Hi, my name is Greg Ganssle, and I’m a Senior Fellow[br]at the Rivendell Institute at Yale University. We’re discussing the[br]philosophical problem of evil. So in the last lecture, we looked at the philosophical problem of evil and we said that atheists[br]want to deny premise one, that is, “God exists and is omniscient
Omnipotent, and wholly good”, while theists want to investigate the additional premises more carefully. So let us check to see. Are these premises true? So let’s look at premise three first: “There are no limits to what an omnipotent, omniscient being can do.” Is this true? Well, let’s think about it.
You’ve probably heard this question: “Can God make a rock so big[br]that even He can’t move it?” What about this: “Can God make a class so boring[br]that even He falls asleep?” These are the kinds of questions some people think are[br]going to be unanswerable. But they boil down to,[br]especially the rock question
Boils down to, “Can God[br]make contradictions true?” You see, a rock so big[br]that an all-powerful being cannot move it is a contradiction. So the question is, can God[br]make a contradiction true? So let’s answer the question[br]”Yes” and let’s answer the question “No” and see what happens. “Yes”: If God can make contradictions true,
Then he can make a rock so[br]big that he cannot move it. But then, he can also move[br]it, because he can make the contradiction true that[br]he cannot move the rock and he also can move the rock. So this is not a problem. But what if God cannot do contradiction?
Then we will have to say that God cannot make this kind of a rock. It’s not something that,[br]as an all-powerful being, He can accomplish. Now traditionally, most[br]theologians and philosophers have understood God’s power such that He cannot do contradictions. And it’s very important for[br]the atheist to hold this view.
Because the atheist[br]wants to have an argument that God does not exist, such[br]as John Mackie’s argument. So suppose Mackie has[br]a successful argument: There’s a contradiction in believing that God exists and that evil exists. The theist can simply[br]say, “Well, if God can do contradictions, he can make[br]that contradiction true. There is no contradiction that challenges
The existence of God.” So in order to have any[br]argument against the existence of God at all, we have to[br]assume that God’s power does not extend to being able[br]to make contradictions true. So we are going to say that premise three as it stands is false.
There are some limits to what[br]an all-powerful being can do. There are logical limits. God cannot draw a square circle. God cannot make a rock[br]so big He cannot move it. These are contradictions. So we need to rewrite premise three. We’ll call it “Three*”: There are no non-logical limits
To what an omnipotent,[br]omniscient being can do. This has a chance of being true. So we’ve revised premise three;[br]let’s look at premise four. Premise four: “A good being always eliminates evil as far as it can.” This too turns out to be false. Often, a good parent[br]allows evil and suffering
Into her child’s life even[br]if she could eliminate it. In our family, we had a very[br]strict rule that the children were not allowed to eat[br]candy before breakfast, and sometimes this caused distress. But we knew we had a good reason to allow this kind of suffering. It didn’t make us bad parents.
So we have to revise premise[br]four as well. Four*: A good being always eliminates[br]evil as far as it can unless it has a good reason to allow it. This has a chance of being true. So the theist says, “We need[br]to revise those two premises. Let’s plug them back into our argument
And see if we can still[br]get a contradiction.” Premise one remains the same. Premise two remains the same. Evil exists. Premise three*. “There are no non-logical limits to what an omnipotent being can do.” Premise four*. “A good being always eliminates[br]evil as far as it can, unless it has a good reason to allow it.”
>From these four, we can[br]go through the steps. Statement five is actually going to be statement five* now: God can eliminate all the evil that it’s logically possible to[br]eliminate. Statement six becomes statement six*: God will eliminate all[br]the evil He can eliminate because He is good, unless He[br]has a good reason to allow it.
>From statement five* and statement six*, we get statement seven*: God eliminates all the evil[br]He logically can eliminate, unless He has a good reason to allow it. Statement eight*: There[br]is evil and there is no evil, unless God has a good reason to allow it. And this is not a contradiction.
So what the theists have recognized is that if it’s possible that[br]God has a good reason to allow evil, there is no contradiction in claiming that God[br]exists, God is wholly good, all-powerful, all-knowing,[br]and yet evil exists. Could it be that God has a[br]good reason to allow evil,
But we don’t have to[br]know what His reasons are for any particular evil? There are some things that[br]have come up as suggestions for why God might allow some[br]of the evils we encounter. First, human freedom. Many philosophers believe[br]that if God allows us to be free in a significant[br]way, then He cannot determine
That we always choose what’s right. That would be a contradiction: a determined action that’s free. Secondly, many people[br]think that the regularities in the universe require the possibility of natural evils such as[br]drownings and burnings. It’s the very same properties[br]of water that make it biologically useful that make[br]it possible for us to drown.
If we’re going to have a regular[br]cause and effect universe, we need to have a stable world. These might be some of the reasons that God allows evil in the world. We don’t know His particular reasons. So the charge of[br]contradiction is the charge that there is a contradiction[br]between the existence of God
And the existence of evil. We’ve shown that there’s[br]probably no contradiction. If God can have a reason to allow evil, then the argument has been answered. Of course, this leads to[br]the next problem of evil called “the evidential problem.” But that’s for another day. Subtitles by the Amara.org community
Foreign I want to go through a little bit of my testimony just because I I don’t recognize a lot of you I mean I recognize some of you some of you might know me some of you might know me as the guy that plays the guitar right that’s
Not who I am I’m a child of God and I have a story and I also have a lesson for you today and I actually want to take you kind of deep in the word this is uh not the milk this would be the meat this is something that requires
Faith for you to understand there’s teachings in the Bible that are called Mysteries and I think the reason they’re called Mysteries is because they require faith for you to understand you can’t analyze them through science you can’t analyze them through human reason and your intellect will do you no good okay
So but before I get to there my name is Jim I did 10 10 years four months in federal prison for manufacturing methamphetamine that’s who I was in the world in the world I was a dope cook I ran around sold drugs and destroyed people’s lives and myself and my family
And everything that was around me um uh the law got me they threw me in prison I dedicated myself to the word you know I tried to make all sorts of deals with God as you do when you’re locked up and you have nothing and you’re stuck and you try to make a
Bargain with them and you know I said you give me 10 years or less and I’ll serve you with all my heart he gave me 12. so now but that one I said you’re going to serve me for the twelve and the reason why I had to do
Such a long sentence was number one that I had a really hard heart and I had a lot of Pride and I know that all of us struggle with those things it’s just a natural thing I think that we’re born with pride even small children when you
Give them toys and they haven’t learned much yet they’re still just little kids and then they got two toys you know that’s my toys you know they’re greedy by Nature they’re prideful and and so that’s one thing that only the Holy Spirit can overcome in us okay it’s only
By Divine appointment It’s Only Life divine inspiration and the Holy Spirit and we can overcome those things but as I’m sitting in prison and I’m going to the chapel I had a buddy that was there in prison with me and he was a Mormon and he said
We go to church with me and he said yeah I said I take what I’ll go to church with you if you’ll go to church with me and I said you bet you know I’ll do that so we went to my church and we’re having a good time and had great things they’re
Pretty good for you enough you got to come to mind so I went to the Mormon service and I sat down and I had kind of long hair back then this was about 2 000 and my hair was a little bit long in prison you know and the Mormon looked at
Me you know in his black pants and his white shirt because they all work pretty much the same thing I’ve never noticed that but yeah there’s two you know that’s what they wear just like the guys in the bicycle anyway he looks at me and he goes to
Obviously you’re not a Mormon right and I know it wasn’t because of the clothes it was because of the hair you know and I said you know you’re right sir and so he said well I’m going to explain to you what we’re all about and so in 15 minutes he explained to me
From pre-mortal existence to the end of time and what the Mormons believe okay and I was just amazed I was blown away you know they were so formulated when I go to church I get a small piece of a puzzle and I take that small piece of
The puzzle back to the sale and I try to fit it in with all the other pieces that I’ve gathered and so I began to ponder why is it that my denomination or my church whether it just be Protestant is more Christian can’t do that same thing
For me so I began to study that with a real passion okay and that study is called Systematic Theology and if you know you went to Theologian school that’s what you would say it’s very technical and all that great stuff but it really doesn’t have any meaning but
Doesn’t have Jesus and the Holy Spirit in it so yeah there’s a lot of things you can do with the Bible you can you can destroy a lot of things with the Bible if you don’t have the spirit of God and so uh so I prayed earnestly and
I studied and I read and I study and I came across this teaching that I want to share with you okay and I came across the answer that I discovered which is the reason why you don’t get a lot of that today in church the whole
Picture so to speak is because there’s a lot of controversy about a lot of the Peace and and pastors don’t want to add even more confusion to confusion so that’s why you don’t get the whole picture a lot of times you’ll get enough of the picture the most important picture that
You need is a picture of Jesus and salvation amen right amen that’s if as long as you get that right you’re good all the other theologians can squabble about all the other details all they want but the teaching that I want to share with you the name of the teaching is called the
Two majors of Christ and the reason why the Holy Spirit led me to this is because once I grasped this teaching it really opened God’s word up to me about Jesus if it made me understand Jesus in a way that I didn’t understand him before not for confusion okay so if if
This teaching confuses you at all okay don’t listen to it if you don’t grasp it if you’re not ready for it it’s okay just ponder it a little bit just focus on Christ that’s our main thing so the the teaching is the two Natures of Christ
And we want to start in Isaiah chapter nine and you ask the people that like to read or the readers read my podcast what verse uh Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6. for to us a child is born to us the son is given and the government shall be
Upon his shoulder and his name Shall be Called wonderful counselor Mighty God Everlasting father Prince of Peace now obviously you can see from the scripture they’re talking about Jesus unto us a son is born and it shows the titles that Jesus carries and you either said Mighty
God is in there okay so what I want to really stress here is that Jesus is God nobody’s ever told you that if nobody’s ever said hey that Jesus is God that’s one of the first things that you’ve got to come to realize Jesus Is God he’s one
Of the three persons of the Trinity right another really deep teaching Trinity is a really really deep teaching but Jesus Is God okay he is divine some religious bodies uh say for example the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t accept that Jesus is God they accept Jesus as a human being without a problem but they
Can’t accept them as God okay but the the scriptural proof that Jesus is God is undeniable I’ve only got like three scriptures to prove it but there’s I’ve got a list in here that’s like it’s huge it’s huge okay by the same token you can make the same mistake and not have Jesus
As a human okay and it’s very important that Jesus be divine and it’s very important that Jesus be human for many reasons number one he needs to be divine in order for his atonement to hold infinite power okay did you grasp that in other words ask God whatever he does because
Everything that God does is infinite he’s an infinite being hell is infinite Heaven is infinite he lives infinitely his knowledge is infinite everything about God is infant and so as as Jesus has gone when he does his atonement the power of that atonement is infinite you understand it’s not limited it’s not
Limited by anyone or anything okay so let’s look at one more scripture for Jesus’s Divinity uh Jeremiah 23 and 6 and then if we want we can read John 1 1 you know which is a New Testament scripture that and with 14 of course and then we’ll look at this Humanity
Someone got Jeremiah 23 and 60. in this days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell safely now this is his name by which we be called the Lord our righteousness all right there’s Jesus Jesus came from the tribe of Judah right and he was the Savior right and he
Was also God okay there’s several texts here I’ll read John 1 1 and 114 in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the word loves God so the question is well who’s the word right and I’m just saying well that’s that sounds great but that really confused me
I don’t know how many times I read that scripture in prison I read that John 1 1. I for a year I read that before God revealed what that meant to me right so let me join 14 with it in 14 it says and the Word was made flesh so the word is
Obviously Jesus and dwelt amongst us and we behold his glory the glory of the only begotten of the father will embraced and full of Truth so what I want to really emphasize here is the Divinity of Jesus that Jesus is holy God okay is he the father no there’s the
Father the Son and the Holy Spirit all of them are equal in power in essence okay I know that our human Minds when we think about that when we think about three persons in one being we’re like it’s too much for me so much you know the Jehovah’s Witnesses say it’s too
Much the unitarians say it’s too much I can’t handle that but there are many things that you’re going to discover about God if you can think about that you can try to rationalize and they’re not going to make sense why does God do Miracles why do I exist and stand here
Why do these millions of cells that are in my body choose to live together just the Miracle of Life that your body functions the way it is is a miracle beyond belief the way A Tree Grows is baffled Sciences for years okay they’re still looking at that so there’s a great
Many things that God does that require okay as a matter of fact everything that God does requires Faith every time you read in the scripture where there’s a miracle then Jesus says and your faith has made you whole wow you got any faith faith is that is
The substance from which we grasp God okay and so for us to truly understand that Jesus is divine that he is actually God requires Faith okay so let’s look at Jesus’s Humanity the first question is why is Jesus have to be a human why can’t he just be a spirit that looks
Like a human right and then when he suffers it don’t hurt and when they do all those things it doesn’t really affect him because there are religious denominations that believe that Jesus appeared that he was just an angel that appeared as a human being but it’s incorrect we know that Jesus was
Actually a human being he even refers to himself as the son of man right he cares the title Son of God which emphasizes his divinity and he also carries the title of the son of man which is his humility or Humanity John 8 40. let’s
Take a look at that one and then we have Matthew 26 28 I’ll grab that one Matthew is 26 28 and but now you seek to kill me a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God this is not what Abraham did now if you
Can’t accept somebody else’s testimony right which you know when I go to talk to people and they start to explain something to me and I start to listen to what they’re saying and I start to analyze what they’re telling me right the first thing that I have to consider
Is that they’re a human being right and that as a human being their ability to be honest sometimes is not what it should be right my ability to be honest with myself is sometimes hammering sometimes I tell lies I don’t even know why I told the LIE until I’m caught anything the
Guy’s just look hey check oh yeah well you’re right man I didn’t even realize I was like well this is the words of Jesus Jesus refers to himself as a man okay Jesus who is God is saying that he’s a man okay if we can’t take the testimony
Of man we can take the testimony of God Amen Matthew 26 26. 26-28 this is my blood of the New Covenant which ratifies the agreement and is being poured out for many for the Forgiveness of sins amen so okay if he’s just a spirit and he’s not made of flesh and blood
Right and how is he there’s no blood if he’s just a spirit there’s no blood okay and the reason that Jesus Christ must be human is because he’s making an atonement for the sins of the human race okay it talks about Jesus being the second Adam okay
What we mean is that as Adam was made perfect in the garden and sinned and brought a curse of sin upon all human beings so the second Adam which is Jesus Christ was also born of the flesh okay and brought atonement for us okay it’s by our faith in Jesus Christ in his
Shedding of the blood that we have the remission of sins so if he wasn’t really a human being how could he atone for the sins of human beings right how can a spirit atone for Humanity that wouldn’t make sense it wouldn’t equate in God’s justice right we serve a just God and if
A human being commits a sin or Humanity in general then by Humanity will that have to be justified so it was very important that Jesus be divine in his atonement and be human in his atonement otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to atone for our sins okay so so we see
That Jesus is both Divine and that he’s human but he’s not half human right and he’s not half divine he’s a man and he’s God all in one being here this is the mystery that’s hard for us to comprehend it comes back to the like the
Trinity we’re like man how can that be but we’re going to look at some scriptures where Jesus is going to speak from his human mind and where he’s going to speak from his Divine mind and you’re going to see that there’s times where Jesus Christ will speak and you’ll say he’s not God
And this is where a lot of Errors come in religious denominations but they say we can’t how could God say that right how could God make that statement because that statement is made by a human being and the answer is because Jesus is a human being and he does speak
Just like a man just like you just like me and sometimes he does say things right that would make you think well he can’t be God to say that and so let’s look at a few examples of Jesus speaking in humanity and speaking in his divinity
Okay and there’s even times and I didn’t go that far in his teachings I didn’t think he would have times time to do it where the human part of Jesus speaks of the Divine and the Divine speaks of the human but I don’t think we have time to go that far so
Um let’s go to mark 11. and there’s you know when I first grasp this teaching it was like wow that makes sense you know I mean I can make sense of why Jesus says this sometimes and this other times and there is no contradiction there’s no contradiction
In the word of God amen amen it’s invaluable it’s the book that has withstood the test of time and the scrutiny of every intellectual of every century without blemish okay Mark chapter 11 and we’ll start in verse 12 and we’re going to compare verse 12 with 11 20.
