You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis, and happy Friday, Clearview, today, listeners. We have made it to the weekend here in our studio with Dr.
Abadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Dr. Shah, Sunday's coming, my friend. How's the sermon looking? It's going very well.
We're in our series on trauma and family and dysfunctions. What is true dysfunction? How are you dealing with that? True, true. And so, true, yeah, so for me.
Very true. Very true. Well, Dr. Shah, I do have a question. This is something that can make the weekend a little more bearable for you.
Just, I wanted to ask you, Dr. Shah, for $1 million. $1 million sermon series.
Okay. And every sermon going forward for the next year.
Okay. So that's 52 sermons from this point forward. Right. You have to preach every single one of them in a goofy, like, mascot suit. Be glad to.
Seriously. Absolutely. You can't keep $1 million. One million. Absolutely.
We'll see Goofy from Disney World. Can you look up? Not Goofy like crazy, like the character Goofy. The character of Goofy. Like the Disney.
Look up the, if you will, David, look up the Disney World Goofy mascot suit. Absolutely. How did you come off? Absolutely. $1 million?
Yeah. If you told me something like. Terrible, sinful. Yeah, I would definitely not like anything weird or that would be weird, but it would be perverse. It would just be weird.
If you had told me to compromise the message. Oh, yeah, of course. I would be glad to. Absolutely. Every.
For 52 sermons. Absolutely, because in every message I'll find some way to use it as an object lesson.
So, you know, your ears be slow to speak. Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to rap.
Sometimes I wonder how much of this is like, is like, we're just kind of playing this up for the show. And sometimes I wonder, like, would you really do that for a million dollars? I'll do it. What would you do, Ryan? 100%.
I teach students, so that's kind of the one I would probably in that wood house anyway. Oh, my God. But yeah, absolutely. Is there any character? Talk about the masks that we wear in life.
100%. Stretch that out for a year? Absolutely. Would you do Donald Duck? Yes.
There's no Disney character you wouldn't do. Oh, no. I don't know about that because Disney has made some crazy messages.
Well, true, true. I'm talking about classic, like Mickey Mouse. Classics, maybe. Yeah. But the modern Disney.
Imagine that in the pulpit. Absolutely. No, 100%. Absolutely. $100.
There's no. $1 million. Yeah, it's a million dollars. That's a lot of money. Did you lead worship as Donald Doug?
If I had permission, would I have to? If I, okay, let me ask you this: if the deal was given to me, absolutely, I'll give it to you. Even if I, even look, like, if I were to be like, hey, Dr. Shah, I'll give you $250,000. Would you be like, no, no, go for it.
Yeah. Like, let you do it? Yeah, for a million. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you know, unless it's something risque or weird, or, you know, oh, that's that's no, we draw the line there.
Yeah, yeah. Which you're not going to do. No, you're just going to do these. I mean, he's not. Absolutely.
Go for it.
Okay. We'll actually get a big following out of this. He'll generate a bud. Let's go to church. I'm going to see what Clearview is doing this time.
That's right. And I mean, preach on sin. Yeah. Imagine like Jake Gosselin at like churchfront.com. And he's like, all right, so we're here.
We're reviewing Clearview Church's live stream. I got to say, I don't get the Donald Duck costume at all, but the production value is pretty good. And the message is right on biblical against sin, repentance, grace through Jesus Christ. He's the way, truth, and life. I mean, Only way to the Father.
There's a real heaven, real hell. There is. I mean, there's not a downside. This is a silly. There's none.
This is silly. Literally, no downside. We're going to read the verse of the day in a second, but I want to read Dr. Shah a couple of messages.
So, this is something we didn't talk about. This past Sunday. By the time you're listening to this, it'll be two Sundays ago, you were on Pray.com's Sunday service, which is basically a rotation of featured leaders. And every Sunday, they pick a featured leader and they play that sermon for 24 straight hours on Pray Radio. That's right.
And so your sermon on alcohol, the series we just did on alcohol here on the show, we played that and it played for 24 hours and it reached a good, I don't know how many people were reached by it, but I know we gained at least a thousand followers in one day. Tons and tons and tons of comments poured in. I just wanted to, some of them were not very supportive because, of course, you went after, we talked about drinking, but a lot of them really were.
So I just wanted to read three of them. If we have a quick second, someone said, This is an awesome. I'm not going to. Share names. I'll say this is Dorian W said, This is an awesome teaching and brought real will.
Thank you for this teaching. It was a revelation.
Someone said, This one is anonymous. Excellent sermon regarding alcohol in the Bible this morning. Thank you for your insights and explanations. Not an easy subject when alcohol is normalized in this world today. Did you feel that?
