Calvin says that human heart is an idol factory. Yeah, great. And I just wish Luther said it or someone else, like, I'll. Because it's right. And I'm like, ah, well, now you.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Have two things that you agree with Calvin on. You know, we're building bridges.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. All the reformed guys are like, they're almost lutheran. The reformed should recognize that the very best things in the reformed church are the lutheran things. And once that starts to sink in, just let it sink in now. So the other, and this is right next to that, it's a slightly different point. But I think it's also important is that one of the ways that the devil tempts us is he says, hey, you're just a Christian because you're dumb. And every smart person is not a Christian.
And that is, I don't know if people like, if you, once you articulate it, you're like, oh, that's a really bad argument. But I don't think that the devil doesn't like to argue by articulation. He likes to argue by, like, vague insinuation. And, you know, he's, he's, he's like the high school mean girls that whisper but won't tell you what they're saying. So he kind of insinuates that. And then you start to think, well, maybe I'm just a Christian because I'm a dummy. And if I was smarter, like all those smart guys at college or whatever, then I'd be an atheist.
And so apologetics is nice because you get to see some people with profound intellectual chops sitting there working these things out in a, in a, in a more academic and rigorous way, and you're like, oh, well, that guy's not a dummy and he believes in Jesus, so that's helpful. It's actually a helpful argument. I think that's like the chief argument that Jordan Cooper makes. If you watch these Jordan Cooper videos and people are like, I can't ever, don't exactly know what he's talking about. But I just get the, I just have some confidence that, like, he's not dumb and he's a Christian, so that's helpful. So that's this kind of second level. The third level is that as arguments are brought against the church, they are answered by the church.
So that as the world kind of musters up a little time in their, to carve out a little time out of their pursuit of their own ends and say, hey, I want to make an argument against what the church is saying, we can say, well, thank you. This is great. We should talk about this.
And let's talk about it. So there's a refutation of error that the Christian engages in, and that's also helpful. So when the world comes along and says, hey, there's no such thing as the soul, we could say, well, okay, you know, why would you say that? What's your evidence? What leads you to that conclusion? And let's, let's talk about this and let's think about it, etc. Etcetera. So, so that's good. And in so far as that pursuing of the things that are right and true, by, by investigation of what exists, by reflection on truth and by study of what the Lord reveals, and we engage in these arguments. That's all great. The philosophy part would be that kind of reflecting on things that are true. So how do I kind of make sound arguments and how do I think about these things? And that's great. So the Christian can engage in philosophy in service to the word, but it has to, again, it's always in service to the word, just like the apparitions are in service to the word. If it. The danger is that philosophy gets over its skis and it would become a critic of what the Lord has revealed. And to that we say, hold on, philosophy. You've stepped out of your lane there and gone too far.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: I think maybe just in addition to that, one of the ways I think about this is that beyond it being helpful for the Christian, which I think is extremely valuable to the Christian, because sometimes they feel, they do feel dumb, like, especially people who've never heard any of these arguments, and then someone presents them to it and they just don't know what to say or how to respond. And they think, man, maybe I am just stupid for believing this. So I think it's invaluable for the Christian to be aware of the arguments out there and how to respond, even if they don't get into debates about it, just so they can be strengthen themselves. But sometimes I view it as with some people, you kind of have to, I don't know, remove obstacles that keep them from hearing what you actually have to say. Right. So sometimes they have something that really bothers them, that they think they know about the Bible or about the church or about Christ. And sometimes you just have to be able to quickly remove those so that you can get to getting them the words. Now, I think the danger is you can get stuck in this cycle of you're just in this constant loop of apologetic arguments and go from one topic to the next. I think the danger with that is you never get to the word, and that's what they're trying to avoid. Right. They don't want to talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus. They don't talk about those things. And so they don't want to hear about what the law of God says about their sin. So I think there can be a danger where you get obsessed with trying to answer every argument. And I don't think that's always helpful. Some usually unhelpful. But if you have someone who has some real objections, I think it's fine to try to remove those obstacles quickly so you can move on to other things. And I've seen some people do this. Well, there's, I don't know his last name. There's this guy who's on Facebook, videos, reels, and some other places, YouTube, whose name is Cliff. He goes to colleges. I don't know if you've seen him. And the college students ask him whatever they want, and he does a pretty good job of like, answering their questions. Like, he's not a jerk about it. And he does a good, tall, skinny guy.