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What is Jesus teaching us about Hades (not Hell)? 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 40)
01:33:45
Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference:1. 0:02 {What is Hades Like?} Looking at Luke 16:19-31 (Rich Man and Lazarus), what does this parable teach us about the afterlife, and how literally should the depiction in that passage of Heaven and Hell be taken?2. 33:27 {Making Decisions “From Faith”} Is there a difference between indecisiveness and doing things “not from faith” (Romans 14:23)? I struggle to make decisions and feel guilty about doing things without being 100% sure it’s God’s will.3. 46:03 {The Great Wealth Transfer} What is your opinion on the movement of "The Great Wealth Transfer" that prosperity preachers teach, where believers obtain unbelievers’ land and wealth?4. 51:09 {Difficult OT Passages} Nahum 3:5-6 is hard for me to reconcile with our holy and loving God. Can you help me understand this?5. 1:00:21 {Praying Biblically in Dire Situations} Is it a lack of faith in me to not pray for a miraculous healing for a fatal diagnosis in my baby I’m carrying, and instead ...
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Question number one in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. This is a parable Jesus tells. He talks about where people go when they die. He discusses it in some detail, and he tells a story about it. And the question we have is the what does this parable teach us about the afterlife and how literally should the depiction in that passage of heaven and hell be taken? And I can add one more thing to this question that was sent in. Is it about heaven and hell, or is it about the intermediate state before we experience something, either heaven or hell, depending on whether or not you are forgiven by the grace of God? So we're going to read the passage and ask the question. For the first question for today, I'm going to take 10 questions from the live chat. My name is Mike Winger. Help you to learn to think. I'm here to help you to learn to think biblically about everything. That's the agenda. We're going to read Luke 16, though, just this one parable. It's a little section and. And we want to see how does it apply to what I expect to happen when I die, or perhaps when, before Christ died? What would happen to people when they died? You'll understand more as we dig into it. So here we go, going to the scripture. Luke chapter 16, verse 19. Here Jesus speaking says, now we're just going to make mental notes. Read through it with me. Think about it. Ask good questions. This isn't a Sunday sermon I'm teaching on this topic. I would handle that differently. I'm trying to answer specific questions about this passage. You might not get answered in a typical bible study. Luke 16:19. There was a certain rich man. I said certain because some translations say certain. Anyway, that's a whole can of worms. But there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, who feasted sumptuously every day, and at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. Verse 23. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and. And Lazarus in like manner, bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. Verse 26. And besides all this between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none who may cross from there to us. And he said, then I beg you, Father, now he has a solution for his family back home. He goes, I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment. But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear him. Verse 30. And he said, no, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. There's so much in this passage. There's so much that Jesus is teaching. And the questions that we're asking aren't necessarily the focus of what. At least what would be a revelation, a teaching. There's stuff here that's almost background info to the hearers of Jesus that we're asking, not being in that background and saying, well, what does he mean about Hades? Or what is the situation? Abraham's bosom and this chasm between them and tormenting and all this. So I'd recommend doing a normal Bible study. This is going to be more rewarding than what I'm going to do for you. This is about answering some nagging questions we have that we do care about and have to do with significant issues. And Jesus does weigh in on us those issues here. So let's talk about this. How does it describe these locations? There are two places. One is a place of torment and one is a place of comfort. And this is somewhere you go after you die. As in, your body's over here, and then there's. You are not your body. Your body's important, your body's valuable. You want a body, but your soul, so to speak, goes to this other location, at least in this story or in this parable, depending on how you take it. And we'll talk about that in a second. One is of torment. One is a place of comfort. And they're currently experiencing comfort or torment. That's Lazarus and this rich man. They're both, like, consciously experiencing it in this story. This is before final judgment. Final judgment in scripture, we'll find takes place much later. This is something before that. That seems to be the best way to take it. There's an explanation I'll give here. Comparing this to jail and