– Well I was always told an explicit “no” on that, based in particular on 2 Corinthians 6, and in verse 14 Paul says to not be “unequally yoked with an unbeliever, for what partnership “does righteousness have with lawlessness?” So I grew up thinking that the apostle Paul
Was talking about dating when he used this metaphor of the yoke, being joined to someone, so that the direction one goes, the direction the other one goes. And so I only have since learned that Paul actually is not talking about dating and marriage relationships explicitly there;
He is rather talking about who the Corinthian believers were going to yoke themselves to, were going to join themselves to, between the false apostles and Paul himself. And so these false apostles, they came with a message that had a lot of Gospel elements to it,
But it wasn’t the full Gospel, it was some other message that appealed to the believers in various ways, by flattering them, by the apostles themselves acting like they were superior because of their more evident gifting. They tried to present that as evidence to these Corinthians
That God was with them, and then they pointed at Paul and said look how weak he is, look how nothing he is. Look at all the things he says that seem so impressive but actually when he shows up, he’s not that impressive. And so they used that as evidence
That God was not with Paul. Now, I think the answer to the question should a Christian date or marry an unbeliever, the answer’s no. And I think I would actually use this same verse. A verse that’s not explicitly about dating actually gives us a very important principle that we then
Apply to all of our relationships including dating. And that is, this principle that we all have this tendency to join ourselves to what appears to be the most impressive according to standards that may or may not line up with God’s. And so really, Paul’s instruction here
Is an appeal to the believers to be impressed with what God’s impressed with, to value what God values, and then to make your decisions relationally based upon those. So that has everything to do with dating. What we love, what we join ourselves to, we will be like.
And so when we apply that to dating and eventual marriage, what that person you’re dating loves will shape what you love. And if that person does not love God, it will absolutely shape and influence your ability to love God as well. So what they do positively love
You will be more compelled to love and so it’s a stewardship of your heart to assess the people around you that are options for marriage, to assess them according to God’s values, what God says is most important, what God says is most true, what God says is most life-giving,
And not to listen to what the world says is most valuable or most life-giving. And Paul knew this. And so Paul was trying to say to them their “love” for you is a self-serving version of love, where they’re using you in order to create a greater platform of influence for themselves, whereas,
And this is what the entire book of 2 Corinthians is about, whereas I have suffered for you, I have taken on loss in order for me to be able to build you up in Christ; that is the definition of love. So real love has at its purpose the building of that in someone.
And so what exists in a dating and moving towards marriage relationship between a believer and an unbeliever is that one of the core purposes of love just simply can’t be. And so, this is why I think Paul, we can construct a very compelling argument from a lot of what Paul says,
And a lot of what the rest of Scripture says, why a believer should not be dating an unbeliever. We haven’t made a distinction yet between dating and marriage, because I’m seeing dating as the purpose of moving towards marriage. The reason I do that, and I don’t just have
Dating as its own separate fun thing to do that doesn’t involve marriage, is I don’t think the Bible gives us a category for romantic connection, increasing self-disclosure and intimacy merely for the purpose of enjoyment or pleasure. It’s always for the establishment of this permanent relationship when it’s between a man and a woman.
So let’s get practical for a moment. What do you do if you’re currently in a dating relationship with an unbeliever? Well, I have heard many people justify that reality by calling it “missionary dating,” where they want to have a strong influence on them.
And honestly, I think people are sincere when they say this, so I’m not doubting the sincerity of that; you want their good in them coming to Jesus Christ. But I would simply challenge you with what I said earlier, actually is your stewardship for your life and what you love
And the direction of your soul. And you need to take seriously what God says about yoking yourself to someone else; they will in some sense be very influential in steering, that’s what the yoke is, in steering where you go. And so if you really want them to come to faith,
And you’re really willing to trust the Lord Jesus for their salvation, then I would challenge you to think long and hard about who you might suggest being placed in their life, who might invest in them with the Gospel that wouldn’t be in a dating relationship
And have alternate elements of the relationship going on. Because what you think might put that person in a better place to come to faith might actually be a hindrance to them coming to faith. And again, I know the stories of missionary dating “working” in the sense of people really coming to faith.
So I am not doubting that the Lord can do that, but your responsibility is not to think about what the Lord can do but what He tells you to do. And then also thinking practically maybe for a different set of people who might be watching this video,
Some people might already be married to an unbeliever, and they maybe have suffered in various ways because of it, and it causes them angst, I just want to say a word of comfort to you, that there’s a reason that 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Peter 3 is in your Bible.
And both of those passages talk about the powerful effect that a believing spouse, particularly a wife actually, in those passages, but the powerful effect a believing spouse living out their faith can have on an unbelieving spouse. And God doesn’t make any explicit promises for your particular situation;
I realize that and I know you feel the pain of that fact, but don’t let the power of those words in any way be undermined. God is pleased as you serve your spouse and as you are faithful to your spouse, by faith in Jesus according to the strength that He provides,
God is pleased with that. And both Paul and Peter are acknowledging that there’s real power behind that. There’s a mysterious power behind that. So be encouraged that your labor is not in vain, and whatever tears you’ve shed about it, or whatever hardships you’ve endured because of it, they’re not in vain.
So let me just end by broadening our perspective to put this thing in its proper place. We need to remember that marriage is a picture of a greater reality. And it is not meant for ultimate life fulfillment. And so that takes the stakes down a bit,
Because marriage is a gift from the Lord; it’s meant to establish a covenant union between two people that displays Jesus’s love for His church, that’s what it’s meant for. And so when we keep that purpose in mind, it helps us put this whole thing in perspective,
Where we don’t get to use dating and marriage for our own purposes alone. So the general instruction that a Christian should not date and marry an unbeliever, it’s not prejudiced, it’s not tribalism. It’s a statement of the purpose of marriage being for something larger than our own earthly satisfaction.
It’s a larger picture; it’s helping each other learn to love God and to do what He says through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we use it for His purposes and not for our own. – [Narrator] Thanks for watching Honest Answers. Don’t forget to subscribe.
If you read your whole Old Testament, you never see a demon being cast out of anyone. Ever. How in the world when Jesus shows up and he starts doing that? Did people automatically in their heads think: “Well, this is what the Messiah is supposed to do! This is a sign of Messiahship.”
Where does that come from? Psalm 91. Which, you know, in recent days, you’ve heard this quoted a lot: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty… he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge… You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness.” In the corona environment, this passage gets quoted a lot.
And unfortunately, in some cases deeply out of context to suggest that well, you know, Christians can do whatever they want here because God will protect us and we won’t get sick and. Okay, that is not what the passage is about. The passage is much cooler than that. It’s more sinister too.
