We're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis, and welcome to another great week of the Clearview Today show. Starting the week off right, I'm glad you decided to join us today. I know my friend Ryan here is glad, and more than anything else, our host with the most, Dr. Abbadon Shah, is glad you are here today.
If you've never listened to the show before, Dr. Shah is a PhD and New Testament textual criticism professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show, Dr. Shah. Start the week off right. The air horn is just like, oh, I got so not me. Yeah, I got tons on, man. I got bald eagle. I'm proud to be an American.
One weekend. I think we need to have the air horn as you were walking up on stage. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Abbadon Shah. Good to be here. Always good to be here in this room. I have a fun time talking to you guys and just laughing, learning, growing, sharing a lot of things I study and prepare over the weeks and over the months, and then to come here and share that, and then to hear from our audience. We're hearing more and more, by the way, which is awesome. So please write, please send texts, please send emails.
We love to hear from you. Keep doing that because that's the way we talk about what you're telling us to talk about. That's what you're commenting on. That's right. You want to hear one of the comments that somebody left this morning. Let's do it.
So, so this person did not leave a name. This was on our iTunes show. This is, so this is in our Apple podcast. Said, Hey, y'all just checking in, loving the Clearview Today show. Me and my church family are listening from Pembroke, North Carolina.
Keep doing what you're doing. You've got a faithful listener right here. Wow. Really? That's awesome. Me and my church family. Yeah.
Yeah. I think a lot of people are seeing that we're on Pray. Now, Pray has been a great platform for us to get out to a wider audience. And so once the conversation starts circulating, I think it does get on, you know, churches do that. Churches will, you know, have Bible studies with other pastors, you know, kind of leading their Bible studies right now. Media was really big for that, but I think we're starting to see people go more and more towards Pray. That's awesome.
That's awesome. To God be the glory. I mean, everything we're talking about is coming from his word. In a trillion years, I couldn't come up with what Romans chapter six, seven and eight are all about. Amen.
Right. It's the Holy Spirit of God that's taking the word of God, the timeless word of God and touching so many lives. So we don't get the glory is God's the glory. We just pray, God, keep your hand upon us. Keep giving us the resources, the finances that we need to keep spreading the word because that's what it's about. Everything we buy in here, every gadget we buy, every camera we upgrade or a system we get is simply so that the message would be clearer, better, more appealing to hear or to watch. And the message will keep going and lives are being changed.
Amen. That's right. People are coming to know Christ as their savior.
That's right. I mean, just this afternoon we baptized somebody. Now this lady was saved, but she wanted to really dedicate her life to the Lord and felt like this was one thing she wanted to do for a long time. And when the baptism was over her husband's, I asked, is this what you were hoping for? She said, yes. Amen. Her husband said, absolutely.
I can see the smile on her face, which means that's what she wanted. I love it. Praise the Lord. Amen. God is doing big things.
Amen. I got a segment I want to, uh, I want to interest you guys in. We have not done this in a while, but this is the Bible guess at game. So I've got, I've got 15 clues. If you're listening for the first time, never played the Bible guess up game before. This is a great, great game that the action Bible puts out.
They're not sponsors of the show, but I'm hoping they should be. Yeah. I'm hoping to change that pretty soon. So I've got 15 clues per object.
Now when you play with a text critic and a youth pastor, typically they get it pretty, pretty soon. But for you guys playing at home, you're going to have 15 guesses to try to get this. You want to get it. The, the, the, the first ones are very vague.
And then as it goes down, it gets more and more obvious. Okay. So this is a person, Dr. Shaw, there's a person I died at Kyrieth Arba. Hmm.
I was 127 years old when I died. I'm drawing a blank. My name, I should know this one.
My name means princess. Oh, Sarah. Yes, Sarah. Good job. Good job.
I'll tell you these ones go quick. Okay. This is another person. I promised to give a 10th back to God. I settled Jacob. Yes. Jacob.
You know, you're not, you're not supposed to like, you're not supposed to get them on the first one. Okay. Here we go. This is a thing.
This is an object. I'm precious in his sight. I make peace. I cried out from the ground. Oh, Abel's blood.
Yes. Oh, he blood. It was blood. I mean, precious in his sight. Oh my word. Precious in his sight comes from Psalm 72 verse 14. I did not get that one.
Dr. Shaw's three and oh man. I know. Yeah. You got it.
Is this supposed to be for both of us? No, it's not. I'm just going around. Okay. This is another thing.
