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Is Ash Wednesday biblical? That's going to be the question. The first question in this 10 questions video. I'm taking the other nine from the live chat. You guys actually are feeding them in right now in a flurry, in a hurry, in the chaos of the comment section that resembles Black Friday from 2010 at a Walmart. So that's coming in, and I'll be answering those questions, hopefully giving you good answers. The agenda here, my name is Mike Winger. My agenda is to help you learn to think biblically about everything. It doesn't mean I understand the Bible in every way. I don't. But we can be part of that journey together to understand it better and apply it to our lives consistently, because there's just the only ultimate, safe, reliable source for truth is going to be the word of God. So question number one for today is make sure that worked. Yeah, it's working. Is, Is Ash Wednesday biblical? I'll read you a more detailed version of the question. Could you share your thoughts on Ash Wednesday and how Christians should understand and approach the day? And is it exclusively a Catholic observance, or is there a way for non Catholics to participate? Should we participate at all? That's sort of up to you, but I'm going to give you a bunch of specific details, some scriptures, some different ideas here. So I'm writing a note here because I just thought of something I want to add to my answer and I don't want to forget it. So. Okay, type something out because I will forget that later. All right, you've got a few things to think about with Ash Wednesday first. What is it? Ash Wednesday. You guys have seen people with the crosses on their heads, and I know I'm wearing a hat. Is that weird? It's Hat Friday today. Welcome to Hat Friday. Anyways, Ash Wednesday is this event about 40. It's part of 40 days of fasting, 40 days of what's called Lent. This. And it's not just Catholic, but there's plenty of other people who've done it throughout church history and even today who are not Catholics. The 40 days is leading up to the Passover, the commemoration of the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. And leading up to that, there's these 40 days of fasting. You know, you don't fast solid for 40 days. It's like Wednesday is this, Friday is this. There's different fastings that get added into this in this season of Lent. And Ash Wednesday is like the kickoff game, the beginning of that season of Lent and the ashes on the forehead are supposed to be representing a time of repentance, a time of being soberly thinking about your mortality, as well as the fact that you have sinned. Those kind of two things, I think, are primary in the concept of Ash Wednesday. Now, I've never participated in Ash Wednesday, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to it. I think we can have a more nuanced answer where we say, hey, here's some pros and here's some cons, and then we can leave it into people's hands how they want to respond. So Ash Wednesday, they burn ashes. They burn something. Now, some people make a big deal about what they burn and how they burn it, where the ashes come from and all that stuff. I'm surprised that matters. But you go up and you have the ashes put on your forehead, probably in the sign of a cross, right? Little cross. And you've seen pictures and people you've just seen walking around during the day on Ash Wednesday, because they'll go sometimes in the morning and they'll do, like, go to a service where they get the ashes put on, then they go to work, or they do a video online, or they take a photo and put on Instagram, and they're going to be publicizing this activity of having their. The ashes on their forehead. Let me talk about some of the pros of this. The idea of having a season where you're going to fast, there's some pros to that. Fasting is a good spiritual discipline and can bring a lot of benefit. The dust on the forehead is a representation of, like back in Genesis, you know, from dust you came, and to dust you shall return. It's symbolic of the fact that we all die and that you are recognizing your mortality. You're pondering. This is how I understand it, pondering. Supposedly, you're pondering your death. Now, that might seem kind of weird or freaky to people, but it's actually a really healthy practice to think about the fact that you will one day die. Now, you don't want to become unhealthy in the way you think about it, but it's healthy to soberly think about it. And this is based upon scripture, so let me show it to you. Ecclesiastes 7:2. It says it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind. That is one of the most sobering verses in the Bible. Have you been there with people as they're at the end of their Life, maybe you're heading towards the end of yours. And it is a house of mourning in many ways. It's a sobering thing, it's a difficult thing, it's a hard thing in ways that words cannot even express. And it's according to Ecclesiastes, there is a benefit in you taking the time to process that and to think about that because you're headed there too. And I'm headed there too. And it may happen suddenly, but for a lot of us it's going to happen slowly. You're going to experience it over time and it's something to be mentally prepared for, at least to some degree. So if you go to the house of mourning, it says here that the living will lay it to heart. This concept of you will be thinking about your own mortality. I know of somebody I know, I'll just say somebody I know who had a heart problem. And after years of neglecting family, after years of having some major glaring problems in his own life in regards to those relationships, he suddenly became very serious about trying to fix those relationships and rebuild them. And it was because of this, I believe anyways, because of this life threatening condition that that woke him up. When you realize that you're dust and to dust you will return, that that's what you're from and that's where you're going. You now there is a soul, there is an eternal soul. And God will deal with you in the afterlife, which is also sobering and you should be thinking about that as well. But when you realize this and take it to heart, it's healthy for you. It's a proper fear because it's a fear of something that's real. And then you can have a sober mind about it. Verse 3 says, Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of the face the heart is made glad. Actually processing through sorrow can actually be part of your recovery process of dealing with hardship and grief. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. And it goes on a lot of wisdom there. Ecclesiastes is a puzzling book, challenging book, but is also a wise book. So dust to dust, the pondering of death, the awareness of that and also then the awareness of your sin, that is huge. This is so important. You know a lot of pop level Christianity that doesn't, that's super shallow and it's more about vibe and Personalities and then just giving people good news all the time, like they don't have the gospel of good news. They have. The gospel is just good news. Whatever they do, they just share good news all the time. The reason why the gospel is good news is because you soberly take into consideration you're a sinner, that your life is temporary, that you will then one day stand before God and he will judge you according to what you've done. And. And then you realize, well, I'm not holy like he is. I'm not righteous like he is. I need to be redeemed. I don't just need to be brought into a church culture or environment. I need to be forgiven for my sins. I have the weight of wickedness upon me. And there's one day I'll be called to account, and you start to realize how desperately you need Jesus. You need the cross. The cross is something that you'd be lost without. And you need the forgiveness of the one who died in your place to suffer your penalty for what you've done. And that soberness of realizing that you're sinful, it's not something people like. It's not something people want to talk about, of realizing that you'll die and you'll be judged. That's not something you want to discuss. But if we don't have that, then the gospel isn't actually good news, is it? There is no good news unless there is the report of the bad news as well. The one makes. The other one makes sense. And so when preaching the gospel, you know, Paul, the apostle, in the Book of Acts, he says, you know that God commands all men everywhere to repent. This is not just like, hey, guys, good news. God loves you and thinks you're really cute. This is not the gospel we preach. So Lent is kind of like, cool in the sense that it's connecting all these ideas together. That's really neat. The fasting and stuff as well. That can be good, too. Now, let me talk about some cons. I say Lent, Ash Wednesday in particular. I'm trying to cover here. Not all of Lent. Some of the cons for Lent, you're asked to give up something. You choose. What. Now, I've known lots of people who have done Lent and do Lent on a regular basis, and I've asked. Well, I didn't even ask. They always volunteer. Is this your experience? They always tell me what they're giving up for Lent. Like, I never have to ask. So for Lent, I'm giving up, and they'll give up Something and usually it's like chocolate or something that is an indulgence that they think they should cut down on anyways so that Lent becomes an avenue by which they try to have a better, more healthy diet, which is not really the purpose of fasting. So I just want to say, like, that's good that you're setting aside those things that can be healthy. But the idea that I'm going to give up carbs for Lent because you're trying to lose weight. So it's a self. It becomes a self improvement thing that moves it out of the realm of spiritual discipline because of your walk with the Lord and more into the realm of like a little bit of a distraction from what this thing is actually about. My opinion, I don't know of any text of scripture where fasting is done for the sake of looking skinnier when summer comes. I don't know of any verse that says that. Do you? And so I think fasting, the idea is that I'm denying myself so that I can maybe spend the time I would have been eating that thing or participating in that thing. Maybe you're fasting from video games. And I'll spend that time instead reading the word, praying, helping out at the church, serving somewhere locally, taking care of someone who needs it, just doing something good instead. That would seem to be a healthier thing. Fasting is often done and connected with sorrow in scripture. That's an interesting thing to talk about when you think about fasting. It's often connected with sorrow and connected with grief and sometimes repentance and stuff. So it's not just a self improvement thing. That's one potential pitfall. There's another pitfall with Ash Wednesday that people should be aware of, and that is that Jesus made a big deal about this. He said about not doing your fasting to be seen by men. Let me see if I can find this passage should have already pulled up, but. The Sermon on the Mount. Let's see here. Matthew 6, verse 17. There it is. That's where it begins. Let me read this to you guys and ask yourself if this is being if we're violating Jesus's command in the way that at least some people do Ash Wednesday. Because in Ash Wednesday you don't have to leave the ashes on your forehead all day. You don't have to do that. But my experience is people tend to leave it on all day, display it for everybody to see, take a picture, put it on social media, and then tell all their friends what fasting they're doing for Lent, that's what I've typically seen. That doesn't mean it's what you've seen, doesn't mean it's what happens around the world. That's very anecdotal, but it's something to be aware of. Matthew 6:17 says, when you fast, anoint your head. Well, let me back up a little, actually, we should start in verse 16 here. Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites. Now, that word hypocrite means faker, but also is connected to the word actor, someone who's acting. The hypocrite was the actor. That's one of the uses of the term as you move on. Anyway, so don't be like the hypocrites with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they. And there's a reason why they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to be fasting. Ah, their fasting is done so that others may see it, so that others may think highly of them. There are plenty of temptations out there for us to do our works, that others may see them and like you, for them. This is most of the philanthropic YouTube channels and philanthropic social media accounts. They're doing their kind deeds for them to be recorded so that they can get clout and get attention and get glory from men. And this is exactly what Jesus was opposed to. It's sad that it's like so consistently out there with people's good deeds, but with fat, with Lent. And if you're fasting and telling people and you're putting the ash on your forehead and you're walking around, everybody sees you. It certainly makes it harder to obey what Jesus says here, right? Assuredly. I say to you, they have their reward. What's the reward? People thinking that they're spiritual. In other words, God does not reward that. He's like, yeah, you got what you wanted. People thought you were special. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face. Now this seems to parallel so easily into Ash Wednesday. If you did show up and you get the ashes put on, I think you should just wash them off right after. Why? Well, unless you're going to stay home and you're going to be alone, if you're going to walk around, you're violating what Jesus commanded here. It seems when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that you do not appear to men to be fasting. But your Father who's in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret, will reward you openly. It seems pretty, pretty clear so many people's way of doing Ash Wednesday would be, it seems, a violation of clear teachings of Jesus. That's a significant issue. Doesn't mean you can't do Ash Wednesday or Lent. But how about you do it and you wash your face and you don't appear to those people that you're doing it. You're not being invited out to lunch and friends are like, hey, we're going to go get lunch. And you're like, oh really, can we do a restaurant that doesn't have such and such? Because I'm fasting. And you're like taking your opportunities to put it out there, you got your reward. God's not interested in that. He calls that hypocrisy. There's a couple other things I'll mention, then we'll move on to the next question. Well, first I have a little announcement, but it's important that you know this, that Lent, the season of Lent and Ash Wednesday and the fasting procedures that people have for like Wednesday we fast this way, Friday we fast this way. That sort of thing is a man made tradition 1000%. So it is not instituted by Jesus and the apostles. It is absolutely a man made tradition. Anybody who says otherwise is making stuff up. And I make a big deal about that, not because it bugs me personally, but because Jesus was very bothered by people presenting man made traditions as if they were commands of God. Now this doesn't mean all man made traditions are wrong. I don't want us to think that having a man made tradition is fine as long as you know it is a man made tradition and you treat it as a man made tradition, which means it's not obligatory. You don't expect other people to do it just because you've come up with this tradition. That's important in scripture. Jesus actually rebukes the leaders because they had created these extra commands that were from men. They made other people do them as obligatory. And then they traced it back and were like, well, God wants you to do this. It's immoral for a church to try to say to their congregants, everybody wants you to do Ash Wednesday. It's not clear in scripture. It's, it's a man made tradition that comes later. It's fine if they say, hey, we think this is beneficial, we think this is fruitful for you. We'd like you to consider participating something else to make it obligatory. So in Catholicism you're like sinning if you don't do Ash Wednesday and the fasting that they have commanded. That's a perfect example of what Jesus said not to do, what he showed us not to do when he reamed the Pharisees and Sadducees for the different policies they had that ultimately cause problems. Jesus kind of wants human driven, or I should say individual driven voluntary fasting. That is not for display and not just for conformity. And that can happen with Ash Wednesday. I also would say knowing that it's a man made tradition, it should help you to avoid this idea here. Here's what happens. I think people go to a church where they have like Ash Wednesday and they're used to maybe an evangelical context or a church context where they don't usually do that sort of thing. And they go there and they see how like organized and ritualistic it is and like, whoa, they brought out the ashes and oh, they're putting in, everybody's stepping up one at a time and then the spiritual leader puts the ashes on your head like it's a special moment. And then they think, I'm getting real Christianity here, I'm getting real original authentic Christianity here. And I just think that is a whole different debate, that if Jesus and the apostles wouldn't have been familiar with it, then don't think that by doing it you're connecting with Jesus and the apostles better, Connecting with first century Christianity better. That's just not a thing. It's not a thing. This is man made tradition. You can do it if you want, that's fine. Jesus, it appears in the Gospel of John, attended Hanukkah. Hanukkah was a Jewish holiday that cropped up after the close of the New, the Old Testament, before the beginning of the New Testament. And there was nothing that seems wrong with that. Jesus attends this, he gets involved in it. But to then make it obligatory to then spiritually guilt people who don't participate in it, that sort of thing, that would be an abuse of the people of God for the sake of your man made traditions. And so what I'm saying happens is sometimes we come up with man made traditions, we might call them liturgy. We do them, they look very powerful and very important because we surround them with very heavy symbolism and they feel very filled with pomp. And then we use that to send out signals to people that we're the true church, we are the authentic Christian church, which then gets people to believe the lie that the church with the most man made traditions and the most high church, man made traditions, is in fact the most authentic. Church, when in fact the things that are drawing you are all things that the disciples would be like, well, that's different. And so I just want to throw that out there. I think it's just a psychological thing that happens with people. You can also just do non literally to do Ash Wednesday, you could literally just. I could go to my fireplace in the living room, I could just grab some soot off the side of the fireplace and then I could pray and I could put it on my own forehead. I don't need anybody else for that. Now I'm not saying I'm a rogue Christian. You know, to do church, you can't be a rogue Christian. You need to be involved in the body of Christ. You need elders who are participating in teaching and you need discipleship. You need corporate worship and you need the teaching and the emphasis upon scripture and explaining expositionally, preaching the word of God. You need the gathering of the saints together to express their different gifts with one another and for those around all that stuff. But to do Ash Wednesday, I think there's an assumption people have that you have to find a church that does Ash Wednesday. You have to go in, you have to have this special leader who you probably have never even met. And he's going to be like the anointed one is how it comes off. He's the special one who can give it to you, give you the ashes. And I'm like, this is all made up, guys. You can do however you want, right? That's just the truth of it. That's the side of it that I think. There's nothing wrong with the procedures themselves. It's the implications it has where we look at man made liturgy and traditions as validating the true spiritual qualities of a church. And that's a dangerous thing that I think people often fall into. So that's question number one. There's Ash Wednesday. A few things that can happen. Don't get spiritually proud because you do Ash Wednesday. Don't get spiritually proud because you don't. It's just, just a thing you can do if you want. It has some benefit, has some potential pitfalls. Use wisdom, be mature. All right, before I do question number two, I have a conference