Psalm 91 is a psalm that was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in a jar with four other Psalms that are not in the Hebrew Bible. There are extra Psalms among the dead sea scrolls, we have 150 in the Hebrew Bible,
But this one that is in the Hebrew Bible, obviously, was put in this jar with four other ones. All four of those other ones are exorcism Psalm. So well, why would they lump Psalm 91 in there? That doesn’t look like an exorcism to me,
I’m, you read the whole thing and there’s no like casting devils out or anything like that. Well, if you read it in Hebrew, and you were a literate Israelite, you would know that words like pestilence (Deber). Okay, there’s pestilence there. Deber down here, Qeteb (destruction), “the arrow that flies by day.” Okay, right here.
This whole motif of the arrow flying by day and the tear of the night. Right here; Pahad. These are names and titles and epithets of Canaanite deities, all of them. To an Israelite, a Canaanite deity was a demonic, a sinister and evil spirit, you know, a power of darkness. That’s why Psalm 91 was lumped into that
Because this is a prayer of protection and thwarting of powers of darkness in ancient Jewish thought. What else is interesting is this psalm in the Hebrew Bible, you notice there’s no superscription. There’s a psalm of whoever. In the Septuagint, it’s a psalm of David. Okay, also in the Septuagint, there are certain different wordings,
The Septuagint would have been based on a Hebrew text. Is a translation of Hebrew, that don’t always align with a traditional Hebrew text. But in the Septuagint, where it’s a psalm of David, there are a couple of psalms that use specific words for the Psalms, and the hymns and the,
I want to use the word spell, because that’s what it means, or can mean, of David and Solomon. Okay, that in the poetry, the literature, they produced, some of that stuff uses vocabulary that you will find in exorcistic material in the Second Temple period. And so this answers an important question.
And here’s the question. And maybe you’ve wondered this. If you read your whole Old Testament, you never see a demon being cast out of anyone. Ever. There’s actually only two references in English Bibles to demons; Shedim is usually translated demon, which isn’t the greatest translation,
But we’ll run with it for the sake of the illustration, Deuteronomy 32. And then there’s a Psalm. Okay, but you never see a demon or a hostile evil spirit cast out of anyone. How in the world, when Jesus shows up, and he starts doing that, did people
Automatically in their heads think: “well, this is what the Messiah is supposed to do! This is a sign of Messiahship.” Where does that come from? It comes from what I just described. It comes from certain Psalms being associated with David, and a few with Solomon. In the Second Temple Period
There was the belief that David and Solomon had power over evil spirits. And so if the Messiah is a descendant, he is The David, The Son of David, he should be able to do that too. So this is something that we wouldn’t get because we’re not living in the culture.
And we’re not familiar with how Psalm 91 in particular was viewed. But when Jesus shows up and starts doing this, the bells and whistles are going off in people’s heads. This is an important thing he does to convince them that he’s the Messiah. And Isn’t it odd that Satan would choose Psalm 91
To quote to Jesus, in a temptation, and he quotes the part, down here, “he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” So what’s really going on here is Satan is fishing for information.
He’s got Jesus in front of him, he knows who he is, he knows why he’s there. His silly Kingdom of God stuff, okay. But he doesn’t know what the plan is. So he’s there to tempt Jesus. Try to shortcut the thing. And you know, the last one is the worst because it’s idolatry.
It’s just kind of a terrible attempt. But this one’s interesting because let’s say that Jesus looks at Satan and says, “Yeah, that’s a good quotation. Yep. Yep, you know, that’s a, that’s an exorcistic psalm. And I’m the son of David, and I’m supposed to be able to cast out demons.
And if that’s true, then the rest of the stuff in the song must be true too. So go ahead, it’ll take me up to the top here, I’m going to throw myself off.” What happens? Okay, let’s say the angels catch him. What is Satan learned? He can’t kill him,
So we’ll take killing the Messiah off the strategy plan. But Jesus knows, that’s exactly what needs to happen. “So I’m not going to demonstrate anything for you. You’re not going to learn anything in this conversation.” He just tells him that you hit the road, “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
And that could be a reference to himself. But it could also be another way of saying; “You shall not try to convince me to let God show you the hand that he’s going to play.” He has to die. He must die. Again, it’s an interesting tit for tat conversation
between these two. And again, my take on it is that Satan actually was fishing for information. It’s not a worthless conversation. And the fact that he quotes Psalm 91 I find really interesting because of its nature. You know, the servant (Israel) out in the wilderness. I mean, let’s think of Jesus
Now as the representative of the corporate nation. Did Israel in the Old Testament pass the test of being God’s servant? Well, yes, and no. You know, they get to the promised land? Sure, after they fail, and then they wander around for 40 years. So there’s that checkered past. They don’t really complete the conquest.
They ask for a king to replace God as the one who fights for them. And then three kings later they go off and start worshipping other gods and end up in exile. So probably no, they really don’t pass the test of being God’s representative son and his servant, but Jesus does.
He passes the test. And now it’s Game on. His ministry begins.
SPROUL: Let’s look this morning at Mark, chapter 15 where I’ll be reading again the later portion of the text we looked at last week. I’ll be beginning at verse 33 and reading through verse 40. And I’d like to ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God.
“Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’
Some of those who stood by, when they heard that, said, ‘Look, He is calling for Elijah!’ Then someone ran and filled a sponge full of sour wine, put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink, saying, ‘Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to take Him down.’
And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, ‘Truly this Man was the Son of God!’
There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.”
Again in your hearing this morning, you have heard that word that comes to us from God Himself. He who has ears to hear it, let them hear. Please be seated. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, there is no more important, no more unfathomable treasure for us to contemplate
Than the meaning of the cross, and so we pray that in this hour, you would lend your help to us who are Your frail creatures. Give us insight into the meaning and the significance of our Savior’s death, for we ask it in His name. Amen.
Last week we looked at the narrative of the execution of Jesus by way of my normal method of biblical exposition, but I mentioned that this week I would depart from that and focus on a theological interpretation of the meaning of the cross. Again, I mentioned last week
That anyone who was an eyewitness of that event would likely not understand what was taking place in the cosmic realm that day, and that was left for the apostles in their epistles to give to us that added revelation of the meaning and of the significance of
The death of Jesus. We remember that Paul announced that he was determined to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, that is Paul’s focus was on the cross, and of course that statement was something of hyperbole, which is a literary form of intentional exaggeration
In order to make a point, but really it’s not too far as an exaggeration that we know Paul knew other things besides the cross; nevertheless, all that he knew and all that he taught had its convergence in that central message of what took place that day on the cross.
