← BibleThinker
BibleThinker
Is JD Vance right? 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 43)
01:17:25
Today's Time Stamps: 1. 0:20 {JD Vance’s Christian Concept} Is JD Vance’s “Christian concept” of love truly Christian?2. 28:00 {Resisting Temptation in the Workplace} What advice would you give to somebody who feels vulnerable to worldliness in the workplace? Not only do I spend most of my time there, but all of my coworkers knew me pre-salvation. It’s a struggle.3. 33:06 {Should Children be Taught about Hell?} What should children who would go to Heaven if they die be taught about Hell, if anything? It may make them afraid that they would go there. 4. 36:06 {The Unsaved: Prayer Priorities?} Is it appropriate to pray for the physical healing of an unsaved person? Isn’t it more reasonable to pray that they would come to faith in Christ? What is the "prayer priority" in this situation?5. 38:51 {Specific Moment of Salvation?} Do you have to have a specific date of salvation, or can salvation be a gradual thing/realization? This has been a debate within our current Bible study.6. 43:17...
Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:02]
A
JD Vance recently came out and said something. We're going to talk about that and whether it's biblical or not. At least a short answer. Believe it or not, I'll give a short answer for once. My name is Mike Winger. I'm here to help you learn to think biblically about hopefully everything, or at least everything we can. At least that I can. And the first question today is based on the following clip where JD Vance was being interviewed and he said something was a Christian principle and it relates to Donald Trump and their agenda with how they're going to run the country. Now, I don't, it's not like I don't have opinions. I have plenty of opinions about Trump and about the things that are going on in the US and my position is a little bit more complicated than like full throated approval or full throated disapproval or something. However, I'm gonna try to not be partisan here. This is not meant to be an analysis of Donald Trump or J.D. vance or their policies. This is not an analysis of that. This is an analysis of the claim that the thing he talks about here is a Christian concept. That's what I'm interested in. That's what I care about and that is what this clip is about. Let's listen in and then we'll talk about it.
- [01:13]
B
But there's this old school, and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country and. And then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept America first. It doesn't mean you hate anybody else. It means that you have leadership. And President Trump is, has been very clear about this. That puts the interests of American citizens first.
- [01:57]
A
All right, we're going to talk about this. We're going to go into it in some detail. This concept of this, like order of who you love and that, that is what he said is a Christian concept, that this is a Christian idea. And the short answer is this, is that he's sort of right. He's sort of right. He's right in a lot of ways. But there's some missing elements that are really important. If we're going to have a Christian concept in place and call it a Christian concept and not just say that it has similarities to one. So let's talk about it. Can we biblically say this, that you should put, say, your family first in the sense of the people who you care for. If you have five starving people that are on your street and one of them is your child and one of them is your next door neighbor, another one is maybe just a citizen from America from some other community, maybe one's from your local community, but they're not your neighbor. And then a fifth one is some foreigner from another country who's just on your street and you know they're starving, but you've only got enough food for one person. Who do you prioritize? And I think the biblical answer is definitely your child. You prioritize your own family first here, not because of pride or arrogance, but because you have a sphere of responsibility to take care of your family. And then you prioritize that. Then you do other things, like even ministry after you take care of your. The needs of your family. I say the needs of your family. I don't want this to get blown out of proportion as to be the prioritizing. Like your family being rich and wealthy and in great condition while other people are destitute and starving around you. That's not what I'm talking about. But first, Timothy 5:18 talks about this. Let's put the Scripture up. It says here, for the Scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it when it treads out the grain. This is not the verse I was trying to find. 5:13, was it? I'm trying to remember now off the top of my head. I'm close, I'm close. This is a discussion about them taking care of widows. There it is. 5 8. I don't know why I had the other verse there. If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for the members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. That is, it's not unchristian to take care of the needs of your own household. In fact, it's so Christian that it's considered. Imagine how extreme it has to be, as Paul's writing this, the apostle who's laying out Christian theology for us to believe how extreme it has to be for people who refuse to provide for their own relatives and especially their members of their own house, their kids, their spouse, they're not going to take care of them. He says, you're worse than an unbeliever you've denied the faith. So family, the idea of family first is a solidly biblical concept. It doesn't mean you can disregard hate, not care about people outside of your family. But it does mean you have a priority, a requirement to take care of your family before you take care of others. This is a really big deal in Christian theology. This is a solidly Christian idea. Absolutely. And you could say this goes on also to elder requirements in First Timothy as well. We have elder requirements and it talks about how has to be a good husband and he has to be a good father if he's going to be an elder in the church. That's a requirement for pastors. Elder and pastor synonymous terms. For the sake of just a generality here. You have to be a good husband, good father if you're going to be able to be a pastor. Because family in a sense here has got to come first. You better take care of those people in your household. When Paul talks about people pursuing riches, there's a hint of this. Who do you provide for first? Is there a priority or is it like everybody equal? He says that people should labor hard and then take care of their needs, but then they should work hard so they can save up money so that they can be generous and give to others. The implication is that you do take care of the needs of yourself and your household and then you give to other people. We're not doing this universal Christian vow of poverty thing. Some individuals can do that and they can honor Christ while doing that. But to make that a Christian rule is not a biblical rule. Instead, the implication is he wants hard working people who make more than enough money to take care of their own needs and then provide for and generously give to others instead of just saving $10 million in the bank for themselves. That seems to be the biblical standard there. But then like these spheres, J.D. vance is talking about these spheres and there's debates on X and other social media right now about this is called the Ordo Amoris, the Order of Love. And it goes back to Augustine and all this. But in these debates people are just ignoring scripture a lot of the time. And I'm not interested in somebody trying to summarize what they think Augustine would have said on a topic where he would have written in detail and a lot of nuance and all this other stuff. I'm really interested in what scripture says about the topic. So we're going to focus on that, not this other stuff. Yeah, I'm aware of it. But you'd be Surprised how easily I can simply say, just go to the Bible, and that will be seen as a liability to some and it'll be seen as a smart move to the people who understand where I'm coming from. So, neighbors. Do you take care of neighbors? Yeah, you take care of neighbors. Scripture does talk about that. You can push back on this and say, love your neighbor as yourself. Isn't that proof that you can't have priorities? You are to love your neighbor as yourself. That's true. But that doesn't mean you can't also have priorities. That this doesn't then fall in line with the idea that you take care of your own children before you take care of your neighbors. And the order that Jesus gives in this very concept of love your neighbor as yourself. He gives an order of loving God first, then loving your neighbor as yourself. And of course, the response. We'll talk about this in a minute. The Good Samaritan response. That's the pushback. That's where I see all the progressive Christians are putting up articles about J.D. vance, and they're saying Jesus did the opposite of this. That was a quote, the opposite of the priority. So in other words, you take care of strangers first and you take care of your family last. That would be their philosophy, which Paul then says, they're worse than an unbeliever. If that's actually your teaching and you say that Jesus taught it, that's pretty bad. That's actually really, really bad. You can have hypothetical love for distant people you never meet. That is really just a way of hating the people that you do know. That's a dangerous thing people do fall into. And it is something that seems common in the more progressive and liberal spaces, to be honest. So you take care of your neighbor. Yep, you do love your neighbor. You do care for them. There's plenty of Old Testament verses that talk about this as well. And you have your community, you have your country. You have these other circles when it comes to loving your country, loving your country seems like an extension of loving your. Your neighbors. It doesn't have to be pride and arrogance in a negative sense. It can be a care for your community. I care for my street, the people that live on my street. Hi. Want to hang out? Maybe she'll join us. We'll see. Moxie hasn't been on in months. Can you come up here? Maybe she's thinking about it. Anyway, let me move forward because I said I wasn't going to take too long on this, so I don't want to spend too much time on this. I'll come back to this in a second. But basically the idea of a government caring for its citizens seems consistent with the prophets of the Old Testament. When you look at the actual judgments God brings on Israel and on foreign nations and you look at and you actually read these things that Isaiah says when he goes through country after country and all this stuff, it does seem like, well, God is rebuking them for not taking care of the people in their midst as a higher priority, it seems, than taking care of strangers. Now there's a category that JD Vance never talks about here and it's really relevant to current issues about immigration. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But it is true that countries have a priority to take care of their own citizens above their priority to take care of the citizens of other countries. And if everybody obeyed God in this, you'd have every country really taking care of their own people. You wouldn't just have this idea of neglect your people, take care of others. That of course, is not biblical any more than a guy neglecting his kids to take care of some stranger's kids is a biblical thing. So Jesus also elevates how we handle the rest of the world. JD Vance said it in kind of a chill method. If you're going to call it a Christian principle, let's deal with the Christian view of it, right? And he was like, and then you can prioritize the rest of the world. The way that Jesus talks about love, every one of these categories gets an incredible amount of love and concern and care, a sense of self identification, hey, if I was in your shoes, what would I want someone to do for me? That kind of attitude that we'd have towards others. So some people use this idea of prioritize the people you know and the people close to you and the people in your community and stuff. They use that idea as a way of having disdain and bitterness towards people that are outside of your community. And I do see this online. I've seen this rising up, especially on X where you. The thing about X isn't that it's a more toxic environment. I think it's that it's more. There's more interaction between people. Whereas the other social media platforms will typically force you to only interact with people who already agree with you. So you just don't know that on that same social media, there's a whole bubble of people that disagree with you that you're just not interacting with. And X allows this interaction. So you see that stuff On X. I sound like I'm being an apologist for X. No, I want people to realize that this is not an X issue. This is a human issue, and it applies to real lives. But we definitely see this. This idea of I'm going to prioritize my kids as a way of disguising, I despise those other people over there. And that's never a Christian perspective. You can't have that attitude of bitterness and hatred and stuff. And you can think of the story of, like, Jonah, how God's trying to get Jonah to care about these foreigners who are cruel, oppressive, hateful people. And he still wants Jonah to care for them because God loves them. That's a good thing to know. As Christians, we see this with Jesus going to Samaria, and when he's there, he's going to pass through Samaria. They find out he's on his way to Jerusalem. There's cool theological stuff that's going on there, and they go, ah, you can't pass through, so they have to go around. And the disciples, James and John, are like, hey, shall we call down lightning like Elijah? Shall we call down fire from heaven upon them? And. And Jesus says, you don't even know what spirit you're of. So it's one thing to say you can prioritize your kids or something like that, but it's something else to have this sort of bitter animosity towards the outside group, like the Samaritans, who were weird, okay? And there was a lot of tension and a lot of ickiness between the different communities. They could all tell stories of how bad they were to each other, and yet Jesus wants to evangelize them. Jesus wants the best for them. And so we should have this loving, gracious, kind, hopeful attitude towards people outside of our country. Now, let me cover a few more things. I'm trying to move as quick as I can, as quick as I can, which is, of course, not that quick, quicker than normal. Okay? So J.D. vance's statement, I think, that I played earlier, was missing a few items. One of the things it was missing was putting God first. This is not a small thing to miss. If you're gonna call it a Christian principle. You have to start with, love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That is the greatest commandment. And then love your neighbor as yourself. Second. That's second. Now, that encompasses all of humanity, that you love them and deeply care for them. But God is first. God is the top priority. It's not family. And then these content. It's God. And then there's circles that come out from that. That would be a more accurate way to look at it. And it's. I don't know if J.D. vance would be bold enough to say this out loud or if it's, to me, a manifestation of the danger of cultural Christianity, which I've been warning people about. It's rising up. You're going to see more and more cultural Christianity and there's going to be times where for you to stand on a good Christian value is going to be seen as inconvenient for the movement forward of the conservative party. And while there's many times where Christian values will align with the conservative view of things and the Republican view of things, there's going to be times where you'll, you'll say something that just outs you as someone who's really a citizen of a different kingdom and who has a different priority than them. And it's going to cause tension and problems. And so the best thing in their minds that you could do is just be quiet about all that stuff. Just be quiet about the Jesus focus. Give them a little acknowledgement here and there, but do it like old school Bible belt style. You just kind of acknowledge it and then move on. You don't actually make Jesus Lord. Your interactions here, that I think is going to be happening more and more. So God first. That would be the Christian principle to say if you want to talk about Christ. Yeah. If you want to say, bring his name into it, you need to make sure God is first. Then there's another missing element. Second missing element from Vance's little summary. And maybe he would add this stuff if he had more time to talk. Interviews are like, you know, rapid fire things. So maybe he would have added these if he'd have more time to talk. This isn't necessarily criticism of all of his views. It's just, let's fill in the gaps. Right? Christians are supposed to actually be a priority. This is something that would be awkward to say especially from as a vice president of the country, but it's actually a biblical thing. So Galatians 6, 10 talks about it. Let's look at that. See if I wrote down this verse correctly. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. So I want to do good to everyone. My doing good to those who are of the household is not an excuse to disregard, ignore, not care about, not have empathy for, or attempt to help somebody else if I'm in a position to do so. So I do good to everyone, but especially those who are of the household of faith. There is a Christian priority in the spheres of, like, family community, a family, neighbor, community, country, world that Vance gave. He didn't give a sphere for Christians, believers, fellow believers. I should have. Now, where do they fit in the circle? Now in my mind, as this is like the concentric circles, like, oh, do I go family, Christians community, and then go out from there? Maybe that's right. I'm not sure if I can just because Christian is a transcendent category. It's sort of, you know, all of these categories are temporal and temporary, where the Christian category is not temporary. It's not temporal. It's not based on locality. It's just sort of its own category. But definitely there's a priority for Christians to bless and take care of other Christians. And you might think that's a bad witness. Mike, that's a bad witness. That's not what Jesus said. This is like a common thing we've done in the U.S. okay, we've. We've taken Jesus words and we've maybe distorted them a bit. He said, they will know you are Christians by. And you're thinking your love. Jesus said more than that. He said, you love for one another. So that it is my witness to the world. When they see that there's a widow in my local church who is being uplifted and taken care of and financially helped by the body if her family can't do it, whose kids are being, like, discipled or, you know, have some, like, sort of surrogate dads that are coming from the congregation to take care. That is something where the world sees that and they're not like, oh, selfish Christians only care about them. No, they're going to see the Christian love that Jesus said, hey, the