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Fun fact, no. I have to make my own with McDonald's Sprite, and you guessed it, Texas Pete. I am genuinely horrified to hear that.
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Where's my Mountain Dew? You're listening to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. You can find us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. Or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or you can email us at contact at ClearViewTodayShow.com.
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Review responsibly. There you go. The version of the day today is coming to you from Romans 8, verse 15. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. This is the sequel to yesterday's verse. Paul wrote yesterday that everybody who's led by the Spirit of God are God's children.
But here, he's getting more specific. He's saying you didn't receive the spirit of bondage again to fear. You received the Holy Spirit of adoption.
And that word is very critical. God has adopted us into his family. God has adopted us really as heirs to righteousness.
That's a big, big deal. I love the picture of adoption as it relates to Christianity, because it's the idea of being chosen. When you did not bring any merit of your own, you've been chosen to be loved. You've been chosen to belong. You've been chosen to be accepted, to belong to a family.
And that's just such a beautiful picture of what God has done for us. It's not what we bring in contrast to other religions around the world. It's not any merit of our own.
It's not anything we earn. But it's because God loves us. He adopted us. He chose us through his Son to be adopted into his family, to have a heavenly Father, to have spiritual siblings. That's just a beautiful picture of what God has done for us.
That's right. And a lot of people get tripped up on a verse like this, because they don't read. Paul is so overcome with emotion and with God's grace.
He's using very—not provocative, but intentional language. He says earlier in the book that we are slaves to righteousness. We're slaves to God. That word doulos, that indentured servant, that person who is swearing their allegiance. We think slaves like, oh, this is a person who's owned by another person. A lot of people take it as pre-Civil War American slavery. This is an indentured servant, someone who has a debt to pay.
They can't pay it, so they swear their allegiance to remain in the service of their master. That's what we are to God. Not only that, but there's a very intentional juxtaposition between a slave and an heir, and Paul is using that on purpose.
He's not writing it as, like, this is the instruction manual of life. He's saying that this is a beautiful juxtaposition that God has given to us in our spiritual lives. Speaking of family, by the way, we should say some good news on the family front. Dr. Shah's sister, Lipna, is finally here in the United States. I'm going to give her just a little bit of respect right there. I might give her some more later, but we are so excited to have Lipna here in the United States. We've been praying for this for a long, long time. I know Dr. Shah's excited.
In fact, we're going to go get him here in a minute and continue the show. Yes, huge answered prayer. Write in and let us know your take on Paul's words in Romans chapter 8 verse 15. What does it mean to be a slave to righteousness?
What does it mean to you to be called a child of God? If you have questions about that, we'd love to be able to answer those for you, maybe even on an episode on the show. Write in 252-582-5028, or you can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. We'll be right back. Hey! Hey, you! Me? No, not you.
You! Listening to the Clear View Today Show. You're here right now because you love Christian talk radio, and I'm 100% down for that. But what if I told you that Clear View Church also produces original music?
That's right. At Clear View, we're more than just a church. We're a vibrant family where everyone is encouraged to worship God right where they are. We wanted to make sure that your worship doesn't stop when you walk out the door on Sunday morning. Our music is more accessible than ever.
You can worship God in any situation. In the car, at home, in the gym, while cleaning your house. Wherever you are, we'll be right there with you. You can check us out on Apple Music or on Spotify.
Anywhere digital music is consumed. We've got a few singles out right now. We have an EP out as well. And right now, at this moment actually, we are working on our first ever full-length original album.
Hopefully that's going to be out sometime this coming summer. Clear View worship on iTunes and Spotify is your 24-7 place for inspiration and worship. Follow us today and let God's message of hope, love, and faith be a guiding light in your life.
Amen. Let's hop back into the show. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com.
If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text, 252-582-5028. That's right. And we're here once again in the Clear View Today studio with our host, Dr. Abbadon Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show, Dr. Shah. We've got some good news, my friend. I don't know if you know this, but your sister is finally home. Yes.
Yeah, buddy. We've been praying for that for a long time. That's been a big prayer. Big answer to prayer.
Welcome home, Libna. She is here with us. She was attending college here, but then when my mom got sick, she had to go back and take care of her. And there was always a heavy burden on our hearts that we need to bring her back.
And so she can finish her education and she can continue her life. And so after an entire year, because this is now a year since my mom passed away, we began the process and it was one closed door after the other. But thank God, finally, everything worked and God opened the door and God made it happen. I mean, I have to say that this is not miraculous in the sense of God stopping the laws of nature, but it's miraculous in the sense of this should not have happened, could not have happened.