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I have seen that guy.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah, he does a good job. There's this other, there's this younger guy I've seen online who very calmly answers people's like, they'll throw crazy things at him. He just very calmly says, nope, that's not true. This is actually like one guy was saying, we don't even know what the hebrew manuscripts say because of translations are so bad. And he's like, no, we translate the English from the Hebrew. And then guys like, well, I heard Hebrew just, we don't even have the actual Hebrew. It was just like this shorthand. He's like, no, that's not, that's not true either. This is how Hebrew works. And just, you know, very calmly answers these objections. And he does it pretty quickly so that he can talk to them about Christ. And I think that kind of stuff's very helpful. Like, if they have real questions, answer them. We just have to be aware that sometimes questions are just a diversion to not talk about the issues. And that's where I think it goes all the way back to Augustine. I know it's been said, put in the mouth of spurgeon and others, but the whole idea of if you have a lion in the cage and someone's mocking you and saying the lion's not real, you let them know by letting the lion out of the cage, then they'll find out real fast. Right. Or if you have a sword and they say it's a fake sword, it's not sharp. Well, how do you prove it's a sword? Well, you stab them with it. And now they find out, oh, it's sharp, it hurts. And Augustine and down since then have used that kind of argument to say, there is a point where you just let the word of God do its work, right? You preach long gospel and let the spirit do its work through those. But that doesn't mean there's never any place for removing obstacles. We just have to remember, like that person mentioned that, yeah, ultimately your faith is going to be in Christ and in his word. And it doesn't mean you'll understand everything. It doesn't mean you'll have every objection answered upfront before you become a Christian even. And in fact, a lot of people who are struggling with those things, they believe. Again, this goes back to Augustine, too, right? They believe, and then they begin to understand the way it all fits together and works. Sometimes it's backwards that way.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: So I suppose that's true for most things in life. Like, I was eating long before I understood digestion, right?
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Our comprehension of how a thing works comes along later. But it's nice to think how. How the Lord has ordered the world. And especially for those people who are kind of philosophically minded, they become great gifts to the church. We appreciate them as well. Good. I think, you know, it's funny how apologetics has gone in the Missouri synod, because at first we were like, hey, we were all existentialists. There's no place for apologetics. And then we got all evidentialists, and it's like that became our track, probably from Doctor Montgomery and his students, probably especially through Doctor Rosenblatt and then the Irvine apologetics crowd. And we became evidentialists, which was to say that the way to do apologetics is to point to the historical veracity of the resurrection. And you start from there and you build out. And that set us against some of the other, like, more philosophical approaches, like the presuppositionalists, which their basic argument was great. It's like, if you don't believe in God, you don't believe in anything. You can't do. You have no substructure for faith or rationality or even thought or self awareness or good or evil. So the presuppositionalists come along and say, you don't.
If you're a materialist, then you don't even have materialism. You don't have any ism. Everything's gone. And that's a useful argument. I think the Lutherans have kind of, I don't know, pushed all those things off to the side. We should probably be more robust in the various different ways of thinking about these things. Because I think you're right. Most people will put the argument out there, not as an argument like, hey, I'm an atheist because I've been convinced by my carbon dating machine I've got in the garage or whatever. They're mostly like, I want to live as if God, as if there's no constraints. And to do that, I have to act like there's no God. And to act like there's no God, I just got to build up evidence that the things that satisfy that can. It's like the kids are playing hide and go seek, right? And they just hide their face around the corner because they think if. If they can't see you, you can't see them. And that's most of the arguments, like, if I can just hide the reality of God from me, then I can pretend like God doesn't exist and do what I want to do. And so you're trying to take that away so you can start to see, just admit some of the hard truths of reality. Yeah.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: There is no God and I hate him. Right.
