The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. If you are new to the show, stay tuned and listen because what we do here is theology, answering difficult questions, have obstreperous callers call in, and my real name is Matt Slick.
I learned to run as a kid because of that name. Also, for those of you who are listening, I recommend that you go check out the website CARM.org, because I've been working on it for almost, in fact, in October it will be 30 years. Thirty years I've been working on it this October. We've had, what is the last, you're not going to check my latest numbers. Not a big deal. I'm just talking about it.
I've written 4,600 articles and we've had 94 million returning visitors with a total of 166 million visitors to the site. So there you go. And if you want good theological, what I think is good theological information, you can go there and check it out, okay, because it's CARM.org. All right, CARM.org, and if you want to call me, the number is 877-207-2276. You can also email me, and that's easy to do.
Send an email to info at CARM.org, info at CARM.org, put in a subject line, rate of comment or rate of question, something like that, and we can get to it. And there you go. All right, why don't we just jump on the line and get to Jermaine from California. Jermaine, welcome, brother.
Welcome back. Hey, Matt, you know, today I have a question about following biblical marriage advice, and I guess would that be 1 Corinthians with Paul? And the reason I ask is, you know, yeah, that's right, the reason I have to ask someone who's a believer who's close to me, and he's going through severe marriage trouble to the point of like, I mean, it's really bad, as bad as you can think, finding out pregnancies outside of marriage and various inappropriate videos in contact with someone who this person will not, you know, leave, like they will not leave the marriage situation, but they want to be with someone else.
Wait, wait, wait, I'm looking at you. So let me ask you, are they both Christians or supposed to be Christians? They're both professing Christians.
My friend is, you know, he is a believer. I've met his wife in the past, and I like her, but I know she's in sin, and I'm trying not to make this all about one person, but yeah. Okay, so they're both professing Christians, or they go to church? I believe they stopped for a while, because there's some family turmoil, but then they appear to be at separate churches at times.
Separate churches, interesting. And so who committed adultery, he or she? In this case, it was she. She did.
And does he want to stick with the marriage? Yes. Okay. And so she was pregnant by somebody else, not her husband? She was.
I didn't ask any further questions, but I know she was, from what I understand. Okay. Okay. I'll just offer this, first of all, I'm willing to do marriage counseling with them over the internet. I've done this many times, where people get together, we put them on camera, and we talk.
It takes two to four hours for the first session, usually. And I'm willing to do that. You can throw that out at them, whatever. I'm just going to say that's the case, okay? Okay. If they don't accept, they don't accept.
But you're telling me to talk to a radio guy named Slick, so who's going to believe? So okay, so that's the situation. And do they, one more question, do they both want to work on staying in the marriage, or does one want out? At this point, it seems like the husband wants to, and the wife does not, the husband wants to work it out, he's wanted to work it out for several years, but the wife does not appear to want to work anything.
Okay. So what he needs to do is he needs to go to the church he needs to go to, and he needs to get involved with the elders, the elders of the church need to know about this. If he's not going to a church, he needs to find the church that he's going to be going to, and start going, and quickly get involved with the elders. He also needs to keep a record of the things that he's doing as he tries to reconcile with his wife, if he's trying to do that, and if she's not having anything to do with it, he needs to document this, and a journal is going to be very, very important.
I always recommend this. And the reason is twofold, well threefold actually. One, it helps a person see things and helps heal. Two, it could be for legal stuff, if there's a divorce that comes into court. Three, it can provide spiritual support later should he go to church and he wants to marry somebody else. The grounds of the previous divorce need to be understood, and if there's a record of his attempt at reconciliation and she abandons him, then he's functionally innocent.
So this is the basics, okay? So I strongly recommend that he do that. Now, if they're both willing to talk, I'm willing to spend that time and go through what the scripture says, and call them both, particularly her, to repentance, and if she refuses to repent, and if she seeks to divorce him, as 1 Corinthians 7 talks about, if the unbeliever leaves, let him go, the believer's under no obligation. If she says she's a believer and still wants to leave, but she's the one who has committed adultery and she just doesn't want to be with him anymore, that's not grounds for divorce on her part.