prison. I hope I can remember to get there, because I don't know if I put that in my notes. But one. One of these locations, the one of comfort, has Abraham there. And now Abraham was the man of faith, the model of faith, you know, Romans uses Abraham to explain to us how we can be saved by faith. And so here he is for not only descendants of Abraham, but for the faithful, for those who have faith and those who have done well. Yeah. Did they earn it? No, it's not that they merited it, but. But those who do have true faith do end up doing works. And so they do. The do go together. They are in time. They are in time. This is interesting. The rich man's brothers are still alive. So this isn't situated in some future judgment in the time of, like, beyond where we exist today, in the future of eternity kind of stuff. This is rather the guy dies, and like, right afterwards he's having a conversation, his brothers are still alive, and he goes, send him to see my brothers. There is a timed thing going on here. Final judgment has not yet taken place. This is why I would at least, and not everybody does this. Other believers would take a different view on this. Several different views on this. I would not call this heaven and hell. I would call this Hades. And I would include as Hades as having two different spots where there's Abraham's bosom, where Abraham himself is there to comfort. And this is a place of comfort and of safety. And then there's where there's torment. They're also aware. This would imply that if this is kind of even somewhat literal, then there's a very long wait for final judgment with sort of this awareness of the life that you've lived. And you're either being tormented or in an unpleasant experience, in anguish in some sense, or you are in comfort in some sense, even though the resurrection and other things that are still future are coming. It's also interesting that they can see and hear each other and they talk to one another across this chasm. I admit that that seems strange. That's unexpected and seems odd to be honest. But that is in the passage, and I think it's relevant that we talk about it and ask if that helps us understand if it's literal or not. There's angels. This is something people pass over. Jesus actually talks about angels taking Lazarus over to this place where Abraham is. Angels being the ones who deliver him to that location. That's, like, interesting. There's A theology that's in there that we could explore in your study of angels, you might think about it. Okay, let's tackle the question of whether this is real or parable. And then that'll help us narrow down what we think is saying about the afterlife, or at least the intermediate state. Is it real or parable? If it's real, it seems like it has to be a very solid representation of events. If this is an actual story, it gives us at least stronger weight of evidence to think that Lazarus is a real guy. He actually has a conversation where. Or actually really, Abraham has a conversation with this rich man and this actually took place, which implies access to each other, at least verbally and visually, even though they're separated by this chasm. And that's something that you have to go, huh, that's interesting. I mean, every aspect of it seems that it has to be true in a straightforward sense, if it's a true story of a real rich man and a real Lazarus. Now, some say this is perhaps the same Lazarus as the Gospel of John, and you can't deny some parallels. This is kind of exciting to think about, right? These parallels are neat, although I'm not convinced and I'll share with you why I don't think it's the same Lazarus. But Lazarus does actually die. He's one of the few cases when he dies, he also gets brought back. And then he is a witness to people, and people are coming to Christ because of Lazarus and his resurrection or his resuscitation. It's not like the eschatological. The resurrection of the end times. Sorry, I'm just throwing the word eschatological out there for no reason. It's not like the resurrection of the end times, you know, when all that stuff finally comes to pass, but he is brought back to life. The Pharisees don't listen. They plot to kill Lazarus. They plot to get rid. To get rid of Jesus. And all this as a result of this, of him being raised, which just confirms what Jesus says in the parable, that even if somebody comes back or in the story, if somebody comes back, then they're not going to believe. If they won't listen to Moses and they won't listen even if someone rises from the dead. And so the parallels between the story of the rich man and Lazarus and Lazarus himself, the actual historical person in the Gospel of John, it's definitely there. There's parallels. There are in different gospels. This is recorded in Luke, whereas Lazarus, the historical, for sure one, is recorded in John. So that's just interesting stuff. John even has a theme like the one in this parable, how if one. Right, if they won't listen to Moses and the law, then they're not going to listen to me. And Jesus is a theme in the Gospel of John. It happens frequently that this kind of thing is being said. So cool to think about. On the other hand, let's just say if this is actually a parable, this is where I think people get sloppy in their thinking. Oftentimes people go, well, this is a parable, and therefore