MS Top 6 Season 4 #1

This is the Truth Network. Monday through Friday, Matt takes calls from all around the world on his radio show. We've compiled this week's best, Matt Slick's Top 6.

Number 6. If the name Jew comes from the tribe Judah, why does everyone refer to the 12 tribes as Jewish? Judah became the Jews. The word Jew just became a word used to designate the Jewish nation, the people of Israel. And so the 12 tribes of Israel are Jewish. That's all. It's just how the word is used. So even though Judah is where Jews come from, if they call all 12 of them Jewish, it means the same thing? Well, no, it's just it has become a word that's now all encompassing. That's all.

They just use it in a non-technical way. Number 5. Jesus resembled Mary at all, or he got DNA from Mary. And I was wondering, kind of my only objection I could think of was if he would have inherited anything, would he have not also inherited her sin nature? Yeah, he probably resembled her because it was her genetics.

So there's that and not a problem. We don't know exactly what he would have looked like because the other part of the genetics got arranged, manifested, whatever we would call it, in the birth. And as far as original sin goes, it looks like the issue of original sin deals with the propagation of the sin nature through the Father. So Adam and Eve were in the garden. She sinned first, but sin entered through Adam, Romans 5-12, and this doctrine called federal headship. So in federal headship, the male represents the descendants, not the female. That's very clearly taught in Scripture. So if he did not have a biological father as in Joseph, then the implication is that the sin line was dismissed at him.

Number 4. Can God's actions be influenced by our prayers? That's a very good question, and it's a very difficult one to answer.

There are different ways we could answer it. If you go to James 5-16, the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. So what James is telling us is that our prayers can accomplish things. Well, wait a minute. How do our prayers accomplish something if God from all eternity is decreed whatsoever shall come to pass? I don't know how that works.

He's above my pay grade. But we know that the more we pray, the more things are effective. So there seems to be a way that God has ordained that we who pray affect him. But when we pray, it's because he wants us to pray, and he works us to pray what he wants us to pray to affect him from all eternity, and yet we're freely doing it. So there's different ways of looking at it, and it's a difficult question. So what we do is by faith say the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. We believe it. We don't understand how it all works, which is okay, and we move forward. So it's a good question, and I don't have a great answer. I have halfway semi-competent answers that raise questions when we look at them.

How about that? Number 3. Are you familiar with Robert Henderson's teachings on the courts of heaven? Nope, but because I saw that's what you're going to talk about during the break, I researched it. So that's the only familiarity I have, and I have an opinion already formed. Okay. Well, can I hear the opinion? Yeah.

Stay away from this guy. He's a load of crud. Operating in the Courts of Heaven, one of his books, Granting God the Legal Rights to Fulfill His Passion and Answer Our Prayers. This kind of a title of a book where you grant God the legal rights. I'm going to grant it to God is arrogant foolishness. Anybody would put that on a title of a book, and I am judging a book by its cover now. You don't grant God anything. It makes me mad, and there's words I want to say that are a lot stronger than what I think I should say on the radio.

Number 2. But it is foolish, and the Greek word would be skubaland. It means defecation. This is what this guy is doing right there, granting God the legal rights. You idiot. You don't grant God anything, you fool.

That's it. He's a fool for this kind of a thing. He's saying, oh, you've got to grant God the legal right. What?

Are you crazy? What moronic theology are you getting that from? Well, he bases this off of Daniel chapter 7, I believe, verses 10 and 11, where it describes the throne room, and he sits and opens the books. The way he describes it is, before the dawn of time, he knew us, and he wrote in a book what our lives would be.

And through the course of life, things happen then, obviously. And what you do in his teaching is you go around, if you want to say spiritual warfare, and you go into his court, and you plead your case before God that the adversary is telling lies about you, and you cut it at the root there. Now, I've never seen his book cover, so I can't speak any knowledge of that. I do agree that the phrasing that you grant God the legal right is heresy in those words.

I agree with that completely. Like I said, I've never seen the book, but his teachings I am aware of. But the thing is it is so close to the truth, but it stretches my theology, I should say, to the point to where I'm leery of it, and I haven't fully accepted it.

But I need somebody who's a little bit smarter than me to look into it. Because I don't want to get my mind twisted. So when you go to Daniel 7, and it talks about thousands and thousands of attending on him, it's not there that we have to bring our case before God. That's not biblical. Jesus is our advocate. Jesus is our mediator. Jesus is the one who mediates between the Father and us. He brings the case before God, not us. And this idiocy that we grant to God the legal right to fulfill his passion and answer our prayers, what that does is it demotes God and it elevates man. It's arrogance.

It's idolatry. I hope you had the time of your life. It's okay now.

Goodbye, my friend. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Matt Slick's Top Six. For more on Matt and his live syndicated call-in radio show, go to truthnetwork.com. Got a question? Matt Slick has your answer.