announcement. So this is on your screen. I am not going to be at this conference. I don't think. I'm pretty sure I can't. It's just have way too much going on at the moment. But I wanted to go and I was invited, but I can't. So I'm just sharing with you Guys, this is the Desert Apologetics Conference, okay? Not Dessert Apologetics, which sounds even better, in my opinion, than Desert Apologetics. You guys should rebrand and sell cakes and fudge. But desertapologetics.com what they do is they gather some different people. So I'll give you some names. Greg Kokel's coming out. Bobby Conway is coming out. John Noyce, who, by the way, I love Greg Kokol. He helped me learn how to think as I listened to his podcast many years ago. John Noyce is actually part of the board for Bible Thinker. So I love John and appreciate him very much. And they spelled his name wrong. It's J O N, not J O, H, N. I got your back, John. You know, Craig Hazen, Clay Jones, I like Clay Jones, has got really good stuff on the problem of evil. So there's other names here. Alan Schliemann I've known for years. So these people who I. Some of whom I have personal relationships with, but also think they have a lot of value they bring people. Seems like a worthwhile conference. If you're looking for somewhere to go, it's going to be in Arizona. I'm sorry, it's going to be in Palm Springs, California. They've done it in Arizona too, but it's gonna be in Palm Springs, California, not far from me. Maybe I'll swing by, surprise people and say HI. Probably not. March 14th and 15th this year. If you guys want, you can actually get a discount. What you do is go to desertapologetics.com and you can use promo code MWLS50. That's if you want a discount for the live stream. You can just watch the livestream or a 30% discount if you want to go in person. And the promo code is MWPS30. That's the stuff they gave me. I'm not getting any kickbacks or money. Nobody's sponsoring me to say this to you. I don't do that. I get nothing for telling you this. I just thought you might want to know. All right, let's go to question number two. And we have all 10 questions for today. Question two is an anonymous one. Why is Jesus in Bethlehem when the wise men come in? Matthew 2, 7, 11, question mark. And the next sentence is Luke 2, 22 and 39 say they returned to Nazareth after the 40 day purification rites. Did Matthew make up their hometown as Bethlehem? So, Luke, this is a bunch of moving pieces here. We talk about the timeline of Jesus. Matthew talks about Jesus going to Egypt. Luke doesn't. He doesn't get into it. Now that may sound strange, but you have to remember that if you've ever had to tell your life story, have you ever had to do that, or someone goes, tell me about your life. And you go, oh boy. And it hits you all of a sudden that you have to skip large bits of information, large chunks, whole years, seasons of your life, lest you go on for hours and hours and hours and hours. And you then choose what to skip based upon what your agenda is in that meeting, in that discussion. You may start with, well, I've been working here for the last five years. Or you may start with, well, I was born over in this place to a of 17 people, or whatever your story is. So the gospels have to do this. They have to summarize three years plus of Jesus earthly ministry. Already too difficult to do, in my opinion. But also in some cases, they're summarizing stuff that happened when he was a kid, stuff that happened when he was a baby. So Luke, when he shares after the purification, he just says they went to Nazareth. It doesn't mean that they went right away. Okay? Luke has plenty of like time skips in, in the Gospel of Luke. And this is, this is just one of them. So when the days of her purification, Luke 22:22, according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. So they go to Jerusalem from Bethlehem, where he was born. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and to offer his sacrifice according to what is said of the, in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or of two young pigeons, which means that they were in fact poor. Because if you had money, you actually made a bigger offering. If you were poor, you just, just did the, the. The birds. Interesting, huh? They were poor. But then verse 39, skipping past some of these events, here it says now, when they had performed all these things, this is the purification according to the law of the Lord. They returned to Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. Then he skips to Jesus is 12 years old. Boom. Two verses later, Jesus is now 12 years old. So there's definitely a big time skip that happens here. The events here. It's event purification. Then in some space they return to Galilee, to Nazareth, and then Jesus is 12 years old. some point he goes back to Passover. This doesn't mean Jesus never went to the Passover during the other years of his life. In fact, it says they went every year to the Passover. But we're not going to record any of the details of any of those events. So what we're suggesting here is that because of what Matthew tells us, we know that there was a lot more that happened that Luke just skipped over and didn't include in the years between and the times between the purification of Jesus and then even his attendance, his return to Nazareth, as Well as the 12 year old event and Passover. The Matthew passage is Matthew chapter 2, verses 7 through 11. So the visit of the wise men comes and they it from Matthew. It seems that this was quite a while, quite a time later that they, they would have, based on the calendar for Jews stuff, the Jewish stuff, they would have gone to Jerusalem and then probably returned to Bethlehem. That's where they're staying. They're staying there. They didn't come there for the birth and now they're done and they're leaving. They came there because of the census and for some longer period of time. So they're staying in Bethlehem. In fact, they stay in Bethlehem until they're warned to flee Bethlehem. And we read about this here. Then Herod, when she had, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the young child and when you found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him. Also verse 9. When they heard the king, they departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. Now he's called a young child. The implication here is that Jesus is not a newborn anymore. And there's other details here. I went over this not long ago in a video on. Actually it was my review of Netflix's movie Mary, where some of the timeline they messed up about the, about the wise men and about the birth of Jesus and stuff like that. So I went over some of these timeline details. I'll link that video below for those who want more details. But basically the conclusion is Jesus is older now, maybe a year older. Maybe they've been at Bethlehem for some season of time, certainly not, certainly more than 40 days. I think when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they'd open their treasures, they Present. They present the gifts now, when they departed, verse 13, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, stay there until I bring you word. For Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. Then Herod does, he tries to kill Jesus, kills everybody. Two years and younger again implying that they were in Bethlehem for some time. So how do you reconcile these? I think it's easy. You just say, oh, Luke definitely does time skipping. He just does. Like I'm overviewing, you know, and you can almost see like the way husbands and wives tell stories. Like the husband might have said, oh yeah, then he was purified in the, in the temple. And then, you know, we came back to Nazareth and the wife would be like, well, a lot happened between then and there. I mean, he's purified. But we went back to Bethlehem first and then we went out to Egypt and then we went to Nazareth. And the husband may simply respond with, yeah, you're totally right, but I've only got so much time to tell the story, so I'm skipping some. Like, it's not deceptive, it's simply selective, which is what we all do when we tell stories, real stories of what happened. So when the days of your purification were completed in Luke chapter two, they brought him to Jerusalem and presented him to the Lord. And where was that verse? And then verse 39. Yeah, verse 39 it was. That's right. So when they performed all the things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, their own city. We would naturally read this if you didn't know anything else and think they immediately returned they at that exact moment. But rather just think of it as he's connecting history together. So they did this. Okay. And the next thing I'll talk about is they went back to Nazareth. And the next thing I'll talk about it is they came down to Passover. And the next thing I talk about, Jesus is 30 years old. After he's 12, boom, he's 30. Luke is doing this like boom, boom, boom. All these events very, very quickly. Time skipping. Let's go to the number, the next question. Number three, Levi Venner. Levi Venner says, is there biblical evidence that the thousand year reign of Christ as described in Revelation is on Earth? I hear a lot about the thousand year reign specifically on Earth, but fail to see the word earth. Let me think, let's just look at the exact passage there in Revelation. Here we go, The Revelation, chapter 20. I'll start in verse one. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and great chains in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon and that serpent of old, who is the devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. Now where is Satan? Satan is on the earth, terrorizing people and destroying people on the earth. That's clear from earlier on. Revelation 13 and on he's been cast down and he's now terrorizing people on earth. So what sets up this kingdom is Satan is bound from his terror causing on earth he's bound. That implies there's. So far. There seems to be an earth context here. And he cast him into the bottomless pit, verse three and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should not deceive. He should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. So when he gets released, who's he going to deceive? The nations. Where are nations? Well, every other time the Bible nations are talked about, they're always on earth. But after these things, he must be released for a little while. Implication. Released on the earth, verse 4. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who'd been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God who had not worshipped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hand. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The question is, where is this living and reigning? Let's keep reading. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. I'll say this first off, the resurrection and living again is to my knowledge, every single time. It is always in an earth context. That is when Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I know that's a paraphrase, not a quote, but when he offers the teaching that gives us the conclusion that when I'm absent from my body, I'm present with the Lord. He doesn't mean resurrection. When he talks about resurrection, it's always talking about this earthly thing. When Jesus resurrected, boom. His body on earth is resurrected. When the resurrection comes, it is seen as an earthly experience. So it'd be weird if they got new bodies in order to live and reign with Christ and that living and reigning with Christ was not on earth. That would be inconsistent with other things we've seen. This is the first resurrection, verse six. Blessed and holy is he who has Part in the first resurrection over such the second death has no power. But they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years. Now, when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and he will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth. Gog and Magog. And now what are they doing? They're fighting against Jesus and his kingdom. Now if they're on the earth, clearly fighting against Jesus and his kingdom, where is Jesus and his kingdom? It seems like it's on the earth. It's ruled by resurrected saints who have bodies which are fit for earthly living. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. So now here we go again. They're on the earth. And where is the camp of the saints? It's on the earth. So that is very. Seems really strong. Now we've got. Every arrow seems to be pointing in the same direction and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. So this is they're on the earth. It's coming out of heaven onto the earth. And the devil who deceives them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. So from that reading, I would think there's really good evidence to think that this thousand year reign is happening on earth. Now there are those who have other views of Revelation and they will reinterpret this, but I don't think they'll deny the description we were given has a kingdom on earth where Jesus reigns with his saints for a thousand years. What they'll do is reinterpret what that means. Okay, yeah, that's the description, but what it means is something else. It means post millennialism, which is like the idea that he's already reigning now on the earth through his saints. And then I don't know how they interpret the resurrection. I think that it's a strange. I can't remember. I looked into this years ago and now I just don't remember off the top of my head how they would handle the idea that these saints are resurrected and reigning. I'm not really sure. I won't comment more because I can't remember. I'll remember after the stream and they'll go, oh yeah, yeah, that was it. So anyway, I think that answers your question. So I'll move on to number four and Emerson M. Speer says, by the way, My last name, Winger. It means friend. And spear. It's like those two words somehow combined. How are they combined? I don't know. Do I spear my friend or am I like, hey, I'm your buddy with a spear. I'm your friend with a spear. I'm not sure. Anyway. And spear. All right, Emerson, you ask. Hi, Mike. What do you think about what the Bible teaches about principles of worship? How can our worship improve in the American Protestant churches? Thank you. That's a huge question. I think that there's a number of things you can draw out as principles of worship. When I have heard people talk about it in the past, it's often they allegorize the Old Testament. Usually the Old Testament, they allegorize it in ways that are a little bit. It's a little loosey goosey of a Bible study to be like, here's our principles of worship. And they tell the story of like. And the worship leaders went first into the battle. And so we're doing our spiritual warfare through worship. That is a little loosey goosey. Doesn't mean you're always wrong, but it means you're allowed to interpret Scripture to fit your preconceived ideas very easily. When you interpret allegorically like that. I'm not opposed to Scripture being allegorical. I'd like for the passage itself to lend itself to allegory, not for me to be pushing it. And it'd be nice if that was indicated in the New Testament somewhere that that allegorical meaning is present. I'm not one of those who thinks the Bible just has this sort of nebulous, continual, forever flexible meaning where you can just pull out stories and apply them however you want. I think that's. You don't do that with anybody else. You shouldn't do that with God where you take what they mean and just reinterpret it however you want. So principles of worship. You know, you can draw some things so God alone gets the glory. God alone is to be glorified. There are no other gods or beings that are part of the worship of Christians. I don't. You know, if an Israelite was to worship an angel along with God, then that would be a blasphemous thing. Revelation talks about this, that John bowed down to worship the angel because he was so overwhelmed with what he was saying. And the angel was like, don't do that. Worship God. God alone is to be worshiped. So there's a good principle of worship. And then this can lead us to other things. Like, are we Creating an environment in our worship or ministries where we're drawing undue attention to the individuals that are on stage. I don't want to go overboard with this, okay? I don't think it's wrong to have a person up with a microphone who's good at leading the congregation in worship. But there's a way to do it that brings pomp towards that person, presents them as the super hyper spiritual one that nobody else, you know, everybody else should try to attain to. But really, he's the. There's the guy, there's the girl there, the anointed one. And we can romanticize that role too much. That can be a problem. Is that a biblical principle or I'm just saying things. Well, actually, Paul, when he talks about even his own anointing, his own gifting, he's always very humble about it. He's very careful about it. And he goes to the Corinthians, he's like, oh, you've made me a fool. I'm becoming a fool by telling you about, like, I had a vision, you know. And he says, like, somebody I know was caught up into the third heaven. He doesn't even want to talk about it. He sort of has to because he's been forced into the situation. But there's this, like, hesitancy to do it. When Peter writes to the elders in 1 Peter, he says, I, Peter, who am a fellow elder, James, was the brother of Jesus, and he writes in his epistle, James, and he calls Jesus his Lord. Now, he could have emphasized, I'm the brother, I'm the brother. But instead he emphasizes Jesus's role over his connection to Jesus. And that's just a consistent thing. I think we see in Scripture there's other principles. You can probably have worship. Gosh, I don't want to off the cuff, try to come up with a full teaching on this off the top of my head, but I want to draw those principles from Scripture. We don't have examples of worship the way we do that do it in the modern church or even in the ancient church. You don't generally have examples of that in the New Testament. And it's not because they didn't do worship. It's because it's just not recorded for us. The few things we know is in Ephesians, it says singing to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, making music in your hearts to the Lord. That gives an idea that there was a variety of musical qualities going on in the early church that Paul was actually encouraging them to do psalms Hymns, spiritual songs. And there's debate on like, what does that mean? Psalms, Is that the book of Psalms? What are hymns then? Is that also the book of like? What are these differences between psalms, Hymns? Spiritual songs is a spiritual song, a spirit led song, like, and it's a spontaneous God's gifting this musician to be led of the spirit. And there's debate on that stuff. And it's nebulous. It's like difficult to get unanswered. And people just read their own presumptions into it sometimes. But there's that which indicates worship or song being a part of your regular Christian gathering seems like a healthy and biblical thing. We see the Song of Miriam, the Song of Deborah. We see singing happening in the Old Testament. We see that there are actually official musicians that are part of the temple. So song seems to be good. In fact, Jesus even sang. Do you know there's one verse in the Bible where Jesus actually sings right before they go out to the garden after the Last Supper, it says they sang a hymn and then they went out to the garden together. They jointly sang. So song as being part of our Christian gathering seems a biblical principle, seems a good thing. We just want to honor the Lord with it. Obviously good principles are there in the Book of Psalms. You might be like, well, there's our blueprint, the Book of Psalms. Well, psalms aren't necessarily just use these in your public worship. We even see implications of there being new compositions in the New Testament. So Philippians chapter two, there's these things that come off like they're poetry or even songs about Jesus that we see even in the New Testament. So it seems like the innovation of new music and stuff is fine. But yeah, modern Protestant worship, modern evangelical worship, I think it's fair to say that the emphasis tends to be on us or our relationship with God in a feel good sense, and tends to be missing out on some important theological principles. So maybe our worship. Maybe it'd be nice if our worship songs had the kind of theological variety that our theology actually has. Because I've noticed anecdotally that people's theology tends to follow their worship songs. So it becomes pretty important. There's more that can be said on this, but I hope I've given you some things to help you think biblically. I'm