He overcame every single obstacle that was designed to keep it from happening 100%. It's kind of funny. We were talking about it in the intro. She has lived here before, and she's been here at Clearview, been a part of Clearview, but that's been years and years and years. And so it's kind of funny because she's still in that kind of awkward phase of, okay, I'm back.
I'm still kind of new. But I've been treating it as though she never left. So I've been jabbing her and poking at her and just messing with her. And she's trying to jump back in, but she's like, oh, oh no. So we're in a fun place, but I'm glad she's back. We are too.
She was alone there. And especially now, India is becoming very difficult for Christians. And yeah, if you have family and if you have connections, it's one thing, but when you're a young girl by yourself in that world, yeah, right now friends will come, right now families will care, church will care. But what happens 20 years from now? Right, exactly. As the world changes.
Of course, Indian society is going to change rapidly, more anti-Christian, but also people get older. They have their own life. They have their own families.
So it's good to have her here so that we can be family. That's right. That's right. That's so exciting.
And in light of... I don't have a segue there. You're good. You're good. Well, on today's episode, we're going to continue our discussion about your trip to England. There's so much to unpack, pun intended, because you're traveling and you got to unpack your luggage.
But there's so much to talk about because you guys have had a chance to... Actually, you know what? I'm going to give that a five out of 10. I thought about it.
I gave you daps. I gave you credit, but actually now that I'm thinking about it, I'll give you a six. A six is okay. We're turning on the higher side of average. That's okay.
I'll take high average. There's so much to see in England and London. There's so much that you guys were able to experience. And we talked about this at the end of yesterday's episode, but it reminds us that as believers, our history is not... We don't exist in a vacuum. Right. That's right. There have been people before us. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, and there's a rich legacy, a heritage to our faith.
That's right. I wish I could spend more time explaining why all this is important. I know I'm just going over the places that were the highlights. There's so much more we saw.
But I'm hoping this is sort of setting the foundation, the stage for me to talk about, to give you a glimpse of what may be coming one day. How did the people who come to America come to America, especially in the 16th and the 17th... I would say 17th and the 18th century? How were these people? And bottom line, most of them, majority of them, came from England. But they came from different parts of England. They came for different reasons. So when you talk about... And I've learned a lot from David Hackett Fisher's book, Albion Seeds, and other books that he's written.
He's one of my favorite historian. Let's talk about the Puritans. Puritans, we're talking about New England. How did they come here? They came because of persecution. They came because they tried to purify the church. Church was not gonna purify, so they had to leave because persecution came. They came more from the northeast side of London.
So that's the part of the world, like more on the east coast, maybe a little bit towards Cambridge, which is to the north of London. That's the part of the world where they came from. Their motivation was different. They were trying to maintain a puritanical lifestyle, very strict in some places, some places very weird. I don't know, people love Puritans.
I like many of them, but I am not a die-hard Puritan. They were odd people. They were odd. They were weird.
They were weirdos. I mean, no Christmas. I mean, right there, I'm like, okay, I gotta go. See you guys. Peace out. Have a nice day.
We tried. Or shaming people who have sinned, you know? Yeah. I mean, really horribly shaming, like putting you in a white sheet and making you stand out in the public square and call you all kinds of names and put a placard on your, you know.
I'm thinking about that episode of The Office where Dwight tried to betray Michael and Michael made him stand up on the desk with this sign that says liar. Yeah. I mean, that would be very acceptable in the puritanical mindset. Of course, there were dissidents there too, who said, I don't like this. But most people went along with it. They were all good with it.
Yeah. When you go down to Virginia, they were not Puritans. They were more of the royalists. They were people who came because of business. They came to do trade, merchants, seamen. They weren't like trying to escape. They were not escaping anything.
Yeah. So they came here for that purpose. They were actually, I guess they were trying to strengthen the crown. They were trying to for a while. They did. They were loyalists. Okay. But then, of course, that didn't work out. Right. They split.
Okay. Then there are people who came from the Midlands. Midlands is like the middle part of England. These are different people. They're not Puritans. They're not loyalists. They were people who are more of the poor, right?
Poor class. They had some persecutions, but they also had persecution for different reasons because many of them were Quakers. Right. Right. They came from these sectarian groups and the Puritans didn't like them. They hated them. Wow.