world will know you're Christians by the love you have for one another. It wasn't just the love we have for the world. And we can do this where we ignore believers. In fact, I've seen you see online people whose ministries are basically criticize the church, attack Christians, attack, and then do this as a way of saying, see, world, I love you. Look how much I love you, you downtrodden people who are outside of Christ and ultimately their priorities are off. Right? They think they're doing evangelism, but what they're doing is just commiserating with non Christians about how much they hate Christians. All right, I'll move on from that. But that's something we've seen. So Galatians 6:10. It does show a priority of Christians. This is a transcendent category. I say it's transcendent because of Jesus. Words in Mark 6:31, where it says. And he said to them, I did it again, 3:31. There it is. And his mother, Jesus's mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent to him and called and called him, and the crowd was sitting around him. And they said to him, your mother and brothers are outside seeking you. Now, we know from the other gospels they were trying to stop Jesus because they thought he was kind of acting crazy because they weren't on board with what he was doing yet. And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and mother. This, by the way, this is a real swipe against exaltation Mary theology that we have in many in a lot of professing Christians. So it's a big deal. But. But that's not what this video is about. So this is not saying. Because you have to take these things and put them together. Yeah, who's my mother and brothers? Well, that's going to be believers. But don't I also have to take care of my household or I'm worse than an unbeliever? And that would be regardless of whether they're Christian or not, I have to take care of them? Yes. So these things aren't in competition. It's showing that there is a transcendent category of Christian that is, in a sense, greater than that of your own family. But your priority of care does start with your family. Does that make sense? Now, you may feel like that's strange, but I think that's the only way to put those facts together in Scripture. Now, there's a third thing that I think J.D. vance missed or didn't mention, and that is you can't just categorize the world as those, like, outside the US or outside of your country or something. You can't just categorize them and not have an extra category for when those people are in your homeland. So there's the foreigner, like living in China, and then there's the Chinese immigrant who's in the US and these are two very different people to me. One is distant and unrelated to my life and who I have almost no impact in even if I try. The other is in my own community, is literally in my community. And so that community care does extend to the person who's passing through your community. I think that this is something that is important. And of course, I'm going to sound like I'm pushing liberal views here. I'm not. I hope you'll get your head out of politics for a second and just know that there is a biblical category for special concern and care for the stranger in your midst. That's a biblical category. So I have a video on immigration where I went through. What's a biblical view of immigration? And that includes, Yep, you can't have borders you control. You can't have times where you say, we need to remove these foreigners from our midst for the safety of our country. There's different treatments. One nation, maybe you allow their foreigners, another one you don't because of the different dangers that those nations present. So there can be all those things, but there also has to be a love and care for the stranger in your midst, who's maybe a sojourner. They're just traveling through, but they have little protection. And so you know how vulnerable they are without their community, without their governmental commitment, the laws of a government that they're a citizen of to protect them. And so you give special care for them because to the Israelites, God goes, you know what it was like to be a stranger wandering, you know, so remember that and take care of them, be kind to them. They are in your midst. They're not just a foreigner far away. They're a foreigner right here. And then there's the foreigner who settles and lives among you and assimilates and actually becomes part of the community. And of course, you treat them with a lot of love and care and concern. And that would be a biblical concept, not just a liberal one. And it's one that I think a lot of conservatives feel like they shouldn't talk about right now because it sounds like it's too easy for the liberal side to use that. And here's where I say I don't care. And you can't either. We need to be solidly biblical. Now, nothing I just said was a statement of approval or judgment on any particular policies that say Trump has or whatever on immigration. I haven't looked into all that stuff, and a lot's been happening really quick. For those who watch this video later, he just started his presidency. There's a ton of executive orders going out, and this is kind of outside my field. Like, I just don't understand all that's going on there. I'm not going to try and comment on that. I'm speaking of Christian principles and how we apply them. I'm not here making judgments on specific policies, not because I'm afraid to, but because I don't want to stumble into something where I don't know what I'm talking about. Now, there's a pushback people can offer. And this is what I saw from the more liberal commentary that was coming from people on. Well, it was on, like, some Baptist news website, and then it was on social media. People said, the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan upends this whole idea, like, you take care of your family first or that a country is obligated to its own citizens before as a priority over citizens of some other country. And they say the Good Samaritan upends this Jesus story of the Good Samaritan. And it kind of makes sense why people say this kind of sort of. They're wrong, but it makes sense. I get it at least. So Jesus says, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strict love your neighbor as yourself. And the response is, well, yeah, but who's my neighbor? They were looking to, like, exclude some people from love. Now, the context, though, is they're not just looking for people to love, like, as a lower priority on their who do I provide and care for list. They're looking for people they can just not love. I do not care for them. I don't love them. I don't care about them. I hate them. Right. Jonah's attitude towards Nineveh, that's what this is making space for. Not, I love you, but you're not on the top priority of my list for who I actually take care of. And I gotta work down that list before I can take care of you. It's not that. So Jesus responds, and he tells the story of the Good Samaritan. And the Good Samaritan does take care of this Jew who normally they would have been at odds with each other. He takes care of this Jewish guy. He provides for him. He pays for his medical care, even though nobody else takes care of him. And he does a great thing. And he's kind of a foreigner. I mean, they're not like, Samaria is not a different nation the way, say, like, the US And China or Mexico and Nicaragua or something. It's not quite like that, but it is a community that's divided from the other Jewish communities. And so he takes care of them. I think the thing that we want to add in here is this doesn't reverse anything. This is about extending the love umbrella wider. It's not about reversing priorities like now, my kids aren't a priority. I look for strangers on the side of the road and I neglect my children. I try to help immigrants from other countries and I neglect the care of the elderly in my own communities, in our own country or something like that. That's not what it's being taught here, but it is an extension of actual love and care. It refuses the Christian the ability to see anybody and go, don't care about you, don't love you. You can't do that. But the Samaritan, we don't see him to relate this to the topic that J.D. vance is talking about, we don't see the Samaritan leaving his wife and kids who are hungry, without food or shelter, passing by his mom who just got beat up and robbed on the side of the road, and then going to this Jewish guy who he doesn't know who got beat up on the side of the road. We don't see him doing that. Like his priorities are flipped upside down or something like that. He does this out of a abundance of ability to help people. He has the finances to do it, he has the time to do it. And maybe he made some sacrifices, financial sacrifices to do it, but he didn't do it to the neglect of other people. And that is actually what this principle is really talking about. And so I think that some people were grabbing that story of this Good Samaritan and using it in ways that don't fit Jesus's actual context. Now, will Donald Trump's administration be a proper model of Christian love? I don't know. I don't know. Remains to be seen. We'll see about that. But the very concept of you help the individuals that are your greater priority to take care of your higher responsibility to take care of before you try to help, or as a higher priority than trying to help someone outside that circle. That is fair. Now, you temper it with this doesn't mean you don't care or you hate those other people you do. And hopefully you'll do so good taking care of the people at home that you can take care of people abroad. That's actually a wonderful goal to have. Hey, let's