it's not describing in a realistic way, even a semi realistic way, what the intermediate state is like when I die now, but I'm not yet at final judgment. I think that that's a big leap because when I say that there's a parable about a landowner or a parable about a woman who lost a coin, or a parable, a farmer throwing seed out, that doesn't mean that, like farms and seeds don't exist or something like that. All the parables of Jesus, every single one of the many parables of Jesus have a realistic background, even though they are basically fictitious stories. They're stories about real kinds of things, but for the purpose of teaching. And that kind of Is the typical of parables. I mean, I don't know if there's any parable examples that we can think of even outside of Jesus. Maybe there are, and I'm just not thinking of them outside of Jesus that give us a parable that's not meant to be realistic in its background setting, but that is fictitious entirely. I can think of just one where, like, oh, you know, is it in Judges? Oh, the bramble says to the trees, there's like a conversation between plants. And this is. You could say that's not a realistic background. Well, them talking is not realistic, but the existence of plants is realistic and their natures. And that's why they're borrowed for the parable, to relate to people who are like those plants metaphorically. So if it is parable, though, it would seem like it would still have to be in its background setting corresponding to reality, unless you had compelling evidence to say otherwise. And I don't currently have that compelling evidence, so I don't go that route. So why would I think it's parable? First off, in Luke 16, what we've got here is there was a rich man. That's the beginning of the phrase in verse 19. There was a rich man and it has the word tis in there. There was a certain rich man. Some People say a certain rich man. Some translations. And this is very similar to the. To a list of parables in Luke in particular, where Jesus goes, there was a certain this, a certain that, a certain this. And he starts his parables this way. It also comes at the tail end of a group of parables. Luke 16, it's got two parables in it. And then Luke 15 has three parables in it. So there's a total of five clustered parables. And this is the final one, or so it seems. If you take the parabolic view, which I actually do take, I didn't used to, but I do now, and I would encourage you to think about it seriously. It doesn't mean it's not telling us truths about the afterlife. That. That doesn't follow, but it does seem like a parable. So Luke 15, we have the parable of the lost sheep. Then we have the parable of the lost coin. Then we have the parable of the prodigal son. Then in Luke 16, we have the parable of the dishonest manager. Then there's a little break for a few verses where it talks about the Pharisees and their love of money. And then Jesus tells this story about the rich man in Lazarus where there's this reversal of fortunes. You know, the rich man's clothes. Well, Lazarus has sores on his body. The rich man eats well. Lazarus sits outside the man's gate, waiting, probably for the food they would throw to the dogs, which is why the dogs are there licking him. And he's waiting for scraps to eat, hoping for that. And then their fortunes are reversed. So this is, it seems, a final parable in a list of parables. Luke 17 seems to start kind of a new section after that. So when I asked this question, are there any parables of Jesus that involve a totally fictitious background, a background that is actually inaccurate? Right. Not. Not just some storytelling elements. You soften or you make things more simplistic than they really are because you're telling a story, but rather just fictitious in the background, and they all seem realistic. So this affects how I view it. Let me talk briefly about the Lazarus thing. Okay? Is Lazarus literal or the same Lazarus as John? This isn't even really exactly what the question asked, but I got excited studying it and I wanted to share it with you guys. I thought you'd be interested in it as well. So the Lazarus of the parable and that of John's Gospel seem like different characters now. Their names being the same is no coincidence. I think this is Ultimately, I think it's showing that what happened in real history just proves what Jesus was teaching in this parable with Lazarus. But I think they're a different Lazarus. So Luke's Lazarus of the parable. He's poor and he's chronically ill. It seems as though he's a long time ill. Not a few days, not a week, not two weeks. He's poor and chronically ill, and that's his normal status. John's Lazarus is part of a family of means. Remember his sister Mary? She offers expensive ointments to Jesus, and Judas is mad about it. They also have a tomb for Lazarus. They have a tomb for him in the parable. He hasn't even buried it, or so it seems. We don't even know for sure what happens to the body of Lazarus. It may be that the community leaders just took him and tossed him in some communal grave. And not in a tomb. The rich man is said to be buried. And it's different. So the Lazarus. And in the Gospel of John, seems as though he was with family when he was sick, and then he died, and then his sisters are there and they have a tomb for him. And in John 11, I'll