It's an object. Ezekiel saw something like me. God said, never again. The flood. No, I am for all generations. I'm in the first and you were close.
I I'm in the first and last books of the Bible. Destruction? No, no. I remind God of something.
Don't you dare. Rainbow. Yeah. Rainbow.
Did you know it was rainbow Dr. Shaw? It's the first chapter of the Bible. The first, first and last book. I'm in the first and last book. I might've said chapter if I did.
You said it right. I was just thinking it was like first chapter. Rainbow did come to me. I was like rainbow. Yeah. No, it's not in the first chapter.
Rainbow. Cause that's Noah and Noah comes later. But anyways, okay. Last one. This is a place.
This is a place. John doesn't mention me. I follow Peter's confession. Moses was here.
Elijah was here. Oh, the amount of transfiguration. That's it. That's it. You got it. That was it. Good job, fellas.
Some of those are tough. Yeah. I like that game. Cause it's always fun for me. Cause like I'm the one looking at it. So it was like, I see how all the clues, but I can see how some of those are like, what we may need to post at one time.
Maybe I need to run it one time. Yeah, sure. That'd be fun. I would like that. Well, speaking of brushing up on God's word, which I feel like I need to do after that segment.
Oh man, that was good. The verse of the day today is coming from Galatians chapter six, verse nine. And let us not grow weary while doing good for in due season, we shall reap. If we do not lose heart, too many Christians losing heart.
Dr. One of the things that you told me, I think when I first started almost 12, almost 13 years ago, and I, it has stuck with me and I think it'll stick with me for the rest of my life because it has fundamentally changed how I think most people quit right at the finish line. Yeah. Yeah. One thing we say is that a lot of people in ministry are lazy and I think that's true, but I think it's also true that they start working hard and then they give up right before harvest time. Yeah.
Very true. Last 25% of the race, people lay down or they just step out of the race and they're done. They're done. It's like, ah, I just, I'm done.
I gave it my best and it just wasn't meant to be. What, what contributes to that? What, what brings people to that point? Well, I think they, they're not grounded like they need to be. They're not grounded in who they are. They're not grounded in their spiritual walk.
They had a sort of a bringing that was very, um, I don't want to say flaky, but it's more, um, there's just the grounded is the only one comes where it comes from mine. And so it's easy for them to go, yeah, I'm done. I'm folding.
And you go, what already? I've been there 10 years, 10 years, 10 years, man. And it's like, no, that's, that's not enough. That's true. That's true. And I think a lot of people don't like to hear that, especially young people like millennials.
I was always taken in by the overnight success story. You know what I mean? Like you see people your age or a little bit younger that are making millions of dollars, their faces on billboards, or even in the church, like they have everything that someone is told to desire, right?
Like the big plasma screen, led walls and all that stuff. And you're told that's what you should desire. And look, all these young people have it. And I remember like, even you, when you were talking about, you know, I've been working on my PhD for 20 years and I was like, aren't you discouraged? And you're like sometimes, but it's going to be worth it. And what I'm doing working on it is going like getting the PhD, it's going to help this church. So my goal is not done once I get it. And really that's, that's just the beginning. And that has helped me, I think, to remember that I don't have an, how am I trying to say?
I don't have an end goal that I'm working towards. That's a tangible thing. We are building up a place where God's presence and God's people are. That's right. And everything along the way, those achievements like a, like getting a PhD or getting an album out or whatever that thing is on the horizon, that's all feeding into a larger goal that we're aiming toward. Absolutely. And what we may think in the moment as just unachievable or not worth it, or just too, has too many problems is ultimately is worth it. It is achievable.
It's not too much. It's yes, the adversities. And maybe that's where I'm going to share the wisdom where the adversities are part of life. Adversities shape us and build us. Adversities keep us humble. And in Romans chapter eight, where we're coming in our series is where you begin to see how suffering is part of the journey.
That's true. It's what God uses to draw us even closer to him. And we don't like suffering. I don't know if any person who truly says, I enjoy suffering.
They may say that, but they, it's a caricature. It's not a real suffering. It's something they can endure.
So they say, Oh yeah, I love it, man. I want to go through it. I'm just, no, when real suffering hits your life, you hate it. You don't want it. You want it to be done.
You want it to be over. But in those moments you grow deeper, you stay humble, you stay focused upon Christ and God does some powerful things that cannot happen without those sufferings. So for your weekly wisdom this week being Monday on all we're starting off the week, right? You would say find purpose in the suffering, find God's purpose in the suffering or yeah, I would say just let suffering be the assurance that God is working with you. Wow. Not, not that God is punishing you. Yeah.