take care of our stuff. Let's fix our issues so that we can minister to and take care of and help other people. You just don't do the one to the neglect of the other. The other thing I'll say about the Good Samaritan parable before we take your questions is just that the idea of the Good Samaritan was not just sending foreign aid to every single person that you can think of. It's not like this is a parallel. It's really not. Rather, the Good Samaritan is he's literally walking along the road and he sees a man beat up and bruised, and I'm in a position to help him, and he's right here in front of me. This isn't somebody, an imaginary person in a far away land. This is someone right in front of him. Just to point out that distinction, because I think it's important that we don't abuse Scripture. Okay, so let's go to the next question. Question number two. Maddie says, what advice would you give to somebody who feels vulnerable to worldliness in the workplace? Not only do I spend most of my time there, but all of my co workers knew me pre salvation. It's a struggle. That's tough question. Mattie, I can give you a couple tips and I got to say this, and I really hope you'll listen to this part. Really good. Take it with a grain of salt. Because I'm a person commenting on your life. I have two sentences about you and that's it. So I want you to use wisdom and be able to say, however much I respect Mike, I can hear the word he said there. And I go, that doesn't really apply to me. And I want you to be able to use that discernment. That's not an affront to me. That's not an offense to me. I'm counting on you doing that because I'm going to give you counsel. And it may not apply to you because I know so little about your scenario. Whenever you guys get advice from somebody who doesn't know your scenario very well, you have to use that much more discernment to figure out if their advice applies. It's going to be on you to figure that out because what else can you do? So, Maddie, you said, what advice would you give to someone who feels vulnerable to worldliness in the workplace? And it seems like this is potentially related to patterns of behavior. So let's say hypothetically, you said you spent most your time there and all your co workers knew you before you were saved. And so it's a struggle. So most likely there's patterns in the relationships where you used to do this with this person or used to joke a certain way with that person. And they will approach you and they'll move right into that old mode of that kind of humor or that kind of inappropriate behavior or those kinds of discussions. And I don't know how long this has been going on, but the awkwardness of this is that once you do put down your new operating rules for how you behave as a Christian, things you're not going to say, things you're not going to engage in, there's a good chance that they're not going to like it and going to be uncomfortable with you. And this could cause you some blowback. And so, I mean, here's a thought. It might help to just, if you feel like you have to, just tell your coworker, hey, you know, I used to do a lot of things that I'm trying not to do anymore, maybe talk about certain things I'm trying not to talk about anymore. So help me out and just know that I'm trying to change some things, some patterns of behavior and stuff like that in my life because I think it'll be good for me. And I want to be a Christian. I want to follow God. And then you let them know. And maybe that would help them to be aware of it and just treat them like real people who care about you, even if they don't understand all that stuff. But the one thing that comes to my mind as I read this is encouraging you to be slow to speak. Being slow to speak is such a huge and helpful thing when you're engaged in those conversations. And then you just naturally get drawn back into the same kind of stuff. And then later on you're thinking back, why did I say that? Why did I get into that? Again, being slow to speak is the best thing you can do. James talks about it. Let everyone be slow to speak, swift to hear. That should be your method. That should be the mantra in your mind as you interact with different co workers. Slow to speak, slow to speak. Just that little pause will allow you to say, do I want to get into that? I want to start down that road. The other thing is to just avoid situations that you know are going to cause you some significant compromise. And that could be who, whoever you eat with lunch, that kind of thing. Just, you know, ahead of time, what that kind of stuff is to avoid being in that scenario. Anyway, I hope that helps. Those seems kind of generic, but I hope that advice gives you some wisdom there. Psalm 1. Read Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who is not. And then read these things. There's like three things that are given there. I'll just read it to us Now, Psalm 1 and consider if these three things, the sit and the stand, there it is in the walk. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. This idea of sitting in the seat, notice there's walking, standing and sitting. So it's almost like a progression. So first I walked in the counsel of the wicked. I started conducting my life based upon ungodly advice and counsel. That's step one. Step two, I standing in the way of sinners. This is hanging out, hanging out in the way of sinners. This could be something so simple as you look around at your friend group and you as a Christian, you just go. It's just what ties this group together is not only their love for each other, but it's also the sin that we love together. I can't hang out there. I can't hang out in the way of sinners. I can't do that. Because the next thing you do is you're sitting now. You're not just walking, you're not standing, you're sitting in the seat of scoffers. And blessed is the person who doesn't do that. Instead, set aside time to delight in the law of the Lord. Read the word, meditate day and night, listen to Bible study, that kind of thing and try to clean up your habits and patterns there. All right, let's go to the next question, number three. This is from Philagape who says, what should children who would go to heaven if they die be taught about hell? If anything, it may make them afraid and that they would go there. Thank you for your ministry. Yeah. So I do think that children and God knows the exact age for each individual, what moment this happens, but there's a time of accountability before that. Time of accountability. Yeah. What should they be taught about hell? It seems to me this is a tough one because kids have a difficulty putting things into proper categories and just knowing of the existence of something scary and terrifying to them can feel like it's a threat to them even if it is not. And so you have to just be very cautious and careful and use wisdom and know your kid and where they're at. But part of parenting is helping them grow up and helping them learn tough things and real things that are going to affect their lives. So for this, you might just actually look for some resources that are Christian resources for talking to your kids about these kinds of topics and see how those things play out. How those things play out. Yeah, I hesitate to answer too carefully here because somebody's watching and you have a three year old and you're not going to listen to me carefully. And you're going to be like, hey, three year old, let me describe to you Dante's Inferno. And I'm just like, it's not what I'm suggesting. And then somebody else is going to have a seven year old whose reasoning abilities are a lot greater and they're going to be afraid to tell their kids some important things about Christian theology. So there's got to be some sort of gradation, some sort of balance. You can always, at a younger age, you can just tell your kids, yeah, you know, there's like jail where cops take people to jail when they're bad guys. Well, when we die, God takes some people to heaven and some people he sends them to, like a jail type place. And you could do that, you could fill it in more as they get a little bit older and are more capable of thinking and talking. But you got to be so careful because you want to form in them an awareness of the gospel of Christ. Not just an awareness of hell, an awareness of the fullness of the gospel. So the cross bears witness to God's wrath, bears witness to the horribleness of sin. It also bears witness to God's love and God's incredible grace. And you don't want to give your kid just one of those. If you just give him one of those, you're not giving them the gospel. So yeah, hell or judgment relates to that. But maybe the discussion of hell should flow out of a discussion of the nature of the gospel itself so that you can give that all to them at the same time. There's my two thoughts on that, my two cents, my thought, me pushing a button, going to question number four. Kerry Dismore says, is it appropriate to pray for the physical healing of an unsaved person? Is it more reasonable to pray that they would come to faith in Christ? What is the prayer priority in this situation? That's a tough one, Carrie. I mean, obviously my greatest prayer for anybody is that they would get stuck, saved, that they would come to saving, faith in Jesus Christ. But when you say prayer priority, how does that play out in your life? Is it like you're thinking, oh, they're sick and they need to be healed. I'm going to pray for two minutes for their healing, but I have to pay for three minutes for their salvation. I'm not into that kind of, what do they call it, neurosis, kind of neurotic type of thinking where you're going into. You spend more time analyzing the