Yeah. They hated them because these are crazy people with all kinds of ecstatic behavior. We're not part of them. They came here for a whole different reason. Where did they settle?
They settled in the Delaware Valley. So New Jersey, Pennsylvania, these are the people who came from the Midlands. So all these people who are settling in the colonies are coming from very different backgrounds. They're still English.
Still English. But they're coming from different backgrounds. And so that kind of affects the way that those areas of the East coast develop over time. Oh yeah.
All of the colonies developed over time. That's what I mean. Yeah. But then when you get into Appalachia, you're talking about, you know, like our Highlanders, Southern Highlanders. They were not Puritans.
Absolutely not. They were not loyalists. They were not Midlanders.
They were people who lived on the border of Scotland and England or Scotland and Ireland. Don't call them Scotch-Irish. They don't like that.
No. People do that all the time. Like even Nicole was saying, like, I think I'm Scotch-Irish. I'm like, I don't think they're like, I don't think that's what they want. Whatever you want to call yourself, that's your problem. Yeah, but they don't like that. They did not.
They did not like that. Today, everybody calls themselves that. It's like, I'm Scotch-Irish. What they're saying is I'm a little Scotch and Scottish and a little Irish, but that's not Scotch-Irish. So they came from that and they are very different. So sometimes when people get into this, you know, I'm King James only, because brother, that's why don't people in New England say that?
Why don't people in Boston say that or years ago say that? Because they came from Puritan background. They were more for the Geneva Bible. Now, I like Byzantine texts, which is behind the King James.
That's a whole different argument. So when people make it like this is the test of your faith, I'm like, this is the test of where you came from. That's right. What a big reason for me to go was not just so I can see all these churches and statues and historical sites. It's to begin to build that comprehensive understanding with evidence that helps us make sense of why people do what they do and how the Bible transcends all that.
That's right. So what is the ideal church polity? Well, go back to what Paul says. If a man wants to be a bishop, a man wants to be a deacon. So we're looking at the two offices here, bishops and deacons.
Now, well, what about the elder over here? Well, when you read the other passages, it also tells us that the elder was the bishop, and the elder was the bishop. The bishop was the shepherd.
This is the one in the same office. Well, how about the deacons? Who are the deacons? Well, deacons were servant leaders, right? These are the people who are giving care to people in the church.
When there was a fight between the Hellenists and the Hebrew widows, the church leaders, the apostles came together and said, let's pick out some people, follow the Holy Spirit, servant-hearted, all that. That's where we get the whole idea of deacons. So a church should have pastors and deacons. So who does the business of the church if the deacons are over there serving and taking care of families and the pastor over here preaching and giving leadership and all that? Who does the money?
Who does the property? Well, that's where I feel we have the liberty to elect godly people, resourceful, knowledgeable people who truly care about the church and the vision of the church that is laid down by the pastor to be the finance committee, to be the building committee, to be the trustees. But too often in churches, the deacons who are supposed to be servant leaders, I guess, appoint themselves or appointed by someone else to be that decision-making, almost board of directors of the church.
And they can be. I think that that office can overlap. It can overlap.
But be careful when that overlap becomes the vision as well. And the pastor just becomes the church chaplain. And I know it happens a lot in the country churches, but he's just a chaplain.
He doesn't have any say other than preach the word, marry, bury, and then leave us alone. That's pretty funny. You haven't heard that before? No, I've never heard that.
But I can tell you this. I've seen that happen in many, many churches. Many churches where the pastor, because I always thought the pastor, he's the one up there preaching. He's the one leading the church. And he's like, all I do is preach. Many of those, especially like you were saying, smaller country churches, that's not the case. The pastor doesn't have a lot of authority.
It's crazy because then you start thinking, and maybe I've just been here at Clearview for a long time and things aren't that way here. But I think back on it, I'm like, but what's the vision of the church? Where is the church going? And a lot of times what I hear is like, what do you mean going? And then on the other side, the reform side or the elders, we got to have multiple elders, elders, all that stuff.
They think, oh, we are, we're it. If you just come over on this side, you will see the benefit in how biblical. No, it's not.
No, it's not. You're picking men to come together and lead the church based on their spiritual maturity. Now who decides that? Oh, you decided. What you really want is people who will pat you on the back and agree with everything you say to be that hedge of protection around me.
Like, oh, okay. So that's biblical. Where do you find the hedge of protection? Where does it say? Get some elders around you who will stand as a guard against the riffraff of your church. So why do people say that elders, why do they always go back to elders being biblical? Accountability.