Okay so here’s Jesus right on the morrow then they were coming from Bethany Jesus was hungry so here’s Jesus he’s walking back from preaching and doing you know doing God’s work and he’s hungry obviously he’s a human right he’s hungry like we were before we had breakfast this morning
And seeing a fig tree afar off and it having leaves he came if happily now this is the King James version so yeah with you the terminology kind of is the first most we have an NIV right I started with the Contemporary English version yeah the sacred box of God you
Know the Ark of the Covenant the sacred walks of God very plain terms that’s what I needed at first having leaves he came if happy he might find anything there on and when he came to it he found nothing but leaves for the time of figs was not yet now
Here’s Jesus who’s hungry he sees a fig tree just like I would I’m gonna go grab me a fig a fig tree got leaves looks like I might have some tasty fruit okay now you’ll see that he gets to the tree and there’s no fruit now we know that God
Knows all things so why didn’t Jesus just you know tap into the Divinity you know I can check it out before he wasted all the energy to go over there and get mad at it right okay and and there’s some controversy as to why Jesus does this some people
Believe that Jesus chooses right to not use his Divine mind in certain instances to relate to our experiences okay he says that Jesus has uh not only bore infirmities but it was tempted in every way that we were tempted okay and so there’s certain times where and and I
Think that it’s pretty accurate to believe that that he actually shuts off his Divine mind and just operates in the human just goes with it right just like me and you in this case it gets to the tree and guess what there’s no figs so what does he do that’s right
And Jesus answered uh there was no fruit and Jesus answered and said unto it no man eat fruit of thee henceforth and his disciples heard it so Jesus curses the fig tree okay we read in chapter 20 right where the tree is withered so here we see Jesus demonstrating his divinity in that
He has the power and authority over nature that he tells a tree to die and it dies right he tells a man to rise up and live the man rises up and live whether it be spiritually dead or physically dead it doesn’t matter so we
See that in his Humanity Jesus goes to a fig tree and in his divinity he curses the tree that will produce the fruit for his Humanity amen amen kind of deep too deep for you guys all right let’s go to the next one Luke 22 42 22-42
Okay here’s Jesus in the garden right in this scripture right here baffled me for a long time when I first read this but the first uh I’ve been a Christian since uh 2000 so you know I it’s I’ve studied a lot that’s really really studied a lot
That and not that that makes me any better than anybody else sometimes after all this study I wish that I wish the Christian I was on the very second day was the day that I got saved man you know what I mean sometimes I wish I
Could just go back and just make it like that sometimes I think that the more I know the worse off I am but that’s not the case it actually brings us closer to Christ but there’s something that that childlike love when you have across from the very beginning it’s a very very
Special time amen and it was for me anyway on my face uh so here we go we got Luke 22 42. and this is the words of Jesus and he’s in the garden and he’s praying he’s about to be crucified and he knows what’s coming right and he says father
If thou be willing remove this cup from me nonetheless not my will but die will be done okay we can see where Jesus speaking in his Humanity right and in his prayer and in his Union with the father is asking just like we do some days right I’ve had days like that you
Had days like that where you say God man just don’t let me go through this I can’t handle it you know don’t let me get divorced don’t let you know me lose my job uh my finances are a mess or anything physical that we experience whether it be an ailment or pain you
Know your back is thrown out whatever I don’t know how many times in my life especially being in prison I say God and can you just let this cup pass just let it slide by just let me sneak through you know and I didn’t put the put as your will on
The end though most of us don’t most of us just pray for what we want but let your will done let your will be done part doesn’t come till way later when we’ve matured as a Christian and we really trust God you know when we really really have faith in
Him and we’re walking in that Faith right and that’s a growing that’s a growing thing but that in my Humanity I’m asked just like Jesus you know what God just take this away from you just don’t let me experience this right and God says you know what my will stands
You will pass through the fire and you will pass unscathed or you’ll pass through the fire and you’ll experience what I wanted you to experience then you’ll learn what I want you to learn that that’s my job as their father is to teach you all things okay so here we see Jesus
As a human he’s down on his knees and he’s praying to God just like we do and he’s asking God to prevent the tragic things that happen in life from happening to him if it’s possible so let’s look at 11 20 now same oh I’m sorry I’m sorry
Let’s look at John 18 36 sorry about that John 18 36. Jesus answers now this is where Jesus is being questioned by Pontius Pilate and and I think that this particular scriptures only found in John but for sure anyway so Jesus is giving an answer as to who he is okay conscious
Mind says well who are you you know and he says my kingdom is not of this world if my kingdom were of this world then would not my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews but now is my kingdom not from hence in
Other words what Jesus is saying is I’m not from this world I’m from heaven right that’s where I came from if if my people were here right now they would smash you like it’s done in heaven but I’m not from this Kingdom so we see Jesus saying in his divinity I’m Divine
I’m a Divine being that was sent here right and as my mission is not to fight you there’s another scripture and I think that it’s also in John where he says that no Authority was given unto you unless it was given by my father right Pontius Pilate tells him hey don’t you
Know that I have the power to have you killed or let you live and Jesus says you know what you don’t have anything on me you don’t have anything that wasn’t given by my father who my trust completely right so we see that Jesus speaks in the humanity just like you and
Me and he speaks in his divinity okay so one more I got one more for you Matthew chapter 4 verse 1. I think okay so here we are and Jesus is being tempted by the devil okay I I don’t know about you guys but when you first read
The Bible right and you said okay Jesus is gone right well then what’s the devil doing there right what does God and the devil have to do with each other and Jesus is really God why is the devil there tempting and that’s just not possible everybody knows that the
Picking order in Heaven Is God angels and demons humans so this provides logic but the reason is because Jesus must be tempted because he’s in his Humanity now whether the devil knows that Jesus is being a God or not I don’t know I’ve never really answered that question I’ve never really
Pursued that question in the Bible to find out but I’ve always thought that he didn’t or I don’t think the devil would be there I don’t think the devil would waste his time he would have died before Dr cross yeah yeah so um so here’s Jesus and let’s read
Starting one then when Jesus was left in the spirit Into the Wilderness to be tempted by the devil and he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights and the temperature came to him and said that if you’re the Son of God command these stones to be made bread so here we see
That just like you and me right Jesus and his humanity is being tempted by the devil and you’re going to experience this if you don’t know this or I know you know this already but you have an enemy the word declares that there is opposition
Stand for to what you believe in to all that you’re about and that enemy is the devil okay and he’s come to kill steal and destroy I know that you guys have heard that okay but just as Jesus was tempted so you’re tempted in your Humanity okay and in your Divinity in
Other words if you truly possess the Holy Spirit don’t we also share in Christ in the fact that not that we’re God I would never claim that but that we have a peace of God in us and that we are clothed in humanity and that we share more with Jesus than we thought
That yes sometimes we speak like a man sometimes we speak the word of God huh amen and sometimes in our infirmities we cry out and let this cup pass and sometimes in our divine strength we say we’re not from this Kingdom right that we’re from the kingdom of God okay okay
I want to read one more scripture dear I can’t see the clock so I didn’t bring my watch all right you got 20 minutes 20 minutes uh let’s go to John 18 and 4. you know all those 10 years in prison I got stuck on the gospels I literally was
In the gospel for like 10 years I just couldn’t get out of the gospels I couldn’t get to the Epistles I couldn’t I mean I did a lot of Correspondence courses through the mail and uh so like they sent me the uh Old Testament you know two-year old
Testament study so I did the two year old testament study and I did the two-year New Testament study and I just kept getting drawn back to the gospels especially John I don’t know what it is about the Gospel of John but when I was a man it’s all that
All right eighteen and four Jesus therefore knowing all things that should come upon him went forth and said unto them whom seek ye okay so here’s Jesus in his human form right Jesus is a man using his divinity to know all things okay so so this is where we differ with
Jesus okay there there’s a lot of things that you’re going to read in the word of God and you’re going to say you know what I’m just like Jesus right and it’s Humanity I’m just like Jesus and and his divinity sometimes I’m just like Jesus sometimes I can be super
Spiritual sometimes I can be filled with the Holy Spirit and I’ll get pumped up and I’ll pray and I’ll share I’ll get the word in me and I’ll go out and God will send someone to me and they’ll say something and I’ll know exactly what to
Say I’ll know that God wants to speak through me wants to speak life into this person right then and there I don’t know how many times it I went to the Walmart right by my house right around 40th and Thomas and there’s a Walmart right there
And there right this big this guy from our church and he’s sick I mean he’s sick sick he’s and he’s trying to work in the Walmart is the greatest they say him not to be the greeter in the sick but it’s okay it was in my appointment
Amen that’s where he was supposed to stand or I wouldn’t have found him in the Walmart so he’s standing there now remember what’s up I’ve been sick for two weeks I spent all my money on the doctor you know I said man let me pray with you so
I prayed with him I went into Walmart I did my shopping and God said you know what you need to give him some money the prayer was great fantastic idea however that’s not what he needs right he needs money he just spent all his money on the doctors he
Told you that hello wake up McFly you know me and my wife blessed him with some money right and so there’s there’s times where those Divine appointments we share with Jesus and we have to recognize those and we have to recognize our Humanity right just like Jesus okay uh
So we got one more that joins with that scripture okay Jesus whom do you seek and they answered him Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus said unto them I am he okay this this particular passage in scripture but let me finish the reading and then I’ll uh and Judas
Also which betrayed him stood with them as soon as he had said unto them I am he then all the people around fell backwards to the ground okay this particular piece of scripture is where Jesus is talking about his divinity a matter of fact he is emphasizing his divinity in a way that
Is causing a physical reaction that the people that are around him because of the command when he’s saying I am God I am he I am who I am I am the I am I am Yahweh that the people fell down so here we see Jesus using his authority right to not
Only demonstrate that his humanity is ineffective he’s a human being but that he’s also a Divine it is also Divine uh everybody fell down this particular passage of scripture is all and it’s only in John when you read it you’re like wow you know Jesus they come up to
Arrest Jesus and you Jesus I am and everybody falls down what a great passage I think this has an authority you know I keep trying but it doesn’t work for me I know nobody Falls can you repeat that passage please okay I’ll read it the address uh 18 uh John 18.