I remember my first year of seminary where a student in our class in preaching gave a moving and eloquent sermon on the substitutionary satisfaction view of the atonement. And in that class on preaching, it was customary when the student finished for the professor
Of homiletics to give a critique. And the idea was to be a constructive critique on the art of preaching. But that day the professor was furious, and he glared at the student, and he said, “How dare you preach the substitutionary satisfactory view of the atonement in this
Day and age.” And I heard that and I was thinking within myself, “How dare this professor question the legitimacy of preaching on the satisfaction substitutionary view of the atonement.” What is it in this day and age that makes this central understanding of the cross suddenly
No longer acceptable? And I mused on that for many years to come because when we talk about the satisfaction substitutionary view of the atonement, we’re trying to answer the question: What really happened there on the cross? And one of the questions that attends
That question is the question: Was Jesus death on the cross really necessary at all? And there have been different answers to that question throughout church history. Early on, the Pelagians taught that Jesus’ death and atonement was not necessary at all, that
God could have redeemed His people by many different ways. He simply could have waved His wand of mercy and grace and pronounced His pardon on sinners without such a grizzly method of execution. Others took an intermediate position saying that the cross was hypothetically necessary
But not absolutely necessary. It was only necessary because though God had many ways He could have done it. From all eternity He chose to do it this way and was in agreement with His Son and with the Holy Spirit to reconcile the world by way of an atoning death. And
So the atonement was not necessary “de facto.” It was not necessary “de jure,” that is legally. But it was necessary “de pacto,” that is because an agreement had been reached, a covenant had been made between the Father and the Son, and once that covenant was made, it had to be carried out.
But then the third view, which is the classic orthodox Christian view is that the atoning death of Jesus was absolutely necessary. We reach back in time to one of the greatest thinkers God ever blessed the church with, the philosopher theologian Saint Anselm of
Canterbury, whose little book, “Cur Deus Homo?,” has become a Christian classic, and that little book that is really a question is translated by the words, “Why the God Man?” And in that little book Anselm spelled out the reasons why the cross was absolutely
Necessary. And the grounds and the necessity for Christ offering payment and satisfaction for our sins was to be found in the character of God Himself. The reason why an atonement was necessary, dear friends, is because God is just, because God is righteous, and because God is holy.
But we’ve lost sight of the character of God in our age. We conceive of God some celestial grandfather, a cosmic bellhop who is on duty 24/7 to give us all of our needs. And we allow the love of God to swallow up His justice, to swallow up His righteousness, and to obscure
His holiness, and we think that not only will God forgive all of our sins without an atonement, but we believe that He must do it if He’s really going to be good and loving. And yet at the other side of that coin always stands His holy, righteous, justice that must be satisfied.
I remember the story of Abraham in the Old Testament where he got word that God was about to bring judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah, which cities clearly invited that judgment from God, and Abraham was concerned about the few innocent folks there in those cities
That might possibly be punished along with the guilty, and so he raised the question to God, “Lord, will you punish the innocent or the righteous with the guilty?” And the reply was God forbid that God would ever do such a thing. And then the statement came
Out of that narrative, “Will not the Judge of all of the earth do what is right?” To ask that question, dear friends, is to answer it because the God of heaven and earth doesn’t know how to do anything except that which is right. The God of heaven and earth has
Never done anything that is wrong. Now according to our sensibilities, there are times in the Scriptures that we object to what God does. I’ve told you before how when I was in my first year as a Christian
As a college student, and I was reading the Old Testament, that I used to pace the halls of my college dormitory long into the night, three o’clock to four o’clock in the morning because I’d never heard of this God that was being revealed to me in the Old Testament.
And all I can remember from that is thinking that wow, if I’m going to be a Christian, I’m going to have to be a Christian because God plays for keeps. If you don’t believe that, let me just direct your attention to one passage in the Old Testament, the passage
That you’ve already heard this morning. When God delivered His law to Moses, after He had rescued His people from slavery and the focus of that law was a prohibition against idolatry. And while Moses was speaking with God on the mountain, Aaron and the people
Made for themselves a golden calf and worshipped it. And the Scriptures tell us that when God saw that, He was outraged, and He demanded satisfaction for that sacrilege, for that work of idolatry. I remind you, dear friends, that that episode in the Old Testament chronicles for us the
Most successful worship service in human history. The attendance that day at the worship of the golden calf surpassed all statistics before or after in Israel. The singing was so lusty, that miles away Joshua hears the music, and he thinks he’s hearing the sound of warfare.
The church was filled to the brim, and the people loved the music as they danced around an idol that distorted the very character of God. Do you think that was the last time that happened in church history? That’s our propensity.
It’s to exchange the God of heaven and earth for an idol and fashion for ourselves a God who requires no satisfaction, who requires no payment for sin. And in a day and age when we preach that God loves all people unconditionally, who in the world needs an atonement? You do.
And I do. Because the righteousness and the justice of God must be satisfied. Now when we look at the concept of the atonement in the New Testament, it’s not monochromatic. I like to use the metaphor of a gorgeous tapestry that is woven by several strands. And I don’t
Even have time this morning to even touch on some of the strands that the New Testament uses to describe what took place on the cross. But one of the major themes in the New Testament is the theme of reconciliation, that Christ is the reconciliation for us. And one of the
Things of course that is absolutely necessary for reconciliation to take place anywhere is a previous estrangement because parties that are not estranged have no need of reconciliation. I gave a message many years ago in a university to the atheists’ club that invited me to
Speak there. And they wanted to hear my case for the existence of God, and I gave it to them. And after I was finished with that part of the message, I said, “I’m happy to deal with these intellectual issues that come up.” I said, “But you have to know where
I’m coming from. I believe that for you the issue of the existence of God is not an intellectual issue at all. It’s a moral issue. Your problem is not that you don’t know that God exists. Your problem is you hate the God whom you know does exist.”
That’s the closest I ever came to being tarred and feathered. I was lucky to get out of there with my life. They were vehement in their denials and protests, “We don’t hate God.” Well, if the Word of God is the truth of God then by nature, dear friends, we are His enemies.
We are at war with Him. We despise Him. But we don’t get angry at the golden calf. If we create a new God, then we can live in comfort with that God. But the biblical God is the
Object of our wrath to such a degree that the Scripture says, “We will not have Him in our thinking.” That’s where the estrangement is. That’s where we are at war with God. That’s where we are at enmity with God. And that enmity was mediated for us on the
Cross, so that Christ became an enemy of the Father to satisfy your hostility and your enmity toward Him. Another dimension about which the New Testament describes the cross, the atonement is the dimension of ransom. Earlier in our study of Mark’s gospel, we read where Jesus said
That He did not come into the world to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. And because of that statement and others, the church has developed what’s called the ransom theory of the atonement. In fact, there is more than one ransom theory
Of the atonement. There’s a good one and there’s a bad one. The bad one that is popular in some circles is the idea that Jesus paid a ransom to Satan, after all Satan is the prince of the power of the air. He’s the prince of this world.