She's supposed to work it out. And that's what I usually say to them. I know a couple where they wanted basically each other to die because they weren't going to get divorced. They didn't believe in that, but they wanted to basically die because they could be free. They didn't have relations anymore.
They hated each other, et cetera, et cetera. I talk about this couple that really had some bad times, and I say, guess what this couple's doing now? And they say, well, the guy's counseling you right now.
And then they're shocked. And I say, even though I didn't want to stay in the marriage, I did, glad I did, because this is what God requires. And when you obligate yourself to fulfill the righteousness that God is required of you, then he rewards you.
And so if people don't want to do this, they're in rebellion against God. And if she continues to act in a rebellious, adulterous manner, he is free to divorce her. He's not obligated to, but he's free to. If she were to move towards that and he's not wanting it, he's ready for reconciliation and she wants out of the marriage and moves to dissolve it, then the guilt is upon her. And so he would then be functionally innocent and be able to remarry should that ever come down the line later.
And that's why I say a journal is necessary, because if that ever comes to pass, not that we want to see him get married and get divorced now and all this stuff, it's just that five, 10 years down the line, reality comes to bear, you find another lady. Now what are you going to do? And so I'm just thinking down the line of protecting them and him in this situation. You can tell, I've got a lot of experience in counseling people and what's recommended what to do. So, go ahead though.
Go ahead. Yeah, and just a lot of what you said had been done. And I can tell you, I will put the invitation out there, I'm pretty sure only one person would be willing to even entertain counseling. I guess my question was, you know, this person, the male was actually advised multiple times about, you know, discipline within the marriage and even separation to seek some kind of reconciliation. But it seems like just because of the stress in the situation, not wanting to deal with a whole lot. There was nothing really followed through, as far as I know, just is that person in sin themself or not following, you know, godly advice from your elders, your pastor? It could be or could not be, depending on the situation and commitments.
If someone says, yes, I will do this, and then doesn't follow through, then that is breaking his word, and that's a sin. But on the other hand, if someone says, you know, give it a shot, and they just get exhausted, things happen, they're tired, you know, it's just life. And we just move, we go, okay, I get it.
Let's work through this and get this going. I'm very gracious when I do marriage counseling, I understand people's difficulties and stuff. But at the right time, I apply the truth of who God is, what our requirements are before God.
And I just say, this is what it is, you know, I'm just laying out before God and before people. So, I'm very gracious, and they need to have that grace, particularly when people drop the ball in certain things that they should be doing. They drop the ball, we all do. And in a difficult time like this, where emotions are high, where difficulties are just everywhere, it's difficult to act completely rationally and biblically and spiritually. We just mess up.
It's just how it is. And so we just work through them, you know, we'll just work through them, all right? Okay. All right.
Makes sense. Yeah, I appreciate you putting the offer out there, and I will definitely extend it to them in the meantime, and I'll pray about it and see what happens. And how it would work is, they just agree, and I need to have them on camera, and I need to see them on camera. And I give them a link, and then I can have them on where I can see them, they can see them. And we just talk, and I don't talk about them afterwards, I mean, except my wife, yeah, it went well, you know, that's all I say, I don't give specifics, I don't do that kind of a thing. And I don't judge anybody.
I know what it means to go through marital difficulties. But if I can see them, I can watch their reactions and watch body language, listen to tone, see who's listening, who's not listening, where to focus, where not to focus, and things like that. And if they're willing to do that online, you know, and I don't charge, I don't charge, but you can tell them this, though. I have been successfully bribed with chocolate chip cookies. I have been successfully bribed.
So aside from that, you know, I'm objective, and I never, ever take any payment, I just, I never have and never will. All right? Okay. All right, I'll put that out there, and yeah, appreciate it, I just, Chuck, you gave me visions of the Cookie Monster with your face on the top.