show you some verses here. The reason why I got excited about this, some think it's just pointless minutiae, but I don't think so. I get excited about this because Scripture has so many details in it that we miss when we casually read. And when we pull these things out, it causes our appreciation for God's word to rise up. And you start to go, oh, the details matter. They're significant. They're important. It's almost like if you watch a movie and you start to realize that the writer and director and all this and actors are actually being a lot smarter than you realized. And so you start paying attention to every word and every line and everything. And that's how we should be with scripture. So John 11:18 says, Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Mary, Martha and Mary, to console them concerning their brother. This is not what you would get if it was the Lazarus of Jesus. Parable in Luke. This real Lazarus had a bunch of people who came out. They cared for him. You know, he wasn't starving and forgotten. He was cared for and loved deeply. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met with him, and Mary remained seated in the house. And then we get this next statement, which is interesting. Martha said to Jesus, lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. This is not a chronically ill man. He's a guy who got sick when Jesus wasn't around and then he died. He wasn't sick for such a long period of time that he was starving, that he was laying at the rich man's gate. All this, these seem like different people with different scenarios to me. You can also see in John 11:3, the sisters sent to him saying, lord, he whom you love is ill. This was news, right? It was news that he got ill and then they just waited a few days. So he got ill. It was a few days later when Jesus ends up showing up several days later and he's been deceased for four days at that point. These two Lazarus guys are different. That's my point here. Otherwise you take Jesus as not being this one who, if you were here, he wouldn't have died. That sort of thing. It doesn't make sense. Them saying it doesn't make sense. I mean, Jesus obviously has a prerogative to heal who he wants, not whoever he chooses not to. But it doesn't explain the statement by Mary is the point. All right, so let's just class it for. If you're with me on this, this is parable. This is parable. That doesn't mean it's not containing truths, especially in its background elements and in its purpose, in its message, that it's communicating about the afterlife. Things like you and me, when we die, we will go to one of two places. It's not multiple choice options. We get. I go to one of two. And there's a place that you, you want to be in the comfort of God, and you will be there only if you know Christ. And it's not going to be the things that you think commend you to God aren't going to work. Ultimately, you need, according to all of the scripture, you need the gospel of Jesus Christ or you are going to die and you're going to be in torment like this is. This is. A lot of skeptics hear this and they hear this as abusive and mean language. But I would encourage you to slow down and think like. But if it's true, this is actually the most urgent message we have for mankind, that there can be a cure for your death and what happens after you die in Jesus Christ, of course, this is the most important message there is. This is why Christians have been willing to die for this message throughout time and are continuing to be willing to do so. Because we love people and we want them to know Christ and know grace and know eternal Life, and nothing in this life matters compared to that. Your pursuit of ambitions, your pursuit of your physical well being and health and your bodybuilding and your, your business acumen and you being an entrepreneur and trying to pursue wonderful family and these things, they all are actually secondary to the things that are eternal that's so important. So those truths are all like very solid and secured, even though this is parable. But then it leads us to some challenging questions. When you read the parable carefully, it has these descriptions that feel physical. Okay, there's a guy, he's suffering in flame, that feels very physical, doesn't it? Then you have another guy, he's Lazarus, and he's able, at least according to the rich man, he's able to dip his finger in water, bring it over, drop a drop of water on the man's tongue and it will cool him, implying like anatomy, in a bodiless state, that here we are in this intermediate state, not resurrected yet, but there's like anatomical descriptions of souls. Now you could go a couple different ways with that. You could say, well, that's because souls have a type of a body, there's like a kind of body like element in the soul. Or there's another way to go with it. I'll talk about it in a second. But yeah, there's a finger that can be dipped in water, there's a tongue that can be quenched, there's a fire that torments. And yet scripture does indicate that the intermediate state is disembodied. 