Did you feel going into it like this is going to be a tough one to confront? Oh, yes, because, you know, it's such a part of our culture, especially America, with our history with prohibition. This is a hot topic and will remain a hot topic.
So the moment you bring up the issue of, hey, maybe we should not drink, maybe this idea that what we're drinking today is the exact same as in the past, immediately you have people saying, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, that's not true. And sometimes you even have biblical scholars who will say that.
Now, with biblical scholars, I want to hear their evidence. Where are they going from? And what I've found is they have the same evidence that I do. And I'm not the one who invented this idea that Alcohol was diluted in ancient times. This is something that others have done profound research in it and solid, solid.
Research in ancient Greek sources and Latin sources, and of course, Babel too. The evidence is the same. is now how do you interpret that? while I interpret it as it was understood that alcohol had to be or wine had to be diluted And then you could drink it does not mean that every time people drank, they followed the rule. They broke the rule.
And that's why you have various passages in the Bible that tell you, don't do that. This is what's going to happen to you. But then there are people who take the same evidence and go, The fact that people were drinking tells you that That didn't happen. It's like, wait. No.
Yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, so you cannot say you're wrong and I'm right. When we're looking at the same evidence, and it's simply a matter of how you're choosing to now. um interpret that evidence. And I say my More and more that you study and examine the word studies, and also look at the extra biblical evidence, you go, Yeah.
Dilution was The normal way. That's interesting that you say that because I would have thought that a lay person, like, yeah, you lay out the evidence, but they're just going to be stubborn and say, No, I'm going to choose to interpret it this way. But you're saying even scholars do that. Scholars will see the evidence and say, I'm choosing a choice. Not to pervert this evidence, but just to draw a different conclusion.
Aaron Powell, is that a misunderstanding or is that an underlying bias? It's an underlying bias. And again, I don't want to be judging people's motives, but many, many, many times what happens is people look To the past and they have theologians and And big names and figures in Christian history who drank. Scholars look to the pastor, like people in general. Scholars, I'm talking about right now.
So they will say, Martin Luther. When he would have his table talks, there was Katie, his wife, right? Who was a nun at one time, and Luther was a priest at one time. And then now they're married after the Reformation. You can do that.
Yes, we can do that now. And so, as they're sitting there doing the table talk, she would bring that homemade beer. And then Luther would drink it and he would drink and then the tongue starts you know, wagging and Luther would say things about Melanthon and he would say things about the uh Erasmus and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it would it would just kind of take on And students loved it. He didn't know.
Or at least that's what they say. That they were taking notes under the table, and the table talks were published. And I Frankly, they were very entertaining. Oh, I thought the table. I can't imagine.
I thought when you said table talks, it was like hip, it was like. A conversation at the dinner table between him and his wife. This is something public that, like, his students. Oh, yeah. The way it happened was after.
you know, the Reformation. Martin Luther Posts the 95 thesis at the Wittenberg door, all the other things begin to happen now. There's a break from the Roman Catholic Church. And then later on. Martin Luther, he allows priests to marry.
Um The nuns, and you know, they're kind of starting their families. And then there was this one nun that nobody wanted to marry 'cause she was too feisty Catherine Von Bora. And Martin Luther said, I like that. He's like, Well, I'll I'll go ahead and marry her because Can't find anybody else for her. I cannot find a priest that can deal with her.
I guess I will. Don't tell her that. Don't tell her that. Yeah, and he was not like, he was like, I want to. No, it was kind of like, I'll do her a favor.
You know, I'm going to go ahead. Yeah. That feels nice. But. He fell in love with her.
I mean, it was love, love, love. And so. Then they built their family, children, whatever. And then what happened was people would come to visit them and they would come and stay with them as they were learning and growing. And all of a sudden, this little town of Wittenberg became a powerful place where people came because this is where it all happened.
This is where is a man who is teaching us all these things and is amazing.
So many, many nights there were students around that dining table. Got you. And they would drink. and talk. Part of the German culture there.
And again, keep in mind. Um Beer was better than drinking water because water could be contaminated. True. They didn't have big water treatment facilities like we have today.
So easier to drink beer.
So when we have such heroes in our lives, whether present or past, we tend to think They cannot be wrong. I cannot say they were wrong. I can I can do that. Because they were right about so many things. They cannot be wrong about that.
And even if they are, I cannot paint them as wrong. I know that you're willing to do that, but do you ever have any. Reservation, like, let me just really be careful before I say this guy's wrong. Or if you feel like someone's wrong, you'll be like, No, no, no, I really love this person, but he was wrong. I want to know why.