You poor guy. Personal memory. Yes. All right, well, I appreciated that, with that. No, I was going to say, I've done a lot of marriage counseling over the years, and here's a little statistic. In 37 people that I've counseled, married couples, dating couples, or they've been married, 37, guess how many of them, okay, let me ask you two questions. Who do you think is more often than not the problem, the man or the woman? Okay, that's the first question, give me a guess, out of 37. The man. Yep, that's right, 33 have been the man, has been the major problem. How about that?
33 out of 37. Yeah, it's horrendous, and but I'm gentle, you know, and I just lay out, I lay out the theology of marriage, and I have a thing I work on called The Theology of Marriage. It's based on the Trinitarian communion and covenant relationship and gets down into responsibilities, and he said, she said, and oh, I can get, I want to do a seminar on marriage, I really do.
I know stuff from the scriptures that I never hear counselors talk about, and when I bring it up in counseling, they're both shocked. I say, well, this is what it says right here, and they're going, yep, that's what it says. So, anyway. Okay? Alright, brother. Alright, and I'll return to my own question tomorrow, just wanted to help out this person who's across from me, but I appreciate your efforts, it definitely is reflective of your ministry trying to help them do the Lord's work, so thank you very much.
Amen, brother, amen. And thanks for calling regularly, I really appreciate it, man, we've got to meet sometime, never get down there, we've got to do lunch. Alright, brother. Hey, got to get going, there's a break, talk to you later, man.
Alright. Hey, folks, if you want to give me a call, the number's 877-207-2276, we'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. Alright, I want to welcome back to the show, we don't have anybody waiting right now online if you want to give me a call.
The number's 877-207-2276. We do have a question that someone has given in through one of the chat systems, wanted to ask about the beast rising out of the sea in Revelation 13, that's what the question is. Well, this is, it's a difficult thing to say for sure what it is, but generally speaking, from what I've read and researched, it seems to be, seems to be, I'm not going to die in this hill, that the beast coming up is the rebuilt, re-established Roman Empire. Now, some people think that this is dealing with the European nations right now, and that if and when they become united, that they are representing a kind of Roman Empire. Now if that's the case, it might be necessary to include their, a religio-political figure, it could be the Pope, I don't know, because Rome had the, Caesar, they had this issue called Caesaropapism, Caesaropapism, emperor worship, where the head of state was also the religious leader, so religio-political, religious-political leader. So that could potentially be someone like the Pope, because he has been in that position as a religious-political leader before, hundreds of years ago. Now that's one of the theories that comes out, and then it says in the beast, which I saw was like a leopard, like a bear out of a lion, that's in verse 2, and what it seems to be is basically old empires that developed, the Greek, Medo-Persian, Babylonian, things like this, that I've spoken of in Daniel, Daniel chapter 7.
So these are some of the theories, okay, and that's what I would kind of lean towards, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen. But I will throw this out, that I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain and his fatal wound was healed. Now this seems to be an allusion to the Antichrist, who will be homosexual, he will be a religio-political leader, he's going to, a fatal wound, but he's going to be healed, a type of resurrection, and he'll command obedience and submission to him in a one-world government-type system. And so this is interesting, and Jesus says that it wasn't days of Noah, so shall it be the days of the coming instead of man, Matthew 26, 37, and Luke 17, 26 and following, where it says the two men in the field, one is taken, one is left, the ones who are taken are the wicked, not the good. And the reason I bring this up is because it's at the end of the age, that the wicked are taken for the place of destruction.
This is what Jesus says in Matthew, in Luke 17, he says where are they taken, they ask Jesus and he says where the body is, the vultures gather. Now the reason I'm bringing this up is because, when it says as it was in days of Noah, so shall it be the days of the coming of the Son of Man, well then that means as it was in Noah's time. Well when you go to Genesis chapter 6 and you find out that the Nephilim were the offspring from the fallen angels and women, or demonic horde and things like that, Jesus says it'll be like that again, then you go to Daniel chapter 2 verse 43, and this is the context of the statue at Nebuchadnezzar had a vision, where there were four metals that were there, gold, silver, bronze, and then iron mixed with clay as for the feet.