trying to make an observation grounded in a text of scripture or make a statement grounded in the text of scripture somewhere. One thing I wonder is how much is the Book of Psalms supposed to be a blueprint for modern worship music? And that I don't really have a good answer for you there. I don't think Psalms was meant to be. There are some songs they would sing, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the right answer there is. I think in many ways it's a blueprint for how we deal with the trials of life. But does that make it a blueprint for crafting verses and choruses and stuff for the modern church? Certainly it wouldn't be bad to borrow from Psalms. I'm not saying that. I just wonder how strictly it's supposed to be there. Don't know the answer to that. All right, number five. Alora says, I watched your video on Calvinism and it was amazing. But the question I still have is, does Calvinism go against God's justice? God is just, and that's a fact. Would that alone disprove Calvinism? This is a really heavy, heavy question. And a lot of people's. Those who come against Calvinism and say, I don't believe it, they will actually say that one of their major objections is that Calvinism turns God into. And this is a phrase you'll often hear is the author of evil. For those who aren't familiar, the reason why people say this is because. And there's lots of different flavors within Calvinism, okay? But depending on your view, you may be one saying that God ordains every single thing. He ordains everything, and he is somehow causally making every single thing happen. So there's no. They might say phrases like, well, there's no stray molecules or atoms in the will of God. Now, I would agree with that statement, but then we would disagree as we started to explain what that means in practical life. So if God ordains all things as some, not all Calvinists would actually affirm that view that way. But if he does, then did he not ordain some horrible abuse like of a child or something? And wouldn't that mean that God, like, created Satan, not just allowed him to fall, used the fall, knew he would fall, still made him, used it, but rather he created him to fall. That was the agenda all along. God wanted, in some sense, wanted Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit. And he is in such control that he's got a responsibility for the things that everybody's doing and they say can make God the author of evil. Why does evil exist? Because God wants it too, is their conclusion. And then, therefore, that is an immoral theology. It is an affront to the character of God. They will believe, and therefore Calvinism is false. Now, I want to have just two things I push back on that with. The first one is, I don't think you have to believe that to be Calvinist. Meaning you can actually adapt your theology of how God's sovereignty plays around with reality or interacts. Plays around is a bad term. How God's sovereignty is played out in relationship to determinism and free will and the things that happen randomly in this life. You can work on that and have different views within Calvinism on that. I think the other pushback. So you could say, hey, this is a defeater of one view of Calvinism. Not everybody's views. You could simply still. Yeah, I affirm all the same things. But I just think in relation to. Here's an example. What if you were Calvinist and you simply said, I just think humans can't of their own free will come to God because they're not. They're so depraved they would never come to God of their free will and they have to be drawn by the Holy Spirit in a regenerative way. I know I'm using big terms. Forgive me, guys, if this goes over your head. I'll move on to another question in a second. It's too much to explain every detail. But if they believe, I believe. You're regeneratively drawn by the Holy Spirit. He regenerates you and then you have faith. But that doesn't mean that every sinful act you've ever done is something that God was controlling. Now, that may not be typical Calvinism, but it would be a type of Calvinism. So the other thing, and I'll push back here, this is where I will get pushback from a lot, even in my own audience on this, at least understand my view. My thought is this. If God reveals how he works in creation, how he works in people's lives, how he works in free will, while I believe in human free will and I think I'm responsible for my evil acts, okay, I don't think God makes me do that. I think that I could have done otherwise, that God didn't. Didn't. It wasn't just ordained and I always had to do it because God ordained it. I don't think that's the case. But let's suppose I did. Let's suppose for a second I really believed that and I had that kind of version of determinism. Would I honestly, like if you lived in the world where that's really what God has done, would I honestly shake my fist to God and Say you're immoral. I would not. And I wouldn't encourage other people to do this either. Because there's a certain line you cross where you say God, if you do X, I reject you. And may I just encourage you to think about this as a humility thing. If God does something, you may not understand why it's okay. It may even look wrong to you. But you've got to know you're just this big. Your brain is this big, and you understand this much of life and you're concluding that God, the almighty, holy, righteous one, is actually immoral and you're the one that has better moral judgment than him. Him. And this is where I would say, slow down. Find some other reason to disagree with Calvinism. Don't do a thing where you say, if God does X, I reject God. How would you say if God does X? I am thoroughly confused. Yes, I'm struggling with that. No, I'm not okay with that. But I will still say, I know you're holy. I just don't understand how this works right now. That's a healthier thing for you to do. That's for your own soul's sake. So I never go against Calvinism with God's the author of evil type stuff, because I think it breeds in a person's heart a willingness to reject God if you don't understand what he's doing in the world. And that is a very scary quality to have as a person. I've seen plenty of people walk away from their proclamation of Christ because they have that mentality. If God does something and it seems horrible and evil and wrong to my mind, I know that I just don't have the whole story. Now, that sounds to especially the skeptical atheist. That sounds like, oh, you're such a child. You're such a fool. It's so dumb. Think for yourself, Mike. Know this. This is the result of me thinking for myself and me saying it is folly for the creature to say to the Creator, I know better than you, you did something wrong. That is always a wrong decision. That is always a bad idea. It is always folly. And if you're there shaking your fist at God, if you hypothetically are, you will always be shown to be wrong. It may take time. Maybe it'll be when you stand before God and you know an example of this. Job, the Book of Job. Job feels wronged. Job feels that God's actions were wrong, that what God did was wrong. Job doesn't understand it. He wants God to answer his questions and he keeps ranting I have questions for God, but I can't talk to him, but he won't talk to me. But God won't interact with me. Who am I? I'm nobody, but I just have these issues and stuff. Did I not serv. And his friends are like, job, this is because you sinned. This is happening because you must have done something wrong. And that's not true either. And Job's like, ah, that's not what happened. And if only I could just talk to God. And finally God shows up at the end of Job. And in this ironic moment, God does irony a lot. He says to Job, as he's there now, presented, he goes, sit down and I will ask you questions. Do you know that Job does not ask God a single question? When God shows up, he doesn't ask him a single question. And all he says after all the stuff he's gone through is, I've heard of you with this hearing of the ear, but now I've seen you. And I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes because I talked about things that were way over my head and I didn't even know what I was getting into. This is always going to be the real response of the person who one day stands before God. And they used to say, God, you're evil for doing this. They will always be like, I was a fool. And I'm just going to say it now, okay? If my heart doesn't respect God for what he's doing, doesn't believe in God for what he's doing, I'm being a fool because of that principle I have. I will not reject a Calvinist view because it makes God evil. Because what I'm doing is. I'm saying if God does this thing I don't like, I'm going to call him evil. And that's a scary place to be. So, yeah, if Calvinism is true, I want to embrace it and not reject it because I feel like morally superior. I don't think it's true though. But anyway, question number six. We always say we don't deserve. This is an anonymous question. We always say we don't deserve anything from God. But how biblical is this? Don't children deserve a degree of love from their parents? Yeah, so that's a great question, a difficult question, but a good question, I think. Do children deserve things from their parents? Yeah, I mean, I don't know how the best way to word this is, but I like to put it this way is parents are morally obligated to their Children like they're your kid. And you have a moral obligation to provide for them and to protect them and to care for them and to teach them and to do what you can to raise them up. There's a moral obligation so that a deadbeat dad is being immoral in a huge and important way in his life. This is implied in Scripture where it says if a man doesn't take care of his own household, that he's worse than an unbeliever. So there's like a moral obligation there that we have to take care of our families, our kids in particular. There's also a moral obligation to take care of your parents as you get older. There's something we lose in our inner Western culture. But it seems there in scripture, where First Timothy 5 talks about widows and how they should be taken care of by their relatives, especially members of their own house. So, yeah, there's moral obligations between family members. Does that extend to God? There is a difference between God and his relationship to you versus your father and his relationship to you. And you might say, but wait a minute, God's