And starting in four okay so it’s four fives and six seven four five and six the reason that I share this particular teaching right is because you’re going to encounter people that have a different view okay and they’re going to come to you and I used to debate
Um with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons in prison just because they were lost souls you know and they were like the hardest ones to get so I went after the hardest one I said God sent me after the hardest ones and God said go to the Jehovah’s Witness for a little while
Right okay and that’s an experience let me tell you because you know what no religious body equips their people to defend against you than any other denomination most people that aren’t experienced will go with them and they’ll get chewed up you’ll come out of there and you’ll be
Feeling raggling it’s like man I gotta go study some more this guy just ate me up right but what you need to understand for yourself not the ear do after the Jehovah’s Witnesses and I found out later that really wasn’t the way to go I mean I did it very softly you know
Because these were my friends I told them look let’s have a Bible study together I said okay so we all brought our Bibles you know they brought their New World Translation and I brought my Bible and we came to an agreement that we were using the same book but we
Didn’t come to the same conclusion right and so I got to the point I said okay well okay well we’re using the same book but we don’t have the same conclusion so we need to come to a conclusion about who Jesus is that’s the only thing that
I really focused on because I figured if they just got the Jesus was God then everything else would fall into play and so I said okay I tell you what uh this week you bring the scriptures that you tell me that Jesus isn’t God and then
Next week I’ll bring the lunch so they brought theirs and I listened to it I said very interesting it’s very interesting and you know I’ll have mine actually they never showed up again but anyway the reason that I share this is so that number one you’ll have a
Deeper relationship with Jesus knew his word that when you read his word and when he says something right it doesn’t sound Divine don’t be surprised okay because Jesus is a man right he’s a man just like you just like me the one exception that you might find to that is
That you know the Holy Spirit on his conception it says that the Holy Spirit hovered around his conception so whether he had a sin nature or not is kind of debatable you know if in order for him to be the first Adam I would think that
He would have to have been like Adam without that sin nature you know that it would be like that but that he’s a human being just like you and me and there’s going to be times where he speaks in his humanity and then there’s going to be
Times where he speaks in his divinity and if you don’t have a good balance of that right if you don’t have a good balance of that then you’re going to fall into one of these calls and that’s where these Cults are going to come at
You from they’re going to come at you I had a guy in prison I don’t remember what denomination but he come to me and he says hey you clean the train I suggest I do he said can you explain it to me I said well certainly I
Can so I began to expound on the Trinity for him and he started hackling me and I said you know hold up did you really want to understand this or are you just trying to bash me you know and he said and he wasn’t the same sky in the world
But he said uh well he said you know at the Jordan River when Jesus is baptized if Jesus Is God what is he Evangelical sin because who’s that voice in heaven I said I said no that that’s the Trinity that they’re all three there there’s Jesus in the water the holy spirit’s
Coming down to the father’s and what better example do you need of this tell me that you know but he was quite a character so you should have a good balance of of Jesus as humanity and a good balance of Jesus Divinity there’s even other scriptures where it talks
About the blood of God all right we’ll come across that wow how can God have blood God can’t but Jesus did and Jesus was God Amen and so when when you read your word and and I assume that all of us read some of the gospels right are we all official people
I’m gonna have still stuck in the gospel it’s like I’m here later it’s good news it’s all there when you’re in the gospels and you’re reading about Jesus and Jesus is speaking when you hit those red letters right you get those red letters okay think to
Yourself okay Jesus is a man and Jesus Is God and he’s both people and one being and that he can speak from his human human mind and he can speak from his Divine mind that he can speak from his human consciousness and that he can speak from his Divine Consciousness and
That he can even speak from his Divine towards his humanity and his Humanity towards his new Divine and at that point it gets a little crazy you know but in us and likewise we also are human being and as born-again Christians we are also Divine we’re not
God and we can never throw the thrill of God obviously but we have the Holy Spirit in us and so there’s times in your life and in my life where we’ll come to a situation and no matter how spiritual we’ve been the week before no matter how much we’ve prayed and you
Know done all the stuff that we come up and something snaps in us and we speak in our humanity and you know what all we can do in those instances is repent and say you know what God I don’t want to be like that I want to
Be more like Jesus give me more of the Divine Right give me more of the Divine all right and there’s going to be times where you have a Divine appointment and you’ll roll up somewhere and God will speak nice and clear to you and tell you
What to do right and then you’ll find that you’re also human and that you’re also a divine sometimes you’ll speak from your human mind sometimes from your Divine sometimes you’ll speak from your Humanity about your Divinity and sometimes from your Divinity about your experience but that you’re just like Jesus amen
Amen any questions too deep okay that was awesome yes brother and when I was in federal prison I had to be a threatened too long sometimes when they’re running around saying alive yeah I mean not everybody was supposed to have guidance but these guys were trying to teach that we were little guys
That was like you know yeah I mean yeah um basically the way that they get away from that scripture in John 1 1 right is that they don’t capitalize the G okay and and the and and how that came about was when they when they translated the New World Translation the scholars that
Did that were not authorized to do that and that’s why it is printed by the Jehovah’s Witnesses people you know the Watchtower publication company and all that because they don’t have they wouldn’t have any other sponsors but basically you can change one letter in one of the Greek
Words and give it a totally different meaning totally different meaning from meaning of the same Essence to meaning a mix of something right and if you’re curious about that particular word I’ll pull it I I got that it’s in my study I have a big old thing if you want the whole
Thing of it I’ve got a huge bigger one it’s called a summary of Christian doctrine it’ll kind of give you a little overview of some of the the names of Christ and of what you know what his titles hold and what they mean and about some errors about that particular what
You’re talking about whether the word god should have a capital letter or a small letter and it all revolves off of one letter the letter i that they insert in the Greek word okay very crazy the biggest problem I had as a Christian in prison was this this they had this they
Have this saying in prison I don’t know if they got a mistake or if they had it in the beds basically a couple places I were at if you’re weak or if you’re scared go to church yeah so I had to deal with that the whole time you know I
Mean you know it’s like hey you know I’m just trying to and then once somebody’s family member was sick guess what they’d come and ask me to pray for them it’s okay though yeah yeah this was a just awesome teaching by the way um I read I think every time I read it
I go man that doesn’t really sound like Jesus is when the syrup Phoenician woman yes um wakes him up and he says why would I give right what’s meant to be at the king’s table the dogs and I’m like you know you know Jesus is Love man you know he just loves
Everybody you know we you know and so for me to read that with my mind I was like dick you know so I I’m trying to find it I can’t find it for the life of me but um at any anyways my knee says that and she says
Even the dogs eat from the scratch on the table yeah she just fires right back and I’m just saying hey even the even the little dogs eat the eat the scraps from the King stable kind of thing but I think that’s the one thing because I can
Say okay well he cursed the Fig Tree yeah he was hungry and he didn’t get what he wanted and he said you’re not getting no one will look from you and then um he uh had righteous indignation um which is Justified anger when he went and cleansed the temple right of the
Money changers and everything like that but but I mean you just straight up called this lady what he was calling there was a a gentile there you go so that you know I don’t know received any Revelation on that particular message no but you know what there’s a book lightness
You got a response yeah I actually do okay the significance seems to be for one thing that God’s a covenant God and um it’s a big deal because in this situation This Woman’s got no rights we’re talking about rights and privileges right we’re we’re seated at
The right hand of Christ right now we have rights and privileges we may not take advantage of them we may not realize them but you know the spiritual credit card in your wallet that’s Limitless it’s Limitless on getting everything you want to need if it’s in
Line with God’s word right we may not take advantage of it we may not use it we may not think about it in this case she had she didn’t have the credit card she didn’t have the perk she didn’t have the plan she couldn’t and she couldn’t sign herself up
She was outside of the will of God at that moment and and God for whatever reason allowed her to kind of like still humiliate herself or humble herself and still press in by faith and she’s one of the she’s like one of the first examples of someone who crossed as they say she
Crossed the line by the grace of God the God said I’m sorry but little dogs don’t get what my children get yeah and she’s like yeah the little dog still get to eat from the crumbs of that counter drop and he’s like you know what woman and you are stubborn you trust you
Acknowledge who I am you’re in and that was a big deal so that’s that seems to be was you as a gentile yeah and so was the Centurion he’s the Roman yeah and it was just too totally different reactions from Jesus yeah one was I’ve been seeing
Faith like this in all of Israel and Jesus marveled at him which and it’s a good thing when Jesus Marvels at you right yeah amen and then the other one was like broad get out of here you know what are you thinking yeah Jesus sees the heart of it yeah but he still
Humbled herself there’s a really good book uh it’s by a guy named FF Bruce it’s called the hard Saints of Jesus and it hits all of those you ever read that Tom man that’s a hard book right there it’s a really good book If you ever you could probably even PDF
It online but you know when he’s talking it’s a spirit though so you know when whenever you talk harshly or turn over tables and as simple because the people were you know selling some and all that people they love the principality that they right you know so that’s why when
You see it’s harsh words and my brothers there’s a time and place for everything yeah there’s nothing wrong with being angry uh the principality and as long as you as long as you you get it out but you know again it’s a word you choose
And as long as they’re uh out of love and it’s biblically directing us where you know there is something wrong with the Rage of course but yeah there’s again there’s there’s a time for that and that’s what’s so interesting we picture Jesus as a loving awesome you know kind of just just
Walking along and not in Beauty and Grace where she was but there’s also the that’s that lion and lamb too yeah that lion needs to come out once in a while so there was a time when the Bible was being formulated right and this is an iniquity and there’s a guy called
Marciano Marcel and marcion didn’t like the god of the Old Testament right but he liked the Jesus guy so he just kind of cut out all the mean stuff about Jesus and just left all the good fluffy stuff and made his own Bible and started
His own set yeah I mean and uh that’s what led to them formulating what’s in the Cannons or the Bible what it is today to prevent people from doing that from cutting out God’s justice in God’s commandment against sin and his demand for righteousness and just holding on to
His love and all the easy fluffy stuff you know so there’s definitely you know Jesus not that he ever sinned but there are times where Jesus had to draw a hard line too and then there’s times where his compassion is overwhelming you know where where he’ll say why don’t uh the
One without sin till the first time the great thing about it is he always will give us an escape yes so uh whenever you tip it don’t feel guilty or shameful just just listen to our god that tells you to go to yeah brother in the back did you have
Something you wanted to add I seen your hand up well I was gonna say uh Paul Paul always said you know the gospel is for the Jew first and then to the gym you know so Christ came to Israel first and uh and then it was after that that you know it was
It was given to us you know uh and the woman as well you know she wasn’t part of Israel and and actually when the disciples came back and saw Jesus sitting under well and talking to this woman they were like what are you doing talking to him you know what or
What what are you doing talking to her right you know what and because her people in Israel didn’t have anything to do with each other you know so there’s a lot there that you can find that would explain that you know it was like he’s staying at home
You know you call him a lady a dog well that’s you know it’s a Humanity in Christ and Christ being Jew talked to this woman but it actually it actually brings about the documents to the Gentiles it’s like um I forget where it was but Jesus called it too PR you name
Two people that were saved in the Old Testament and and the Pharisees were offended that he brought up these two names with us because they were gentile people back in the Old Testament you know what I’m talking about the right now Jesus was talking and he was saying how
Look back in this day the woman was visited by the prophet that had nothing to eat Elisha visited this one the name of the leopard was field and these were the only two that God had named last year that’s you know he just brings the gospel full round to not only until he’s
Used within 10 towels as well and he does that yeah his Humanity speaks any other questions uh I want to thank you Brothers for letting me share I’m sorry I’m not here every Saturday I work on Saturday mornings I work from seven to noon at a busy little Garage in Tempe
Uh working on cars and getting drinks and all that fun stuff these days yeah hey man but I’ll try to get here as much as I can you know I’d love to spend time and get to know some of you guys better I know most of you
But not all of you some kind of new basis and uh you know thanks for letting me share with you and I hope that that opens up God’s word a little bit to you that when you read the red red lettering in the Bible if you have read that
Arrival then you’ll hear Jesus speaking you know and with a little more depth and I hope that you’re a little more confident to stand behind the truth that Jesus is God and that Jesus is a human being amen amen that’s great thanks Jim thank you
SPROUL: There’s a real sense, I think, that every Christian is a missionary. If we go back to the New Testament, and we see in the book of Acts, that when persecution arose in Jerusalem we read that all of the Christians were scattered except the apostles.
And those who were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Gospel. That is the way the Christian church was born—not simply with the ministry of the clergy or the apostles or even of the deacons but it was the rank and file Christians that took the Gospel wherever they went in the ancient world.
But in our church today we make a distinction, don’t we, between a professional missionary and a layman who is not a missionary? But in Biblical categories every Christian, in a sense, is a missionary, because every Christian is called to participate in the mission that Christ has given to the church.
Well when I look at what we do with missionaries before we send them into a foreign country what do we have them do? We don’t just select a missionary, put them on an airplane, have them arrive in Timbuktu or someplace like that and say “ok, do your thing.”
Before a missionary can go to the foreign field that the person has to undergo in-depth study of the culture to which they are going. They have to learn the language; they have to learn the customs; they have to be able
To understand the way people think and the way they behave in the land to which they are sent as missionaries. Now let’s assume that you are missionaries to the United States. What’s your preparation? It’s not enough simply to know the Gospel, to know the content of Scriptures, the subject
Matter that you want to communicate and bear witness to your culture. It is also very important that you understand the culture in which you are acting out your role as a missionary. So that’s the purpose of this series of lectures.
It’s to try to get a handle on the culture as it now presents itself to us as Christians. I think it would be a dreadful mistake to assume that the American culture is predominantly a Christian culture. Certainly we live in a nation that has had an enormous influence from the church and
From Judeo-Christian value systems. It’s not that our country is pagan. Our country has been strongly influenced by Christianity. Some have said that we have been influenced in the degree that people are influenced when they receive a shot of inoculation to prevent a disease that you put a minor dose of the
Disease in the inoculation so that they have just enough of it to be immune to the real thing. And some have maintained that that’s what has happened here in the American culture, that we’ve had just enough Christianity impacting our society as to make us immune from the real thing.
There’s a sense, as I said, in which our nation is not pagan. Paganism is a pre-Christian situation. It’s a situation that exists where the Gospel and the light of the Gospel has never been manifest in a particular environment, but that’s not true about America.
Ours is what I call a “secular” environment, a “secular” society. And the secularization of the American culture is a post-Christian phenomenon, not a pre-Christian—”pre-Christian” is pagan; “post-Christian” is secularized. Now, I think it’s also important for us to understand that our culture is, and has been, a melting pot.
We don’t live in a culture that is monolithic. What is monolithic? A monolithic culture is a culture where only one definable worldview or value system is operating, and there’s kind of a uniformity as you find in some nations.
You go, for example, into Red China and you see a uniform system of thought that everybody is supposed to embrace—it’s taught in the schools, it’s advertised in posters, and even the uniformity comes down to literal uniforms. People dress in the same way as there is this enforced conformity, but that’s not been the
American ideal. The American ideal has been—we are a melting pot, so that there are all kinds of different beliefs and philosophies competing for acceptance within our society and within our culture. And if a Christian is going to be able to communicate to this culture, he has to be
Aware at least of the dominant systems that are operating within our culture. As I said, we’re not monolithic but the term that we use is pluralistic, and we’ll have a separate study, a separate lecture, just on pluralism. But the various schools of thought that are most dominant, I believe, in our culture today
Include the ones that I’m about to put up here on the blackboard, and we’re going to look at each one of those individually in the lectures to come. First of all, there is the influence of what we call humanism.
As I say, we will a separate lecture defining the content and the perspective of humanism. Secondly, there is the influence of existentialism. How many of you think that you could give a good definition of existentialism? How many of you have never heard the word existentialism? All right, just a couple.
Most of you have at least heard the term existentialism, but it’s one of those terms that we hear bandied about in the culture but very few people are able to give concrete definition—we will have a separate lecture on existentialism.
A third “ism” that has had a tremendous impact on our culture that most laymen have never heard of is the “ism” called positivism. How many of you have never heard of positivism? See, there’s some more here, more than have never heard of existentialism.
And also, there’s the influence of a very ancient perspective or philosophy that we call hedonism. How many of you have never heard of hedonism? How many of you have heard of hedonism? You have … You have heard of that. Ok, all right.
And then there is, as I said, pluralism and relativism … And there’s one other “ism” that I’m going to incorporate up above with positivism which we call pragmatism, which is a distinctly American life and worldview. All right, let’s see how many I have there—five—humanism, existentialism, positivism, pragmatism, hedonism,
And pluralism and its corollary relativism. All right, those are going to be the systems of thought or philosophical perspectives that we will be examining in this brief course. But what I’m looking for today is this: is there an overarching, generic, holistic philosophy
Or value system that would in some sense incorporate all of these? It’s been said that no society can survive, no civilization can function without some unifying philosophical perspective. Even if you have all different kinds of views competing, there must be some kind of overarching
Atmosphere or environment that makes it possible even for these to coexist in a given society. And when the historians and the philosophers seek the common term, the common basic generic lowest common denominator that incorporates features of all of these, usually the term
That we hear is the term secularism, and that’s what I want to look at in the time that we have left today. Let me do my handiwork here with the eraser and we’ll start again with this word: secularism.