I want to know why. So, again, the whole beer thing with Luther, I mean, that was part of the German culture, right? Doesn't make it right, right? Does not make it right. Nobody sits there and does research to go, well, let's see how was drinking impacting people in Bavaria back in those days.
I mean, by that same line of reasoning, there's plenty of things that are part of our culture that we would say that's not right. Exactly. Or in Prussia back in the, you know, fifteenth century, were people really uh getting along fine with their lives or when or by getting drunk they were losing money and and ch w well, guess what we find? Most of the time the evidence is and not just in Germanic countries or other places when people drank, it never ended well.
So Whether he's my hero or not At that point, Shouldn't have done that. Do you find the same biases coming into people's research within the realm of textual criticism? Wow, that's a great question. And maybe that's not a question that we have time to answer today, but I just didn't know if it was like they have this one pet topic that they want to protect, or if it's like, no, people in all of scholarship have biases they can't confront. No, it's they have.
They protect themselves. I mean, they'll protect themselves so much that they will not associate with people on the other side. Really? Oh, I felt that. Because, you know, I.
I prefer the Byzantine text form.
Okay? Because I feel like the reasonings behind it are better. And um they are no less than The support for the critical text in fact I find it. More solid research.
So, people who are on the critical tech side of things always see you as, oh, we're friends, but I can't publicize that because then people may lump me in the same category. It's like, okay, that's fine. You are trying to please people. I hope, I hope you enjoy that. It's a great point.
You're going to be backed into a corner because you're bound by people's opinions rather than the research itself. How do you confront that as a scholar and even as a Christian? Like, how do you confront your own biases? You know what I mean? Like, how do you even recognize it?
Because if you truly think that this is right, how do you know, like, I really believe this versus I only believe this because I want to keep this other thing over here safe? Yeah, you have to really spend time researching, really read, really read people who are reputable, really read people who care about the repercussions of taking certain views. I can espouse trendy, cool, Wow You know Color outside the lines, kind of views, and really go after them because at the end of the day, it's not going to hurt me as much as just make me popular. Mm-hmm. Everybody's going to talk about me and be trendy.
But then I have to ask myself: will this. Will this stagger someone's faith in Christ? Will this stall someone's growth in the Christian life? Will this open the door for someone to leave? and walk away from the faith.
The bigger you get? Like, what I mean is, like, for someone, let's say a small country pastor who's got like 100 members in his congregation, he might ask himself, is this going to stagger someone's faith or is this going to hurt someone's faith? But if you are a mega pastor with hundreds of thousands of members, they all just look like a. faceless mask. I don't think that's how it works.
I think it comes back to personalities. Really? I I'm not saying personalities. I'm I'm what I'm really talking about is convictions here. Gotcha, gotcha.
It comes down to convictions. What kind of fi what kind of convictions do you have? Do you have convictions that what you're saying and doing is really making an impact for eternity? What you're saying and doing may change someone's eternal destiny? Do you truly believe that there is a heaven and a hell?
Do you truly believe that what you do and say impacts someone's mind and heart? If you don't and if you think I'm doing this. And someone, people have that false sense of confidence. And sometimes I'm amazed by it, and sometimes I'm shocked. when people do certain things With no regard to how this may Make someone stumble or how this may May not shatter someone's faith, but definitely de-shelve them and they go along with it, anyways.
Yeah. They they they lack the understanding of the weight of what they're doing. I mean, just like you were saying, do you really believe that this is going to impact someone's eternity? Or are you just out here trying to make a name for yourself? You're trying to sell your latest book.
You're trying to get rich quick. I don't Or even shock people. Is that a pastor of a fifty member church in a small little country church. We still enjoy Shocking people. Yeah.
Even if he is just a fifty member church pastor, uh maybe he doesn't have theological acumen or education or whatever, but he still likes that that You know, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna shake your faith a little bit. He may never pasture it Thousand member or ten thousand member church because he is not built that way or doesn't have the capacity to do that. But he will still try to do that with the fifteen people member people. Gotcha. And He does it, but he is Quite more cool and collected in why he's doing it.
He's not doing just to shock, he's doing So he can shock, and then you will open your wallet and buy his next book or. whatever else he's selling. We did an episode right after the, and I know this we were planning on continuing the conversation from yesterday, but I just love the way this conversation has gone so far. We did an episode on when John MacArthur passed. You know, you mentioned that he knew how to infuse himself and brand himself into his messages.
Do you feel like it's hard? And what I mean by that is this. When you're preaching a message, you want to give people the word. You want to give them what the text says to the best of your ability as a scholar. Here is what the author intended.