Yeah. Let suffering be. Now sufferings come in everybody's lives, right? You know, lost people who go through suffering, people who are in sin right now are going through suffering. People who love the Lord and serve him go to, how do you know that your suffering is not because of sin or because of just being part of life is because you can see the message in that suffering and it's not a random, it's not just a, you're just going through it.
It is what it is. Like Job, when he went through adversity, he was able to see the other realm. I mean, how do we even know that there was a conversation between Satan and God? How do we know that? Because Job, I believe wrote about it.
Now maybe somebody else wrote about it. I think it was Job. I believe Job had that deeper walk with God and he was writing because how can someone share someone else's emotions so well, right? When you read Job's dialogues and what his friends are saying, how can you express yourself so authentically, but also so biblically, so realistically, unless you are the person. So he saw what the enemy was doing.
He was there when the conversation took place with his wife. All of that is Job. And having those eyes to see that better perspective in suffering, I think is crucial and it shows how the Holy Spirit works in us and bringing us to that place where we can look at suffering and say, this objectively is not a good thing. No one will look at suffering and say, it is good that I'm going through this, but we can find God bringing good from that situation. You said that, I think you said that, I know you said it from the pulpit and I think we've said it on the show, but people, it isn't that they misuse Romans 8.28, God works all things together for good, but it's like they want to jump there without putting in the work of going through the rest of Romans. And I've done that too because it's an uplifting verse, especially in the wake of suffering. If you're leading someone and they're suffering, it's very easy. And it's, it's, I refrain from calling it a cop out, but it's sort of to be like, Hey, listen, God's going to work all things together for good. It's not a cop out, but it's also, you're jumping to a solution without having worked through all the difficult stuff of like Romans 6, 7, and 8.
Yeah. Not that it's wrong. It's great because it gives people hope. It gives people assurance.
It lifts them up in their suffering. But if you really want to get the full benefit, the full package of what Romans 8.28 is all about, make sure you also study Romans chapter 6, 7, and 8. In fact, begin Romans chapter 1 and make your way slowly through all the chapters to 8.
And then you come to 28 and go keep going to 31, 32, and you will see how wonderful it is in the Christian life. If someone's listening for the first time today and they say, you know, or if they've been following the show for a long time, then it's like, man, we've been really hitting Romans hard these past couple. Why, why such a specific focus on Romans for the past couple of months on the show? Well, the real series was on the end times prophecy.
People have been after me for, for years. When are you going to teach end times? When are you going to teach end times? And I told him, I said, before you came, I spent almost two years teaching end times prophecy.
I've done it. Now I may not agree with everything that I preached back then because the more you study God's word, the more you see proper historical grammatical egesis, the more you take the whole canon into context, the more you study the repercussions of certain views and certain perspectives on scriptures or certain conclusions. You go, wait a minute, if I go that way, then I know this is affected. If I do this, then if I believe this, then, then I have to somehow reconcile this. So, so some of my views have changed over the years, but not so radically that, Oh my goodness, I am, you know, diametrically opposed to what I did back in 2009 and I'm sorry, yes, 2009 and 10. So, no, not, not that much, but yeah, I preached on end times prophecy years ago, but then when people kept asking me, asking me, asking me, I said, look, I will do that. I will do that, but there are certain other series I need to cover.
Yeah. Not only for my benefit, but for the church's benefit where we are right now, we need to go through Nehemiah where we are right now, we need to walk through the life of Christ where we are right now, we need to go through Genesis and learn why the earth is not millions of years old. I want to teach our people that the earth is not millions of years old, right? And so we had to do some of those theories first and then we came to end times prophecy. But when we came to end times prophecy, the big, big, big question is, is Israel now the church? That's, that's what everybody wants to know. Well, they may not want to know.
That's what they need to know. They need to know because it makes a huge impact on how you see those prophetic scriptures that hinges on that. Do you think that it's just taken for granted? Do you think that it quote unquote goes without saying that the church has replaced Israel in people's minds? Some people's minds because I think some of the pastors, speakers, you know, famous leaders are, have espoused replacement theology and I disagree with them. So Romans, this series on Romans that we've been going through and we've been going through, like hitting hard, is it leading up to the defense that Israel has not been replaced or is it like, is it the whole thing is about that or is it just we're getting to like Romans nine, but this is setting the stage for that theory? I would say, yeah, I would say Romans nine through 11 of course is about Israel being Israel and church being church. But when you see the whole purpose of the book, especially when you find in later chapters, the difference between the weak and the strong and the purpose of the law, you begin to see that there was something happening in the first century church in Rome.