things you're doing than doing anything that you're analyzing. And I think that that can be crippling. And so I would caution people not to do that too much. Just make sure you're doing both. You pray for both. The physical healing is. Usually we feel a physical healing is more presently urgent, and it certainly is more presently urgent to the unsaved person. But in reality, what's more urgent is, of course, their salvation. Of course it's their salvation. And even if they were physically healed, they would get sick again and they would die in the future, and then it would only be a delay of the inevitable of what's going to happen in their lives. Whereas salvation is a permanent cure to all that ails mankind. It's just you have to wait on it before you get all the fruit of it and all the joy that comes. So can you pray for an unsaved person to be healed, though? Yes. We do have examples of this even in Scripture, where God spares people. And it's not. He only spares people because they have a right relationship with Him. There's times where Jesus heals people and like, he heals the paralytic, and he goes, then go and sin no more. The paraplegic, whatever it was called, let something worse come upon you. If you. If you think about those words, the healing was this evidence of who Christ was. But then there was also this, like, looming, unresolved issue of, will you live for me? Are you going to live the proper way? I don't think it's wrong to pray for God to help somebody who's unsaved. When you think about it, you're like, yeah, I mean, the Lord, he causes his reign to fall on the just and the unjust, and all of these things are a testimony that should cause us to worship Him. But for those who God blesses and those who God heals and those who God takes care of, who never turn to him, are storing up more wrath because of it. So the ultimate issue of their salvation, of course, is the bigger issue. Let's go to the next question. Number five. Do you have any specific date of salvation or can it be a gradual thing or realization? There's a debate within our current Bible study. I think that's a great question. So I was sort of brought up. I say brought up. I was like, around 12. When I first started attending church, I would only go Thursday nights to the youth ministry. I did that for years. Okay. I went on a Sunday morning at that church because I actually went with. A little while later, I went with a friend with his family to Sunday morning services. But the first time I ever went without someone taking me to a Sunday morning service and at this church that I was really trying to be part of, it was like years after having gone to youth group and heard the gospel and believed it. But later, as I started getting more grounded and hearing people share their stories and testimonies, they would talk about when they got saved. It was June 12, 19, whatever. And then they would tell the story of getting saved. And then I felt weird that I didn't even know what my timeline was. I'm like, when did I get saved? What was the day? So I started trying to play out in my mind, like, let me find the exact day when I put my faith in Christ. And that was the day I was born again. And I had a real hard time finding the day. I could think of some significant days. I could think of a couple in particular that stood out. And I thought maybe that was the day. But for me, it felt like it happened in a way that really changed my life, but in a way that I wasn't able to pinpoint a day. And this really bothered me. And the way some people talked about it, I felt like maybe I was a teenager processing this, but I felt like maybe I'm not really saved because I can't think of a specific day and don't have this amazing story. Because the inevitable result of putting people on stage or in front of Christian groups who have amazing testimonies is that everybody else feels like, oh, shucks, I ain't got nothing on them. My testimony is not that great. We should also occasionally put people up who don't have an amazing testimony other than the fact that God saved them, which that's the amazing part. It doesn't have to be like, so I was an assassin working for the Mafia. I was high on 12 pounds of cocaine, and I was driving my truck there into the facility where I was going to kill the president of whatever country. And then the Holy Spirit shook the car and I had a vision and God took me to heaven. And all of a sudden my hair turned white and I started floating. And you get like. You don't have to have a crazy testimony in order to have a real testimony of the work of Christ. Now, one of the things that helped me with this personally was looking at the Bible and going, does everybody in the Bible have this? Now I'm saved. Moment clear. That's the day I can celebrate it every year. That's my second birthday. Can they do that? And I think the answer is no. Like in the Gospel of John, belief seems like it sort of comes gradually without a definable, discernible, single moment of salvation. This isn't me saying that doesn't happen. But there was this whole work of the Spirit. There was the person responding. In fact, it's typical when people get saved. It seems that they don't actually have someone lead them through a prayer at that exact moment. That seems typical. It's more of the exception that someone leads you through prayer, and then that's how you know that was the exact day. It's more like you go and you hear and you're like, wow, that makes a lot of sense. And then you go again and you're praying and you read the Bible and you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then you're just going, like, one day, you're like, man, I definitely. I believe this stuff. I believe this stuff. I want to follow the Lord, you know? And then maybe like a week later, you tell your buddy, and your buddy's like, that's amazing. This is great. You should talk to my pastor. He talks to the pastor and he prays for you and stuff. And you look back and you go, what was the moment? Don't worry about it. Okay? Don't worry about it. That's a modern pressure put on you to identify a moment that is unnecessary. There's nothing in scripture that says you're supposed to have to have that. You know, sure, Paul had that. Paul had that. But that was not necessarily standard or common, these great moments. So that would be. My counsel is we don't see in scripture an indication that you're supposed to have an exact moment. We don't see that. We see that happens occasionally, and other times it appears to just be this sort of gradual thing. It's okay either way. God works in a variety of ways as he brings about salvation into the heart of a person. And that's quite all right. Question number six, Arthur. Maybe that's French. I don't know. Hello, Pastor Mike. Hello, Arthur. Within God's omnipresence, is that confined to spatial and spiritual dimensions? Let me read that sentence again. So is God's omnipresence confined to spatial and spiritual dimensions, or does that include across all of time as well as in he's currently in all times at once? Okay, so you're not asking, is God omnipresent? That's assumed in your question. You're not asking if God is, in a sense, everywhere, spatially, spiritually, he's just everywhere. Like the psalm says, if I go up to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. That God's presence is at every location, or a way I like to put it, that makes sense to my brain is God transcends space. He's transcendent. He is not confined by space. And so he is everywhere, but not contained. God exists, his presence is in all places, but he is not contained by any place. And that's what Solomon talks about when he builds the temple, and we read about this in the Old Testament when he says, even the heaven of heavens can't contain you, let alone this house that I've built, that's not going to contain you. So God is present everywhere, but not contained by the universe. It's not like you get to the edge of the universe, if you could even talk about such a thing. And then outside of that, there is no God. No God, just if you were to wipe out the universe, it would just be God left. That's the thing. And he wouldn't be in a universe sized shape. You guys get what I'm trying to say? He's transcendent. So does that include time? Does that mean that God is currently somehow present across all of time? Well, he's present across all of time in one sense because there's no moment, no second in the past, present or future where God is not OMNIPresent. So in 2053, God is or shall be present, omnipresent at that moment. But is he? And this is where I start. I think that we start to realize that we don't understand the word time very well because our language breaks down. We start saying things that don't make sense. So is God present in all times right now? Well, that would seem like a contradiction to do anything at all times right now, wouldn't it? Because then it wouldn't be right now, would it? So he's present right now. He's also present right now and right now he's still present. So yeah, there's a sense in which you can say this, but in another sense what you're really getting into is not a theory about God. I think it's a theory about time. With the concept of time. You have, you have like these two different theories. There's A theory of time and B, theory of time and how time functions. And this gets weird. Okay, this is not theology here. Your conclusions here may relate to your theology to some degree. But this is like philosophers trying to discuss what they think, the nature of time Is so one of the theories. I think it's a theory. I always get the letters mixed up, so I could get the letters mixed up here. But I think it's a theory where they