my father. God's a father. Well, God's your father through adoption. He is not your father. He's not your dad, and he doesn't have the kind of relationship with you that a father does until you are adopted in Christ. And the Bible makes a big deal about this. Now, the Pope doesn't do this. The Pope says we're all children of God. But is the Pope even Catholic anymore? So the concept of adoption is huge in the Scriptures. You are adopted into his kingdom. You are, according to Ephesians, children of wrath, and then you become children of God. In fact, one John talks about this. It says, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called children of God. This adoption to become children of God is a huge issue, and so will God. Does God have a fatherly obligation to take care of his children? Yes, but you're not his children until you receive Christ. Now, does he have an obligation as Creator to do something for his creation? That's a lot fishier to say. I mean, what kind of obligation does God have to do for his creations? It's not a father, son, father, daughter relationship. I'm hesitant to give God obligations to me in the first place. The Scripture talks about man as though he's a fairly lowly thing and talks about the kindness of God as though it's a grace. It's his grace. Now, I would never. As a. As a. If you're a father and you feed your kids, you don't go, do you like my grace? Are you enjoying my grace over there? I gave you some food. There's dinner. More grace for you. You don't call it grace if it's feeding your kids. But God's the rain that falls upon us, the air that we breathe, these things are looked at as like something we have to stop and be grateful for and be thankful for to God. It's not looked at as obligation on God's part. So I hesitate to create moral obligations on the part of God towards the creatures, towards creation, and that this can be a problem because it sets us up for doing the thing I talked about in the last question. I like when the questions randomly tied together, which is shaking our fist at God. You should have done this, you should have done that. I have these demands on you. Who can make demands of God? So he gives me a soul, he gives me a life. And then I look up at him and think, but you also have to give me a better family environment, you know, you also have to give me more physical capabilities and less disease and less hardship and less of this and all that. And I think that that is a dangerous place for a heart to go. So I would counsel people to watch out for that. Yeah, but God's still loving and God's still good. And he gives each soul opportunity to receive the knowledge of God and to put faith in Christ and to be saved. And he does so much for us. It's not like he doesn't do anything for us. But oftentimes is the last thing I'll say about this. Oftentimes what God does for us is seen in the context of eternity and not just in the moment. In the moment you might be like, but I'm suffering and all this stuff's going on. But if you do trust in God, if you do put faith in Christ, then God is giving you eternal life and he's giving you so much more than any father's ever given their kid. It's just not happening in the moment. I know that this discussion I just had, this question I just answered raises other questions. I know, but what about the people who've never heard? I'm sure there's a bunch of people right now thinking, what about people who've never heard the gospel? I have a video on that. I'll link it down below. You guys can check it out. I'll put it in at the end of the stream. I'll put it into the comments. Maybe one of the mods. Mods. Could one of you guys put in the video on what happens to people who don't ever hear the gospel and yeah, that'll be helpful as a follow up. I hope I gave you guys at least something to move you forward in answering this question. All right, question number. What are we on? 7. 7. Why was Jesus atoning sacrifice on Passover instead of Yom Kippur, the Day of atonement? I've looked everywhere but can't find an answer. Thanks. Let's theorize about this. Okay? This is conjecture. This is entering into the realm of theories. I have a video I will link down below that is, I think, an awesome video. Not because of me in any way, shape or form, but because this subject is so cool. There are so many ways that Jesus dying on Passover that it makes sense. And it's so many ways. It's so intricate, the details, the specifics. And it's not hard to see why Jesus died on Passover. When you look at the sacrificial lamb and you look at how the lamb was to represent how bringing people out of Egypt, you know, and God starting up a new people, a new nation, right? And you're going to be part of it if you, if you partake of this offering. It had to be a spotless lamb. The people had to lay hands on it. This is like a transfer of sin in a sense. It has to be like the spotless lamb. They all lay hands on it. They slaughter it after it's inspected by the priest. Jesus was inspected in his trials and he was found sinless. And the spiritual leaders would inspect the lambs and confirm that they were good to go. So many aspects of what Jesus did connect with Passover in so many ways. I got a video on it. It's like, I don't know, it's like two dozen or three dozen ways that Passover is important in the pictures of how it represents Christ. But here's the question. Why doesn't the day. Why not the day of atonement? There's another holiday called Yom Kippur, and it's like the National Day of Atonement, the day where there's one big sacrifice that's meant to nationally restore the people to God. Wouldn't that have been the perfect day for Jesus Crucifixion? And in a sense it would work, but there could be some reasons why it's not. Now I'm going to give you conjecture, conjecture. The Day of atonement is Israel as a nation getting right With God. Eschatologically, there's a fun word, eschatological ology. There is a future time coming where Israel is going to get right with God. Romans 9, 10 and 11 talk about this, that Israel. I believe this is the correct eschatology. Maybe I'm wrong. Just know that that's possible. This is conjecture realm, right? But my view of eschatology is that Israel is one day going to have great revival. There's going to be a massive turning of the people of Israel over to Jesus, to their Messiah. And that is more what the day of atonement would look like. Day of atonement actually includes a time of repentance. So Israel nationally, it's the only feast of Israel where they're required to actually repent and fast. So the only one in all the calendar of Israel. Now other ones are feast days, celebrations. This one's like a repentance. So they're going to do that now. That's the day of atonement. This is I think maybe future fulfilled in some way. If it is fulfilled. Super conjecture moment, right? Passover was fulfilled in Jesus. Like that was Pentecost, another Jewish holiday that God gave them was fulfilled when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. There does seem to be a fulfillment thing with Israel's feasts. And so day of atonement I think will be fulfilled in perhaps a future time. Israel in connection with Israel repenting and returning to the Lord and receiving Christ as Messiah. I will link the video. Maybe one of the mods can, if you haven't already put it in the live chat video on the how Passover connects to Jesus, How Jesus fulfilled Passover, something like that. I'll put it in the video description later on. Question number eight. Liam Baker says, I'm 17 and I have a huge desire to go into pastoral ministry. I feel called and equipped for this. But I hear a lot of people say that God has to speak to you directly to do this is my burden for this. Enough. Liam, let me tell you a story from my own life. So I went to the Calvary Chapel School of ministry for two years from 2006 to 2004 to 2006. So this is a little ways ago. It's like it's a few months ago really. And I went to this school because I felt so unequipped. And I was actually had just been starting to teach in my local church now. I had taught Bible studies numbers of times over the years, but I was being given like a regular position to teach the young Adults and it just, I just felt under equipped. So I went to the school because I couldn't afford anything and it was so cheap and it was great. It was very, very glad I went for those two years. It's closed now. They don't have a school there anymore. That school ministry shut down. Carl Westerland was the guy that ran it and when he retired it just kind of like, kind of wavered for a bit and then it ended. But I thought it was very good for me now. While I was there, there were guests that were. Every Friday they'd have a guest pastor, missionary, somebody would show up and talk to us about their experiences. And, and I heard so many times, if you're going to do this, you better know that God's called you. You better know that you know that, you know that God's called you, that if you, if you've been part of Calvary Chapel, you've heard, you know that, you know that, you know you've heard that before, you better know that, you know that, you know that God's called you. And I remember hearing this and never in my life knowing that God called me to do pastoral ministry. It wasn't just me. I think that was the norm for people I had seen. I think that in some cases pastors who want to do pastoral ministry, they hear this and they have to psychologically whip themselves up in order to believe that they know that, they know that, they know that God's called them. The reason why people put this warning out, why pastors and other leaders say you have to know that you know the reason why they're doing this, is because they have seen the hardships of ministry. They know the difficulties of it. They know how tempted they have been to quit the themselves. They know that it is not like a normal other job. Most of the time it's a very stressful and very challenging job. And so they'll say things like, if you can think of anything else to do, you should do that. Because they're just trying to like, help people realize that they don't come into it with some sort of fantasy, some sort of high fantasy. Pastoral ministry, if you do it well, is going to be difficult and it's going to be challenging and it's going to tax you and you're going to have times, at least in my experience, where you literally just lose sleep because you're