1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 2 Corinthians 5, 4 talks about the intermediate state as being unclothed, I'm without a body. So what is going on here? Whatever body, bodily elements, if they're true, if they're literally true in some sense, then Lazarus, the rich man, they've got some sort of soul type body. And I think this was Tertullian's view, as I was looking into this stuff, that there's like a soulish type body that goes on there. There are, however, there's a chance that Jesus is deliberately, by using these terms, dip a finger in the water, bring it over here, put one drop on my tongue, because I'm dealing with anguish and inflamed. If I was burning, inflamed, a drop on my tongue, in a very real sense of at least physicality I have now wouldn't make a difference because it wouldn't really make much of a difference. One drop wouldn't survive a travel across this chasm anyways. There's things about this that feel simplistic. Intentionally, intentionally simplistic. This could be a deliberate way for Jesus to signal to his listeners that the story is, in some of its elements, more symbolic, some of its elements. And why would he do this? Well, it could be that in discussing the experience of souls in an intermediate state, it's very difficult to use normal English terminology for this stuff because we don't really have categories for this. I don't really have words to describe the experience of a soul interacting with. With something, experiencing something just as pure soul. And so instead archetypal things are used. So water as something that brings life and comfort and coolness and refreshing. And then fire is something that brings destruction and dries out and causes harm and is unpleasant, is hurtful. That these could be more like archetypes in the story, not meaning that, oh, so nothing was going on, but no, no, no, something's going on. It's just difficult to use English to describe it to people. When we say that God's arm is outstretched to Israel in the Old Testament, we don't expect him to have a big physical arm and it's stretched out. We're using this archetype of reaching an arm, reaching out to help somebody as a way of describing something that's a little bit more ethereal to discuss, like God's willingness to assist you and his power and capability to do so successfully. That's what we mean by his outstretched army. But this is used to simplify that in a picture. And so this may be the case. Fire, water, those types of things. We also have other possible signs that there's like archetypal elements that are going on in the parable where Abraham is personally with Lazarus, like Abraham personally with Lazarus, and they happen to be right at the edge of the divide so that they can actually have a conversation across this chasm. They actually have a conversation with each other. Again, he only asks for one single drop of water. He specifically wants Lazarus to bring it, and it's impossible. Anyways, the request is just for us to have an opportunity to hear how there's a permanent divide. Like you're not going to repent in hell, they're not going to repent in Hades, so to speak, or in the intermediate state. So what I'm suggesting is it's possible that there's elements of this parable. I think it's true. I'll put it this way. I think it's true that there's elements of this parable that may not be perfect correspondence in descriptions of physicalities, but rather physical ways of describing soulish realities. I feel like I'm being pretentious when I say it that way. I just don't know a better way to say it. So forgive me. But physical ways of describing soulish realities, the soulless realities are real, but the real comfort that there is versus the real torment that there is. And all this now this leads to. So at least how you can understand me, how I, and many other Christians, I'm not alone in this by any measure. How we view the intermediate state. I keep using that phrase, intermediate meaning here's where I am now in the body. Then here's where I will be in the very new kingdom, new heaven and new earth. Revelation talks about where we're resurrected and there's a very physical, eternal kingdom. And that's really what our goal is. It's not just the intermediate state, but the intermediate state is where I go between now and then. I will be in the presence of Christ if I'm in heaven, if I'm with Christ, if I know God, and if not, I will be in what the Bible calls Hades. So Hades, that's the term. That's actually the term that the Bible uses in the New Testament consistently. Not to refer to hell, as you're thinking, the permanent final location of all that stuff, but rather an intermediate state. Hades is usually described that way in the New Testament, and it's actually the term that the Old Testament refers to as Sheol. You'll sometimes see, depending on your translation, sheol, you will not abandon me to Sheol, that kind of thing. The Greek translation of the Old Testament used Hades in place of Sheol. And so it was something that the New Testament writers that Jesus and stuff in their language they were using would have been familiar with. So the intermediate state, here's how I view it, to summarize, for you to consider, and how many others view it. Before Christ, there is this place in Hades, or it's adjacent to Hades, some would say. And this is where everybody basically goes to the grave and goes to Hades in some sense. But there's like two different locations within that. And one is for the righteous or the saved, and the other is for the unsaved. And some receive. Receive sort of