The iron mixed with clay is an allusion, some think, to the rebuilt Roman Empire that will not be that strong, and it's probably consistent with the idea of the European Union being developed where they have independence yet they have unity at the same time. The reason I'm bringing this up is because eschatologically this is consistent with everything else that we're seeing, and it says in Luke, excuse me, Daniel 2.43, it says that they will combine with one another in the seat of men. Now the they can't be people, that's what I understood the Hebrew implies, they cannot be people, because they is different then, they will combine with one another in the seat of men. And so this lends credence to the idea that this same system of demonic manifestation will occur towards the return of Christ, which then makes sense that the idea of the fatal wound of the anti-Christ is healed.
But if you go to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, this cannot occur until the apostasy comes first. And I can go into all this kind of stuff. So all this is interrelated, and it's hard to say exactly what is what, but I just threw a whole bunch of stuff out at you. There you go. Let's get to Seth from North Carolina. Seth, welcome, you're on the air. Hey, Matt, thanks for taking my call. Sure. I have a question about a recent false prophet, just coming up, his name is Abdullah Hashem, have you heard of him?
No, I haven't. Abdullah Hashem. It's very, very recent. He literally claimed to be the successor of Jesus Christ. And he seems like a pretty, pretty led astray guy there. He said he's, he said he's, I can't remember exactly his words, but basically in charge of the Christians, the Jews and the Muslims, and just making these massive claims.
And I, I personally don't really believe him to be the anti-Christ, because like you just were talking about, he's supposed to be homosexual and a bunch of other things, but pretty, pretty crazy. I just wanted to see if he did know about him. No, I'm doing a little research while you're talking. And he's an Egyptian guy, but he's born in the United States, apparently. But I could do some research on him just to see. This is interesting.
I think you definitely get a kick out of what he's done saying, the great stuff. When they say they're the successor of Christ, I wonder what that means, you know, that are they Christ, or they're the one, the last prophet after Jesus, et cetera, you know, it's always curious. Yeah. He also, his words were also, I am the legitimate pope.
He's a legitimate pope. Yeah. Okay. So he declares himself the Messiah. Yeah.
Yeah, he claims to be the Mahdi, Islam. Okay. Yeah, that's bad. Okay. Yeah, maybe I'll research him. Yeah. There we go.
Yeah, then I just found his official website. Oh, wow. The Mahdi's. Yeah, the cult. Ooh, how about that? The manifesto.
Oh, wow. And a divine jurisprudence, new book out now, join the call. You know, I know enough to start a cult. I could never do it, but you know, I'm saved. But you know, the reason I'm bringing it up is, you know, I'm saying it tongue in cheek, but it's like, I see, well, that's what I would do if I was starting a cult.
I'd do what he was doing right there. I'm looking at this stuff. Make these books.
Make broad proclamations. Look, an experiment. We're never going to do this, but let's say hypothetically, you and I were having dinner together, right? We're talking. And I said, okay, let's write down some stupid heresies. Let's just make some things up. Okay.
Oh, we got a break. Hold on. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you why I'm saying this, all right, because we'll be right back.
Okay. Hold on, buddy. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Oh, three open lines, if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276, be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. All right, welcome back to the show, if you want to give me a call, it's easy, 877-207-2276. All right, let's get back on with Seth. Are you still there, buddy?
Yep, still here. All right, as I was saying, you and I could sit at a dinner table, make up theological ideas that are, we could make them up, 20, 30, 40 of them, just, hey, I got one, you have to wear a red sash in order to be spiritual, okay, let's put it in there, you know, like whatever it might be. And then what we could do is say, okay, we got like 50 in there, right, let's just put them in a hat or in a bowl and mix them up and we pull out 10, we've got to create a religion around those 10, okay.