How do you infuse Abadan Shah's personality, Abadan Shah's convictions? How do you infuse yourself into it without becoming so like a lot of these flashy mega pastors who that's all they seem to do? That's what I'm saying. Do you know what I mean? Where's the line between your personality and this is what scripture says?
Well, look back to people like Spurgeon. Look back to. Uh go further back if you want to. Those like Luther. Go further back to those like say Cousin Go further back to Peter.
They all had that little bit of a shock and awe, right? Peter did that on the day of Pentecost. The way he preached was very Shocking and earth-shattering, in a sense, to all the Jewish people who were gathered from the diaspora. And their next question was: they were cut to the heart. Of course, the Holy Spirit is all over this message.
The next question is, what shall we do to be saved? And then, of course, Peter tells them, and Peter is now the head of the church in Jerusalem. Chrysostom. This amazing Church father You know, they people are still trying to get the numbers right, but they say as many as 100,000 people would come hear him every Sunday. Wow.
That's incredible. Imagine that. Hundred thousand.
Now, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople or Istanbul is um You know, it has been remade over the years, but imagine 100,000 people coming to your church every weekend. That's a lot of people. And he had a way of speaking. He had a way of talking very.
So, you know, people wonder, it's like. What made them come? Did somebody force them? Were they forced by the state to come? No.
It's just the way Chrysostom spoke. Right. When you read his messages 'cause I read many of his messages to figure out what's what's What makes him made him the golden mouth? And what you find is that he's very. Uh he he applies the word very well.
And there are times he talks about controversies that are going on, and people came to hear that too. And so it was not just um You know, Chrysostom just happened to have 100,000 people show up. No, it was certain things he did. Luther, there's a great book I told you about, Brian Luther. It's a great book that tells you how Luther was very particular about everything that he did, even the books, how they need to be presented, because book culture was.
Dwindling at the time because people were like, This is great, but I like. I like books when they're written by hand. And like that printing press. Yeah, the printing press is it's just not the same 'cause everybody has the same thing. Isn't it kind of funny how like you look back on the printing press and you're like, That's a revolution of mankind But at the time people were like I mean, it became, it began as a revolution, but then it sort of dwindled off, especially in a small town like Wittenberg, not compared to like the big, big cities that had the big universities.
Wittenberg, they had a printing press, but it hardly printed a few things. And then next thing you know, reformation happens and it goes from just a handful of books to all of a sudden hundreds of books being printed every year. And not just in Wittenberg, but all over Germany, all over Europe. I mean, this is catching fire. But he was very particular about how he did what he did.
The shock and awe. was also part of his appeal because Luther spoke like a common man. And people were drawn to that. They were like, wow, we like the way he speaks. Not like our silly priest over here who's, I don't know what he's doing.
Do you ever, do you ever try to infuse that? Do you stay away from that in your preaching or do you try to approach it carefully? Or do you, like, like, how do you, how do you interject your. Your own self, not necessarily the shock and awe, like I wanna say something to rock you, but do you try to infuse yourself, your personality into your sermons at all? Do you try to stay away from it, or is it something you just do carefully?
Well, let me mention one more example: like Charles Spurgeon. A lot of people love Spurgeon. Spurgeon also was quite like that. Very rich theologically. He had a great.
Heritage of pastors in his family. But he was also very good at speaking to the common people. He was very funny. He would make people laugh.
So they would come from everywhere just trying to go to Spurgeon's church. And every Sunday, they would have to turn away hundreds and hundreds of people. Wow. Because there's not enough to fit into that metropolitan tabernacle. I've been there.
That's incredible. It's been refurbished since then, so it's not as big as it used to be. But people would go hear him because it just had that sense of humor, the richness, very Puritan theology because Spurgeon was a heir of the Puritans. There's a book out there. I read it years ago.
So At a time when liberalism was coming in, at a time when the downgrade controversy was happening, like downgrading the gospel, at a time when baptismal regeneration was also there, like you need to be baptized to be saved. Here's Spurgeon. who is preaching the truth But is very witty and rich and funny and applicable and Full of Latin words when needed to be, and Greek words when it needed to be, but full of the rich theology and people are like, that's what we want. But he was also at times part of controversies.
So You know, I've tried to do some of that, and I think more of that may happen, not just to get likes and. More views. But I've tried to do that. but not jumping too far ahead. Yeah, we can take on some very controversial subjects and we can hold our own, or I can hold my own, but.
Sometimes you go It's not time yet.
Well, I think you do a great job of striking that balance. I mean, I've always told people you bring together the mind of a scholar and the heart of a pastor.