involved in what someone else is going through. You'll have times where you minister to somebody for years and you try to bless them and seek to draw them closer to Christ. And sure, you fail in ways that you're doing it and you're not perfect at it for sure. You do things where you're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. That was a bad leadership thing I did. There's going to be times where you do things like that. And then after years of investing in somebody, they just go around badmouthing you to everybody they know because they got hurt and they looked at you like on this pillar you never should have been on, and now they despise you for it. And it is sadly true that the people who looked up to you the most in ministry are often the people who hate you the most later on because they had an unrealistic holy version of you. Now they have an unrealistic, evil version of you. And then they. You're going to experience this stuff. There's like, lots of things you'll experience in ministry, but you'll also experience getting to bless others in their walk with God, getting to be part of the Lord, growing them closer to Christ, and investing in their lives and in the kingdom in ways that are very powerful. I could just go on and on. There's all sorts of struggles that are going to come and challenges. And so when people make a big deal about you better know that you're called. They're possibly just trying to help people to not get into this if you're not going to stick through it. And from my perspective, you just don't know what's going to happen. That's just the reality of it. What helped me out was a scripture. Let me share it with you. Just a second. This is what helped me out. Know this, that the word bishop here, it's the same as for elder pastor, that office in the church where you're doing the teaching and preaching and praying and that sort of stuff. Okay, so Paul writes 1 Timothy 3. This is a faithful saying. If a man desires the position of a bishop, right? That's you here. I'm going to go to esv. If a man desires the office of an overseer, that's a pastor. That is what that is. This is not like. You don't have pastor. Then overseers are up here. That's not biblical. That's a later church development. He desires a noble task. That's it. What I could tell you, Liam, you're like, hey, I desire this. You're desiring a noble task. What you're desiring is a noble task, which is, in a sense, complimenting you that what you're Desiring is to do something good. But it's also telling you that this thing that you'd like to do is noble. And it requires nobility in the classic sense, not caste system, but you to be a man of noble character. So am I called to do ministry? I don't know. Do you desire to do ministry? Yeah. Well then, here are the requirements. Therefore, Liam must be above reproach, the husband of one wife. You can be single if you're faithful in your singleness, but you have to be faithful in your family, in your sexuality, but also in your relationships with family first, sober minded, a man of self control. You must be a respectable man. You need to be hospitable. You have to be able to teach. That's an important capacity you have to have. This is the only one that's actually a skill. The rest are just character qualities. Not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle. Not quarrelsome, a man who can stand his ground, but a man who doesn't pick fights, not a lover of money. You must manage your own household well, with all dignity, keeping your children submissive. For if someone does not know, if Liam, for instance, does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He can't be a recent convert. Are you recently saved or you're very young? It's going to probably take a while. I would start on the path of character now. And don't worry about being ordained for quite a while. He may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. People who get raised up early because they have very obvious skills and giftings often end up crashing and burning the hardest. An example of this is Rob Bell. Rob Bell was really good at drawing crowds, really good at influencing people. And he ended up crashing and burning because he didn't have the doctrinal stability that he needed to go the distance. So he got pushed up and lifted up recklessly because of his skills. But able to teach is not the only requirement. It's all those other things as well. And moreover, he must be thought of by outsiders, thought of well by outsiders, non Christians, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into the snare of the devil. Do you get the idea that the pastors who say, like you have to know, know, know that you're called, and the APostle Paul in 1 Timothy 3, they all have the same awareness, which is this is an important and heavy thing and there are traps, there is the danger of the condemnation of the enemy, there is the danger of the Snare of the enemy. There are these dangers that you must be aware of. And the way that some have thought they can police against pastors getting involved who shouldn't is by telling them, you have to know God told you to do it. That's not what scripture says. Scripture says you need to be a man of nobility. Here's the requirements. Liam, you can pursue pastoral ministry if you fit these requirements. If you don't, you shouldn't. It is an option. It is not something you have to have God personally reveal to you. That is just not. There's no biblical warrant to say that it's great if he does. If he doesn't, it's not a hindrance. Andrew Andrews says Matthew 4, 18:22 and John 1 and I'll give you the verses later, seem to have two very different accounts of how Andrew and Peter were called to follow Christ. Can you please explain this? Thank you for your time in ministry. Off the top of my head, I don't know what you're referring to, so I'm going to read the verses on screen with you guys. Keep in mind, I don't know these questions until I read them. The only the first question I know ahead of time so I can prepare something as I hit the button to go live. I already have something to talk about, but everything else I'm reading live with you guys. So let's read through these and maybe I'll have a response, maybe I won't and I'll just move on. So hopefully I can help you out. Matthew 4, 18:22 and then we'll look at John 1 and we're looking at Andrew and Peter and how they're called to follow Christ. While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers. Simon. Oh, I kind of know this. Who was called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea. For they were fishermen. And he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men immediately. Keep this in mind. They left their nets and followed him. And going on from there, he saw two other brothers. And it talks about James and I should keep reading. James and the son of Zebedee and John with his brother in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets. And he called them immediately. They left their boat and their father and followed him. So we have leaving nets, we have leaving boat and Father, and then they follow Jesus. All right, now you have the passage in John 1. This is earlier on. Earlier on, because this is that this is the day after Christ's baptism So this is very, very early on. They haven't really met Jesus. They may have seen him get baptized, but they haven't really interacted with him much, or so it seems. So John 1:35. The next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, behold the Lamb of God. This is so cool. It's so amazing. I mean, this just the idea. This amazes me. We talked about Passover and behold the Lamb. That's just. We could talk about that for a long time. Two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. So they now do they follow Jesus. They literally follow Jesus. They start walking behind him, follow him. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking? And they said to him, rabbi, which means teacher. So they're acknowledging his position as a teacher, and they say, where are you staying? Which what I've read is that this phrase, where are you staying? The implication is, can we come and spend time being discipled by you? We would like to go to where you're going to be so that when you teach, we can receive your teaching. Right? Hey, teacher, where are you teaching? Is kind of what they're asking here. And he says, come and you will see. Which is him saying, yep, come on, I'll teach you. You can join you. It was not normal to just follow a rabbi like back then. You would actually ask, can I start following you? So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. For it was about the 10th hour. One of the two who heard John speak and follow Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. And then he goes and he finds his brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we found the Messiah, which means Christ. He brought him to Jesus. And Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of John. You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter. Then he goes to Galilee. Jesus goes to Galilee. And that's actually where they are when they're casting nets. They're in Galilee. And then he calls them away. So how are these two different? The first one, John 1, is a reference. It seems to me this is how I put it together. John 1 is their initial introduction to Jesus and their transferal from John as the one they were focusing on receiving from to Jesus as the one they were focusing on receiving from. Hey, we're going to go sit and I want to learn from this rabbi and attend his teachings. It was later that they went into what you might call Vocational ministry. So while they're learning from Jesus, they're still part of the family business, the fishing business. They still go fishing, they still get out on the water, they still do these things. It wasn't like we often think, oh, they saw Jesus and immediately they were with him 247 for three years. But rather they saw Jesus. They transferred from John to Jesus as their spiritual leader, and then later they move out of vocational ministry. So that is in Matthew 4, which is why I highlighted. He says they're fishing and immediately they leave their nets. I'm leaving the family business, at least for the season. Right. And then immediately John and James, they left the boat and their father moving out of that vocation into like, not just sitting under Jesus teaching, but like being