Then we'd make a website where we'd proclaim that and see if people sign up and start believing it, we'll get adherents, we'll get believers, it happens, okay. So by your, what is actually the definition of a cult, like what actually defines something being a cult? There's two, there's different definitions that you can use. A cult can be a neutral kind of category where it is the cult of Mary, the cult of Joseph, the cult of Calvin, and the word cult means the theological parameter set related to that. You can also have what's called a pejorative, a native form, or it's a non-Christian cult. Now that would be, for example, Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses and things like that. Now generally speaking, a cult is something that, when we talk about Christianity, is a group that uses the Bible, but not always, and deviates from biblical theological perspective sufficiently that there is no true salvation. So that's why we call Mormonism a cult, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science a cult. But Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, we don't generally call them cults because they're world-class religions, you know, over a billion in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, you know, is like close to half a billion or 300 something million people. So they're not called cults in that sense, but we can call them false churches and aberrates.
It just depends on how you want to define the word. So there's a bit of a variation. Dang it, I just had my other question and I totally just lost it. False prophets coming out of the sea, Joseph Smith as a false prophet, I don't know, let's see what else. I was going to talk to you about, I was going to ask you about if you've heard of the Bible codes.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I've been, I just wanted to see if you could dive into that a little bit. I've looked into it, I watched a little video on it, so I really skimmed over what's going on there, but just wanted to get your take on that and what really that's all about. Yeah, so it's called, usually it's called equidistant letter spacing, and that by doing this you can find certain patterns and certain codes. And so in the Bible they do this and they find some interesting relationships, and granted they do find some interesting relationships, but generally speaking they find them after the fact.
And that means an event happens like 9-11 and they go in and they look for codes that are similar. Well, if you're searching for a certain pattern, you can find patterns, and this is one of the things false religious systems can do. Now I'm not saying it's false, but what I understand is that they've taken books like Moby Dick and done the same thing. So when they can find similar patterns in non-inspired works, then it does not add credibility to the idea that the Bible is inspired from that perspective. Now it is from other, because there are supposedly biblical patterns and numeric patterns in the scriptures. And I can go over some of them if you want, some of them that are very interesting.
But there are codes embedded in the scriptures. There are various things that are there. Which is incredible. That gives me chills. There is.
It's so amazing. In fact, let me give you an example of something. We have a caller coming in, but there's something called the universal probability bound. It's just a theoretical number of the maximum number of events that could occur in the entire universe, if the universe was 18 billion years old, if every particle in the entire universe was changing its state at the maximum rate, 10 to the 40th times per second, then you'd have 10 to the 138th events. That's a one with 138 zeros behind it. That's called the universal probability bound. Just a theoretical maximum number of possible events that could have ever occurred in the universe. That's just a number.
Okay. But the odds of Jesus fulfilling like 48 prophecies, a mathematician went through and did a generic analysis and found that for him to fulfill 48 prophecies is one times 10 to the 157th power. Just stuff like this.
It gets even bigger when you start looking at other things. And then there's patterns in the Bible, for example, Genesis five is a genealogy from Adam to Noah. And then you put the names in English, you get a sentence.
You put it like it is that and things like that in to smooth it out. But the words are man appointed, mortal, sorrow, blessed God will come down teaching. His death shall bring to the despairing rest. I've actually, yeah, I've seen that one, yeah. And then, um, then you have, uh, you have like Genesis one, one, it says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The number of words in Hebrew is seven. The number of letters is 28, which is four times seven. The first three words are 14 letters. The last four words are 14 letters.
The fourth and fifth words are seven letters, the sixth and seventh word are seven letters. The nouns, God, heaven and earth are 14 letters and the words remaining are 14 letters. And then you have, uh, you have, uh, put this, um, you have never patterns like the word Yahweh. And when you go to Genesis and you find the first letter of the, of the word Yahweh, and you count, I think it's seven letters or it's 49 letters, 49 letters, and you find the next letter and in Yahweh, and the fourth letter you find the third letter and then the fourth letter.