So if you have just the shock and awe factor for the sake of shocking the people, I mean, that's really a very shallow, very short-term payoff. If you have the scholarly mind, then that's going to create a barrier between you and the average person. They're going to be like, oh, that's just over my head. But you help people kind of wade into those deeper waters. Kind of, I mean, to use that analogy, like holding their hand as they're going, like, come with me, I'll show you how to swim.
And you, you do a great job of bringing that fire and that personality from the pulpit, but also in a way that is engaging and warm and inviting people into deeper. Scholastitude. Yeah. I guess is the word I'm looking at. I don't know.
That seems like a secret word of the day, like Peewee's Playhouse or something. Scholastitude. I see. I feel, correct me if I'm wrong on this, Dr. Shaub, but the sense I get is that when young guys are going through seminary and wanting to be pastors, they almost try to do the opposite, where it's like, I want to, I want to preach the word and bring zero of myself into it.
None of my personality should ever come through. And I wonder if people really think that because I. I don't think it's wrong, and maybe you can kind of comment on this, but I don't think it's wrong to want to cement yourself as an established preacher with your own personality and your own, not your own spin on the scripture, but your own. Commentary. Yeah.
If that makes sense. I would say it depends on their seminary tradition from which they're coming. If they're coming from some seminary tradition that are very, hey, stick to the plan. Don't you dare try to go off script. Stick to the confession.
This is where we stand. Does that happen a lot? Which is, I'm not against the confession. It's like, yeah, we hold to them. But.
Preach the Bible, teach the Bible. If the Bible is funny there, let it be funny there. If the Bible takes you off course a little bit, go off course with it. You don't have to compromise the doctrines to do that. But sometimes people are.
Seminary students are almost scared because they have been scared by their mentors or teachers or professors to stay here. Just trust, trust the The script, I guess? It's not the script, but experts. Trust the experts. We are the experts.
You just do your job and you sit down. And then you have seminary traditions where it's like, man, try everything wacko to get people in. Do whatever. Do this, do that, do this. It's like the animaniacs, like they're slamming themselves with a ballot.
Yeah. Have a Mario game on the big screen and play it and make a point out of it. The message may be this deep, but man, people are like, wow, that was great. What'd you learn today? Man, I learned, like, you know, when like God is with you through life, that's right.
When you this is the way when you can't jump the mushroom, man, just reach for the star. God will think.
So you have to then decide But who is right? And I think. It's in the middle, is where we're trying to be. Where, yes, we can be creative. Yes, we can be funny.
Yes, we can go off script, but at the same time, we are very sure on doctrine and theology. And we know what we're doing here can change someone's eternal destiny.
So, how can we bring those two things together? I have in my preaching ministry or Our church Uh Vision, we've tried to bring those two things together. Because I think in the middle is longevity. Yes. The flash may be over, the deep.
scholarly or even just stick to the script may after a while become old and boring, people will be like It's the same old, same old. I could just stay home and read the Bible. Or, or. You yourself get bored with it because you're like, I don't know if I'm making a difference. I may try something else.
And that happens. Yes. I may just, I don't know, man. I just, I'm wondering if God's calling me to something else.
Well, because you were. Living someone else's script. You forgot to enjoy this process. Yes. Yes.
These are my favorite episodes where conversations just kind of naturally progress. I'm sure there's listeners that were like, I thought we were going to keep talking about dysfunctional families. It's coming. We haven't forgotten. It's coming.
I tuned in for the dysfunction. These conversations are so important because this is something you're not going to hear in a seminary classroom. You're not going to hear on the average kind of around-the-water cooler at the church. This is something where you're getting to benefit from someone with, you know, decades of pastoral experience and to hear how to walk that road between being a scholar and being a pastor. That's right.
Bridging the gap in the middle. That's right. That's awesome. Guys, make sure you join us next week. Same time, same station.
We're going to be digging into this topic of dysfunction a little bit more. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible, particularly Mighty Muscadine and LaBlue Ultra Pure Water. Very grateful for you guys. And don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes if you want to re-listen. You can always support us financially at Abadanshad.com forward slash give.
John, what do you want to close with? Tonight's the night. You know what that means, right? Tonight. Live.
Tonight is the night. We're going live 7 p.m. tonight to 9 p.m. We want you guys to join us online on our stream. We're going to be on Facebook.
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We're going to be on Eat, We're Resurrecting E-bombs. We're going to be on cheatcodes.com. Decades of all the old sites. No, but we are going to go live stream tonight. We want you guys to call in.
We want to pray for you as part of our 24-hour prayer vigil. It's just done a couple hours, so make sure you're there with us tonight as we are going through this great, great time of prayer together. That's right. We love you guys. We'll see you next week on Clearview Today.