Obviously, when we see that word, we see that we have a root and a suffix. And my favorite method of teaching is to do word studies and break these concepts down into its constituent parts so that we can get a hold of them. There’s the word “secular,” and then there’s the suffix.
Now let’s start at the back and work our way forward. Anytime we see this three-letter suffix, “ism,” what do we see? What do we find? What’s it saying? What’s it do to the word? You’re allowed to answer my question, you know. What does it do? What does “ism” do to a word?
AUDIENCE: It makes it a state of being. SPROUL: It makes it a state of being. Little bit more than that. AUDIENCE: A philosophy. SPROUL: A philosophy, a system of thought. What we call a “veltunchung,” a way of looking at the world, a view of the world, a value system.
It’s one thing—how many of you believe in humans? And think that being human is a good thing? It’s one thing to be human; it’s another thing to be a humanist—that is one who embraces humanism. We all exist, but we’re not all existentialists, are we?
You put that “ism”, existentialism, on the end of the root for existence and you’re talking now about a philosophical system, a whole way of looking at things. You want to be practical, but does that make you a pragmatist? Of course not.
All right, so we see that the suffix “ism” takes the root and elevates it to the level of a philosophical system. Now the word “secular” is a perfectly good and positive word in the Christian’s vocabulary. Historically the church has always had a good view of that which was regarded as being secular.
I’m thinking in terms of the whole of the history of the church. In the Middle Ages, for example, men were ordained to a specific role in the priesthood that was called the secular priesthood, because those were men who had offices that took them
Out of the arena, or the institution, of the church to minister out in the world where they were specific needs that needed the healing touch of the church, or the priestly mission of the church. There’s a sense in which I was ordained as a secular clergyman, because I was ordained
To the teaching ministry, not to an ecclesiastical office within a local congregation. So I was commissioned to go to the university and to be a teacher out in the world, if you will, in the secular world that can be distinguished to some degree by that sphere that we’ve set
Apart and called the church, or the sacred realm. But so often in Christians’ minds the distinction between sacred and secular is the distinction between the good and the bad, but that’s not the way it was meant to be in the development of church history. It was simply a different sphere of operation. Ok?
Now the word secular has its origins and its roots in the Latin, in the Latin language. It comes from the Latin word “saeculum,” which means—Do we have any Latin scholars in here? What does the Latin word “saeculum” mean? What’s its translation?—It means the word “saeculum” means in the original Latin “world.” Ok?
I said a secular priest is one who ministers in the world. What does the Latin word “mundus” mean? Anybody know? “World.” Remember Athanasius? St. Athanasius, what was on his tombstone? “Athanasius Contra Mundum”—Athanasius against what? The world. All right, so that “mundus” also means world.
Well both words mean the same thing in the original Latin, what was the difference? Well, the people in the ancient world understood that as human beings they lived in time and in space. We still talk that way, don’t we?
That our life is spatial; it’s geographical; there is a certain “whereness” to my life. I live here. I am here; I’m not somewhere else. And there is also a time frame in which I live. Jesus talked about this place or this generation—this age. Ok? The present age.
So in the Latin the word for this world, thinking in terms of time is “saeculum,” and the word for this world in terms of space is “mundus.” Now what in the world, what in the “mundus” or the “saeculum” does this have to do with our culture?
Well “saeculum” or the secular had to do literally with this time, this world in the present time. The secular realm is this world in this world, in the present time. Now what happens to the word secular when you add the “ism”?
The basic overarching theme of secularism is this: That all of reality, all of life, every human value, every human activity must be understood in light of and judged by the value or the norm of this present time. Where’s the point of conflict between secularism and Christianity? Can you see it coming?
The New Testament Scriptures, the Biblical worldview is always concerned about long-range considerations. The Bible teaches us that we were created for eternity that the heart of the New Testament message is that Christ has come to give us life, a life that wells up into what?—eternal life.
And that at the very beginning of our understanding of the world we read in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning,” what? “God created the heavens and the earth.” So that if we look at the earth and we see that it has a beginning in space and time,
But before there is even a world, if I can use the term “before,” there is One who transcends the world; One who stands above the world; One is outside of the restrictions of this space and time order that we call the world—namely, God.
“In the beginning God …” And we as part of the most core dimension of the Christian faith, we believe in a transcendent God—a God out there, a God who is beyond the confines of this planet. A God who is transcendent and a God who is what?—eternal, and that all judgments that
God makes, all things that He does are done from the perspective of what?—of the eternal. Now in philosophy we call that that God considers everything “subspecies aeternitatis.” Now that’s just a fancy Latin phrase for a very simple idea that means that God considers
Everything under, “sub” means under, under the species or the “auspices,” the auspices, or from the perspective of the eternal. In fact, the admonition and the rebuke that Christ brings to this world is that men are only thinking short term; they’re thinking in terms of the now and only the now instead
Of the future consequences of their behavior—long term. And Jesus says that He comes from above; He descends from the eternal realm. And He calls the Christian to live his life in light of eternity, and that his values are to be measured by transcendent norms of eternal significance.
I have a column that you know of in “Tabletalk,” our magazine, and what’s the byline, what’s the title of the column? “Right Now Counts…” what? “Forever.” Why do I choose that byline? Just to be cute? I did it because I said if there’s only one message that I can give to my generation,
And I can say the same message over and over and over again until people begin to think about it, it’s that. That’s the one voice that I want to scream from the streets—right now counts forever. What you do now has eternal significance.
And I did that consciously aware of the fact that we are being pressed upon by every side from the philosophy of the secularist who says, bottom line, right now counts for what?—right now. There is no eternity; there is no eternal perspective.
You’ve heard it said a jillion times “there are no absolutes;” there are no abiding principles by which human life is to be judged, is to be embraced, is to be evaluated. All reality is restricted or limited to the now. We see it in different phraseology in theology.
We’ve seen an attempt in twentieth century theology to produce a secularized gospel. Remember the Death of God movement? One of the most important books that came out of the Death of God movement by Dr. Van Buren was called the “Secular Meaning of the Gospel,” in which he talked in terms of synthesizing
Classical Christianity with the philosophy of secularism. But how can you do that without declaring the death of God? And you see the death of God, in the terms of the loss of transcendence, the loss of the eternal, means for you the death of man—because it means that history has no transcendent
Goal, no eternal purpose, that the meaning of your life is summed up in the words on the tombstone—born 1925; died 1985—that’s it. You have a terminal point, a beginning and an ending with no ultimate significance. This is called the theology or the philosophy of the “hic et nunc”—”the here and the now.”
Do you have to go to the library and get a dusty tome of philosophy, a heavy weighty treatise on moral philosophy to be exposed to these ideas? Where else do you see it? AUDIENCE: The media’s full of it. SPROUL: The media is full of it.
You know my favorite illustration of it is the beer advertisement: “You only go around life once, so do it with gusto.” And you see the guy out in the sailboat and this wind is blowing his hair and the salt spray is splashing at his face, and he’s having a fantastic time right now.
Ok? Pepsi calls it what? “The now generation.” Do it now. Do it now, because the message that comes through—you better get it now, because there is no tomorrow ultimately. Now we’re going to consider hedonism later, but one of the themes of the Epicureans who
Were hedonists in antiquity, one of … the bottom line of their philosophy was, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die.” Contrast that with Jesus. “Lay up treasures in heaven.” Think in terms of eternity, long-range implications.
Do you see this touches us most heavily, not simply in how we handle our bank accounts or how we speculate philosophically, but it touches us at the level of how we invest our lives, because life is an investment?
And the question that modern man has to answer is he going to invest his life for short-term benefits or for long-term gain? And every time you are faced with a moral decision, the temptation to do something now that may have harmful after effects, you are caught up in the tension and the conflict
Between two worldviews right now. Do you live for the present? Or do we live for eternity? Because, again, at the core of our Biblical understanding of life and of our moral behavior is that there are actions and that every action not only has a cause but it also has what?—a
Result or a consequence. And the consequence takes us to tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. What did Shakespeare say? “Creeps at its petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time.” But for the Christian there is no last syllable of recorded time.
Our lives are forever, but beyond the secular or the “saeculum” there is the eternal. And that’s what the Christian faith is all about. Why should a person be worried about salvation in terms of personal redemption if there is no eternal dimension? What is the mission of the church if secularism is correct?
Why should we be concerned about redemption of individuals? All we can really do—and churches get into this—all we can really do, is minimize pain and suffering for a season. We can never really offer ultimate answers to the human predicament, because for the
Secularist there is no ultimate answer because there is no ultimate realm. This side of eternity is the exclusive sphere of human activity. It’s not by accident, as we will see, that for the most part those who buy into secularism, who are thinking people, ultimately embrace a philosophy of despair.
And that despair, it’ll manifest itself in a host of ways—escapism, through drugs, alcohol, and other forms of behavior to dull the senses from the message that is being proclaimed and being screamed from every corner of our culture—There is no tomorrow ultimately.
It is a philosophy of despair, and it is right now competing for men’s minds in the United States of America. What we’re going to look at in the weeks to come are the constituent elements that make up secularism—humanism, you’ve heard of secular humanism, there’s also secularistic
Existentialism, positivism, and those different philosophies may be in the collision course with each other but they all embrace one common point; namely, the denial of the transcendent and of the eternal. Look for it in your culture. Be aware of it when you see it.
For we need to understand the world in which we live.
– I think gods in Buddhist fart. – I’m Sara, and I am 10 years old. – I’m four and I’m Tobie. – By law, I am Jewish, but I don’t know if I necessarily believe in it. – I believe in Buddhism. – I believe in God.
– For me, it’s a really big maybe. Part of me believes in God a lot, and part of me definitely doesn’t. Because maybe there is someone upstairs, making great things happen and sprinkling magic on the world. And then you see such bad stuff happen and you see kids get cancer,
You doubt or you question God. – We have this thing called Guanyin, it’s kind of like God, but it’s like Chinese. – In my religion, we call him Allah. – He helps people. – God is love. – I think God has a sweet, soft voice.
– I think he would sound like, “Hi” (laughs). – I think since he’s lived so long, it’s kind of washed out, “I should make “good things happen to the world.” This sounds so creepy, like a horror movie. – I think it sounds loud. He sounds like really kind, I think. “Well hello” (laughs).
– You can see him on the ground on his legs and on his feet. – I think God is in the sky. – I pray to the Guanyin to bring us good luck and support my family. – Usually what I wish for, I’d like to spend time with my mom all day.
– I wanna have confidence in God, if they control all of us, I wanna have confidence that I don’t need to pray and tell them to do it. I think they should make great things happen and really prevent the really bad, terrible things.
– One time I went outside and I prayed to God so I could have flowers. – If there is a God, what is it? What do they look like? – God looks like a person. – Maybe God’s a woman or maybe God doesn’t identify as a gender. – They’re usually gold or white.
– I think God will have green eyes. – Why do we always think of him wearing a hoodie? – I’m drawing him clothes, I don’t really know if he has clothes because I can’t draw him naked. – He’s wearing his masculine God t-shirt. Gotta put that God on there.
– Put some jewelry on his head. – He’s in his hoodie so we’re not gonna be able to see his hair, guys. I don’t think he has hair, I think it’s hard to keep having hair if you’ve been alive for this many millions of years. He’s kinda self-conscious about not having hair.
– This one’s shaped like a monkey. – I just would hope that he would look like a regular person. – God is a big head on legs (laughs). – His hands are very long and big. – I now how to make hands, really. Like this circle, because my hands are circles, see?
– I don’t think he looks like anyone I know. – I think he wears those swag green pants, very cool green pants, make him a little more colorful. He’s got those sick Nikes on. – He has a beard. – He has orange hair and green eyes (laughs).
– He’s big and he always sits down. – He looks kinda funny. – He has a blue shirt and blue pants, and very hairy arms. – I just would like you to think of God, a man or a woman or whatever you want to think of God as, happiness.
You should have big smile when you think of God. And wearing those, those sick Nikes, you know. – Thank you for letting me be in this world. – The world goes around because all these different people have different beliefs in God, and I love that, but I don’t think
That their beliefs should cause wars. This could be somewhat fiction. This could be somewhat man-made. I love that everyone has a different view of God and different beliefs in God, but I don’t think it should cause so much commodity or war, I really don’t.
– Hey, Unsolved is on a new channel, and now your part. – [Together] Subscribe here. – That was my part.
What is a gracious, effective response to someone who pushes away from the idea of God because of the problem of evil? Well, my first question is, what exactly is the problem? Now, of course I’m— this is a question
I’m asking to get the other person to spell it out because it’s not that I am ignorant about the kinds of ways people factor in the problem of evil into the existence of God. I want them to
Spell it out because i actually think there are serious problems with using evil as an argument against God. So, I want them to spell it out. Now, I know the way it’s usually characterized.
Well, if you think God is good and he’s powerful, and that would be God, right? But if he’s good, he’d want to get rid of all evil. If he’s powerful, he’d be able to get all rid of all evil, but
There’s evil, right? So there you go. God probably doesn’t exist. And it turns out, though that sounds like an argument. Like a step-by-step syllogistic argument leading from premises to a conclusion, it turns out that when you press the issue, you can’t build a valid argument from those facts.
If God were good, for example, then he wouldn’t allow any evil. Really? Is that true? That’s a question, and we talk about this— I talk about this— I’m looking at you because I’m saying “we” because you were such a help to me in editing The Story of Reality, but you recall
From The Story of Reality how I talk about my daughters don’t like shots, you know? They don’t like that’s evil for them because it causes them pain, but Daddy makes them get shots, so why does he do that? Because Daddy’s evil? No. Because I know that the short-term evil to them is
Going to result in a longer term good. And so there is a moral justification for the shorter term bad. All that does is point out that it certainly could be possible, and that’s a very simple illustration. There’s dozens and dozens we can think of. It certainly is possible how something bad
Could be justified. There could be a morally sufficient reason for allowing it because it leads to something good, okay? Or maybe something bad that prevents something even worse from happening. So, there’s different ways to construe this,
To demonstrate that it is not the case that if God were good he would never allow anything evil. Rather, he could have a morally sufficient reason for allowing it for a time. And that, by the way, is all we need to parry the objection about the problem of evil.