Well, that's Francis Pieper. And, you know, is he the fourth president of the lutheran church, Missouri sin and his dogmatics. He points out that every argument against God is ultimately a moral argument. Right. Because why do they attack the christian God so ferociously and don't go after these other gods? Well, because he's the God they have to kill. They have to get out of their way because they don't want to stand before him on judgment Day. Right. You attack the real thing because that's the one you have to deal with and that's the one that afflicts your conscience. And he's got to be out of the way. And so, I mean, a lot of these things are just trying to avoid talking about the issues. And you quickly find out with a lot of people. Most people don't know why they believe what they believe. I often encourage people just ask lots of questions. Like if you learn to ask good questions, Greg Kochle has a great book called tactics, where he explains how to do a lot of this, like asking good questions. He calls it the Columbo method. You get them to talk about what they believe. And if you can ask good questions, oftentimes you can get them to realize what they believe doesn't make any sense. Like, sometimes their own system makes no sense. Sometimes it just makes no sense of the world or themselves. But they haven't given it much thought. So with a lot of people, if you just ask them good questions, you don't even have to have the most brilliant apologetics answer. You just have to give questions. And I do think that's an issue.
I've seen in lutheranism that the, I think evidentialism is great. I think there's a role for that. There's a place for that. But I'm more eclectic. Like depending on the person or situation I'm dealing with, I may have to present a different argument. Just stacking up the other issue. And presuppositionists have pointed this out before. If I stack all evidence for the resurrection in front of an unbeliever, they can still look at that and say, I don't care or I don't believe it or whatever. You can stack all evidence you want, but the sinful heart can still look at it and say, who cares?
Because we're always dealing with hard issue, no matter whether we're using philosophy or whether we're using evidentialism, or whether we're asking hard questions to get them to see their own presuppositions at the issue. Is your heart right?
[00:31:56] Speaker A: That's.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: That's what we're really trying to get to, not just these intellectual arguments. We want to get it deeper than that.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: So I've been trying to just have this idea of a project in the back of my mind, and it's apologetics with an eye to the conscience, because we normally think, well, the apologetics is, I'm going to make an argument that's going to change your mind, which is fine. But the problem is, we're not just minds. You know, there's. There. There's motivations that sit below the mind. So I'm motivated to believe certain things, and I'm disincentivized to believe certain other things. And that motivation and incentive comes in large part from the conscience, which is where a lot of this is where our kind of humanity is. And so we got to do a lot of work there, too, which is why. Oh, sorry.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: That's where the idea of beauty in apologetics comes in. There's been some stuff written recently on that, or even Cs Lewis and Tolkien. Right. On their. There are various things. They used stories, right. The imagination. Because we're whole people, and we. Most people do not make most of their decisions purely based on, like, some kind of intellectual reasoning. That's almost never true for pretty much anyone, probably ever, in the history of the world. Like, there's all kinds of reasons people make decisions, and. But it's very rarely because they were just a purely intellectual decision about any one thing. So we have to keep that in mind, too.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Except for the viewers of this YouTube channel, who decided that of all the things to watch on YouTube, this would be the most edifying.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Correct. I mean, obviously.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: I think we got time for one more question.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Well, let's do it. I gotta find it.
This one is kind of a hot topic, I guess. Right now.
Are the Jews God's chosen people today?