think that everything sort of temporal becoming is illusory and the existence the present is not real so much there isn't. But rather everything just sort of is happening. That is my birth is just sort of happening ongoingly. It's just sort of. I don't even know how they explain this. This theory does not make a lot of sense to my brain. So they would say it smarter than I would, because I look at it and go, I think this is silly, but it's a popular theory among philosophers. And so then the idea of temporal becoming is not a thing. Now, with temporal becoming, what that means is, I was born, but that event of me being born, that already happened. It's gone. And now the present is the only real moment. And then as time moves, the present maintains its persistence as the only real moment that's actual. So things happen and then they stop happening, and that's temporal becoming. I know this is clumsy for those who are into this philosophy stuff as a clumsy explanation, but that's how it. How I understand it, and trying to explain it in a way that's super simplistic to an audience who's not digging into this stuff on any kind of serious basis. So if your theory of time is a B theory of time, which I think that's what it's called as a B theory, then you. Then God is present everywhere right now, but the future hasn't happened yet. And so God's not present yet. He will be, but he's not yet, because there's nothing to be present at. There's not a limit on God's omnipresence. It's just an understanding of time. Then if you have this, a theory of time, then you would think that God is currently present at all times right now, in some sense right now, even though it sounds like a contradiction, because everything just sort of is happening. And even the whole concept just seems wild to me and weird. And I think that the Bible speaks in plain language and talks about things like things that have come, things that will come to pass, things that are not yet. I sound like I'm quoting Galadriel from Lord of the Rings. Things have not yet come to pass. But anyways, I'll say I think God is omnipresent right now, and he's not omnipresent in the future yet because of my Understanding of time and his omnipresence would apply the same in either concept of time. It's really a question of the concept of time. Yeah, I'm opening a can of worms, but I'm going to move on. You guys can just play with the worms. Number seven, what disqualifies someone from non pastoral ministry? Are the rules for pastors the same for sound text ushers, etc. Wow. I said that's a good question. Let me think about that for a minute. That's a big drink of coffee. Question. What disqualifies somebody from non pastoral ministry? I think that in reality, in ministry I have always operated and everybody I know anyways has always operated. At least in my past. Okay, maybe the church I'm at now, they would think differently about this. And maybe we've been wrong in the past. I don't know. I'd have to ask the leaders if they have a view on this. But the ministries where I've been in leadership, we would definitely have different policies. We had people who we thought like, that guy's a little weird. I would never trust him as a pastor. I would never call him a pastor because I feel like people would put too much trust in him and I'm a little bit nervous about that. But he's not evil, but he's not exactly this pillar of the community. Right. And so can he be an usher? Can he help with the food ministry? And we've always been like, yeah, he doesn't have this major character flaw. It's not like a sin issue. It's not like he's going to do something terrible. But yeah, he's not the stand up kind of guy that we would like to see say for our leadership where we feel like we can trust him with a sense of authority over other people. And yeah, I think pragmatically we've always said like, hey, a sound tech is not being given the kind of authority that a pastor has. And so practically speaking, it makes sense that they're not. You don't necessarily have the same high requirements as you have a pastor. But here's the natural pushback I feel on this. The requirements for a pastor as I read them, most of them are just basic Christian character requirements that every Christian should ascribe to, should try to not ascribe to, but should try to get, should try to have, should really push forward and try to obtain. And so most of them are just being a godly person and then add to it, like able to teach. Like that's kind of the thing that elders like and able to teach, that's a requirement elder has that other people don't. So obviously you could be an usher if you're not able to teach just fine. But they're just the kind of things every Christian should have. But it naturally just the stakes are so high with leaders. You know, anybody who's in a leadership role, anybody who's looked up to as opposed to just helping out. I think that instinctively these people we can tolerate less, less capacities, less leadership qualities than what you need to see in a pastor. Does that also translate to being tolerating lower character? You know, that guy gets more out of hand. He's a little bit more rough with his words. He's a little bit more prone to argument and gossip or something. That's tough. Like that stuff I feel like is a stricter. There's a stricter standard as let me say this, the standard is the same for pastors and non pastors, but maybe that's the way to put it. The application of the standard is more strict for leaders than it is for non leaders. That seems accurate to me that I'm going to apply this more harshly towards leaders than I am or more strongly or more strictly than I am towards other people who are not bearing those responsibilities. So what I struggle with is coming up with biblical proof for this difference that I'm making. I don't know of any scripture that says that it's not the case that if you're going to be an usher, you have to have the same character qualifications that we see in an elder. I don't see a case for that exactly either. But I don't see anywhere where scripture answers this. The only thing I can think is that in laying out requirements for elders, this is subtle. This is like almost an argument from silence. Okay. But I'll put it out there in laying out arguments for elders and deacons. Elders and deacons both are in a type of like pillar of the community type role. A deacon's a really wide service position. I'm still, like I said, I'm answering this. As I think about it, the requirements for deacons, and I take deacon to be a catch all term for any official servant in the church who's serving like on a regular consistent basis. Is an usher that I don't know if an usher is that they could just be handing out bulletins. But the deacons tend to have maybe a little bit more involvement than that. But they are required to have the same kind of character stuff as an elder. Okay. So that's in place. But what about something like parking lot attendant, usher, helper, not like in any capacity deacon, but something who's just helping out. Because we don't see requirements from Paul for everybody who helps in all capacities. The implication is that these requirements are more strictly required among elders and deacons who are both pillar type roles in the community. And so that's like an argument that hey, maybe if there's lesser things you're doing that don't rise to the role of deacon as sort of catch all thing for an official servant of the church that is seen with respect, then amongst them you may not have it. But this doesn't mean as long as you're not a pastor, you don't need those requirements. Because of that deacon concept that we get in the Pastoral Epistles of Paul, we see this in First Timothy and in Titus one, Timothy two and Titus chapter one, Titus chapter one. The idea of the deacon also was applied to people who would help out with the widow's ministry in Acts chapter seven. So you get Stephen, you get all these guys that are brought in to take care of widows. So they're handing out food, but they're not just literally physically handing out food. They're actually in charge of distributing food to these, to these widows and making sure that they get the right fair share of the food that they need. So this is not just the person who's transferring for the food ministry food from one truck to another. This is someone who's in a bit more of a pillar type role there. They must have character requirements. Maybe they're not teaching as a pastor, but they do have high character requirements. Where the rubber hits the road and this gets hard is when you're in a small church and you need people to help and you look around and you just go, I have slim pickings. And then you pick the best you can because what else can you do? And sometimes you say, we don't need that ministry because we don't have anybody to run it, so we're just not going to do it. But sometimes you need it and you take the best options you have because what else can you do while you're hopefully raising up and discipling and trying to fill the gap because there's a character deficit in the community of your church that you got to work on long term. All right, question number eight. Alora says, are there specific brands or products that we shouldn't use? I see these videos and they show things like makeup products Christians shouldn't use because they Let in spirits. Should I throw these away? Alora, I want to take your question very seriously. I have to admit, off the cuff, knowing nothing about these makeup products or the companies, the idea that there are certain products, like if you buy this product from this manufacturer and you use it, you're letting spirits in. That sounds