Now, the possibility that he could have a reason, we don’t have to tell them what that reason is. Remember, the type of objection that this is is a strong defeater. It’s not possible that there
Is a God because there’s evil in the world, and my response is, well, wait a minute. Maybe so. And this, by the way, I step out a little step by step in The Story of Reality. So, anybody wants to go
There, they can see the chapter where I deal with this. It’s not tricky, but it has some steps to it. This is why it makes a little bit more difficult when you’re having a conversation with somebody. Somebody’s even listening to this saying, “Well, I can’t remember all that stuff that he just said.”
Well, that’s true, I can understand that. But if you don’t know why the problem of evil is not a good argument against God, but a good argument for God, then it’s going to be hard for you to make
That point. And that, I think, is the most powerful point that can be made from the problem of evil. This helps us. Evil is on our side, in that sense, because if there were no God, there would be no evil at all…Because there’d be no lawmaker. It’s just molecules clashing in the
Universe. Okay, so then, what is wrong? Says who? Your grandma? Kind of thing. So sometimes I get to the point in a little different way. What’s the alternative? So, somebody says, “Well, there can’t be any God, there’s evil in the world.” Really? There’s real evil? What do
You mean by evil? So, I would just want them to emphasize that, okay? So, if there is no God, how can there be evil? What do you mean? Well, there’s no lawmaker. There would be no law, alright?
Notice, those are questions, and I’m trying to lead to make this point, or what’s the alternative? Well, the alternative is there is no God, okay? Let’s say there is no God then, right? So, what makes
Anything evil? You just complained about the problem of evil. There must be evil in the world, right? So what do you make of evil now that God doesn’t exist? How do you get traction to even complain
About evil in the world? You can’t. And I make this point again in The Story of Reality because people think that they somehow solve the problem of evil by getting God out of the
Equation. And what I point out is, okay, now you got God out of the equation, okay? Now you’re an atheist. Yeah. Okay, that’s our view now. Right. How do you solve the problem of evil? What do you mean? Well,
You got God out of the picture. You didn’t get rid of evil. You still got all the things that you used to call evil. They still are existing, and you still probably consider them evil, okay? Now, solve
The problem. The point I’m making is, atheism can give you no traction to even make sense out of evil to begin with. And if somebody wants to say, well, okay, then evil is just an illusion of evolution or something. Really? Wait, just a few moments ago, you’re saying it’s so real
That it disqualifies the existence of God, and now you want to say it’s an illusion? See, our answer makes sense of all the facts. We don’t have to play games like that. The world is broken. That’s why there’s evil in the world. Broken means it ain’t the way it’s supposed
To be. It started out one way, and now it’s a different way. So these are all— and we broke it. And so, we’re responsible. Some people haven’t thought about it this way, Amy, but our whole story
Is about the problem of evil. It starts in the third chapter, it doesn’t get solved till 66 books later. If there was no problem of evil, we’d have no story. We’d have no Christianity. So in a certain sense, we could say that evil is quite at home in our view.
It’s central to our story, and our story is not over yet. But it has no place in an atheistic worldview. It does not make any sense whatsoever in an atheistic worldview. Now, people can get that notion in their mind, and I do walk through fairly carefully
Not only The Story of Reality, but in the last couple chapters of the book on Relativism that Dr. Beckwith and I wrote called, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air” and lots of things we’ve
Done on the air here, and lots of things we have on the internet makes the same point. If there is no God, there is no morality. But there is a morality, since the problem of evil, therefore, there is a
God. That’s your basic modus tollens argument for God. Moral argument for the existence of God.
Hi, my name is Greg Ganssle, and I’m a part-time lecturer[br]in the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, and a senior fellow at the Rivendell Institute. Today we’re going to talk about part of the philosophical problem of evil. The philosophical problem[br]of evil is an argument beginning with facts about evil,
Leading to the conclusion either that God does not exist, or that[br]it’s most likely the case that God does not exist. So first we need to make a distinction. There’s what has been[br]called “a deductive,” or “the logical problem of evil,” and then there’s what has been called “the evidential problem of evil”.
Deductive or logical problem of evil, I like to call “the[br]square circle objection” or “the charge of contradiction.” It is an argument that to believe that God exists, and that evil exists, is like believing in square circles. There’s a contradiction. The evidential problem, on the other hand, I like to call “the unicorn objection.”
It is not that there’s a contradiction, but it’s pretty hard to believe in God in light of facts about evil. Today I’m going to talk about[br]the logical problem of evil, and how theists, or[br]philosophers who believe in God, begin to answer it. So, first we need to look at what is
The charge of contradiction. Where is the contradiction found? I’m following a famous paper by a British philosopher named John Mackie who began his argument[br]with a couple of premises. Premise one: God exists,[br]and is wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient. The second premise is that evil exists. So we have God on the one hand,
And evil on the other hand. His aim is to show that these two together entail or lead to a contradiction. He recognizes that the contradiction is not obvious at first. We have to amplify “What does it mean for God to be wholly good,[br]omnipotent, and omniscient?” Once we amplify this, we can see
How these premises together[br]lead to a contradiction. In order to amplify this, he[br]adds two additional premises. Premise three: There are no[br]limits to what an omnipotent, omniscient being can do. Premise four: A good[br]being always eliminates or prevents evil as far as it can. That’s part of what it[br]means to be a good being.
So, Mackie has four premises, and he tries to derive a[br]contradiction from them. We can see pretty clearly[br]that he can succeed. We can take step number five: God can eliminate or prevent[br]all of the evil there is. If premise one is true and God[br]is all-powerful, omnipotent, then he’s powerful enough[br]to eliminate all evil.
Premise six: God will eliminate or prevent all of the evil that there[br]is, because he is good. If premise one is true[br]and God is wholly good, and premise four is true “a good being always[br]eliminates or prevents evil as far as it can,” then step six is true. God will eliminate or prevent
All of the evil that he can[br]eliminate because he is good. So from these six steps, we can see that a contradiction follows. If step five and step six are true, then we get the conclusion that God does eliminate[br]or prevent all evil. Well, if God eliminates[br]and prevents all evil,
Then step eight is true: there is no evil. But the final step, step nine, builds on premise two, the[br]premise that evil exists. And we get a statement “There is evil and there is no evil.” And that is the explicit contradiction. Something is wrong with a valid argument that leads to a contradiction.
Some premise has to be rejected. John Mackie and other atheists think premise one needs to be rejected. It’s not true that God[br]exists and is wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient. Theists, or philosophers who[br]believe that God does exist, they think the problem is[br]not with the first premise, nor is it with the second premise,
Because it’s pretty[br]obvious that evil exists. Rather, they look carefully[br]at the additional premises, premise three and premise four. Subtitles by the Amara.org community
On Friday we ended the week talking about the physical origins of Jesus and how the miraculous conception happened biologically today we move to a question of what divine attributes were necessary for Christ to lay down in order to take up his humanity the question comes from Matthew in Vienna the capital of Austria
Hello Matthew thank you for writing in dear pastor John thank you for all your work over the years of ministry my small group recently considered the subject of Jesus’s divinity and humanity I looked through desiring God’s resources and found a sermon that you delivered way
Back in 1981 in that sermon on Luke 2:52 you say this quote our text has important implications for understanding the divinity of Christ it helps us understand what Paul meant when he said though he was in the form of God he did not count equality with God a thing to
Be grasped but emptied himself taking the form of a bondservant as Philippians 2 verses 6 & 7 one of the things Christ emptied himself of was omniscience you said later regarding the attributes of God you said this quote they were his potentially and thus he was God but he
Surrendered their use absolutely and so he was man in quote now the question is how do you now understand Philippians 2 verses 6 to 8 and Luke 2 verse 52 do these texts really necessitate that some attributes of the eternal divine nature of Jesus must have been given up or laid
Down at his incarnation pastor John what would you say to Matthew well I’m glad this question is asked and I’m glad they quote my old sermon because the first thing I would say is that I would speak today with more precision and care than
I did in those sentences I as I as I read those I went back and read them in context I thought oh that’s that was not very careful when we say things about Jesus Christ after the incarnation of the eternal divine Sun we have to be careful not to
Give the impression that the divine nature of Christ has the same limitations that the human nature of Christ does and I don’t think I made that distinction clear enough in 1981 I would not want to say for example that Christ in His divine nature emptied himself of any essential divine
Attribute and I think omniscience is an essential divine attribute so when in Matthew 24:36 Jesus says that not even the Sun knows the time of Jesus return I take him to mean that the Son Jesus Christ considered in his human nature operates with a kind of limitation but
Not the divine nature now I know that sounds weird that sounds strange and it is strange it is strange because the union of two natures in one person one divine and one human is beyond our experience and will always be beyond our personal experience we’re never gonna be
God and we we may expect it to sound strange so how then do I understand Philippians 2:5 2:8 and the emptying of himself let me read the verses so we all have it in in front of us though he was in the form of God he did not count
Equality with God a thing to be grasped grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant and being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a so verse six you have the pre-existent
Christ before incarnation in the form of God which the next phrase defines as equality with God then in verse 7 you have him taking the form of a servant in the likeness of men and I think just as the term form of God in verse 6 does not
Mean less than God because of the term equality with God in the same way the term form of a servant or likeness of man in verse 7 does not mean less than human but rather equal with all humans that is a real human nature upshot
Christ is very God and very man and in between those two statements you have this famous phrase he emptied him self what does that mean I don’t think it means that Christ in His divine nature became less than fully divine in other words he didn’t empty himself of deity
One of the reasons I don’t believe that is what Paul meant is because he says the very opposite in Colossians 2:9 he said for in him in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily you know you even wondered whether he use the word fullness there parceling say he
Didn’t he didn’t empty himself of that he not empty he’s not only not empty he’s full he’s full of deity the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily in Jesus so I don’t think he emptied himself of anything that constitutes the essence of deity I think the best clue for how to think
About the emptying probably comes from John 17:5 where Jesus says father glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed so John had already said in John 5:18 that the Jews recognized that Jesus was making himself equal with God so on the one hand the
Incarnate Christ in the Gospel of John has a divine nature he’s fully God on the other hand there were aspects of his glory which he had laid aside and that’s why he’s praying father restored to me the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world and I think that
Would include at least the privileges of deity that stand between the divine Christ and the shame and degradation and suffering and death of the cross that’s the point that’s the point of Philippians 2:58 that he moved from such height to such shameful degradation on our behalf and that’s the mindset
We’re supposed to have as we serve others but then again and I need to qualify and say it would be a mistake to say that he laid aside all of the divine glory in becoming man because in John 1:14 it says the word became flesh and
Dwelt among us and we behaved see we have seen his glory glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth so there was a divine glory in the Incarnate Christ for those who had eyes to see but the fullness of divine glory I think
Would have incinerated sinners and blinded everyone and this he emptied himself of maybe the best way to say it is that what whatever stood between the fullness of the divine glory before the Incarnation and the suffering and shame and degradation and death of the cross whatever stood between there that had to
Be laid aside so that he could he could do it and the the only thing I would say now with regard to Luke 2:52 which was mentioned in the quest Jesus increased in wisdom and stature in favor would God a man the only thing I’d say there is Jesus was in his human
Nature fully man and therefore he grew he grew up through the stages of childhood like other humans and yet without sin Paul says in 1st Timothy 2:5 there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men the man human Christ Jesus so in his divine nature Christ was
Fully God in his human nature he was fully man in his divine nature he had all the essential attributes of God during his incarnation and in his human nature he was finite and could therefore grow in wisdom and stature just just by way of conclusion no book in the Bible
Exalts the deity of Christ better than the book of Hebrews of the son he says your throne O God is for ever and ever Hebrews 1:8 and no book stresses the humanity of Christ for the sake of his sympathy with with our weaknesses like Hebrews does chapter 4 verse 15 we we do
Not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect was tempted like we are therefore in this Advent season let us do exactly what Hebrews 4:16 says let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive
Mercy and find grace to help in time of need we we have a great divine and human Savior amen what a profound mystery here and beautifully approachable – thank you Pastor John for that answer Matthew thinks for the very good question thank you to everyone who listens thank you for
Making the podcast part of your Advent season this year you can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive and even reach us by email with the question of your own even questions about maybe something you’ve seen in an old John Piper sermon
That you would love to have clarified by him you can do all of that through our online home at desiring God org forward slash ask Pastor John well there’s a great danger in worshiping gifts more than the gift giver that of course is idolatry and this topic is especially
Important in a season of gift-giving like this one that we’re in the midst of so how do we love the giver more than his gifts and of course we’re talking about our relationship to God and God as the giver that is next as we ask and answer some Christmas related questions
And the podcast of this year I’m your host Tony ranky thanks for listening we’ll see you next time you
AS A YOUNG GIRL GRACE WILLIAMS HAD A DESTINY VISION FROM GOD. SHE SAW MUSICAL NOTES LITERALLY ENCIRCLING THE EARTH NOW GRACE IS RELEASING THE SOUND OF HEAVEN AROUND THE WORLD THROUGH THE MUSIC GOD GIVES HER, BRINGING SUPERNATURAL HEALING AND DELIVERANCE TO PEOPLE. DO ANGELS EXIST? ARE HEALIING MIRACLES REAL?
IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? CAN PEOPLE GET SUPERNATURAL HELP FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION? HAS THE FUTURE BEEN WRITTEN IN ADVANCE? SID ROTH HAS SPENT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS RESEARCHING THE STRANGE WORLD OF THE SUPERNATURAL. JOIN SID ON THIS EDITION OF, “IT’S SUPERNATURAL.” HELLO, SID ROTH HERE, WELCOME TO MY WORLD WHERE IT IS NATURALLY SUPERNATURAL.
I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE ANYWHERE ELSE AND THE OXYGEN HERE ISN’T OXYGEN, IT IS FROM THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IT IS SUCH A WONDERFUL ATMOSPHERE BECAUSE WE HAD GRACE WILLIAMS REHEARSING. I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING. I HAVE HER CD HERE “FIRE FALL, I HAVE NEVER HEARD MUSIC THAT BRINGS SUCH AN
ABUNDANCE OF THE ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN AND WHAT I CALL SUPERNATURAL PEACE, I ALSO HAVE GRACE’S MOTHER GERRI HERE, AND GRACE I HAVE TO ASK YOU A QUESTION, DO MANY PEOPLE TELL YOU WHAT I’VE JUST SAID ABOUT THAT PEACE? YES, THAT IS JUST ONE OF THE MANY THINGS WE
HEAR, OVERWHELMING PEACE, PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT, PEOPLE ARE RECEIVING JUST DEEP COMFORT, HEALING, A LOT OF INNER HEALING, DELIVERANCE FROM REALLY ABUSIVE THINGS AND SOUL ISSUES THAT THEY HAVE BEEN HURTING IN THEIR SOUL, THIS CD HAS HEALED THEM IN THE DEEPEST PARTS OF THEIR SOUL.