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: I grew up evangelical Pentecostal and married my lutheran husband 22 years ago and have been Lutheran ever since. Its only been the last five years or so that I actually wanted to be wanted and tried to understand what it meant to be Lutheran. My parents attend an assembly of God church and have an incredible love of God, Jesus the Holy Spirit. And their faith is amazing and inspiring. They love God, however, we have some differences in doctrine, as you can imagine. And lately my mom has confronted my husband and I once stating very vehemently that we need to support and stand by Israel and God will curse those who don't. Secondly, she sent a screenshot of someone in Israel talking about the miracle that occurred this last weekend when the iranian drones could not penetrate the iron dome of Israel's defense. I'm learning that we are all God's chosen people now, that the church collective are God's chosen people. But I struggle with this, especially just reading romans eleven, and I think maybe God does favor the Jews or Israel.
So she's confused on this and wants your help.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: This is an interesting one. So I want to think about it theologically first, because there was an argument that came from the dispensationalists, and I'll put a link to the show notes on an essay that I wrote at seminary called dispensationalism what and why not?
I'm writing that down so I don't forget the dispensationalist, which is a new theological phenomenon, 100 5180 years old. Part of their arguments is that God has two chosen people.
He has his earthly chosen people, and that's Israel. That the descendants of Abraham. The descendants of Israel from the flesh, it's a blood people, and then he earthly people, and then he has a heavenly people. That is the church. Part of old dispensationalism. Was that really the church's plan b?
The plan a was to establish the thousand year millennial kingdom for his people, put Jesus back on the throne of David, etcetera, just like the Pharisees were hoping. But because they rejected him, then God switched over to plan b, which is the church. But the whole business of dispensationalism is God has to get his heavenly people out of here, raptured, so he can go back to dealing with his earthly people. Israel. And the dispensationalists were particularly excited in 1948 with the reconstitution of Israel as a nation, because they understood that as a fulfillment, fulfillment of biblical prophecy and a start of the prophetic stopwatch, which they think is going to end in seven years of great tribulation, the rebuilding of the temple, the sacrifice, the reinstitution of animal sacrifices, and the war of Armageddon, the Lord will return and then set up his kingdom. So a lot of evangelicals are particularly drawn to the nation of Israel because they understand it as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
That is just wrong. And there's a lot of we can talk big picture and little picture. Why it's wrong.
The big picture is that every promise of God is yes and amen in Christ.
So that to say that the Lord still has prophetic promises to keep before the Lord can return.
For example, if the reconstitution of the nation of Israel in 1948 is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, then that means that Jesus could not have returned before 1948, which means that the expectation of the Christians, which they were taught by the Holy Spirit through the word, to expect the return of Jesus at any time, was not really that time, and it even extends now. So the dispensationalists will say, well, Jesus can't come back now. He could rapture us, but that's not the second coming. At least they claim that could happen at any time. But then it'll be seven years, plus maybe a few days or weeks until the second coming, so that the people will actually know the time of his coming.
But he can't come back now because all these other things have to happen. And that destroys the clear biblical doctrine of the imminence of the return of Christ, that he'll come as a thief in a night, that no one knows the day of the hour. So the whole construct of the idea of all these things happening in Israel, in the Middle east as being the fulfillment of biblical prophecy is wrongheaded and dangerous.
Now, that does not mean that we can't look at what's going on in the Middle east as a political phenomenon and have opinions one way or another, like root for one side or another, but it should not be connected to biblical prophecy. So then that leads to the question, well, what do we think of Israel? And this is answered a number of times in the New Testament, especially when we look at romans 910, when Paul says, has God forsaken Israel?
And his answer is, by no means.
I was a Pharisee of Pharisees.
In other words, we should see God not rejecting Israel, not in the success of the iron dome or in the reconstitution of the state or of whatever things are happening to the jewish people, but that God not forsaking his people looks like those who were born jewish, recognizing that their sins are forgiven by Jesus.
If Paul puts himself as the example of God not rejecting his people, then we understand that not rejecting is that God also has for them the gift of baptism, the gift of life and salvation. And to this end, I mean, some very exciting things are happening with some missionary work in Tel Aviv. So lutheran church is being established in Israel really for the first time in a long time and this kind of conversion starting to take place and we thank the Lord for that.