like superstition. And I want to say laughable, like it sounds, haha, that's funny. But it actually sounds like the kind of thing that unsettles Christians and turns them into people who were very superstitious in an unhealthy way. I remember having a conversation with a lady and we had just heard of two people who I think it was cancer. Someone got cancer and then someone else that we knew got cancer. And she says to me, oh, gosh, I wonder who's next. These things always happen in threes. And she said this, and I just was like, what? I can't believe she said that. Like, I thought it was very strange. I know you've heard this before. I've heard it before too. It was weird to hear this from someone who's a strong, convicted Christian who really believes the Bible and go, why do you think that happens in threes? And then she was like, oh, I don't know. I thought that just kind of how it is, right? It was just a superstition and it created a fear in her that was unhealthy. And this seems like the same kind of thing. Now, if you buy a makeup product called like, Praise Satan, We Love him more than God, and then you put this makeup on as you chant, obviously there's got to be some exception to what I'm talking about here. But the general idea of paranoia, that we can create paranoia instead of actual purity. Another thing that we can mention is in Colossians. Let me see if I can find it. Colossians where there's a passage that talks about them being worried about foods which do and outward things. Oh, man. I'm trying to think of how to find this passage. You guys know what I'm talking about in Colossians. Colossians 2? Yeah, it's Colossians 2. Okay, here's the passage. Let me read this to you and see if you think it might apply to your question. Okay. Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations? Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using according to the commandments and doctrines of men. These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self imposed religion, not God imposed religion, self imposed religion, false humility and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. There's a few things that get highlighted here in this passage in Colossians, and one of them is you are part of a kingdom that is not of this world and you have entered into true spirituality. Not just symbolism, but a genuine relationship with God through Jesus Christ. So don't get caught up in all the ritualistic. Now not all rituals are bad, but don't get caught up in ritualistic things that have these traits. They focus on don't touch, don't taste, don't handle. So it's a bunch of material related restrictions and they all concern things that perish with the using. So they're things that are materialistic. So food or makeup or things like that. And it's not according to any clear teaching of scripture, don't use this makeup, but rather the commandments and doctrines of men. It's just things that people have made up. So that's another quality or trait these things have. And then the last one is this. These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self imposed false religion and false humility and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. They seem wise. And you make all these rules and you have all these little policies and you get up all these habits and patterns in your life. I do this and then I do that and then I don't do this and I won't touch that. But in the end, you're not actually failing to indulge in the flesh. So as you're putting on your makeup, am I putting on my makeup in a way as a woman to compete with other women to become attractive to men who are not my husband. Am I doing this in a carnal way to draw a lot of unnecessary attention to myself, or am I just trying to look nice and presentable? That's carnal indulgence. There's a rule about makeup that's actually important that is neglected by lots of people because that avoids the indulgence of the flesh. But this idea of like this brand of makeup is going to bring put Satan on your nose or something. I don't know what that is. So there's a scripture for you. Hope that it's helpful. Question number nine. Brittany White says, do you believe Jacob wrestled with God the Father or God the Son? And you give me two references. So let's look these up. So first we'll look at Genesis 32. Who did Jacob wrestle with? So he goes on his way, and he's. So you guys know the story. He's about to meet Esau, and he's about to see his brother after a long time. And he's scared because he thinks Esau's going to kill him. So he splits his company and he sends, like, his servants and stuff. He sends his wives in a specific order so that the wife he prefers is last. And then finally, last of all, he's going to come, come alongside. He does this whole thing. And then at night, the night before all this is going to happen, he wrestles with God. Let me see if I can find verse 22. The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. Verse 24. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. And here it's called a man. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, let me go, for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said to him, what is your name? And he said, jacob. Then he said, you, name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Interesting stuff. Tons of interesting stuff here. And you've got questions popping into your mind. You prevailed. What does that mean? But that's not the question. So let's all focus. Then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. But he said, why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So it's a mystery. So who's he wrestling with? It says he wrestled with God. And then Jacob's like, what's your name? Who are you that I'm wrestling with? And he says, why do you ask my name? And there he blessed him. There's another place where there's like a mysterious heavenly type being who shows up and the question of his name comes up. And here's. It's the birth of Samson. And it seems heavily implied, heavily implied that this is actually God who is there talking about this birth. And he's like, what is your name? And he goes, why do you ask my name, seeing that it is wonderful. And Jesus, of course, his name is Wonderful counselor and stuff like that. And you can make these connections. I talk about this in my Jesus in the Old Testament series when I talk about theophanies and christophanies. The other passage that you mentioned though was Hosea, Hosea 12, verse 4. And it says in Hosea 12, 4 and it speaks. I'm going to back up a little so we get the context. I'll start in verse 2. The Lord has an indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways. Now they're talking about communities, not just Jacob, but of his descendants. But, but Jacob's, you know, being brought up here, he will repay him according to his deeds. In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed, and he wept and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel and there God spoke with us. So who's he? It says here there's an angel, but then it also says he strove with God. So what does this mean? Is the angel merely. I wasn't on your screen, I apologize. I did read it to you though. Is the angel merely a stand in for God? As in it's an angel that he's wrestling with who's ontologically like the nature of this being is just an angel. Like Michael was an angel or Gabriel was an angel. And then by wrestling with the angel, it's like part of his symbolizes his wrestling with God. I tend to think that we have a biblical category for this and that the nature of Jacob wrestling with an angel who is blurred in his identity of being an angel or being God is he is the angel of the Lord, I think. And the angel of the Lord is a repeated figure that shows up in the Old Testament many times. And many of these times you can specifically identify this angel of the Lord as being God, being Yahweh himself. And there's plenty of evidence in the New Testament as well as the Old that suggests to me that this angel of the Lord is Jesus, is Jesus. And that doesn't mean that it's Christ incarnate being incarnated before his incarnation in the womb of Mary. That's not what it means because this is a manifestation, not an incarnation. He didn't take on human form. He wasn't coming in a descendant of Adam's body. He was showing up in a body that was like made for this purpose, but was not of Adam and was not truly human in that sense. I hope that answers some of the questions I'm trying to Think of the questions that come up as a result of this. But I'll link below my video that talks about Christology or Christophanies and why I would relate these hints that it being God, being the angel of the Lord and how that connects to Jesus. I think it's really neat study and really neat rewarding kind of stuff to research into and look at. But I think I've given you some of the breadcrumbs that might help. So I'll link that below after the stream. You guys can check that out. Question number 10 Rob Allen says hi Mike, I almost skipped over your question. Okay. In the pre tribulational view of the Rapture, if the Raptured church is the Bride of Christ, then what position or purpose in heaven do the Tribulation Saints hold? So are you suggesting that the Raptured Church as the Bride of Christ is somehow separate from the Tribulation Saints? I think most pre Trib people would just say the Tribulation Saints are part of the church, they just haven't been joined to the rest of the church yet. Does that make sense that that they're. But the pre Trib view will typically say that what you have during that seven years is like at least I've heard people say this, the wedding supper of the Lamb. So