YOU KNOW GERRI, WHAT I FIND IS THE DEVIL, I BELIEVE, HAS INSIGHT OF SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT IN A BABY’S LIFE, AND MANY THAT ARE CALLED TO HAVE VERY, VERY SIGNIFICANT ROLES IN THE KINGDOM THE DEVIL TRIES TO SNUFF THEIR LIFE OUT AND THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED WITH GRACE, TELL ME ABOUT THAT.
YES, GRACE WAS BORN PREMATURE AND SHE HAD WATER ON HER LUNGS. ISN’T IT INTERESTING SHE USES HER LUNGS FOR SINGING AND THAT’S WHERE SHE WAS ATTACKED. YES, TOTALLY ATTACKED IN HER LUNGS, HER LITTLE CHEST WOULD CONCAVE TWO OR THREE INCHES JUST GASPING FOR BREATH,
AND AFTER SHE WAS BORN MY HUSBAND WENT DOWN TO THE NURSERY TO SEE OUR NEW LITTLE BABY GIRL BUT HER BED WAS EMPTY, SHE WASN’T THERE AND THE NURSE SAID THE DOCTORS NEED TO TALK TO YOU, AND SHE WAS HAVING TROUBLE BREATHING. SO THEY PUT HER IN INTENSIVE CARE AND IT WAS
A FIGHT FOR HER LIFE, EVERY HOUR THEY WOULD CHECK HER BLOOD TO SEE IF SHE HAD ENOUGH OXYGEN AND SHE WASN’T GETTING ENOUGH OXYGEN SO EVERY HOUR HER BODY WAS LOSING WEIGHT, SHE LOST UP TO A THIRD OF HER BODY WEIGHT JUST TRYING TO BREATH,
AND IT WAS A TREMENDOUS TIME OF PAIN AND GREAT WEEPING. BUT AT THE TIME I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN GOD, I WAS AN ATHEIST AND I THOUGHT, GOD I CAN’T PRAY TO YOU NOW, I CAN’T BE A HYPOCRITE, I DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU.
SO I JUST CRIED THAT WAS ALL I COULD DO AND ONE DAY THE DOCTOR CAME IN, TWO DOCTORS, WE WERE IN A CHILDREN’S SPECIALISTS’ HOSPITAL, AND THEY CAME AND SAT ON THE SIDE OF MY BED AND THEY SAID, “PREPARE, YOUR DAUGHTER IS NOT GOING TO MAKE IT.”
AND I REMEMBER SUCH A, KIND OF A COLD STONE FEELING, I THOUGHT GOD THERE IS NO HOPE WITHIN. AND LIKE I SAID I NEVER REALLY PRAYED BECAUSE I STILL DIDN’T BELIEVE, BUT GOD IN HIS GREAT MERCY HE VISITED THAT HOSPITAL. AND WE FELT JUST AN AMAZING ATMOSPHERE,
A SHIFT IN THE ATMOSPHERE LIKE ENERGY AND STRENGTH AND GREAT LOVE, AND SHE WAS TOTALLY HEALED. AND SHE LEFT THE HOSPITAL WITHIN A WEEK. WHAT WAS THE PROGNOSIS OF THE DOCTOR’S BEFORE SHE WAS HEALED, DID THEY THINK SHE WOULD MAKE IT? NO, THEY CAME TO MY BEDSIDE AND THEY SAID YOUR
DAUGHTER WILL NOT LIVE AND JUST PREPARE YOURSELF FOR HER DEATH, THEY SAID WE HAVE DONE WHAT WE CAN DO AND SHE IS JUST TRYING TO BREATHE AND IT IS EMACIATING HER BODY AND SHE IS WITHERING AWAY JUST TRYING TO GET A BREATH. WHEN SHE WAS JUST AN INFANT YOU SAW AN ANGELIC
VISITATION, TELL ME ABOUT THAT. YES, AT THAT TIME IN MY LIFE I WAS VERY DISHEVELED AND BROKEN IN EVERY WAY, COME FROM A VERY DARK, ABUSIVE FAMILY, AND I WAS JUST REALLY CRYING OUT TO GOD, I SAID GOD I DON’T KNOW HOW TO RAISE A CHILD,
I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS THAT I COULD DO, I FEEL SO OVERWHELMED AND I FEEL SO UNDERNEATH THE SITUATION AND AS I, HER CRIB WAS IN OUR BEDROOM AND I FELT THE AIR BECAME ELECTRIFIED AND RAREFIED, AND I FELT LIKE MYRIAD WINGED CREATURES IN THE
AIR AND I LOOKED OVER AND IT LOOKED LIKE KIND OF THE MILKY WAY, THEY WERE JUST LITTLE FLASHES OF LIGHT AND I FELT THE WINGS OF THE ANGLES LIKE MINISTERING TO HER IN HER CRIB AND IT WAS JUST LIKE THE LORD SAID I AM GOING TO TAKE CARE OF THIS,
I AM GOING TO CAUSE YOU TO BE ABLE TO BE THE MOTHER, I AM GOING TO CAUSE YOU TO KNOW HOW TO RAISE THIS CHILD, JUST SUPERNATURALLY. AND YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK IS SO FASCINATING IS GRACE, WHEN YOU WERE SEVEN YOU HAD A VISION, A VISITATION; TELL ME ABOUT THAT.
I DID AND IT WAS REALLY A DESTINY VISION, AND I SAW MY MUSIC LITERALLY ENCIRCLING THE EARTH AND KEYBOARD NOTES AND PIANO LITERALLY CIRCLING AROUND THE WORLD, AND AT THAT MOMENT I WAS LIKE THIS IS WHAT I AM CALLED TO DO, THIS IS WHAT THE LORD HAS CALLED ME TO DO,
TO COVER THE EARTH WITH HIS GLORY AND TO RELEASE THAT SOUND OF HEAVEN. IT REALLY IS A SOUND OF HEAVEN; IN FACT YOU TOLD ME THAT EVERY SONG THAT GOD GIVES YOU COMES FROM HEAVEN. YES, I AM JUST AN INTERPRETER, I JUST SAY JESUS FLOW THROUGH ME,
LET YOUR SONGS BE SUNG, YOU KNOW IT TALKS ABOUT THAT IN HIS WORD, THAT HE SINGS OVER US SONGS OF DELIVERANCE, SONGS OF HEALING, AND THAT IS BASICALLY, I AM A CONDUIT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, SAYING HOLY SPIRIT WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SING OVER YOUR PEOPLE?
YOU KNOW I INTERVIEWED A MAN BY THE NAME OF GARY WOOD WHO DIED AND WENT TO HEAVEN AND A WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL STORY BUT THIS IS WHAT HE SAID AND IT WAS SO AMAZING AND IT HAS NEVER LEFT ME GRACE, HE SAID THAT HE HEARD SONGS IN HEAVEN AND
THEN MAYBE A DECADE LATER ON EARTH THE SONGS WOULD BE RELEASED, THAT IS WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOU. YES, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS TO ME AND IT IS GETTING EVEN GREATER, I WAS IN A SERVICE ON FRIDAY NIGHT AND THE LORD POURED OUT A PROPHETIC SONG AND
IT WAS SIMPLY HE IS HOLY, HE IS WORTH, HE IS MIGHTY AND DURING THE SERVICE I WAS MINISTERING AND WE HAD A PROPHET IN TOWN AND SHE TOLD ME THAT SHE SAW AN ANGLE STANDING BEHIND ME DECLARING THE LORD IS HOLY, THE LORD IS MIGHTY, THE LORD IS WORTHY,
LITERALLY AS I WAS SINGING THIS FORTH AND THERE WERE MANY PEOPLE AFTER THE SERVICE THAT SAID THEY LOOKED UP AND SAW WARRING ANGELS IN THE ATMOSPHERE, IT WAS MIGHTY, MIGHTY AND THAT SONG WILL BE ON MY NEXT CD, I MEAN I AM JUST BIRTHING WHATEVER GOD IS SAYING, BLESS THE LORD.
LISTEN, I WANT YOU TO EXPERIENCE THIS SUPERNATURAL PEACE, BECAUSE GRACE IN JUST A LITTLE BIT IS GOING TO [MUSIC♪] PLAY “NEVER LET ME GO.” HE WILL NEVER LET YOU GO, BE BACK IN A MOMENT. [MUSIC♪] WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK TO, “IT’S SUPERNATURAL.” [MUSIC♪] WE NOW RETURN TO, “IT’S SUPERNATURAL.”
I JUST WANTED TO SHARE WITH YOU HOW THIS SONG CAME ABOUT, I BELIEVE THIS IS A MELODY FROM HEAVEN, IT IS GOING TO RELEASE COMFORT INTO THE EARTH, AND ONE NIGHT I WAS UP LATE AND I HAD JUST BEEN THROUGH A REAL DESERT SEASON IN MY LIFE PERSONALLY.
I WAS CRYING OUT TO GOD, AND I WAS IN PRAYER, AND I SAID, “JESUS,” AND I FELT THIS OVERWHELMING PRESENCE COME INTO MY STUDIO, AND I STARTED WEEPING AND AS I SENSED THIS HOLY PRESENCE AND I LITERALLY FELT JESUS, HIS ARMS EMBRACED ME AND HELD ME FOR SEVERAL HOURS
AND I SAID JESUS DON’T EVER LET GO, IT IS SUCH A SAFE PLACE, IT IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL PLACE, A PLACE OF COMFORT, AND PEACE AND AMAZING LOVE, AND GOD POURED OUR HIS AMAZING LOVE TO ME IN THAT MOMENT AND I WENT OVER TO THE KEYBOARD AND I
BEGAN TO WRITE THIS SONG AND FLOW. AND I BELIEVE THAT THE PRESENCE OF HEAVEN IS COMING TO YOU RIGHT NOW AND HIS AMAZING LOVE IS GOING TO HOLD YOU IN THAT BEAUTIFUL PLACE. [KEYBOARD MUSIC♪] [♪GRACE SINGING] HOLD ME IN YOUR ARMS LORD LET ME FEEL YOUR LOVE
♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ WRAP ME IN YOUR ARMS LORD I FEEL YOUR WARM EMBRACE ♪ ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ BEING IN YOUR ARMS IS LIKE DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ BEING IN YOUR ARMS IS LIKE
A DREAM ♪ CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S FOR ETERNITY ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ HOLD ME IN YOUR ARMS LORD LET ME FEEL YOUR LOVE ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪
WRAP ME IN YOUR ARMS LORD I FEEL YOUR WARM EMBRACE ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ I FEEL CLOUDED BY YOUR MYSTERY ♪ SOMEDAY I’LL KNOW YOUR LOVE FOR ME ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪
DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ ♪
[INSTRUMENTAL ♪] [FOR OUR CAPTION READING FRIENDS PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REACH OUT TO THE SPEAKER OF YOUR T.V. AND FEEL THE VIBRATIONS OF THE MUSIC, AND LET MESSIAH HEAL YOU AND TOUCH YOUR SPIRIT!] JUST SEE THE LORD HOLDING YOU RIGHT NOW ♪ IN HIS
EVERLASTING ARMS OF LOVE ♪ ♪ HE IS HOLDING YOU RIGHT EVERLASTING ARMS OF LOVE ♪ ♪ HE IS HOLDING YOU RIGHT NOW ♪ TOUCHING YOU RIGHT NOW ♪ EMBRACING YOU RIGHT NOW ♪ HE IS HOLDING YOU RIGHT NOW ♪
IN HIS ARMS OF LOVE ♪ ARMS OF LOVE ♪ LET HIM HOLD YOU IN HIS ARMS ♪ THERE IS SAFETY IN HIS ARMS ♪ THERE IS MERCY THERE IS GRACE ♪ THERE IS SAFETY IN THIS PLACE ♪ ♪ HIS EVERLASTING LOVE HIS
MIGHTY ARMS OF LOVE ♪ HE WILL NEVER LET YOU GO ♪ HE WILL NEVER LET YOU GO NO, NO, NO. ♪ HE WILL NEVER LET YOU GO NO, NO, NO ♪ HE IS HOLDING YOU IN HIS ARMS,
♪ HIS MIGHTY ARMS OF LOVE ♪ YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE ALONE ♪ YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AFRAID ♪ YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE ALONE ♪ HOLD ME IN YOUR ARMS LORD ♪ LET ME FEEL YOUR LOVE ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪
WRAP ME IN YOUR ARMS LORD ♪ I FEEL YOUR WARM EMBRACE ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO ♪ ♪ DON’T EVER LET GO [MUSIC♪] WE NOW RETURN TO, “IT’S SUPERNATURAL.” HELLO, SID ROTH HERE WITH GRACE WILLIAMS.
WELL WAS I RIGHT, DID THAT PEACE JUST TOTALLY INVADE YOUR PRESENCE? I TELL YOU ALMOST EVERY DAY I AM LISTENING TO THIS CD AND THE PHYSICAL MIRACLES THAT ARE HAPPENING. THERE ARE PLACES, THEY CALL THEM HEALING ROOMS AND THEY PLAY THIS AND THE ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN COMES IN AND MAJOR HEALINGS ARE HAPPENING,
TELL ME ABOUT THAT WOMAN THAT WAS SO FEARFUL. SHE HAD WHAT IS CALLED AGORAPHOBIA, AND IT IS BASICALLY WHERE YOU ARE CONFINED TO YOUR HOME, YOU CANNOT LEAVE THERE IS SUCH FEAR AND PANIC ATTACKS, SHE HAD CLOSED THE SHADES, SHE LITERALLY COULD NOT LEAVE HER HOUSE AND A
FRIEND GAVE HER THIS CD AND SHE PUT IT ON, BASICALLY LOCKED HERSELF AWAY FOR TWO DAYS LISTENING TO THIS CD NONSTOP, WAS COMPLETELY SET FREE, SHE NOW GOES OUT OF THE HOUSE SHOPPING, SHE IS A NEW WOMAN THAT GOD HAS SET HER FREE FROM EVERY SPIRIT OF FEAR AND EVERYTHING.