He holds us captive and hostage. In a sense he has kidnapped the people of God and now demands payment or ransom for our release, and so Jesus makes a deal with the devil. He pays him what he wants to purchase our freedom from him. No, no, no, no. In that
Case the cross would not represent “Christus Victor” but “Satanas Victor,” Satan would be the winner. He would get the payment and enjoy it forever. No, there is a ransom paid, dear friends, but it’s not paid to Satan. It’s paid
To the Father. A debt has been incurred to Him that has to be paid. Now quickly, we think of the New Testament speaking that we are debtors to God, and not only are we mildly in debt but that we are hopelessly in debt, and the way in which the New Testament sets
It forth is that we are debtors who can’t possibly their debt. We have an IOU that can never be redeemed. But there’s different ways to understand that concept of debt. I’ve told you on another occasion in another concept my favorite illustration of that. I tell the story of the little boy
Who goes to the ice cream store, and he asks for an ice cream cone with two scoops of ice cream, and when the lady behind the counter hands the little boy the cone, she says, “That will be two dollars,” and the boy’s face sinks. He’s crestfallen. His lip begins
To tremble, and he said, “But my Mommy only gave me one dollar.” So what do you do if you’re watching that transaction? You know what you do. You reach your hand in your pocket, and you get out a dollar bill, and you hand it to the lady, and you say, “Here, this
Is legal tender. I’ll pay the little boy’s debt, and we all can go home happy.” And she has to accept that payment because it’s a pecuniary payment, a monetary payment of commercial debt. But that’s not the kind of debt that we’re in here. The debt that we have before God
Is not that we owe Him money that we can’t pay. It’s a moral debt. It is a moral obligation that He has imposed upon us, which we have not paid. Now we turn the story around with the little boy. Now he comes to the ice cream store and
He said, “I’d like to have an ice cream cone with two scoops, and the lady comes and hands him the ice cream cone, and she says, “That will be two dollars.” He sticks his tongue out at her, runs out the door, doesn’t pay her anything, and she’s chasing
Him, yelling, “Stop, thief.” And the little boy runs right into the arms of the patrolman who’s walking down the block. He grabs the boy by the scruff of the neck, brings him back into the shop, said, “What’s going on here?” And the lady said, “That boy
Just stole two dollars worth of ice cream.” And I’m watching that. I reach in my pocket and I take out two dollars instead of one, and I say, “Look, everybody settle down here. Here’s the two dollars. No harm. No fowl. Let the boy go.” Now does the owner
Have to accept it? Absolutely not. Because now a crime has been committed. Now a moral debt has been incurred. And a policeman can look at me and my two dollars and look at the woman in the store and say, “Do you want to press charges?” And the storekeeper
Has that option on this occasion. Now with God we have a moral debt. And even when His Son pays the debt as our Substitute, when He pays the debt vicariously, the Father does not have to accept it. The fact that
The debt is paid means that justice is satisfied. The fact that the Father accepts the payment expresses His mercy and His grace, that as the Apostle says, “He may be both just and justifier of His people.” The justice is there insofar as Christ paid what was required, and that God wasn’t playing.
As the text I read indicated, the Son of God was forsaken, completely forsaken. And as Paul uses the other metaphor later in Galatians, “He was cursed by God.” He became a curse to fulfill the law of the Old Testament because all who break the law of God, all who sin
Are exposed to the curse of God’s wrath. And you say, “But that’s not fair.” But as I mentioned last week, once Christ willingly took upon Himself your sin and my sin, God didn’t play games. He punished Him to the fullest extent of the law. Christ
Didn’t just go to the cross. When He was on the cross, He went to Hell, not after He died but while He was on the cross. He experienced the full measure of God’s wrath when the Father turned His back on the Son and cursed Him for you and for me.
Again, I’m terrified when people come to me and say, “I don’t need Jesus.” I want to grab them by the throat and say, “O foolish one, don’t you understand that there’s nothing in the universe that you need more than Jesus. Don’t you realize that at the
End of your life, you will stand before God and you will be held accountable by God. And the God before whom you stand will be holy and just and righteous. And you either stand in front of Him on your own merit—and the only thing you have to bring is demerit, friends—or
You stand covered in the righteousness of Christ. If you deny Christ, you face the curse on your own, a debtor who can’t possibly pay your debt.” Karl Barth, the late Swiss theologian with whom I disagree more often than I agree, made
A comment once many years ago that I agree with completely. He said the single most important word in the New Testament Greek is the word “huper,” which is the Greek word that is translated by three English words, “in behalf of.” And that’s how the New Testament
Describes the death of Jesus, “in behalf of” His sheep, “in behalf of” the godless, “in behalf of” God’s enemies, He paid this price and He purchased you, so that the apostle says, “You are not your own.” You see the thing that we tend to think even
As Christians is we may not own the biggest house in the community, we may not own the biggest car in the community, but one thing we own, there’s no mortgage on, is ourselves. I own me. No, you don’t. No I don’t. Paul said, “You are not your own. You don’t
Own yourself. You’ve been bought. You’ve been purchased.” Paul said, “You’ve been bought with a price.” And the price tag is the blood of Christ. Finally, my friend John Guest once preached a sermon on the blood of Jesus. He said, “If
Jesus would have come to Jerusalem and scratched His finger on a nail, would that have done it?” There’s blood. It wouldn’t have done it. It took more than a scratch. The figurative significance to the Jew of blood means life. Jesus didn’t just give His blood.
He had to give His life. He had to pour out His blood unto death, and that was the price tag. That was the ransom. That was the purchase price. And the New Testament tells us that in God’s eyes at the top of the cross was not simply
The accusation written by Pilate, but the words, “It is paid,” appear on that cross. God is satisfied, propitiation. Our sins are removed, expiation. As I told you before, every time you come down that aisle, look at that cross. You come down the center aisle
Of the church. You remember that the architectural form of this building is a cruciform. It’s built in the shape of the cross. If you look from an airplane, and you cross over Saint Andrews, you’ll see the form of a cross. The center aisle if the vertical beam of the
Cross. The transepts in which you are sitting are the crossbeams. And I said the vertical beam points to heaven in the sense that propitiation was made. The Son satisfied the Father. And in doing that on the horizontal level was expiation, our sins were removed as far as
The east is from the west. Therefore, dear friends, come let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be as crimson, they shall be as wool, for He bought you with His life. Let’s pray.