They're saying, if only we have this group leadership instead of one person, then we have accountability. For one, we don't find that in the Bible. There's nothing on that. By the way, you can make the Bible say whatever you want to, right? So if you force it, then of course anything can be like, ah, there it is. But in reality, it was not there. There was nothing about accountability.
Yeah. I don't know if this is a low blower, if this is stepping too far, but that is something that I noticed that every single scandal that has come out of the church recently, I would say it's the church with elders. So I'm like, I don't understand where the accountability is. These are high profile churches. These are high profile leaders and pastors, but every single one of them, not one that I've seen, maybe I could be missing. I even heard one of the elders when he was being interviewed, he said, I cannot believe that he sat there and looked us in the eye and said that he was walking with God and he was everything while the whole time he was doing this.
How did your hedge of protection fail, sir? Well, you can't believe that a fallen sinful human being would lie. Exactly.
It's like, hello, what do you think? I don't understand how this happened. If he had a hedge of protection around him, it couldn't have happened. I'm not trying to be like sassy or whatever, but I'm saying if this is being espoused as biblical, the only way to do it. This is the way to do it. And if you're not, you're just setting yourself up for. No, it's not like that. When it comes to money, when it comes to property, when it comes to those kind of things, yes, you need the godly leaders in your church who are capable and who agree with the vision of the church that is laid down by the pastor to be taking care of those things. But not arbitrarily, not like the pastor, you go and sit over there and you do a little preaching and visiting. We're going to take care of where the church is headed.
That's not how it works. The pastor does give the leadership, the vision of the church, but he trusts these people to handle the money, to handle the property, to handle the building. But they handle it recognizing that he may be young. What did Paul say to Timothy?
Don't let anybody despise you. He may be young, but he's still called to be our leader. He's called to be the elder.
He's called to be the shepherd. Now clearly we have a pastoral team. So yes, I'm the senior pastor, but this is my team.
They represent me. So there are men and there are women on that team, but I am male, last I checked. So we believe in male headship. We believe in the pastor needs to be male. So all that is covered. We have a pastoral team and these people who take care of the finances, they're accountable.
We have a CPA, all that is there. But then we also have care group leaders. We don't call them deacons because deacons is a loaded term, which immediately tells people, oh, I need to sit together around a room and make decisions. You have to take care of the families under your care. So we have a care group leaders and so husband wife team does do it and even singles because it doesn't mean that you got to have a wife, but you can also be a care group leader. They function as deacons are designed to function.
And the thing is this, it works. Our care group system is very unique. I'm sure other churches do it.
I have not seen it, but we're not the only ones who are doing this way, but I can see, and I have seen for the past 11 years of being here that it works phenomenally because people feel loved and they feel cared for. Yeah. What about the accountability? Well, accountability is needed. Of course I'm accountable to people in the church. I'm accountable to my pastoral team. I'm accountable to the congregation, but I'm also accountable to my wife. That's right. I'm accountable to God.
You can have 20 elders around you who can drill you every morning and every evening and you'll still lie. So ultimately it comes down to, well, that man stayed true to the vow he has taken before God to love God above anyone or everything else, to preach the word of God, to present the gospel of Jesus Christ, to love the body of Christ. Will he stand for those things? That's right. Will he not compromise his integrity whether financially or sexually?
Will he still love his wife? These are things that you have at the end of the day, it's on me. That's true.
That's 100% true. I'm sorry. You're good. You're good. Go for it.
If a group of men have to make sure that I can keep my pants zipped up. You're right. Something's wrong with that.
There's something wrong with your structure. And that's what I wanted to say because at the end of the day, the reason I think Clearview works, and I could be 100% wrong, but I don't think I am, is that we have elected a leader, a person, one person to drive the bus and to steer the ship and to take us on somewhere instead of everything being bogged down by red tape and us as the pastoral team being like, all right, now it's my solemn duty to keep this guy in line. We're not going to get anywhere.
We're not going to do anything and we're not going to trust each other. But it's enough for me and for Ryan and for David and for everyone to say, I trust this man with my church, with my spiritual life, with my family, and he's going to take us somewhere good. I trust it.
It is based on how I preach and how I live with my family. Those are the bottom line. That's right. And I don't want to go to a church where I have men guarding my pastor because at the end of the day, he could, you know, he could do something crazy. I don't want to... Or you're going to attack him, so we're going to guard him.
