Christology & Israel!

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. A journey into the life of Jesus, a journey into modern and ancient Israel, and who better to be our tour guide than one of my old college profs years ago. Flashback to the 1980s and 90s, Doug Bookman, Dr. Bookman, in his big bass voice would get up there and teach us all through the Old Testament, the New Testament. Sir, it's an honor to sit down with you now and get into this Christology and all these things going on. Well, amen, and thank you so much, and it's been a delight to be with you occasionally, and it's a delight to be with you today. Well, and we're not on the basketball court, so that means we're not going to get hurt. Those were the days, weren't they?

They were. Hey, so, Doc, tell everyone what you're up to. A lot of things going on. I'm with you in Cary, North Carolina, in the Colonial Baptist Church Shepherds Theological Seminary offices, where you are, I guess, a professor. Give us an update. Who is Doug Bookman? Tell everybody.

Give us a little bit of that. Well, I'll tell you. We, of course, got to know each other as student professor and then as friends there in California at Masters College. I left Masters College and became part of Friends of Israel, which is a marvelous ministry outreach to Jewish folk. And while I was at Masters, I helped frame a program in Israel called IBEX, which is a semester abroad. And that kind of got me over there and got me thinking I'd studied over there in Israel. And I'll tell you, Stu, what's at stake in my... What's fundamentally at stake is that it is a huge help to Christians to get to Israel.

And so just in various ways, I started to find ways to get over there and so on. Then in God's Sweet Providences in 2009, we moved here to Cary and became part of Shepherds Seminary. It's a wonderful seminary, and we are fully committed. We believe in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible with full throat, and we take it literally. And we believe in grammatical historical interpretation. A lot of our listeners are gonna know what that means, but basically what we mean by that is that the text, the author insinuated the meaning into the text. And our obligation is to mine the meaning out of the text. And so you pay attention to grammatical issues and all other parts, and then historical issue, which means the context.

And so not only the literary context, but the context in which it happens. So the more you understand about the world... You know, I tell people all the time that half of your Bible is history. And I mean, Genesis to Nehemiah is just a historical narrative. Matthew to Acts is a historical narrative. And that history happens somewhere. And so when you read these real historical narratives, you generate a picture in your mind. And I hate to be the guy to tell folks, but your picture is wrong, because you're thinking in terms of your culture and your... And so the more you can learn to read the Bible in terms of its own culture, the more you're gonna be advantaged in every way.

Whatever level of teaching or leadership you have, you're gonna be advantaged to learn. And one of the really staggering realities that people don't take into account, I think, is that it's really stunning that we live in a day when you can go to Israel. Because really from 70 AD, when Titus Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem in the temple, until functionally 1967, the land was at least functionally, if not physically, inaccessible. And we live in a day when it's wide open, it's remarkably secure, they welcome the visitor. And I always say one of the most amazing realities is that Israel had little land, gives so much time and effort and expertise and attention to digging out and reconstructing the biblical artifacts and places and so on, that you and I, it's like they had us in mind.

Oh, think how much it'd be to their advantage if we took this out and put it on display. So at any rate, I came here to Shepherd Seminary. And as part of our program, we take our students to Israel. We pay for it. We pay the entire trip because... And I always say it's a function of these three realities that number one, say, here we are as a seminary and here, and if I can maybe appropriately or otherwise personalize it, in my own life, my own stewardship, my sense is that number one, it's stunning that we live in a day when you can go to Israel.

Number two, we know that people are gonna be hugely advantaged. Now, you can study the Bible without getting to Israel, but you're going to be advantaged, and there it sits. And then thirdly, here at the seminary, we realize that most seminary students are stone cold, dead in the water, broke, so they can't afford to go to Israel.

So we have raised the money to take our students and just in a few weeks, we'll be setting out. And so you ask about who Doug Bookman is. Well, and I tell people all the time that it's really amazing in God's providence that I lead trips to Israel because I'm the most directionally challenged guy in the world. I always say, if you take me out in the backyard and turn me around a couple of times, I can't find a house, and yet here I go to Israel and I can get people around. But one of the other huge elements of my study life and so on, and teaching and preaching, is the life of Jesus. And again, Christians are so advantaged to come to grips with the life that Jesus lived. Not just the incidents, the horrors are important, but in many quarters, to be honest with you, Stuart, told today that, well, for whatever set of illegitimate reasons, for my money, you really can't build a life of Jesus.