They were divided among Jewish background and Gentile background believers. And the point of contention was the law. What is the law supposed to do now? What is the law now? And so once you truly understand that and see that, yes, certain things have changed, but then certain things have not changed.
You have to understand those, those two, you have to answer those two questions. What has changed? What has not changed? And then you can come to Romans nine and then go, so knowing what we know and having cleared certain questions now, is Israel still Israel? This might go back to the laziness of Christians because I think what a lot of those passages that you mentioned are trying to do is just make it simple and clean. Law used to be for God's people, but it is no more. Jesus has done away with it. Put your faith in him. You're good. You're the church.
Israel's done. Cause that's, that's pretty clean and you can package that and you can sell it. And I don't mean that in a cynical way, but some do that.
Many do that. Yeah. But it's like, that's easy to understand. I, as a Christian don't have to put a whole lot of thought in it. Right. I think that's indicative of where we are as a larger culture.
We just want something handed to us. So we don't have to put a lot of thought in, but you said this from the pulpit and it's transformed the way that not just our church congregation has thought about it, but what the way that our listeners on the show have thought about it. Christianity is a thinking faith.
It's one that engages. I mean, we say it on the show, engaging both heart and mind for the gospel. You can't just kind of be on autopilot and say, just feed me what you regurgitate and I'm just going to exist in the Christian life.
Right. And people don't want to think about Christian doctrine being this tangled web, like this tangled mess. Like, like the whole thing I loved where you pointed out the law of your mind, the law of sin, the law of death, the law of flesh, the law of your members, the law of the spirit. It's this big tangled web.
And you're supposed to get to this point where you throw your hands up and say, I can't do this. And I think people are opposed to that because they think, well, why would God work that way? God shouldn't work that way. This should be simple.
This should be clean. But I can't think of a single day I've ever lived my life, Christian or non-Christian that was simple. Like life is just complicated.
Exactly. And Romans is that textbook that allows us to really look at the nitty gritty of how we are made and how Christianity or Christian life changes us. And yet at the same time, we have to contend against certain things that are not going to go away. But God has not just said, okay, now sink or swim, hope it works out for you.
See on the other side. But God says, no, here is how you are able to, you know, go back to our show yesterday, counteract the law of sin and death. Right. That's right. It's the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has freed us from the law of sin and death. So that is where we ended last time. But again, I want us to remember that the Holy Spirit is essential to the Christian life.
Yeah. The Holy Spirit is a must. And he has given to us once we receive Christ as our savior, now he's living inside of us. And I don't want to repeat all that I've taught so far, or we've been talking about so far about our death, burial, resurrection with Christ. Now the Holy Spirit is with us. Now we're walking the Christian life. Now he is counteracting the law of sin and death, but then something else he does for us because as you're living life, of course, positionally, you have sanctification, right? Ultimately you will have sent sanctification.
That's your perfection. That's going to come one day, but in the middle part, which is the progressive part, some people call it experiential. I call it progressive because even if it's not progressive, even if you're not necessarily always going to get better and better, you should aspire for that. You don't become sinless, but you should sin less. And when you don't live up to that standard, that should bring you right back to Romans chapter eight and say, where have I missed?
Oh, here's where I missed. It's almost your starting point or your reset point. You get to that point where you find yourself in that tug of war. You find yourself in that tangled web and like Paul say, a wretched man that I am. Yeah.
Yeah. And then you go back to the basics, which is let the Holy Spirit help you live the Christian life and you're living it in your mortal bodies, right? So your mortal body is still there. The body of sin is gone, but the spirit of sin is still alive. So what do I do with this mortal body?
What do I do with my members? Don't present them to unrighteousness, but present them to God, present them for righteousness, your hands, your feet, your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your, you know, every part of you present them to God. Even there, the Holy Spirit helps us. So I want us to see here and I don't want to, I wish we had time to read Romans chapter eight, five through 10, but we encourage our people to read that.
But I want us to read Romans chapter five, I'm sorry, chapter eight and verse 11, Romans chapter eight and verse 11. It says, but if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, okay, listen again. But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. So what in the world is Paul saying there? Yeah, he's gonna, he's gonna give life to my body through his spirit. And often people say, oh, that's in the, in the, in heaven, right? He's gonna raise me up from the dead. Raise me up from the dead. Well, that's already promised, but here he's talking about he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.