But we are. The dispensationalists accuse us of being replacement theologians, but that's exactly what Paul talks about in Romans. He says the natural branch was cut off of the tree and the wild branch was grafted in. And so Paul doesn't even hesitate to call the christians in Galatia, for example, the Israel of God.
And that is what the church is. The church is the Israel of God. The church is the chosen people. That is not a matter of blood. God can raise up from the stones children of Abraham. And we are the children of Abraham by faith, not by blood or by descendancy, but by trusting in the promise like Abraham trusted in the promise. And I've outlined that argument in this essay so you can see that. And I hope that people who are interested will take a look at that in the show notes. Yeah. Your thoughts, Pastor Packer?
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Pastor yeah, and that's Paul and Romans nine. Right. The true Israel is not, to paraphrase, DNA Israel, not just because you have DNA of a jewish person, but true Israel is those who have faith. And Paul says this isn't new, this is the way it's always been. Like, that's Paul's whole argument, is that the church has always been made up of those, the Israel of God, the true Israel of God has always been made up of those who have faith. That's like the whole beginning of Romans chapter nine. I think too, part of the problem is for a lot of christians is they don't take seriously what Jesus said would happen to Jerusalem in 70 ad.
They don't, I don't think, fully grasp the importance of that event and the destruction of the temple and what it meant for how God was reorienting the entire world. Instead of being kind of Jerusalem as the center of the world, now the church is the center of the world. That the thing that matters, even in politics, I would argue, like, I think our prayers are more important than anything that happens in DC, that the church is now that the main thing is the thing that matters. It's the thing at the center of the world. So to argue that, well, the temple has to be rebuilt or these other things have to happen is also to say the church isn't that important. Right. They even called that.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: It's plan B in their view. Quite often in many dispensationalist views, it's, it's plan B. It's not what God intended. We're just kind of like here for a moment. But the Bible says the opposite. Throughout, it's always been about the church, and now we have the fullness of that because Christ came and died and rose again, and he proved it by leveling Jerusalem because of what the town had done to Christ. And so he proves it by leveling it and saying, this isn't the way it's done anymore. The temple's gone, all of this is gone. It's now all through the church. And I think that helps refocus us too. So when we get to romans eleven. Yes. Do we still want people of jewish DNA to be saved? Yes, we want all people to be saved, whether Jew or Gentile. So they become part of as Ephesians, right. There's no longer Jew and Gentile. We're the new man, Christian. That's what matters is being a Christian, not your DNA, not where you came from, but that you come into the church and you become a new man, you become a Christian. And Paul makes that clear. That's for everybody. Jew, Gentile, whatever, that's, that's what matters, that's what you need.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: I think it's helpful for, in this, especially because, I mean, so we get to think about now Israel and Gaza and all the war. It helps us to think about this. One of the important questions for us Christians is to ask is to be able to understand rightly what is Judaism and what is Islam? And there's a couple. So one of the dangers is because we all took like world religions in 8th grade kind of socio social studies classes, we learned that there's all these different religions. And so we think, oh, there's Judaism as a religion, Christianity is a religion, Islam is a religion. That's not, I'm not sure that that's accurate.
So to start with Islam, the lutheran confessions understand Islam as a christian heresy, correct? And it is a rejection of the divinity of Christ.
So it is an arian heresy with a lot of other things. So its radical monism rejects the conversation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the equality and the co eternality of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And then it builds out a morality based on that. And so you have Islam, which is antichrist.
The other thing is that I think when we flip over to Judaism, most people think of Judaism as like Old Testament religion, but it's not, it's not like if King David or Moses or Adam and Eve and Noah were just like suddenly be zapped forward to 2024, they wouldn't go to the synagogue for church they would go to the church for church. They'd go to a lutheran church. Obviously, they were Christians. Yeah. They believed in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They believed in the incarnation. They believed in the sacrifice of the messiah on the cross. And when Christ came to the true Israel, recognized him as the messiah and rejoiced in the expansion of the church.