So every 49 letters you find, uh, the, each letter consecutive, uh, the word Yahweh. And um, so this works in Genesis and Exodus and we skip Leviticus, but in Numbers it's reversed. So Genesis, Exodus, then we skip Leviticus for a minute, and Numbers and Deuteronomy it's reversed.
49 letters, it's reversed. And uh, so when you, uh, then you go to Leviticus and you find the first word and it occurs at Yahweh, the first letter occurs every seven letters. So it's really interesting because Genesis, Exodus point to Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy point to Leviticus, and in there is Yahweh. And that's the book of blood, of atonement. And here's another one I'll throw out at you. The twelve tribes of Israel camped around the tabernacle, and I got more but I could just, I'll just do this, in fact I'll do one more for this for fun, uh, the twelve tribes camped around the tabernacle in four groups of three.
And so to the west, uh, there's a certain, I've done that, I've actually gone and checked. When you take the people who camped around the tabernacle and you put them in groups and you just extend them out to the tabernacle, northeast, southwest, you get a cross. And there's four, the four groups have a banner or a flag, lion, ox, eagle, and man. And the book of Ezekiel talks about a four-faced creature, lion, ox, eagle, and man. Revelation talks about a four-faced creature, lion, ox, eagle, and man.
And here's one more for fun. And, um, in John 21, 11, Simon Peter went up and drew the net to the land full of large fish, 153 fish. This is after the resurrection, Jesus, they're out there fishing again, Jesus says, cast your net out, and they caught 153 fish. Why 153? Long story short, in the four gospels, 153 individuals received a blessing from Jesus.
Now there's 4,000, 5,000 men, but those aren't individuals, and she, excuse me, the fish represent the saved ones caught in the net. It goes on and on. Okay? I just got chills, that's crazy. Yeah.
And haven't even got into Dematria, that's a whole nother thing. So there's a lot there, God's word is really something. Okay? Alright.
It's got pretty good. That's right. Did that help? Yes, yes, definitely. Thank you, Matt. Okay. Alright, brother. Well, God bless. Alright, you too. Thank you, Matt. Okay, man, God bless. Alright, so there's a break, yeah, there's the music, there's the break, hey, we'll be right back after these messages, we'll get to Luke from Washington, D.C., and talk to you in a minute.
Okay, stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276, here's Matt Slick. Alright, everyone, welcome back to the show, if you wanna give me a call, it's easy, 877-207-2276, let's get to Luke from Washington, D.C. Luke, welcome, you're on the air. Hi, Matt, how are you? I'm doing alright. Haven't heard from you in a while, glad you're calling.
So what's up? My question is, why did Jesus curse the fig tree? Because the fig tree represents Israel, and it wasn't bearing fruit. When a fig tree is new, by the fifth year, it's supposed to be producing fruit so you can go there and benefit from it.
If the fruit doesn't show up, they would prune it and do other things. So it looks like it was the seventh year, if I'm correct, that Jesus was there with it, and so it was to be cursed. So if you were to understand that the fig tree represents Israel, the cursing of Israel for not bearing the proper fruit that it's supposed to bear, then you can understand why it's done, okay? Okay.
Alright. I've written an article on this in the parables, and so you can go to Carm and look up the issue of the fig tree, because it's in the context of the Galileans whose blood would have been shed and judgment that come upon them. Do you think that they were worse sinners than anybody else because this happened to them, Jesus is talking about? And he says, no, that's not it. And he says, unless you repent, you'll likewise perish.
He's speaking to the people of Israel. And then he says, a certain man had a fig tree, which had been planted in a vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it. That's by the fifth year. And so the fourth year, the fruit is holy, because it's the first fruit, and it goes to God. The fifth year, you can look for fruit. And so he'd already, he was ready to eat the fruit, but there wasn't, and it was the seventh year. It looks like, behold, for three years, I've come looking for it. So that means the seventh year, because of the fourth year, is when the fruit is really there, but it belongs to the Lord, so the seventh year, okay?