O Lord, if we had a thousand tongues to sing the praise of our great Redeemer, that would not be enough to express our gratitude, which gratitude carries on for us into eternity. Thank you for the cross. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
[Anderson] Evil and suffering is a big one, and I’d be interested in your perspectives on that. You hear people say that particularly the Abrahamic God, who’s all-powerful and all-knowing and all good, and you’ve just made a reference to that yourself, the locus of all good things,
[yes] now there’s the atheistic argument from evil. And it basically runs that if there is such a God, and look I don’t want to sound unsympathetic about this; it’s a big challenge evil is a big problem, just as I described exists, then, there’d be no evil or or suffering. But
There is a lot of evil and suffering in the world, therefore there can’t be a God, or certainly not a Christian God. So where do philosophers in general come out on that question of suffering, and where do you land? [Craig] Well historically for centuries atheistic philosophers have defended
The view that the existence of the suffering and evil in the world is logically incompatible with the existence of God. And now on the contemporary scene, this has really changed; virtually no one defends the logical version of the problem of evil anymore, and the reason is that it lays upon
The shoulders of the atheist a burden of proof that is so heavy that no one has been able to sustain it. The atheist would have to prove that there is no logically possible reason that God could have for permitting the evil and suffering in the world,
And no one can prove such a thing. So those who do defend the problem of evil today have retreated from the logical version of the problem to the so-called probabilistic version of the problem, where the claim is that given the evil and suffering in the world, it’s improbable that
God exists, if not impossible. And the difficulty with this version of the problem is that it makes probability judgments that are simply beyond our ability. There is no basis for thinking that if God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering in the world
That these should be evident to me. For example, every event that occurs in human history sends a ripple effect through history, such that God’s morally sufficient reasons for permitting it might not emerge until centuries from now, perhaps in another country. An illustration of this would
Be the so-called butterfly effect in contemporary physics. It’s been shown that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings on a twig in West Africa can set in motion forces that will eventually produce a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean, and yet no one watching that little butterfly on the branch
Could possibly predict such an outcome. These kinds of probability judgments are just beyond our capacity. And similarly, when we see some instance of suffering and evil in the world, we are simply not in a position to say with any sort of confidence God probably doesn’t have
A morally sufficient reason for permitting that to occur. A second point that needs to be made here is that when one’s talking about probabilities, then you’ve also got to consider on the other side of the scale, what is the probability that God does exist? And here I would offer
A multiple considerations that I think make it quite probable that there is in fact a transcendent creator and designer of the universe, despite any improbability that the suffering in the world might throw upon the existence of God. [Anderson] Interestingly, I’ve never
Forgotten the story, a true story, about a young university student in Scotland not long after well probably I suspect during the Depression years, things were grim, and he knocked on the door, of a small cottage that was opened, there was a returned serviceman from the first World War,
And when he realized the young man wanted to talk to him about God he said go away, he said I was in the trenches in France and I stopped believing in God when I saw all that evil. And the young man said to him I respect that that must have been terrible,
And I certainly won’t pester you, but can I just make the observation that I wonder if I’d been there I might not have stopped believing in man rather than stop believing in God. And the old man looked at him, tears welled up near his eyes,
And he said you better come in; we need to talk about this. It’s an interesting take on evil. I sometimes think that one of our problems is we’re not self-reflective enough. [Craig] Yes one of the major developments in philosophy with respect to this problem is the so-called free will defense,
In which philosophers I think have been able to show that it’s neither improbable nor impossible that every world that God would create that would involve this much good, this much moral goodness, would also involve this much moral evil freely perpetrated by human free agents,
So that ultimately the blame lies at man’s threshold and not at God’s. oh
NICHOLS: You know, you’ve heard people say—I’ve heard people say all sorts of things about who Christ is. And in our State of Theology survey, one of the statements that we put on the survey directly gets at who Jesus Christ is.
And the statement is this: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he is not God”. Now, when we put that survey to the general U.S. population, 52%—that’s the majority—agree with that statement. That’s to say that the majority of Americans espouse a heretical view of the person of Christ.
And this is a truly crucial, essential doctrine, because the person of Christ is behind the work of Christ. When we’re talking about the work of Christ, we’re talking about the gospel. And without the true gospel, people are lost, and they are without hope in this world, and they are facing eternal damnation.
There could be nothing more important than getting the doctrine of the work and person of Christ right. And as this survey shows, there’s a lot of false understanding and confusion out there about who Christ is. But what’s even more tragic about this survey is that we put that same question to evangelicals.
Now, when you hear us use that term of “evangelicals” in this survey, let me explain to you what that means. It’s not someone just simply checking a box. We actually attached at the end of the survey four questions which have historically served as sort of a grid to identify evangelicals.
There’s a question regarding biblical authority; a question regarding the necessity of evangelism; there’s a statement regarding who Christ is and His atoning death on the cross; and then, fourthly, the exclusivity of Christ, that only faith in Christ can lead to salvation.
So, people who strongly affirm all four of those, they get considered “evangelicals.” We can pull that data out separately and analyze that. And here’s the tragedy. When it comes to that statement, “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God,”
Thirty percent, three out of 10, almost a third of evangelicals agree with that statement. So here are folks who want to say, “Yes, we must have the death of Christ in order to be saved. It is absolutely necessary for this work of Christ.”
But then they turn around, and they’re just so confused that they affirm a heretical view of who Christ is. What are we to do with this? What’s the takeaway? All of this underscores the importance of our studying the doctrine of Christology and teaching the doctrine of Christology.
We just can’t assume that folks sitting in our churches and the Christians we know and our family will just “get it” by osmosis. We have to be intentional and programmatic about teaching this cardinal doctrine. Because if this survey tells us anything, it tells us that we’ve got a lot of work
I was wondering if you could clear this up for me. So… argues that Christ’s suffering was equivalent to our eternal damnation on account of the infinite dignity of Christ. So he appeals to the divine nature of Christ and that absolves the issue. But earlier this morning you mentioned that when Christ experienced the
Loss of fellowship with the Father it was through his human nature and not the divine, and so what I’m having a difficult time understanding is how we can appeal to the divine nature of Jesus in order for the sacrifice to be sufficient, while denying that it is the involvement of his divine nature.
This is a tremendous subtlety of Chalcedonian orthodoxy concerning the two natures of Christ. And that is that there is only one person who Christ is, and that is a divine person. It is the second person of the Trinity. There is no
Human person who is Jesus of Nazareth. There is a divine person who has a human nature as well as a divine nature. So it’s not that in virtue of his divine nature that Christ makes atonement; it is that you have a divine person who in his
Human nature bears our sin and punishment, and it’s the person that is divine and is the one who suffers and dies and so forth for our sins, but he does so with respect to the human nature.
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.
What If We Proved the Devil? For many, the devil is the embodiment of true evil. A terrifying and ancient, ever-present force existing in the shadows of humanity, orchestrating all the terrible things that have happened and ever will happen.
But what if this malevolent being wasn’t just the stuff of stories, but instead a real-world, accepted entity? This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if we proved the Devil? Are you a fiend for facts? Are you constantly curious?
Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one? And ring the bell for more fascinating content! Throughout theology, faith and cultural history, the exact identity and intention of the Devil is a complex and thorny issue. And various figures have assumed the title, without necessarily deserving it.