Modern Judaism, which has its seeds in the Pharisees, which are built on the rejection of Moses. Because, remember, the Pharisees started in the babylonian captivity and they were saying, we can be jewish without the blood sacrifice. That's the kind of basic idea of the Pharisee. And it's historical thing. They're wrestling through the fact that the temple is destroyed. What does that mean? So that Phariseeism continues to fight during the time it becomes the major opponent at the time of Jesus. And they are defined by the rejection of Jesus.
Theologically. I mean, the big controversy is now is that the, you know, with the definition of anti Semitism that the Congress passed this last week, that includes the idea that the Jews are those who killed Christ, that. And that becomes. And that's going to be a problem, by the way, going forward for the church, even though I don't think people who passed it intended it to be. But no matter that like the historical question. But the point more interestingly is theologically, what did the Pharisees say of Jesus theologically? And that is that he is not the Christ, he is not the son of God, he is not the savior of the world. And that modern Judaism, through all of its kind of assertions, you have like reformed Judaism, which is basically like more liberal than the Unitarians. It's like nothing. Who knows what they believe? And then orthodox and hasidic and the kind of very, what we call the strict forms of Judaism, the only thing that is consistent between all of them is the rejection of Jesus. That's. That's that. That the foundation of modern Judaism is that Jesus is not the Christ.
That's like their assertion. There's one God and it's not Jesus. And Jesus makes this claim that if you reject me, you reject the father who sent me. So that modern Judaism is not Old Testament religion, it's the rejection of Jesus. Islam is not its own religion. It's the rejection of Jesus. So you have these two.
These two religious assertions, and they're not even positive assertions. You have these two religious denials that have been codified in people groups. And now that's where you have now Islam and Judaism.
And they've become, I think, because they are not theological but rather moral.
They devolve into almost being purely political. And so now we see Islam and Judaism as political forces.
I think that's connected to their theological thing, but that's what it is. So can we say that the Jews are the people of God?
No, that claim cannot be sustained theologically from the scripture. The people of God are those who have the faith of Abraham, that is, faith in the promised seed, Jesus, and that is that. There's an article about this, I think John Stevenson is writing about it and he says the argument for this in the Bible is the Bible, like every single word in the Bible is making that case. And so. Yeah, so if that is a difficult thing for you or whatever, then the link below should be helpful to help you track that down.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: That's great. And you're out of time because you have a meeting. But I was just thinking, we better hope that Taylor Swift isn't a jew.
They're gonna be in real trouble.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: That's this, that's the full circle. That's what this comes down to.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Well, I wanted to bring closure to everything we've talked about, bring it all back to the beginning.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Full circle. Full circle. Now this should be. So here's. And maybe just one, one last comment on this is because we are. So we're trying to think theologically about these things, not chiefly politically or even chiefly morally, but theologically. And that means that the church is, as the church asserts, salvation apart from works.
Everyone who sees salvation by their works persecutes the, as Paul says in Galatians, the child of the law persecutes the child of the promise. The child of the slave persecutes the child of the promise. And so the church, what does the church expect from this is we say, hey, oddly, as we say, you're saved by grace through faith apart from works. And we expect people to say, that's great. And all of a sudden come canons and bullets and swords and everything. We're like, why is this? Because people love the darkness more than the light, etcetera, etcetera. But we have to stand in this light. And that part of that standing in the light should be a great and profound affection for all people and desire that they would know the freedom and love and grace of God in Christ. So there's no animosity for the church, for the christian, for the jewish people, or for the muslim people. What is there to be angry about? There's a, there's a profound desire and prayer that they would also know the love of God in Christ. So that's. I think that's our. Should be our biblical attitude.
[00:50:02] Speaker B: That's a great way to end it.