So seventh number of perfection here. And so the sixth year would have been the second year he used to be able to partake. So the owner has the right to expect fruit from the fig tree out of the vineyard. So symbolically, the parable is teaching that the Jewish leadership has had enough time to repent of their sins and produce proper fruit, because Jesus says in Luke 3, 8, elsewhere, therefore bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance. In Luke 13, he says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and the stones.
How often I've wanted to gather you together. So he's lamenting the issue of the lack of fruit and proper necessity that the Jewish leadership is failing to do. And so because of that, the judgment of God is upon them. And we know that because they rejected the Messiah, and then in 70 AD, God allowed Rome to come in and clean their clock. So the fruit tree was then cut down, because what you would do on the vineyard if the fruit tree did not bear fruit after a while, it's a defective tree, you've got rid of it. And you planted another so that at least that soil and the effort you're putting in would bear some fruit. So that's the idea. But they were pretty merciful to it.
You know, it will prune it a little bit more, prune it a little bit more. And so Israel, I could go on here, but Israel, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were stuck in legalism. They were seeking to justify themselves before God by their law keeping and by the external manifestations of ceremonies. And so they were bankrupt theologically. And this is why they missed the Messiah and the true gospel. And this kind of thing can be ported over to religious systems who claim to be the true church, and are also steeped in religiosity and traditions, so much so that they miss the simplicity of the gospel. And so their judgment's coming.
Okay? So it's basically a warning to all. The cursing of the victory is a warning to professing believers. I didn't understand your words.
Is what of the universe? It's a warning to believers. A warning. A warning. Yes, it's a warning. Yes.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Since he mentioned the other words, since he mentioned Matthew 23, 37, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and the stones, those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together. So some pre-willers use this verse, you know, pre-will theology, too, in order to establish their pre-will.
How often I wanted to gather your children together. Yeah. Yes, it's called the... Yeah. Yes, it deals with what's called counterfactuals. And so what I had to do is teach them what the issue of what is actual and what is potential. It really deals with counterfactuals. So what they're going to do is they're going to assume libertarian free will in that God would know what they would do under certain circumstances.
This is as far as their thinking and logic usually goes. But the only reason anybody can do anything is because God had ordained through proximate conditions and the arrangement of those circumstances in which they can make decisions. And none of those decisions are outside the will or the counsel of God, Ephesians 1.11. So a counterfactual is under different circumstances. Different things would have happened, of course. But God did not ordain or arrange those different circumstances. But God, knowing all things, can certainly know what would happen in different circumstances. But no matter what happens in counterfactuals or actualities, the individual is responsible for his actions in the actual sense. But Jesus is saying in a different situation, this is what would have happened.
And of course, because only he would know that being God. So there's not a problem there, and it does not bode well, ultimately, for the issue of libertarian free will. Because if libertarian free will is there, in the sense, if they mean that the knowledge of God is restricted to knowing what they will do so that he discovers, then they're removing the sovereignty of God. And they're working against the truth of Scripture, which says that God works all things after the counsel of his will. And then what happens is they can go down the fork in the road and go towards what's called Mullinism or Opentheism. So when you presuppose libertarian free will, and it's cross-examined, and holes are poked in it, usually what you find underneath of the adherents is a form of Opentheism, where God doesn't know the future exhaustively, or Mullinism, where God knows what you'll do in different circumstances, and then he works his divine will according to the choices you make. And this restricts the sovereignty of God as well.
And so there's problems with both theological perspectives. Okay? Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, God bless.
God bless you. All right. Okay. Thanks for calling.
All right. Let's get to Andrew from Maryland. Andrew, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. How are you tonight? Doing all right.
Talking about counterfactuals, factuals, potentiality. I love those kind of discussions. Oh, yeah. It's fun. Yeah.