Right. I don't want to go to a church where I can't trust my pastor, so he needs all this public accountability. Like, hey guys, it's our job to keep the pastor in line. I don't want to follow that guy. What does he do when you don't keep him in line?
I want to follow someone strong and with integrity. And again, re-emphasize, I know you said that before, but if you're just tuning in financially or are building, all that, we have committees that are responsible for that. But they are responsible, not in the sense of, we'll handle this.
You just... No, it's responsible in the sense of, yes, we are. Yes, we're godly. Yes, we love the church. Yes, we are capable, but we also agree with the vision that the pastor has. If there is a dissonance there, if there is a detachment there or distance there, it's not going to work. That's right. I don't care whether you have elder system or you have pastor deacon system or, I don't know, be a pope. But going back to London, I mean, we already took up like 25 minutes, but we're going to quickly finish this so we can do one more episode on this.
Let's do it. So when we left St. Paul's Cathedral yesterday, which was Monday evening, Monday evening, then our next step was, okay, I told Nicole, we're leaving tomorrow morning, but I still have to go by Bunhill Cemetery. Bunhill Cemetery is where John Bunyan is buried.
Nothing to do with his name. This is where William Blake is buried. This is where Daniel Defoe is buried. This is where Susanna Wesley is buried. This is where John Gill, very Calvinistic reform, but amazing theologian, is buried.
I have to go there. And she's like, she's tired. She's like, tomorrow morning. I said, or hear me out.
And Wesley's grave is across the street from Bunhill Cemetery. Or we can go do this this evening. He said, let's do it this evening.
Let's do it now. So we made a turnaround. St. Paul's Cathedral in the backyard was John Dunn's statue. I love John Dunn. John Dunn was a poet. John Dunn was Anglican, had a wanton lifestyle, was not a follower of Jesus Christ. He was actually very, how do I say this, very, very, very ladies man.
Really? A womanizer. Oh yeah. He was a womanizer. I mean, this is going back to 1572 to 1631.
Nothing new under the sun. Yeah. Womanizer. I mean, if you read his poem on women, he's like, I don't care if she's young, old. I don't care if she's white, black, brown, whatever. He's for real.
Hey, I am down. That's how he would be. His poem is. Hold on. Wow.
He's for real. He gets saved. He gets saved, radically saved.
And he's so transformed and he's in love with his wife. Amen. Wow.
And he writes a poem called a valediction foreboding. Okay. Something, something. I missed the title there.
But anyways, I filmed outside St. Paul's Cathedral in the yard where John Dunn's statue was. And he talks about his relationship to his wife like a compass. He said, and again, I'm paraphrasing, read the poem. He says to her, you are the fixed point.
I am the free one. And I go further away from you. When I go further away from you, I lean towards you. And, and then he says, you know, I wander here. I wander there to do what I have to do. But you make my, when I come back in, you make my circle whole again. That's nice.
I like that. So I returned to where I began. That's that man right there. I was like, I have to stop by John Dunn's statue. And he goes like, where is it? I'm like, it's behind the church.
I know it's there. We're going to find it. We found it, stood there, filmed in front of that statue.
And I felt so awesome. And then we began our trek and we walked and we walked and we walked. We came by, this is the place I wanted to go by, which is a plaque on this church gate. And this plaque was put there in 1926.
You see that? Uh huh. Wow. Commemorating the site of John Wesley's conversion. So this is where he was converted?
Near here. And then I also was able to go by the London Museum, which is closed now. Wow. Look at that. And found this massive, this is the, this is the flame that he talks about, you know, strangely warmed and all that.
This is on Wednesday, that May the 24th, 1738 is when he was converted. And this is out, by the way, the museum is shut down. Really? Yeah. It's going to be rebuilt.
But anyway, this is that. So I went there and filmed there, Alders Gate, where John Wesley was converted. So it was pretty awesome. That is awesome.
Pretty awesome. I don't know how long that flame will remain there. I think they were probably going to remove it when the construction begins with the London Museum. I hope they'll put it somewhere.
I hope they save it. I love that. But to just be there, film, take my picture there. I was very happy. Look how cool it looks here. That's incredible.
Wow. Man, so awesome. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, write in and let us know 2525825028. Or you can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. Don't forget, you can partner with us financially on that same website. Scroll to the bottom, click that donate button and let us know it's coming from our Clear View Today Show family. Lots of great content coming your way. Make sure you guys tune in tomorrow. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear View Today.