blessings and others receive torments. That is the intermediate state. The Old Testament describes this as going down to Sheol, or it will say sometimes to indicate, it seems people who went to the positive side of the grave or of Hades, they went to the fathers. He was gathered to his fathers. And sometimes you'll get like a bad guy in the Old Testament, who's more clearly bad. All of us are bad and need the grace of God, but you know what I mean? And he will not be described as being gathered to his fathers. He'll just die and he'll be buried or something, but not necessarily gathered to his father. So that's a phrase you sometimes get. Now, after Christ, they're in this sort of. You might think of this as an underworld type thing, although I don't want us to import too much other religious ideologies into here, but you can think of it like that. But after Christ, half of this gets emptied out. This is the view that Jesus, after he dies, he proclaims liberty to those who are waiting upon him in this place of comfort where Lazarus was in the story. And then those who are outside of that kingdom, they stay there and they wait a much longer time until there's a final judgment in the future. So that now when people die, they don't go to that temporary holding place, they go to the very presence of God, they go to heaven. That's kind of the idea is that paradise is being relocated for the righteous dead, so to speak. The saved, they would die and they would go to the positive place of Hades or Hades adjacent location called Abraham's bosom or paradise. And then that was carried up into heaven when Christ finished the job. And this is why Stephen, in Acts 7:55, he is about to be stoned and he sees Jesus standing to receive him. Let me show you what I mean, because you might think for a second I'm making something up. Check this out. But he, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. So he's standing there and the idea is that he's there to receive Stephen. Meaning that Stephen's going to be going where? Not down, but up, so to speak. He's going to be going into the very presence of God. Unlike in Jesus story about going carried downward, not necessarily to an evil place, but to this not heaven place. Not yet. Verse 59, though, I think confirms this. It says here, and as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, lord Jesus, receive my spirit. So just confirming that the vision of Jesus is he's there to receive Stephen. He's going to be there. Paul talks about this when he says to be absent from the body is not what he wants, but he doesn't want to not have a body. But he does want to be present with the Lord, and this, he gives us a sort of formula that he has torn between sticking around here or losing a body, which is bad, but dying, but being in the very presence of God, which means he's where. He's not just with Abraham, he's with God. That is, after Christ's resurrection, there's a new location. And there's other verses people quote on this that we could get into. Ephesians 4, 8, Acts 231. This is where the Apostles Creed says that Jesus descended into Hades is the term in English. It says hell, but that's debatable whether we should translate it that way. Let me share two more things with you, then we'll go to your guys. Questions? Okay, so Revelation 20 kind of reinforces this about the intermediate state, in my opinion. And I know this is a big debate. And I know especially the conditionalists out there, like, oh, Mike, there's other perspectives I have. I just don't have the time to get into all that. But I will say I did dig into it a little bit and I didn't find it convincing. And so I'm just sharing what I think is more the correct perspective. At least I believe it to be so. Revelation 20, verse 13, actually distinguishes between Hades and hell, as I've been doing throughout this explanation here. It talks about this sort of future time of final judgment. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Now, these are all. They're all the deceased who are unsaved, because those who are in the book of life have already been resurrected at this point. This is just resurrection unto judgment. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. That's where we get that terminology for hell is a lake of fire. It's revelation. And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. So Hades is this existing location that contains the dead who were in them, the dead who were in Hades, and then that will eventually be cleared out and then they'll receive their summary judgment. I mentioned I would try to remember this analogy about jail and prison. So jail can be a temporary. Even like a local police building will have, like a little jail that's there. It'll be a temporary holding location. Perhaps it's a guilty criminal that's there, but they're not yet sentenced with their final judgment yet but they're held there temporarily. That's kind of how Hades is. Is it pleasant? No, it's unpleasant. You don't want to be there. Everything about it is something you don't like. But it's not prison. Prison is different and worse. And so Hades and hell are different. One is intermediate and the other one is final. That would be my understanding of it. And what's interesting too, I'll share something else with you. Josephus, he's a first century guy. He's not a