I mean, in Matthew 23 as well, it all depends on who Jesus is talking to, and I'm talking to the scribes and the prophets as the subject, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I've wanted to gather your children under your wing, but you, the scribes and Pharisees, weren't willing to let me gather them. It's a perfectly consistent, non-leaning in any direction statement, you know? Yeah. And I use it in support of my theological perspective, believe it or not, but that's another topic.
So what do you got, buddy? Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I just had a quick question about clean and unclean in the Old Testament. Okay. I don't, you know, growing up, I was kind of taught that unclean was merely ceremonial, but there is some evidence that Leviticus 20, I'll give you references in Leviticus 18, give it in the context of the King, Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah gives this, says, you know, woe to the eye of a man, a non-clean man amongst an unclean people. I'm just kind of wondering about, like, at what point do we differentiate between sin and uncleanness and uncleanness, but not sin?
Okay. So the categories that were mentioned there were under the theocratic system of the old covenant, which has now been abrogated due to the death of Christ. Hebrews 8, 13, 9, 15 through 16. So there's no longer the issue of the clean versus the unclean. And we know this because Peter was told to eat from all of the fruit, all the animals, clean and unclean. He says he wouldn't do that.
He says, you know, go ahead and do that. And also in Romans 14, where Paul talks about different people eating different things and worshiping different days, be convinced in your own mind, if we're obligated to keep these ancient laws, then that would have been told to us in the new covenant. But it's not the new covenant being the New Testament.
So it's not that. So we don't have to worry about clean and unclean as far as our theological necessity goes. Now, I'm not sure if I'm answering your question right, but I needed to say that first. So am I on the right track or what?
No, no, I totally get you. And I understand that Christ fulfilled those obligations. He brought the two people together, Ephesians chapter two, you know, Jew and Gentile, right, you know, all that good stuff. But I guess that my question is a little bit deeper, it's like, well, you know, if we can ask the question, why, you know, why was it necessary for a man with a body emanation or a woman going through a menstrual cycle? You know, why was that unclean? Was God just merely trying to show us our own?
I'm trying to say this in quotation marks, depravity in a sense, that we could. It seems to be the case that God was symbolizing the necessity of the people of Israel to be different than the nations around them. So what you need to do at this point to understand that, and then the second thing is that the scriptures are about Jesus.
Jesus says in John 539, you search the scriptures because in them you think you find eternal life, but as these are very witness of me. So what we do now is look, well, why is a discharge unclean? Well, because it can become foul as blood can decay, as discharges can become infected. And so these things are to be separated by distance and ceremonies. And if you come in contact, it'd be cleansed usually with blood. So these things, these unclean things, are symbolic of decay, which is representative of sin, which brings death and decay.
So this seems to be the reason, as God is what he's doing, is he's putting these things forth to symbolize and represent the purity necessary of the people of God, as it represents and how death has a representation in decay, because when a human body dies, it decays and oozes and does other gross things. And these kinds of extensions are in other areas as well, et cetera. And then there's the issue of leprosy, of various emissions, of clothed and non-clothed heat and other stuff, okay, but anyway, we can get into it, okay? Does that help anything? Understood. No, I think your explanation about decay helped me a lot with that.
It's a decay of humanity as a result of sin. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, great. Thank you so much.
Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, that's okay.
That's it. There's no big deal. All right. Yeah, absolutely. You might've asked one last quick connected question. Sure.
Go ahead. We've got one minute. Actually, we've got 20 seconds. Oh, yeah. One minute. All right. Well, I'm not going to ask another question, but thanks for your time, and I hope you have a great night. Okay.
Call back tomorrow. I didn't know what time it was. I just looked at the clock. Oh, my goodness.
We're almost out of time. Sorry about that. You're good. Have a good night. All right. You too. God bless. See you. Hey, folks.
There's the music, which means the show's over. And by His grace, back on there tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll talk to you then. Please continue to listen. May the Lord bless you. Have a great evening, everyone. We'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye-bye.