Just look at the individual pericopes, as they're called, the individual incidents and episodes in his life. Well, you can't live your life that way. You couldn't just random order.

You couldn't trade Tuesday from Wednesday and it'll come out the same. You know what I'm saying? So I think it's so important to actually study the... And that means taking the four gospels, laying them, as it were, one on top of each other, finding the synchronisms, harmonizing, and coming to as full and coherent a concept of the life Jesus lived. And it's there. What's a way to read the gospel, practically, for listeners out there that are really... Because I'm about to do a study in the book of Luke.

What's a good way to go through it? That's a very interesting point, Stu, because Luke just left. But no, that's a very important point. Because on the one hand, they are individual books, and they deserve and demand to be read, and if you don't mind, exegeted, which just means we're trying to get the author's meaning out of the text as individual books. Then the next step is to read them... And this takes some work, and there are a lot of helps out there, but to read the gospels in harmonized fashion, where you try and trace the life of Jesus. And here's the thing, Stu, Jesus lived a real life, and the life... Now, here we get into the whole issue of the person of Jesus and honoring what the Bible says about the fact that he took upon himself, genuine humanity, right?

Amen and amen. He wasn't... I always say that a lot of Christians kind of witlessly embrace what I call the Clark Kent approach to the life of Jesus.

There never was a Clark Kent, that was Superman pretending. And sometimes people think that Jesus was just God pretending to be man. Oh no, he took upon himself genuine, unfallen humanity. And what that means, and it's so bottomlessly significant, is that he lived a life stunningly like ours, and thus he can be... Because he took upon genuine humanity, number one, he can be our redeemer because he is our kinsman, but number two, and you've spent a lot of time with yourselves, Stu, but number two, he can be a high priest who is genuinely touched with the feeling of our infirmities, as Hebrews says, and it was because of his humanity. So to study his humanity and from nativity through boyhood, and this is a lot of what we do when we're in Israel. So you're taking people through the steps of Jesus and the seed of Galilee. Okay, real quick now, how many times have you been there?

Oh, I couldn't count, but probably about 40, 45. Forty-five times to Israel. Okay, so listeners that have never been, we got 60 seconds left in this segment. Give us the 60 second fire tour real quick, or just tell us in 60 seconds why... Just take us...

Create the picture, create the picture for us real quick. Well, Israel, here's the thing, Israel is stunning in so many ways. Number one, God has contrived throughout history to make Israel the center, and it is today. Everybody worries about Israel, it's the epicenter of the world. And of course, it was the stage upon which so much of the biblical history was played out, and it's so tiny, it's so public and so private, the regions are so distinct.

This is the thing, it's not just an issue. Here's what I would encourage people. All right, there may be some value, some virtue in going and just doing sort of a pilgrimage and standing in a given place and contemplating the fact that this is what happened in this place. Ah, but beyond that, what makes it rich is to study the land, study the geography, the climate, the agriculture, the cycle of the years, the geology for heaven's sakes, and understand what it is about this place where you're standing that plays into the biblical drama. And takes you to Jesus ultimately because he's the sinner, he's the king of kings, right?

And this is where he lived, this is where he lived. So you are walking... Now, we do a lot more, we got both testaments to deal with and even more, but... And let me just say this, that the last week of Jesus' life... I'll conclude with this, 40% of each of the four gospels is given over to the last week of his life. So that means that we can reconstruct that week in remarkable detail.

I think it also means that God wants us to know that week and to walk through. You can stand at the place, I swear, where Jesus was tried by Pilate, and to sit there and to work your way through that marvelous, marvelous drama in John 18 and 19. Yeah, get there.

And every kid that... Or kid, student that comes to Shepherds Theological Seminary in Cary, North Carolina, gets a trip paid as part of their education to spend with you a couple of weeks in Israel a year, once in their four years here. God bless you, Dr. Bookman. Thanks for being a great mentor, friend, teacher. I'm still here, man.

I pulled a strong C average, man. I'm gonna try to get that up, man. Thanks a lot. Hey, good to see you, Stu. Lord bless you. God bless you.

Yes, sir. Truthnetwork.com will make this podcast available. You, too, may need to go to Israel. But most of all, don't miss the Jesus Christ. If you can't go there, you can go to the Word and read and go there and go to Him and find in Him. Life everlasting. This is the Truth Network.