SOME AMAZING SUPERNATURAL THINGS ARE HAPPENING WHEN PEOPLE LISTEN TO THIS MUSIC; TELL ME ABOUT THAT PERSON WHO HAD THE AROMA OF HEAVEN. YES THEY WERE IN A SERVICE I GUESS AND THEY WERE PLAYING MY CD AS LIKE SOAKING MUSIC AND JUST WORSHIPPING BEFORE THE LORD, PEOPLE WERE LAID OUT, PEOPLE WERE JUST RECEIVING
DEEP INNER HEALING TYPE OF MINISTRY AND SEVERAL PEOPLE SAID THAT THEY LITERALLY SMELLED THE FRAGRANCE OF THE LORD COME DOWN THE MIDDLE AISLE AND JUST LINGER AT THE ALTAR WHERE PEOPLE WERE RECEIVING MINISTRY, AND A LADY EMAILED ME AND SAID I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW WHAT THIS CD IS DOING,
IT IS CHANGING PEOPLE’S LIVES, WE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME, AND SHE SAID THEY ARE ADDICTED TO IT. THEY CAN’T STOP PLAYING IT; IT IS PLAYING CONTINUALLY ACTUALLY IN THEIR PRAYER ROOM. WHAT HAPPENED IN THAT CHURCH IN ALABAMA YOU WERE AT? THEY HAVE AN AWESOME MINISTRY TO RECOVERING ADDICTS, PROSTITUTES,
DRUG ADDICTS, AND THINGS LIKE THAT AND THEY USE IT AS A TOOL FOR MINISTRY AND PEOPLE WERE GETTING TOTALLY COMPLETELY SET FREE, CHAINS BREAKING, THINGS THEY HAD DEALT WITH FOR LOTS OF YEARS, A LOT OF WOMEN. PEOPLE HAVE HAD DELIVERANCE FROM YOUR MUSIC? THEY PUT THIS MUSIC ON AND IMMEDIATELY YOU KNOW GOD
WILL SET THEM FREE OF THINGS MAYBE THEY DIDN’T KNOW THEY HAD OR CHAINS THAT HAVE BEEN ACCUMULATING OVER THE YEARS, A LOT OF BROKEN HEARTS MENDED AND DEEP SOUL WOUNDS THAT ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT COULD SUPERNATURALLY TOUCH THAT AND SET THEM FREE. WHEN YOU MINISTERED AT THAT ALABAMA CHURCH WHAT HAPPENED?
WELL IT WAS MIGHTY, WE HAD PEOPLE JUST FILLING THE ALTARS IN WORSHIP CRYING, I MEAN PEOPLE WERE LAID OUT ON THE FLOOR SAYING I FELT LIKE I WAS LITERALLY IN HEAVEN, I WAS IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD AND PEOPLE WERE SEEING ANGELS AND HEARING, I HAVE EVEN HAD PEOPLE SAY I HEAR
ANGELS, SINGING, THAT HAS TO BE THE LORD. YOU KNOW I FEEL SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN IN THIS STUDIO NOW, IT JUST KIND OF FLOODED IN. AND ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I BELIEVE OCCURS WHEN HER MUSIC IS SUNG OR PLAYED IS IT MAKES YOUR AREA A DEMON
FREE ZONE, I GUESS THAT’S WHY PEOPLE SLEEP SO WELL. YES AND THEY PLAY IT IN THEIR CARS, I HAVE HAD A LOT OF PEOPLE EMAIL ME AND SAY YOUR CD IS PLAYING 24 HOURS A DAY IN OUR HOME AND OUR CHILDREN’S ROOM BECAUSE LIKE EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID
IT KEEPS THE ATMOSPHERE CLEAR AND FREE AND IT CREATES THAT OPEN HEAVEN SO IT IS EASY TO BREAK THROUGH INTO THAT SECRET PLACE OF WORSHIP. GRACE YOU HAVE AN UNUSUAL ANCESTRY. LET’S SEE IF I GET THIS RIGHT, YOUR GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT GRANDFATHER, PEOPLE SAID THAT WHEN HE WOULD SPEAK GOD’S WORD,
RATHER THAN ME SAY IT, WHAT DID THEY SAY ABOUT HIM? WELL HE WAS AN AMAZING MAN AND IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT HIM THAT HE LITERALLY CARRIED THE FIRE OF GOD AND PEOPLE WOULD SEE BURNING FLAMES IN HIS EYES AND HE PRAYED IN SOME OF HIS JOURNALS THAT HIS
SEED AND HIS CHILDREN’S CHILDREN CHILDREN WOULD CARRY THIS FIRE AND WOULD CARRY THE MANTEL AND IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT HOW HE WOULD LITERALLY GLOW IN THE PULPIT AND SO I KNOW THAT WHAT HE PRAYED I AM WALKING IN THAT, THE GENERATIONAL BLESSING THAT
I AM WALKING IN AND I AM SEEING HIS PRAYERS COME TO PASS, IT IS AWESOME HE WAS LIKE A CIRCUIT RIDER PREACHER, EVANGELIST, HE WAS MOVING IN SIGNS AND WONDERS IN A TIME WHEN THAT WAS VERY, VERY UNHEARD OF. NOW PEOPLE SAY THIS ABOUT YOU,
TELL ME THAT LAST PERSON THAT SAID I SEE FIRE IN YOUR EYES. WELL I WAS AT AN AZUSA MEETING A FEW WEEKS AGO AND WE WERE CELEBRATING THE AZUSA EVENT AND I WAS WORSHIPPING AND PEOPLE WERE JUST GETTING SO BLESSED AND A LADY CAME UP
TO ME AFTERWARDS AND SHE GRABBED MY HAND AND SHE SAID I HAVE ALL YOUR CD’S, SHE SAID I AM SO GLAD TO KNOW YOU, AND SHE LOOKED IN MY EYES AND SHE SAID I SEE THE FIRE OF THE LORD IN YOUR EYES AND SHE SAID I SEE HIS BURNING LOVE.
THERE IS SUCH A PRESENCE OF GOD THAT I BELIEVE IN THIS ATMOSPHERE ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE, I AM GOING TO ASK GRACE TO SING WITHOUT ANY MUSIC BUT JUST SING AS THE SPIRIT OF GOD TELLS HER WHAT TO SING, BUT I HAVE INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOU,
I GIVE ORDERS YOU KNOW, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAVE NOTICED OR NOT, I GIVE ORDERS, I ORDER YOU TO OPEN YOURSELF UP TO LOVE, NOW THAT IS NOT A TOUGH ASSIGNMENT, OPEN YOURSELF UP TO HEALING, OPEN YOURSELF UP TO THE MIRACULOUS, OPEN YOURSELF UP TO, YOU THAT ARE WEAK,
SUPERNATURAL STRENGTH, GRACE WOULD YOU SING. I SENSE THE LORD IS HEALING A WOMAN RIGHT NOW, YOU HAVE HAD, IT IS LIKE WHAT I AM GETTING IS LIKE A CHRONIC BROKEN HEART, YOU HAVE GONE THROUGH TRAUMA AFTER TRAUMA AFTER TRAUMA AND YOU HAVE BEEN EVEN TO THE POINT WHERE YOU ARE SUICIDAL RIGHT
NOW, AND YOU ARE WANTING TO TAKE YOUR LIFE, YOU ARE JUST WANTING TO END IT BECAUSE YOU CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE. AND RIGHT NOW GOD SAYS THAT IT IS NOT OVER, IT IS NOT OVER, HE IS FILLING YOU RIGHT NOW WITH HOPE FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE, JUST REACH OUT TO HIM
RIGHT NOW AND RECEIVE THAT, RECEIVE THAT LOVE RECEIVE THAT HEALING AND RECEIVE THAT HOPE, THAT SPIRIT OF HOPE IS COMING TO YOU IT IS LIKE IT IS INFUSING YOUR SPIRIT RIGHT NOW. IN JESUS NAME BE FREE, BE FREE TO LIVE, BE FREE TO LIVE AND WE THANK YOU LORD. [GRACE SINGS♪]
♪ THE ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN IS IN THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW ♪ THE PRESENCE OF HEAVEN IS TOUCHING YOU RIGHT NOW ♪ IT’S HEALING YOU RIGHT NOW, RESTORING YOU RIGHT NOW, ♪ ♪ AND IT IS FRESH OIL, FLOWING FROM HEAVEN ♪ IT IS FRESH OIL FLOWING FROM
HEAVEN ♪ JUST RECEIVE THAT FRESH OIL RIGHT NOW WHERE YOU ARE, ♪ IT IS TOUCHING YOU, CHANGING YOU MAKING ALL THINGS NEW ♪ THE ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN IS HEALING YOU RIGHT NOW. ♪ RESTORING YOU RIGHT NOW, YES IT IS, JUST RECEIVE IT,
♪ RECEIVE IT, LIFT YOUR HANDS AND RECEIVE IT, RIGHT NOW, ♪ RECEIVE IT RIGHT NOW, RECEIVE IT RIGHT NOW. ♪ HALLELUJAH, THANK YOU GOD. IF YOU EVER EXPERIENCED THE LOVE OF GOD YOU WOULD SAY GOD NEVER LET GO, THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS EARTH TO COMPARE WITH THE
LOVE OF GOD, YOU GET THE LOVE OF GOD BY A FREE GIFT FROM GOD, JESUS DIED IN YOUR PLACE, JUST SAY JESUS FORGIVE ME OF MY SINS, I BELIEVE YOU DIED IN MY PLACE, I MAKE YOU LORD OF MY LIFE, JESUS COME INSIDE OF ME, BE THE SHAR SHALOM,
THE PRINCE OF PEACE IN MY LIFE, AND JUST BASK IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF HEAVEN. JESUS, NEVER LET GO, JESUS NEVER EVER LET GO, [MUSIC♪] NEVER LET GO OF YOUR PEOPLE, NEVER.
You ‘ve heard of bible accurate angels, but what about Bible-accurate demons? You’ll be familiar with them from pop culture, but demons in the Bible – that’s a murky subject. For example. Where does Satan really come from? Who came before him?
Welcome to the realm of evil spirits, fallen angels, and ancient gods. Where the boundaries of good and evil are not as clear cut as you d expect. This is… an A to Z of biblical demons. I suppose I ought to get something clear. What even is a demon?
In its broadest sense, a demon is an evil spirit. A supernatural being that’s up to no good. Demons appear across all world religions in one way or another, but the demons we’ll be exploring are from the Bible. The sacred text plays a key role in Christianity, and to some extent, Judaism and Islam.
The Bible is made up of two halves: the Old Testament, ancient Jewish writings about the history of Israel; and the New Testament, early Christian texts about the life of Jesus. Now, not every letter has a suitable demonic counterpart. So sometimes, I’ll have to get
Creative with the term “biblical”. From books that didn’t make it into the Bible, known as the Apocrypha; to the wider world of demonology inspired by these religious texts. But enough caveating and demon-splaining. It’s time to learn our ABCs. Starting with A for Asmodeus
Asmodeus is from the Book of Tobit. It’s a strange story, not included in all versions of the Bible. In one tale, Asmodeus falls in love with a woman called Sarah. But Sarah is already betrothed. In a fit of jealous rage, Asmodeus slays the groom and repeats this every time Sarah remarries.
Seven times no less! Asmodeus is eventually banished with an unusual spell. The heart and liver of a fish are placed onto a bed of burning hot embers. The smoke it produces smells so bad that the demon flees to the deserts of Egypt. Sarah moves on to her eighth husband and lives happily ever
After. B is for Belial Belial never chose the demon life, the demon life chose him. The word “beliya’al” appears throughout the Old Testament, but not as the name of a demon, but instead as the Hebrew word for “wickedness”.
But over time, people began to read this word as a name. It’s not clear why exactly, but beliya’al became Belial and *poof* a demon was born. This newly created demon appears throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls, a group of Jewish writings found in pots beside the Dead Sea.
In the amazingly named War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, Belial commands a vast legion of evil. It’s real Lord of the Rings stuff, shame it never got included in the Bible. This version of Belial offers the blueprint for Satan from the New Testament. More on that demon later.
From a Hebrew word that meant “wickedness”, to the demonic embodiment of wickedness itself, Belial has a surprising origin story. C is for Chemosh One person s deity is another person s demon. Chemosh appears in the Old Testament and was the chief god of the Moabites.
Now, a core biblical belief is that there is only one God, the God of Israel. So having another god in the picture simply won’t do. Chemosh became the victim of a biblical smear campaign. His worst crime: an apparent appetite for human sacrifice. Especially children.
Outside the Bible, Chemosh is far less bloodthirsty. He appears on this, the Mesha Stele, a carved stone dating to 840 BC. It was made by King Mesha of Moab to honour Chemosh. The god kindly gave them victory against their rivals, including Israel. This rock was a way of saying thanks.
D is for Dagon Dagon is another pagan God from the Old Testament. He was the god of wealth and prosperity and for some reason was depicted as a mermaid. A reference to lost treasure maybe? I say this as Dagon appears in an episode featuring the Ark of the Covenant, a golden
Box that supposedly housed the Ten Commandments. In the story, the ark is stolen by the Philistines and is placed at an altar to Dagon. Being the biblical superweapon that it is, the Ark destroys the statue and causes a deadly plague. It was returned shortly after E is for Exorcism
Mixing it up now, a key part of studying demons is learning how to get rid of them. A process known as exorcism. In the New Testament, many of Jesus’ miracles are exorcisms. In one story, Jesus encounters a man living in a cave. Inside him are not one, but several
Demons. When asked their name, they respond: “Legion for we are many”. Realising they are about to be forcibly ejected from their host, the demons persuade Jesus not to be destroyed. Jesus kindly agrees to transfer them into a nearby herd of pigs, which then run off a nearby cliff to their death.
This story establishes a quirky tradition in modern-day exorcism: asking a demon its name. Apparently being on a first-name basis helps banish them F is for Fallen Angel Another key word in demonology, a fallen angel is a good spirit that has been corrupted.
The idea of the fallen angel doesn’t really appear in the Bible but is common in those apocryphal books. Like the Book of Enoch. It s about a group of angels called “The Watchers” who visit earth one day. Things take a turn when they start falling in love with human women who
Then give birth to a monstrous race of giants called “Nephilim”. It s another great story that’s apparently too spicy for the Bible. The myth of the fallen angel really influenced Christian writers and works of fiction like Paradise Lost. It gave rise to the figure of Lucifer, God s right-hand angel who went rogue.
G is for Grimoire A Grimoire is an occult textbook. Full of magical spells, dark incantations and of course demons. One of the most famous is The Lesser Key of Solomon, a comprehensive compendium of demons. It s a staple of demonology today as it contains advice on how to summon them.
Like Gaap, a prince of Hell who is the patron demon of philosophy. Conjure Gaap to get help with learning the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Grimoires are not biblical per se, but many demons that appear in them do stem from the
Bible. Like the demon Belial from before, he is described as having a “comely voice”. H is for Hades You may have heard of Hades from Greek mythology, but it appears in Biblical mythology too. In the New Testament, Hades is the underworld a realm of fire and brimstone, demons and sinners.