That is not future that's present. So he's given life to my body right now. Yeah. So I would live to God in service. Yeah. He's the one who sustains you so that you can serve him. Sometime back people asked me, so what do I do in the meantime while I am letting God use me and work in me and all that. It's like, it does not mean you sit back or fall into some kind of quietism.
Yeah. Like I'm just going to sit here and let go and let God, that's all I'm going to do, brother. No, you watch and you pray, you examine your heart, you confess sin, you study the word of God diligently. You have the mind of Christ. You focus on the, let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. Let that happen. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Okay.
Serve God. That's a big one. Yeah.
Enemy will find something for idle hands. That's true. Wow. Yeah. So do something. But if you say my body is just so riddled with sin, the law of my members, the law of my flesh is pulling me down to the law of sin and sin in turn is pulling me down to the law of death.
Okay. Serve God. But my mortal body is not able to because it wants to, what does the Bible say? The spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who does in you, which means your life will receive a lie. Your body will receive life from God. That's right.
That's right. So I'll make a statement here. He will set you free from sickness.
Now don't misunderstand. I don't believe that there is healing in the atonement. There is healing if you pray for healing.
Right? God heals. I'm sitting here because God healed me many times. Of course, hospitals help, doctors help, medicine helps, but ultimately he's the great healer.
That's right. So he healed me. But having said that, what does it mean that he will give life to your mortal bodies? He will set me free from that sickness to carry out the will of God. So when you get well, it's because it's when you get sick and you get well, he has done that for a purpose so that you would carry his will out. But even during the sickness, I'm not bound to that sickness.
Right? There are some people when they get sick, and I'm talking about Christians, when they get sick, they are bound to that sickness. There's nothing else they can think other than the sickness. Got you. Got you.
Got you. That sickness has become their identity. The sickness has become their identity. The sickness has become their preoccupation. It's all encompassing. It's all.
Yeah. Like, why is this happening to me? What is going on? What I'm going to do?
How I'm going to get over this? There is no hope. This is my end. I don't know. This is it.
It sounds like me when I got like allergies this past spring. Yeah. Yeah. But the Holy Spirit giving life to your mortal bodies means that he is going to set you free from sickness so you can serve God. You may still be in a hospital bed. You may even die. Okay.
That may sound kind of like, oh, come on now. Yeah, you may even die, but you will not be bound by that sickness. You will not be bound by that death. Even in your sickness, you'll be serving God. That's right.
That's right. I have seen people who got sick, got put in bed, and it took the law of life in Christ Jesus to set them free so that they would be as free in that bed, in that hospital bed as Paul was in that prison in Philippi. Wow. Wow. Do you really think those chains were binding Paul?
No, not at all. No, he was like, he was, you know, they were praising God. Paul and Silas were praising God in the prison cell. Amen. So also we, when we are sick, but if his life is in us, same thing with suffering. We're not bound by that suffering.
His life is in us. You know, Corrie 10 Boom in her sixties got called to go be a missionary to Japan in her sixties. And she was like, God, I can't do this. I can't do it. It's too old.
I'm too old for this. And Manly Beasley talks about this in one of his messages. He said, she said, God, if, if, if you would show her, she said that if, if she, if God would show her Corrie 10 Boom, that her body will not be a hindrance to the will of God, then she would go. And God gave her Romans 811 and she went and she served for many years. Amen.
Yeah. Into her seventies. And people would say, man, that woman walks us into the ground. She is so energetic. She is so strong. How does she do that?
Romans 811. That's right. It gave her that energy. Absolutely life.
That's right. Guys join us for tomorrow's episode. Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into one of the great topic here on the Clear Read Today show. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And don't forget that you can support us on iTunes by subscribing to the show and you can always support us financially at Clear Read Today show.com. John, what do you want to leave listeners with today? We are at 9.5 K followers on pray.com.
That means we're closing in on 10,000. I want you, you listening right now. I want you. You're the one, you're the one right there. I can see you through the lens of the camera.
I want you to be the one who crosses us over the finish line to get to 10,000. Make sure you follow Dr. Abadan Shah on pray.com. There's all sorts of exclusive content on there. New series are coming very soon. New podcasts, new devotionals, new shows, new episodes of discerning doctrine.
You can only get on that app. Thank you to everyone who's been giving financially. Your support means the world to us and it allows us to continue to do this, spread God's message. That's right. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear Read Today.