Christian. He's a Jewish historian for Rome. He's a Jewish Roman historian and he writes in his book Antiquities, book 18 of Antiquities. If you. If you wanted to look it up, look up Antiquities Book 1814 and you'll see the following. Look at how he describes the Pharisees in this passage. He's talking about the Pharisees. They also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments. That's not that. That's an intermediate thing, as from a New Testament perspective, according to as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life, and the latter are to be detained in everlasting prison. The unsaved, if we thought about it in our terminology, but the former shall have power to revive and live again. So that there is an intermediate state where there's the saved and unsaved, so to speak, in my Christian terminology here, like what we have at Abraham's bosom and then being in Hades, we have these two compartments or two different sides of the coin here. And then there's a future resurrection. And what's interesting about this is a couple things. Verse 15, it says, on account of which doctrines they are able to greatly persuade the body of the people. I included that part because Josephus is saying this is what in his opinion, most Jews believed at the time. And the Pharisees were the more popular party than the Sadducees. They were the minority. And so when Jesus tells the story, if this is the background, that's how the original reader is interpreting Jesus. You're talking about an intermediate state with two different compartments. Now, it doesn't mean he has to mirror all of their beliefs about this state. He doesn't. He disagrees with Pharisees at times. But it is interesting that when Jesus was arguing with the Sadducees about the resurrection, which is what this belief connects to, he sides with the Pharisees in a very significant way. All that to say, I think, the traditional understanding of Hades and the intermediate state and all that seems accurate. And while I would say that Lazarus and the rich man is a parable, I do think it's a parable. It doesn't mean that the concept of this intermediate state with two compartments and comfort and torment, that those aren't real truths that people really experience. Where I personally come off of some of the more literalistic side of things is when it comes to the description of fingers and tongues and fire and water and being able to discuss things with each other, I think that this may just be a deliberate simplification for the sake of communicating things to people who've only ever lived in bodies. There's my answer on that one. I hope that you guys find that helpful. Interested to read the comments you guys have down below, But I do have more questions for from you guys today because this is 10 questions, not just one, even though the first one always gets the most time. All right, here we go. Question two from ajosep says, is there a difference between indecisiveness and doing things not from faith? I struggle to make decisions and feel guilty about doing things without being 100% sure it's God's will, I think. Joseph, I wish we could talk. Like, I don't have the time to do this with everybody. I think it would help if we could talk for a while first and I could just ask you 100 questions about what you mean by that. So I'm going to hazard some guesses if I misrepresent your views. Don't take it personal. I'm not telling you what you think. I'm trying to guess at what you think about things so I can help answer your question. It seems to me from your question could be wrong here, that you're thinking the phrase in Romans 14:23 that says whatsoever is not of faith is sin. That that phrase means you have to have confidence that what you're about to do is what God wants you to do. And that's what faith means. Faith means knowing that God is directing your actions in this moment, and I think that that's causing you a lot of unnecessary stress. So let's read the passage together, Romans 14:23, and see if we can restore context to this concept. I'm going to go back. Well, I'll read the verse, then we'll back up. Whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats because he eats. The eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Now let's back up. Is this talking about making proper decisions in life and being led By God. Let me start in verse 13. And it's dealing with the issue of Christians going, can I eat this? Is that okay to eat? Maybe that was offered to an idol at some point behind the scenes. I wasn't participating in idolatry with it, but maybe the food was. And then someone else goes, I will never touch that. Someone else partakes of it. Maybe it has to do with drinking. You're like, I can drink and say, thank you God for this alcohol. I'm never going to abuse it. I'm not going to become drunk. I know what scripture says about that. And then someone else says, I couldn't even touch this stuff because I feel as though it's wrong. And I just don't have faith, this confidence that I can do that. And there's plenty of people in that situation and they don't have to change their minds. They should actually abstain if that's their view. They just shouldn't force that on everyone else. That's. There's a really interesting passage in Romans 14. So verse 13 says, Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer. In