Take Hades, the Lord of the Underworld in ancient Greek mythology… He’s usually presented as the worst of the worst, but he’s only really there to watch over the souls of the dead and isn’t an explicitly evil figure. In fact, according to some representations, the Devil himself wasn’t actually evil at
First – but his evilness set in when he was cast out of heaven as a “fallen angel” after disagreements with God. Now, he mainly serves to tempt humanity into making selfish, dishonest and generally bad decisions – which, from some perspectives, means that the devil actually exists so that
Humankind can remain pure, by resisting his schemes. Many interpret the Devil’s first appearance in the Bible as when he takes the form of a serpent to convince Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, which she does,
Turning humankind into a race of sinners all the way up until the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. At other points, the Devil goes by Satan, a title originally given to the ruler of hell, otherwise known as the archangel of death Samael in Jewish texts.
But, in the three thousand years since the Old Testament was first written, the Devil has morphed many, many times, from a figure more simply in charge of punishing those who give in to sinful temptation, to the ultimate personification of evil itself.
So, given that there are so many conflicting ideas about who or what he is and why he even exists, how could the devil ever be explicitly proven? Well, if he plays to type, then he’s actually far more likely to just plain reveal himself than, say, God would be.
After all, making himself known to potential sinners, or appearing at times of extreme hardship, is kind of his “thing”. But, if he did suddenly show, then it could also, adversely, reaffirm the faith that millions of people have in God as well.
With proof of the ultimate evil, the belief that there’s also a supreme good would naturally strengthen. That said, proof that the devil exists might also be seen by some as the final confirmation that God doesn’t, or at least that God isn’t supreme, isn’t all-powerful and all-forgiving,
But can in fact be challenged – this is otherwise known as the Problem of Evil. Regardless, if the Devil (as well as Hell) was shown beyond doubt, back on plain old Planet Earth there’d be mass hysteria. In amongst the existential crises that millions of people would likely be experiencing after
Confirmation of a higher power, the terrible threat of eternal damnation and endless torture would now be confirmed – leaving people to decipher exactly what that means for their own lives… And placing all new, urgent meaning on defining the parameters of precisely what sends you to hell, and what doesn’t.
We’d see huge ethical questions debated as a matter of fact, but with widespread disagreement on what those facts are – seeing as the meaning of the devil would still rely on interpretation. The confusion and chaos could quickly trigger a major crime wave, with people throwing caution
To the wind, convinced that for one reason or another the devil will target them anyway. Of course, if the Devil’s appearance also confirms the existence of an overriding God, then there’d be no major cause for concern and humanity could still make it through the pearly gates.
Elsewhere, the Devil in real life could have a severe impact on law, order and justice all over the world – with even convicted criminals now able to blame the actual devil, in a bid to claim they’re not accountable for their actions. Already, people have used this defence with some degree of success.
Take the infamous “The Devil Made Me Do It” murder case in 1981, where Arne Cheyenne Johnson killed his landlord, blamed demonic possession, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter but not murder, and served a shortened sentence of five years in prison. Johnson’s controversial case obviously played out without categorical evidence that the devil exists…
But, if Satan really stood among us we’d likely see lots more crimes justified as the devil’s work, and a probable collapse of the criminal justice system as lawyers scramble to find a way to prove whether or not a criminal really was influenced by the fallen deity who now definitely is real.
And it’s not as though we could simply call the devil to the stand to testify, given that he’s characterised – among other things – as persuasive, manipulative and untrustworthy. And so, with the devil at our door and hell on our doorstep, perhaps there’d be only
One solution; we’d need to somehow eliminate Satan, and in so doing stop all bad things from ever happening again. It’d be a tall order, but with the Devil out in the open it’d no longer feel such a massive leap to actually go to war with him.
United by the ultimate in common enemies, the world’s militaries could stage a global effort to rid humanity of its greatest and most dangerous villain. Could he ever be defeated, though? And could our armies ever match his? It’s hard to believe that anything, even an arsenal of nuclear weapons, could kill the Devil outright…
More likely we’d wind up eradicating ourselves in the crossfire, probably as part of our opponent’s cunning plan. Having inspired continent-wide battlefields of bloodshed and violence, we could also assume that the now-confirmed devil would bring with him plenty of other dangerous demons and nightmarish monsters – including vampires.
They’re pop culture powerhouses nowadays, but the vampire myth can be traced as far back as the story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife according to some texts, who becomes the consort of Samael, aka Satan. So, if the devil’s real, then vampires probably are too, and who knows what else!
Ouija boards are suddenly viable, and crucifixes are desperately weaponised as the end of days apparently draws near. If Satan truly showed himself, humanity would struggle to comprehend it at first, then struggle to adapt, and finally, possibly, fall into his trap. And that’s what would happen if we proved the Devil.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.
– The word proofs is a loaded term in philosophy and in many cases people will push back at us for using that in the Christian faith, but the Bible itself, Acts 1:3 says that with many convincing proofs Jesus appeared to his disciples for 40 days after his resurrection.
In fact, the apostles were faced with this accusation that they had actually stolen the body of Jesus. And so as early as the New Testament all the way to this present day there have been attacks on the notion that Jesus was raised from the dead. And through the next almost 2000 years,
If we were to come up to today, there are a series of what we call counter theories to the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus through the centuries has responded to these counter theories such as, well his body was stolen, or maybe he wasn’t really dead
When he was put in the tomb, and so on, have been responded to powerfully such that I’m convinced today the very best answer is, in fact, rationally, that Jesus was historically raised from the dead. Now some of the actual historical evidences that have been discussed through the centuries
Are that Jesus was really dead. That is to say, there is no question that he just swooned when he was put into the tomb, to Romans knew how to kill you when they crucified you. Two, the fact is that his tomb was empty. The early Christians even lost where the actual tomb is,
We don’t know for sure even where you’re taken as a tourist today is actually where he was buried. Why? Because they didn’t care about it, he was raised from the dead. His enemies would have presented his body were he actually still in the tomb. Three, his disciples believed that they were seeing Jesus
After his resurrection, that is in a post mortem raised state, so much so that they were willing to die for this, this is remarkable. And in fact, they changed, four, their belief system. These early believers were Jewish, and so they began to worship on the first day of the week,
That is Sunday instead of the Sabbath day. They celebrated the Lord’s supper, which is a proclamation of his death, and burial, and resurrection until he comes, and baptism, which was a symbol of buried with him in the likeness of his death and raised in the likeness of his resurrection.