they're like caught up and they're enjoying glory in God's presence during that seven year period. And yet there's tribulation upon the earth. And I have heard people say that. It's been a while since I've looked into these details so I'm going off memory here. But the Tribulation Saint would be people who are saved and they're not yet part of that, but they will be part of that in the future. I think. That's what I think. How they would cash it out. How they would cash it out. But I'm not the best person to ask on this because when I was younger I would have much younger. When I was a wee little boy I would have been an advocate of the pre Tribulational Rapture. I'm kind of on the fence and hopefully I can resolve that one day. It's just that it's the amount of research I want to do on it is like a real serious study on the topic. Not like casual. If you want to hear a casual response I can give that, but I don't want to do that. And so that me being on the fence there makes me careful in how I answer these kinds of questions because it's not Something I'm actually telling you you should be believing. I'm just saying it is a view that is held by plenty of believers. And I think that's how it's held. And I do believe. I'm confident that as Christians, we're caught up in the air, right? We shall not all die, but we will be transformed. We'll be caught up in the air so that there is this coming of Christ where we are transformed and that you can call that a rapture, but usually when people say rapture, they also not only mean that event, but they mean at this moment in time and a specific moment of usually pre tribulational rapture. And yeah, I'm just gonna stay out of that because there's plenty of topics I just don't have a teaching on because I'm not that confident on. And it's irresponsible for me to pretend that I am just because people expect me to. So I view it like this. I'm not telling you not not to have a confident view. I'm not disagreeing with your view on it either. It is, however, irresponsible for me and reckless for me to teach with confidence anything that I don't know with confidence. I have to teach things with an exact degree of confidence I have in them. I cannot teach beyond that. And I cannot water down or risk misleading people because I just traditionally will throw something out. I'd rather just abstain from giving too much info. But I can say this. Yeah, I've heard people say seven year tribulation, that's the wedding supper. You're up in heaven, you're celebrating, you're delighting, you're in absolute glory and joy. You're not subject to any wrath of the suffering that's on the earth at the time. But then they would say the tribulation saints just kind of one by one, if they die, they join into that, or eventually they'll join into that if they live through to the Second coming. That, I think, is how I've heard it cashed out. Whether you agree with it, you can be a Christian and you can take either position. We shouldn't divide over that particular issue. It's just not the kind of thing we should divide over. All right, I do have a bonus question, and this is actually a prayer request. So we're going to pray for Jacob. So this is from Jacob, who says, can you and your listeners please pray for my sister Darby's pregnancy. The other day we found out she was having twins. But at the same Time she was told she's most likely going to miscarry. The babies are measuring smaller than they should with no heartbeats detected. Please join us in asking God to miraculously breathe life into her babies again. All right, let's pray. Lord, we lift up Darby with the Darby and her two precious, precious babies. We pray for your miraculous hand to bring health and well being to them. Lord, we pray that there will be good news, that there would be wonderful, incredible news, and that she will take these kids into the world and raise them, enjoy them and bless them, and raise them in your ways. Lord, we don't know your will. We don't pretend to know your will here, Lord, but we do trust you, even not knowing your will. And we pray for your help as they're struggling with incredible fear, incredible anxiety and all those types of things. Or may you grant them a peace that passes understanding. Help them to rest in you and rest in what they know of you, even though the current situation sometimes fights against that, but it demands it as well. We pray that they would know that they know you and that they can trust you regardless, Lord, we pray that they would draw closer to you and that they'd be there for each other in this hard time, Lord, as Jesus prayed, we say, your will be done, not ours. But I pray, Lord, that whatever happens, you grant them the help that they need through a miraculous need deliverance, a miraculous healing and incredible babies being brought into the world or through your comfort in incredible and unimaginable hardship. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. All right, you guys, that's it for today. I have an announcement to make though, before I sign off. And I've been looking into. This is going to be some inside info here. I've been looking into the ministry of a guy named Sean Bowles right there, who there are very convincing reports that he was fabricating and faking prophecies that he was going on. And he was a big dog in the Bethel and IHOP and Hyper Charismatic movement. He was considered a big dog. And he was like. If you look at the endorsements of his book, it's like all these big dogs, right? You got Randy Clark here, you got C. Peter Wagner and the Johnsons, Bill Johnson and Benny Johnson and all them. You've got all these. Basically, here's the thing, it looks very much like he was. And I've been gathering a lot of evidence and even talking to some witnesses. It looks very much like he was manipulating people and lying to people in the name of God, which would be absolute blasphemy that he was doing so and that it was well known to the leaders that propped him up. Now, the leaders that propped him up when it became public, when it was exposed out in public, they didn't expose it, which they should have. It was exposed out in public. They just quietly distanced themselves from him in a way that looks very self protective but didn't do anything to protect the people. The people themselves were never warned about this guy. And as I was digging into Sean Bowles, I found out that there was a lot of other guys that have been in a similar situation. And you can think of people who I can go down. I will provide you a list of people who have been reasonably exposed as fake prophets, false prophets, lying deceivers who have been high up in the Bethel type movement and who, when they were known, when the leaders had good enough reason, had culpability in they should have exposed them. They didn't. And they didn't warn the people. They didn't seem to care about the people that way. They just protected themselves. And when it went public by itself, when it goes viral because of social media, viral because somebody goes online and says shambles lied to me and it almost killed me, which is what a lady did. And then the leaders go, oh, I guess we'll do damage control. And this has been the pattern that I've seen. And so I'm preparing a video where I'm going to be dealing with this in a lot of detail. In the meantime, Sean Bowles has just come out and said that he's on Twitter and he's talking about how like there's a lot of false accusations and stuff. So I reached out to him and I sent an email to him and I know he received it because I got a reply back saying, I'm going to make a video. I've seen convincing reports of these things about you and I'm going to be making a video that talks about it and warns people about it and a lot more than that actually. And I'm giving him a chance to reach out to me and tell me what evidence he has to demonstrate that some of these claims are lies. I'm a little skeptical that he has that evidence, but I want to give him a chance. Supposedly he's supposed to reach out back to me soon and we'll find out. But in the meantime I'm making a video on this topic and it's kind of going deep and I didn't want to do it, but I think it needs to be done. So that's what's coming. And I know that I'm being a little bit vague, but basically I would like to be exposing fake prophets, false prophets, abusers within the church who are lifted up by those in the Charismatic movement. Some of those in the Charismatic movement, but some of the big heavy hitters and very influential people and often very trusted people in the Charismatic movement, they're enabled by them and when they're exposed, they're not dealt with biblically. So that predators are in your midst and you find out he's a predator and you find out he's lying to people and he's faking prophecies and then you don't warn your congregation, hey, this guy I brought up on stage last week, you need to know that the prophecies he told you that wasn't from the Lord. You need to know that he's been lying to women to manipulate them and take advantage of them. Like a Joseph Smith type thing, you know, that sort of thing all over again. So if they're not going to do it, then guess what, the Christian community by and large is going to respond and do it. And people need to be aware anyway. It's all, it's sad stuff, it's not fun stuff at all. I don't take any delight in it, but it needs to be done. So I'm gonna pick a fight with a bunch of people. So now you know, alright, that's coming as soon as it's ready. I don't know, a week, three weeks, something. There's a lot of info, There's a lot of stuff, there's a lot of dirt. It's not gossip, guys, but it is light. It is gonna shine light. So that is all.