When our spirits are not on the surface world harassing human women or leading legions of darkness, they’re in Hades. Blowing off some steam. It s very different to the Old Testament’s version of the underworld by the way, a gloomy chasm called Sheol.
All souls go here, regardless of whether you’ve been good or bad. I is for Ipos Finding a biblical demon with the letter “I” is a challenge. But I’ve settled on Ipos. Ipos is a little strange looking: it has the head of a goose, the body of a lion and the
Feet of a chicken. You can find him in The Lesser Key of Solomon, a demonic grimoire According to his entry, Ipos is one of the sixteen dukes of Hell, and has this rather splendid seal. He knows all things, past, present and future J is for Jezebel
J is another difficult letter for biblical demons, especially as this letter doesn’t technically exist in either language the Bible was written in, Hebrew or Greek. Jezebel is a character from the Old Testament, the wicked wife of King Ahab. She isn’t a
Demon, but there is a demon in her name: Ba al, the Lord of the Underworld. The name Jezebel is from the Hebrew phrase “ezeh Ba’al” or “where is Ba’al?”. A prayer used at ancient funerals to encourage Ba al to claim the souls of the deceased.
This demonic name might explain why Jezebel is a villain in the biblical story. For her various crimes, including Ba al worship, she gets defenestrated (aka thrown out of a window). Jezebel may not be a demon, but if there s an opportunity to talk about Levantine Death gods, I’ll take it.
K is for Kokkabiel Kokkabiel is one of our fallen angels from the book of Enoch. This angel is responsible for corrupting humans with the dark art of stargazing. Kokkabiel teaches the people astronomy. Apparently, that s a bad thing? Maybe it s because the
Sky was seen as the realm of God and shouldn’t be the subject of scientific study. Kokkabiel later appears in the Kabbalah, a series of Jewish mystical texts. But now he s a good guy: his knowledge of celestial bodies is regarded as a worthy thing to teach. Which is it Kokkabiel? Angel or demon?
L is for Lilith The demoness Lilith is perhaps the oldest one on this list. She appears in the Old Testament s Book of Isaiah, lurking in a ruined town. Lilith is surrounded by creatures of the desert: jackals, owls and goats.
But she goes back way further than this, to a Mesopotamian demoness called Lilitu a shadowy being who prowls the night. References to her reach back to the Epic of Gilgamesh the world’s first written story. Lilith s name also appears in old pottery. This is an incantation bowls: along the side
Are prayers to be read aloud, prayers that trap demons. In the centre is a figure who has been ensnared by the bowl. Many believe that this is Lilith. M is for Mastema We’re mid-way through the alphabet, and what better way to celebrate this milestone than with Mastema: the demon of persecution.
Mastema is from the Book of Jubilees. Again, another apocryphal book. Those banned biblical texts certainly contain the juiciest demonic lore. His job is to punish people. But strangely, Mastema gets his orders from God. Whether that be sending plagues to wreak havoc, to torturing folk who may or may not deserve
It. He’s kind of like a divine hitman. Mastema blurs the line between angel and demon. And what does this say about God? He not only allows demons to exist but actively uses them to carry out his punishments. Maybe demons aren’t so evil after all N is for Nephilim
The Nephilim are a race of demonic giants. In the Old Testament’s Book of Numbers, they are so big that people look like grasshoppers in comparison. The Nephilim also appear in the Apocrypha. Enter our old friend the Book of Enoch, which explores how they came to be.
In the story, the Nephilim are the cursed offspring of fallen angels and humans and go about causing trouble on Earth. At 450 ft tall they become a very big problem, so God decides to wipe them out with a big flood.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. The Nephilim are an enigmatic bunch for sure, and not much else is known about them O is for Ornias Ornias is a demon from one of the oldest grimoires in existence, The Testament of Solomon. Despite
The name, it was not written by the biblical King Solomon. It s a bizarre book, especially as it’s about how Solomon was a secret demon slayer. His first assignment is to deal with Ornias. He s been harassing a man by stealing his
Money and draining his life energy, classic demon stuff. Solomon traps Ornias by sealing him in a magical ring. Then he goes around collecting more demons. It’s a biblical precursor to the Ghostbusters franchise. None of King Solomon’s demon-busting exploits are in the Bible by the way. This story is
Biblical fan fiction at its finest. P is for pseudo-Christos We’re back in the New Testament to talk lies, deceit and false messiahs. That s what “Pseudo-Christos” in Greek: false messiah. You don’t have to be a biblical historian to know that Christians believe in one messiah: Jesus.
But there are others who claim to be divine, others that will deceive unwary followers. There are hard to spot, like a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. One of these false messiahs is quite literally that. In the apocalyptic Book of Revelation,
The Antichrist takes the form of a little sheep monster, just with a few more horns. His job it is to hail the arrival of The Beast and get everyone to believe that somehow this creature isn’t evil. Q is for Qeteb We’re back in the Old Testament with Qeteb. The demon of disease.
Or maybe not. Depends on how you translate Qeteb. He appears in the Book of Psalms, alongside his brother, Deber. The poem encourages readers not to fear these demons. Whether that be: “Deber that stalks in the darkness or Qeteb that destroys at midday”.
But in Hebrew, the word Qeteb also means plague; and Deber, means pestilence. So it could also be translated as: You shall not fear: “pestilence that stalks in the darkness, or plague that destroys at midday”. Instead of demons, what if the poem is about disease? What if this is a case of personification,
Where the idea of plague is given demon-like behaviour for creative flourish. R is for Ruach Elohim Ra-ah Speaking of language, this next demon I’ve highlighted is the Hebrew phrase, Ruach Elohim Ra-ah. Which translates to: “an evil spirit of God”.
As we saw with Mastema, when God wants to punish someone, he sends a demon to haunt them. In the Old Testament, this happens too. In one story, an “evil spirit of God” is sent to torment King Saul, driving him to madness.
This has stumped people for a while. Is God responsible for evil? After all, he gets demons to do his dirty work It s an uncomfortable thought, we like to imagine God as all peace and love. But in early biblical texts, God is more morally questionable.
As time went on, people didn’t quite like the idea of a vengeful God. By the New Testament, people placed evil upon another figure S is for Satan Here we are. The big one. The demon of demons. Satan. In Christianity, Satan is the arch-prince of evil. From tempting Jesus in the desert
To a red multi-headed dragon, for the past two thousand years, Satan has been evil incarnate. Early Christian thinkers believed that the snake in the garden of Eden story was Satan himself. If so, all human suffering can be traced to him.
Before Christianity however, Satan was a little less well-defined. In the Old Testament Book of Job, there is a mysterious character known as “The Satan” literally meaning “the adversary”, who challenges God s judgement. A literal devil s advocate.
But The Satan doesn’t seem to be a bad guy, he s just one of the angels. Originally, the word satan didn”t exclusively apply to angels and demons. It’s common for people be called satans, even countries get called satans. Everyone s a satan!
It seems like the classic picture of the devil hadn’t yet evolved by this point. Satan grew into his horns by New Testament. T is for Titivillus Over our journey into biblical demons, they seem to spring out of spelling mistakes and mistranslations. But who is behind those errors?
Introducing Titivillus, aka The Printer’s Devil. The patron demon of typos. His speciality: biblical errors. Imagine if you had to write out the King James Bible by hand, that s 783,137 words. Mistakes are bound to creep in. In fact, they often did.
Like in 1631, when someone accidentally removed a “not” from one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was changed to “Thou shalt commit adultery”. Cheating on your partner was now permitted! Of course, the demon Titivullus was blamed, not the careless hands of an overworked bookmaker. U is for Unclean Spirits
Unclean spirits is what the New Testament often calls demons. But what has hygiene got to do with it all? There seems to be an idea that demons are dirty, if they touch you, you are spiritually contaminated. This partly explains the idea of Baptism, a literal bath to wash away your sins… and
Those demons. As they say: a shower a day keeps the demons away. V is for Vampire Yes, you heard me, vampires appear in the Bible. Well, only once. There s a quote in the book of proverbs which says this “The Vampire has two daughters. Give! Give! they cry”.
This pithy saying is not about the reality of being a Vampire dad. Instead, the two daughters in question could be a reference to two thirsty fangs. “Give! Give! they cry”. It’s either that or the passage is talking about leeches. Another bloodthirsty animal with sharp teeth.
Regardless, this biblical Vampire appears in Jewish folktales. The “alukah” is a beast that takes the appearance of a human but lives entirely off blood. When threatened it will transform into a fearsome werewolf. The question is, is a vampire a demon? It depends on how far you want to stretch the
Term “evil spirit” I suppose W is for Witches First vampires. Now witches? The Bible has a bunch of rules against the practice of witchcraft and divination. Like: “Thou shalt not allow a witch to live”. These biblical rules against magic were used to support the witch trials throughout Europe
And the Americas. There was a fear that witches lived among the population, and that they were in cahoots with demons. You’d even get specialised witch hunters who’d go accusing people of sorcery, predominately older women. These hunters took the Bible’s laws very literally. The punishment for witchcraft? Death. X is for Xezbeth
Xexbeth is one of the only demons out there beginning with the letter X. Xezbeth is from the “Dictionarre Infernal” or “Hell’s Dictionary”. A little catalogue of French demons. There s not a lot of information on this one. Perhaps for the best. Xezbeth is the demon
Of lies and deceit. Whether it’s a white lie or full-blown tax fraud, Xezbeth is behind it. No one knows the origin of this demon. There is an Islamic demon called “al-Khadab”, Arabic for “the liar”. But that’s pretty much it.
Khadab, Xezbeth maybe those names are related somehow. Or maybe it s all just lies. Y is for Yamm It s time for Yamm. But not the food, the Mesopotamian god of the Sea. Yamm appears in several ancient myths about Earth’s creation.
These stories take the form of a giant battle between Yamm, his giant sea serpent pet, and a heroic god. To the Babylonians, it was Tiamat vs. Marduk. To the ancient Hebrews, it was Leviathan vs El (aka. God). Once Yamm’s sea beast is vanquished, the god creates the earth out of its body parts.
German scholars refer to these myths as the “Chaoskampf” the primordial struggle. Today, it s widely agreed that life began in the ocean. So, I can t help but feel a bit sorry for Yamm. He doesn’t get the respect he deserves. Z is for Zedek
The final letter, one that I m cursed to pronounce as “Zed” not “Zee”. We’ve spoken a lot about demons, but not about the angels appointed to deal with the ones that get out of hand. Enter Zedek or Melki-Zedek. The “Angel of Righteousness”.
His big moment is in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. In this epic battle at the end of time, Zedek defeats the demon Belial and his legions of evil. Truth, happiness, and love abound. And the demons are no more.
A good place to end this list. Twenty-six letters later we’ve covered biblical demonology from A to Z. It s a ragtag bunch, all from different stories and eras in time. But we can unscramble this lot, and draw out some wider themes.
You may have noticed that lots of biblical demons do not originally come from the Bible. Instead, they come from the Apocrypha: those books that didn’t quite make it into the canon. It seems that fallen angels, demonic hitmen, and giants were too scandalous for mainstream audiences.
The Bible itself has a mixed picture of demons. Take the Old Testament for example demons either take the form of ancient Gods like Chemosh, Dagon and Yamm, or “evil spirits” sent from God himself. Others like Belial, Qeteb and Satan were not originally demons, but just plain, everyday words that became names over time.
But then, fast forward to the New Testament writings, this had all changed. There’s an explosion of demons! Satan becomes a name and exorcisms are now a thing. These Christian writings were clearly inspired by those apocryphal books and their rich collection of demons.
From then onwards, demons have been a big part of Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths. Scholars of religion believe that demons offer a neat explanation for the problem of evil: if God is all good, where does evil come from? Answer: Demons.
Exploring evil spirits in the Bible and its Apocrypha reveals how these demons took root and began to grow and evolve. Nowadays, the study of demons is livelier than ever before. There is demonological content for every occasion, and enough to fill an entire alphabet.
Hey! Thanks for watching. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Any demons you think to deserve an honourable mention? If you liked this video and want to see more, why not subscribe? A like and comment also go a really long way.
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We are all well aware of the suffering and evil in the world: horrific suffering, unthinkable evil. How then can anyone believe in the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful God? And if God does exist, why would anyone want to worship Him? Epicurus framed the logical problem of suffering and evil like this:
If God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then he’s not all-powerful. If he is able to prevent evil but not willing, he is not good. But if he is both willing and able, how can evil exist? And if he is neither
Able nor willing, then why call him God? In other words, it’s logically impossible for God and suffering to both exist, but we know full well that suffering exists. Therefore, God does not. Is this a good argument? Let’s look at it more closely.
Are these two statements logically inconsistent? No; here is an example of two logically inconsistent statements. David can’t be both married and a bachelor, but there is no explicit contradiction between these two statements, so there must be hidden assumptions behind this argument that
Would bring out the alleged contradiction. Here they are. If God is all-powerful, he can create any world he wants, and if God is all-loving, he prefers a world without suffering. So if an all-powerful, all-loving God exists, it follows that suffering does not exist. Since suffering
Obviously does exist, the atheist concludes that God must not exist. But are the atheist’s two hidden assumptions necessarily true? Consider the first assumption. Can God create any world he wants? What if he want a world populated by people who have free will? It’s logically impossible for God to force
Someone to freely choose to do good. Forcing free choices is like making a square circle; it’s not logically possible. It’s not that God lacks the power to perform the task; it is that the supposed task itself is just nonsense. So
It may not be feasible to create a world populated by people who always freely choose to do what is morally good, so the first assumption is not necessarily true. Therefore, the argument fails, and what about the second assumption? Is it necessarily true that God would prefer a world without suffering? How could we
Possibly know this? We all know of cases where we permit suffering in order to bring about a greater good. If it’s even possible that God allows suffering in order to achieve a greater good, then we cannot say this assumption is necessarily true. For the logical problem of suffering to succeed, the atheist
Would have to show that it’s logically impossible that free will exists, and that it’s logically impossible that God has good reasons for permitting suffering. This burden of proof is too heavy to bear. It’s quite possible that God and suffering both exist. This is why philosophers, even atheist philosophers,
Have given up on the logical problem of evil. We can concede that the problem of evil does not after all show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another. Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically
Inconsistent with the existence of a theistic God. No one I think has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim. It’s now acknowledged on almost all sides that the logical argument is bankrupt. But this is hardly the end of the discussion. We still need to explore the probability version of the problem of evil.