Interestingly enough, the various theories like swoon, or conspiracy, or they lost the body, and so on, only a handful of these are still used today by skeptics and the irony is they fail miserably simply to deal with what now the majority of New Testament scholars, even those
Who are not Christians, agree on those historical facts that I presented. The bottom line is the significance of the resurrection of Jesus is intensely personal. The reason is simply that if he’s not raised from the dead then Christianity is silly, there’s no forgiveness for our sins,
My having lived my life believing that he’s raised from the dead was a waste, I could’ve lived it any other of a number of ways. But if he is raised from the dead, then in fact, the hundreds of millions of people who trusted in him through the centuries
Really do have hope for eternal life. I remember 43 years ago when I was not a Christian, 20 year old pagan, hated Christianity, yet woke up on Easter morning with a bad hangover as a hippy with long hair, God has a sense of humor, it seems, I had been told recently by Christians
That on Easter, that was the day they celebrated Jesus having been raised from the dead. And the fundamental question of life that I was facing, like is there a God and could I be forgiven for the evil that I actually was fully caught up in and was convinced I was guilty of,
Could I be forgiven? I didn’t connect all those dots, but something bothered me that morning, this is the day Jesus rose from the dead. And that’s what makes Christianity so very special, the love of God displayed in the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus for us, has been demonstrated
To be true, and that’s what gives me hope, and it should you, too, if you belong to him. – [Narrator] Thanks for watching. You can submit your questions by email, Twitter, or in the comments section below. And don’t forget to subscribe to find out the answer to next week’s question.
JONES: This second lecture will deal with one of the powerful influences on our culture today, namely I’m looking at the rise and demise of secular humanism. I think it’s important that we understand today’s culture. And I really am so happy that there are young people listening to me because while some
Of you my age will say, “You’re saying what exactly what I understand and have lived through.” Sometimes our young people have difficulty figuring out what’s happening because they have not lived through this kind of thing. So I address them in particular.
And to understand our culture, we need to see that there are two fundamental ideologies that I will show at the end of my lectures possibly are really the same because they’re Oneist, namely secular humanism and revive paganism. They’re very different but at the end of the day, they are in their fundamental orientations
Of the world — Oneist. You know when I first came in 1964, I mention how amazed I was to see Christian America. And the other thing that amazed me was how much people lived in fear of communism. There were commies behind every bush.
And of course the McCarthy investigation of communist agents was just finished and many on the left poopooed that but it’s actually been shown that there were many communist agents in America during that time. But we were worried because this godless system of communism or Marxism was spreading throughout
The world in this sort of a domino effect from the Soviet Union to China, to Korea, to Vietnam, to Cuba. And you know the ’60s revolution was very much a revolution against the Vietnam War whose motivation of course was to oppose communism.
So we have radicals who still actually now have power who were part of those refusing to denounce communism which is sort of interesting. So the threat in the ’60s was not a religious threat but a nonreligious materialism in its various forms. In its political form of course — atheistic Marxism.
But it is also had an intellectual form called secular humanism and that was something that we all realized and perhaps still realize as a fundamental opponent of the Christian faith. Humanism was celebrated in the Renaissance just before the Reformation as the rediscovery
Of the value of the individual human being and his reason over against the power of the church. And many of us have seen the importance of that movement and of course it’s easy to describe the work of Martin Luther as an expression, in a certain sense, of that humanistic understanding
Of the importance of the individual. But of course, like most things, its good parts can be turned to bad. And what you have you see is, from the intelligent use of individual reason which has produced the incredible successes of Western culture through science and technology.
So, that one day human beings would walk on the moon; this kind of thinking became more and more enamored of its own power and felt that it was the only way of relating to the world — that human reason was the source of truth.
And belief in a world created by God and of reason created by God was dismissed as religious superstition and myth. And so for modern man — religion had to go, and this is why we have known and recognized that secular humanism is a massive attack on Christianity.
So from the 18th Century on what’s called “The Enlightenment” — “the age of light” if you like; this view of reason as the ultimate source of authority for human existence developed in a powerful way. Optimism in what mankind could produce, its capacities to bring about a better world took
The minds of intellectuals by storm and of course invaded the university. So that, so many of our intellectuals bought into this system. Bringing about if you like this vision of a kingdom of man on earth, you can already see how Oneist that is, right?
If it’s simply depending on human beings to put the world together, it is a form of Oneism. It was known as the religion of humanism and it was particularly expressed by the French Revolution. I spent eighteen years in France, so I love the French but I see their weaknesses too.
In 1789, the Paris revolutionaries built an altar to the goddess ‘Reason’ in Notre Dame Cathedral, can you believe that? There was an altar right in the center of that incredible medieval church and they celebrated to goddess ‘Reason’. The French philosopher who was part of this French Revolution — Voltaire, was fundamentally anti-Christian.
He was a friend by the way of Benjamin Franklin, who himself was a very conflicted man because some of you know that Benjamin Franklin was fascinated by George Whitfield and helped pay for some of his campaign.
And yet he was also a friend of Voltaire, one of the leading atheists of the 18th Century. Voltaire came up with the famous phrase “écrasez l’infâme,” — “Crush that vile unspeakable thing.” This became the battle cry of The Enlightenment, but it was actually Christianity that was the vile and unspeakable thing.
And so there were thousands of heads of priests and so on that were separated from their bodies through the French Revolution. The Emperor Napoleon asked Pierre-Simon Laplace, — the great French scientist if he believed in God; he was reputed to have said, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
This is a movement, a very powerful movement in the West, and as western history develops in the 18th and 19th Centuries, you find leading intellectuals actually predicting the end of religion. In the 21st Century, we should be seeing the end of religion according to these predictions.
Ludwig Feuerbach called Christianity a “delusion,” “a gigantic human projection.” You remember Karl Marx described religion as “the opiate of the people,” the sign of a wrongly ordered society. “Man,” said Marx, “is the supreme divinity.” By the way, another expression Oneism.
But these people didn’t want to be called religious by the way; they weren’t religious, they were rational. Of course why did they believe in their own rationality, that was a faith statement by the way. Friedrich Nietzsche declared “Gott ist tot,” “God is dead.”
The tradition of Christianity was now being buried by these leading philosophers. Sigmund Freud in his book “The Future of an Illusion” speaks about religion in particularism his own Judaism as a “mass delusion, a collective neurosis which enshrines our infantile longing.”
He actually describes it as a serious pathological condition from which one needed to be healed. Really massive anti-religious mindset going on amongst the intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries. And that continues to this day in 1976, Richard Dawkins, one of the new atheists, in his book
“The Selfish Gene,” describes faith, quote, “as a kind of mental illness.” So here we have this rationalistic approach to eliminate faith and religion as a form of illness. And of course we saw this kind of thinking invade the church; that’s what liberalism is, you see.
Liberalism is the adaptation of the world’s kind of thinking and trying to make it Christian, that’s what liberals have done all through the ages since the beginning. Christianity, beginning with the Gnostics, who were the original liberals who tried to take pagan notions of the mystery religions and make them Christian.