Jesus's full time disciples. Now we're full time. In other words. I've done ministry for many years, but for plenty of those years I wasn't full time. And for many of the years I was full time, there was a difference, but I was doing ministry. So, yeah, I look at it as a vocational change. All right, let's go to the next question. Number 10 from Susan Tabloom, maybe guessing how you pronounce that. Hey, Mike, thanks for all you do. You're very, very welcome. What does it mean to be fishers of men? How do all these connect to the Q and A? We'll just take questions from the live chat. Okay. What does it mean to be fishers of men? A leader at my seeker church said it meant to use bait to go get them. Not sure if this is what Jesus meant. Thanks. Yeah, okay, let's think about that for a second. Man, I wish I could have, like sat in and heard this leader and what they said about bait. What was the bait they were using? What do they mean by this? So in the passage we already just read, they're literally fishing to get fish. And he says, I will make you fishers of men. That's a vocational calling. He's like, I'm calling you out of the vocation of fishing, and I'm calling you into the vocation of evangelism and discipleship ministry. Full time ministry, where they're just getting taken care of by other means. Peter briefly went back to fishing after the death of Christ Resurrection, but that's pretty much it. They mostly just did these things. Maybe he had days where he went out and went fishing with somebody. I'm sure Paul the Apostle was a tent maker too. But the concept of being fishers of men is you guys are going to Cast out and gather in fish. Now, how did they fish for this bait analogy to work, can we add another layer onto this and be biblically faithful and say that when Jesus said, I'm making you fishers of men, he was also implying that you would use bait in your evangelism. And then bait is whatever this pastor, this seeker sensitive church was saying, this is the bait. Whether or not it's fair, it's good for them to use whatever method they're using. Let's just ask if it, if it even works biblically to make this connection. And I think the answer is going to be, going to be no. It is true that sometimes they would fish with like hooks. That does happen, right, Jesus? When paying the taxes, they cast, I believe, a hook and they draw one fish out of the water. So it had a pole and a hook and a fish and a line. Draw the fish out and there's a coin in the fish's mouth and they use it to pay. But Peter and these other guys, they did commercial fishing. They were doing it for a family business and they did not use hooks, they used nets. This is why they left their nets to follow Jesus. We read in John chapter one, and they left the boat and their father and they were there mending their nets. So nets don't use bait. Nets just. You just throw a net out and it falls on top of the fish. So the primary way in which they fish is not a bait method. So trying to say that Jesus, when he says, I make you fishers of men when they're using nets in that exact encounter, to say that Jesus is implying we use bait to hook people into the gospel is not biblical and is not true. Now can it be true that you can use some other means as you're in your evangelism? Are there a variety of ways to do evangelism? Can you do different things and you can call that bait? You can. But this is obviously a precarious project. There's the old phrases, what you win them with is what you win them to. And sometimes what happens is if the gospel is the hook and the bait is there to make it taste good, what often can happen is there ends up being bait with no hook. Because the gospel itself is offensive and it will drive people away from your church. It will shrink your numbers. Jesus himself shrunk his numbers when he talked about certain things. And it's just the reality that that's okay. It's okay to share the truth of Christ in ways that even shrink the numbers of your church. This is probably important to do, but churches can become too interested. I don't want to say it so crudely, but too interested in numbers. Too interested in numbers. So that the driving force is not the kingdom of Christ and the gospel, but the perceived prosperity of our fellowship in numbers, in vibe and feel and reputation, that sort of thing. And that's a dangerous thing that leads to problems where as time goes on, you become more and more bait and less and less hook. So, yeah, that analogy doesn't work. That pastor is abusing the text. Doesn't mean he's a heretic, but he's abusing the text of scripture. There clearly to say something that I don't think it can say in the passage. And if you look at the book of Acts and you look at the way that preaching is done, does it use the type of bait your preacher friend, there's pastor that was talking, does it use the kind of bait they're saying we should use? Because Paul gets up and he just like straight up tells people the gospel. Peter gets up and in his gospel presentation he like accuses people of crucifying the Lord. He's like, you crucified the Lord, you need to repent. Is that considered taboo? Like, you can't say that in this seeker environment. If you can't tell people they're sinners in need of a savior, that's not bait. That's an abandonment of the gospel. That's a very important thing to be aware of. But anyways, yeah, an interesting book to check out would be Hell's Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort, where he talks about some of this that I think is a good corrective to bait without hooks that we do see sometimes in seeker sensitive type churches. Yeah. So you guys, hey, that's it for today. I'll give you a quick update and then I'll pray. But I like to sometimes give you guys a quick update on things I'm working on now because I'm spending so much time in preparation for video content that sometimes it helps just keep you guys updated on what I'm doing. I initially started looking into a guy named Sean Bowles who's basically a fake prophet and spiritual abuser who was not properly being dealt with by those who could have exposed him and chose not to, to the harm of a bunch of individuals, including people questioning their faith and stuff like that. I started looking into that and then that research snowballed into a whole bunch of other stuff and a whole bunch of other names and a whole bunch of other people and in coming days, I'm going to be looked at as a heresy hunter. I'm just warning you now, some of you are going to be like, I liked Mike until 2025. I don't like him anymore. That's okay. I think this needs to be done. And I'm going to be exposing several predators or spiritual abusers that are in the body of Christ at least visibly, and are not being properly dealt with by those who have the ability to warn others and won't do it. And so I'm doing research on that stuff, and it's going to be coming out. I'm gathering evidence and looking, talking to witnesses, and that stuff's going to come out. So pray for me that I have wisdom as I handle all that stuff. I appreciate your encouragement, your help in that, to me, to have wisdom, because it's precarious. There's a danger in becoming a mob with a pitchfork who is just trying to find another leader and be like another one stab. And that's like the agenda is just to take out people because you're mad because of the collective abuse that you've heard about or experienced. But then on the other side, there really is a problem of major leaders, especially in the charismatic church, I'll be honest. At least that's what I'm emphasizing and focusing on at the moment. Who systematically will not hold accountable some of these people who are predators in their midst. Leaders who they have on stage and they put their arm around and then they find out the guy's actually a predator and they just do damage control instead of protecting the sheep, warning everybody that anybody under his influence who's been hurt, please reach out to us. We want to help you. How about telling them that this guy's prophecies turn out to be fake like Sean Bulls, who is, I'm convinced, was using Facebook and other social media and researching on people and pretending God was giving them special insights. Oh, I know your address and your phone number and your grandma's maiden name. And it was all just stuff he got off the Internet and he was pretending it was God, which is blasphemous and disgusting and horrible. And Bethel Church in Redding, California, Bill Johnson, Chris Valentin, they knew about it and they did not warn a single person who didn't have power. Not a single person. They didn't warn Jubilee, a lady who Sean told to marry her boyfriend, and then he became abusive to the point of almost murder. Didn't warn her, just let her go on and do it. It infuriates you to think about it. So for those of you who will look back at me and say, mike, I don't respect you anymore. I just like, teach Bible studies, but don't confront false teachers and abuses in the church, then I say, hey, I'm glad I got to minister to you for a while and we'll have to part ways. I'm going to be doing this and it's not going to be pretty, so appreciate your prayers. Let's pray. Father, we ask for help and wisdom for me that I could navigate these issues and the spiritual complexities of the stuff and victims and their stories and individuals. But we pray that the end result would be I could be one voice among many, many who helps cause grassroots change from within churches. That congregants that fellow leaders, underling leaders that they would simply not tolerate anymore the failure to properly handle abuse, to properly handle fake prophets and fake prophecies and fake wonders and signs, that they would no longer tolerate those things. And that whether or not the people in power want to continue at business as usual, that they won't be able to. In Jesus name, amen. All right, that's coming. It'll come in the days to come, months to come. I'm working on it all right now. And that's it. So, yeah, God bless you guys. Really appreciate your encouragement. I'm grateful that I got to do this ministry and I'm praying for wisdom. We may start a new ministry just to meet these needs and these purposes, not to stop doing Bible Thinker. I'm going to keep doing that for sure. I just don't know what this looks like moving forward. This is going to be a big deal and we're going to keep pushing forward with it. So, yeah, that is it.