So that’s the mechanism that liberals use. And when I was studying New Testament at Harvard, of course that was the great goal — to reinterpret the New Testament by demythologizing the supernatural. Demythologizing means taking away the myths and getting to the heart which really the
Heart was sort of a sense of one’s own existential being faced with nothingness; that was the real meaning of Christianity in the New Testament. So there was no miracles and certainly no resurrection of Jesus. And then of course, the mainline churches buy into this kind of thinking.
But of course, someone has said, “If you marry the spirit of the age, you will soon be a widower.” And we’ve seen mainline churches going down in their effect in our culture. And Liberalism thus defined the Gospel as mere social work, and saw Jesus only as an
Example not as a divine Savior, that was myth of course you see, so myth had to go. The Gospel was redefined in terms of Marxist politics. Liberation theology became all the rage, and Jesus was little more than a cake of 20th century revolutionary theory.
On a different level, the secular humanists were greatly influenced by Darwin, who would effectively eliminated belief in “God the Creator,” and proposed in place of “God the Creator” the idea of an unguided and impersonal process of natural selection.
Life came about by mere chance, and man was seen as the result of purposelessness and a mere natural process, that did not have him in mind by the way, and so we are really the result of chance.
It’s incredible to see how far people can go with that as an explanation for the incredible beauty and power of what we represent as human beings. The way our bodies have put together. The way our minds can function. There’s no valid explanation of this in secular humanism and yet so many liberal thinkers
Adopted it. Science was the only way of knowing anything about anything. And so, there was a belief that religion would disappear. When I came to the states in the ’60s, I was asked to read books on ‘the death of God’.
And this was all the rage and we were sort of told that this was the proof (and I wasn’t at an evangelical school and I don’t really blame my professors for seeing it this way, I saw it that way) that the death of God was the proof of the success of secular humanism.
That man no longer needed God as a hypothesis, he was now fine on his own. The final triumph then of secular humanism is to declare in America in the ’70s that God had died. Secular humanism had won. Now in a certain sense, these predictions have come true.
We’re seeing the decline of the Christian faith in the population as a whole. No longer are many people influenced by a Christian way of thinking and I don’t think we should hide our eyes from that. And in that sense we’ve seen the decline of attachment to the Christian faith.
Now, this is a massive change. People no longer actually believe in God the Creator and so they can do anything they want to, but that was not always the case. In 1890, the Supreme Court in United States defined religion as “one’s view of one’s relation
To his Creator, to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character and obedience to His will.” That was the statement of the Supreme Court in 1890. There was no other definition of God but of a personal transcendent creator.
But thanks in many ways to secular humanism, this is no longer the case in public discourse. So what is ‘secularism’ or secular humanism? Let me give you a simple definition, it comes in various names. As an intellectual discipline, it is known as “philosophical materialism,” that matter is ultimate. That’s the philosophy of materialism. As a religious expression, it is called ‘Atheism’, the faith belief that there is no God. There’s no — you can’t prove that rationally, right? So an atheist has to be in some sense a religious believer.
As a political form, it is practiced as ‘Marxism’ and various forms of socialism. And for many people, it’s simply a default way of thinking of living without any notion that God exists. That’s probably the way most people practice this kind of thinking.
But in all these expressions of secularism, it’s a consistent rejection as a mere ancient superstition, a sort of a holdover from the Middle Ages and we must refuse that kind of mythology if we want to really do our world good. Now, this kind of a view still dominates the western universities.
Some of you young people that go to schools around here will confirm that your professors — many of them believe in this kind of rationalism or secular humanism. However, this is not the whole story. Just as these philosophers of the 19th and early 20th century were predicting the end
Of the withering away of religion in a kind of ironic turn of events. We are now seeing the withering away of secular humanism, did you realize that? You probably don’t always see it, but this is happening and many people are talking about it.
And the withering away of secular humanism, (oh let me just say it) the proof is, how many people now say, “I’m spiritual but not religious?” In other words, they are making a claim to spirituality which doesn’t fit with secular humanism, right? — That’s superstition. Any kind of faith is superstition.
Well, the reasons why this movement of secular humanism is on the decline and indeed is withering away, is that while it was so optimistic and full of self-confidence; secular humanism produced two devastating World Wars that produced the death of millions. In some of its socialistic expressions it became totalitarian fascism.
And some of its great leader was Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot that produced the murder of countless millions, in the name of secular humanism. That doesn’t give a movement too many honors. And of course from that — you have wild industrialization, ecological disasters; but as I was indicating
Earlier, one of the real problems is that many people have begun to feel that without some kind of spirituality they can’t exist in this world. And that’s what secular humanism does; it leaves us with a soulless materialism without any sense of a meaning in a spiritual way of thinking.
And so secular humanism produced a profound sense of alienation from the rest of the universe. So we human beings, you see, are isolated in this massive cosmos, and we have no real relationship with the outside and so we have a profound sense of alienation. Have you met people like that?
They are looking for a sense of wholeness. “W-H.” (I didn’t say holiness, I said whole-ness) they want to belong somehow to more than a mere physical. But there is another reason why secular humanism is in decline. It is severely weak as a philosophical system. What do I mean by that?
Well, you see, to be a secular humanist, you have to believe in the validity of human reason. But in order to believe in human reason, you have to presuppose it. So to demonstrate that, you have to presuppose it. So it’s a perfectly circular way of thinking, does that make sense?
In order to prove reason, you have to presuppose it. And to presuppose it, that’s a faith statement that the world is rational. You don’t have all the information, right? You don’t sit outside of the cosmos and look down, ‘Oh yeah, that’s rational’. You have to presuppose that.
And some scholars have realized that this is not a ground for establishing secular humanism. The postmodern critique of secular humanism which argued that all major ideas are simply human notions and they are not scientific or philosophical, included the critique of secular humanism oddly.
So postmodernism — the thinkers of whom were probably the sons and daughters of secular humanist turns around and eats up their parents. There are two reasons really why secular humanism is on the decline. The first, is it really cannot stand against true biblical theism.
The conversion of Antony Flew — the great atheist is an example of that. He stated this, “It is simply inconceivable that any material matrix or field can generate agents who think and act. Matter cannot produce conceptions and perceptions such a world has to originate in the living source, a mind.”
The greatest atheist of the 20th century finally has to admit that secularism cannot justify the human mind. Isn’t that beautiful? But then, finally, there’s a new way of thinking. It is the thinking of this new spirituality. David Miller, who was a professor at Syracuse University, and was one of the ‘death of God’
Theologians actually said, “At the death of God, you will see the rebirth of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome.” That’s not secular humanism. That’s a justification of a belief in all the gods. What did Miller know that we didn’t know as we read him in the ’70s?
Well, he was a devout follower of Carl Jung. And that will be the subject of my next lecture. Thank you.