regards to what? To these sort of conviction based topics. And I want to be careful here. I don't want to talk for too long on this, but when I say conviction based topics, I think what Romans is talking about here is not issues where someone goes, I'm leaving my wife and I'm marrying this other woman. I feel no conviction about it, so it must be okay. Your convictions can go wrong a few different ways. Your convictions can say something's okay, that's not okay. That's never allowed, that's never okay, it's still sin. But your convictions can say something's not okay, that is okay. That's what Romans is talking about. Romans is saying, if there's an issue where God has made this acceptable, Christians can't participate in this. And it's totally okay. Like, how about dancing? Dancing as a category is not off limits. That's biblically very clear. There's instances of good dancing in scripture. Now, dancing can be abused, but the category itself is not evil. That's very clear if you just want to take scripture at face value. So dancing is one of those issues that is allowable, obviously has to be done rightly and wisely and all that, but it's allowable and you can do it and enjoy it. David danced under the Lord even. It wasn't like he was doing some like usher dance, but he was exclaiming and he was dancing. He was being emotive in his behaviors and stuff unto the Lord. He was just super excited. He didn't normally do it, didn't do it all the time. He did it that one time because there's kind of a lot of stuff going on. It was a big deal. Okay, so take the dancing issue your conscience, because this is an acceptable issue. Your conscience can help. You can be. Be able to have faith. Yes, God has allowed this, and I can dance unto the Lord. Or your conscience can say, while, yes, scripture says that, and you guys do that. But, man, I can't get over it. And it just, you know, I went clubbing when I was younger and all the dancing is so sensual in my own past, in my history, that it's tainted and I just can't touch it. To me, it's an unclean thing. Even though it's not unclean in its nature, to me it is that person. Their conscience will restrict them from dancing, and it should. They should not dance until that conscience is clear. This isn't about you making decisions about where to move, about what job to take, about who to marry, about what book of the Bible you're going to read next. This isn't about that. This is about sin and not sin, clean and unclean type of behaviors. That's what it's about. So he says, okay, in these types of situations, don't pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. Yeah, hey, okay, maybe you can dance. I'll just stay with the dancing illustration. You can dance, but don't necessarily dance in front of people that you know it's going to mess them up. You're not trying to mess them up. You're not trying to stir up negative things in their lives because you love them. But you're also not to put a hindrance in the way of a brother where you're not going to run around telling everybody else they can't dance just because you can't dance and you can't handle it. Maybe you can never touch a playing card even though you're not doing anything wrong with it. You just can never touch them. That's your conviction. But don't get mad at other people because you see them having a box of playing cards in their desk. It doesn't mean they're sinning in that. I know I am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. He's talking about food here, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. Remember I said this is the situation of a conscience making something unclean that is not inherently unclean. If your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love, but by what you eat. You do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. The questions about liberty, Christian liberty, are always trumped and answered by the questions about Christian charity. That's a really good thing to think about. Your questions about your liberty are always answered by questions about what is the loving thing to do in this situation. So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. We got bigger fish to fry than these small conviction issues. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble, because love is how you're going to answer the questions of liberty. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason. This, by the way, the faith somebody can be like, see, don't witness. No, no context. Right. The faith you have to eat or drink or dance. Keep it between yourself and God. If you're in a culture where, you know, in your church, this thing is. While you have a clear conscience before God, biblically, you're totally solid. You can enjoy this thing under the Lord, but, you know, in your church, it's a real mixed bag and just kind of. You don't need to put it on display. You can quietly enjoy your liberty amongst yourself or maybe some others who have a clear conscience, but you're not trying to cause problems for others by making this an issue that divides the fellowship and causes problems. So that could come to drinking, or maybe you smoke a pipe every once in a while or something like that. Not in, like, some constant addictive way. And these, these are types of things where Christians need to, like, chill out, give each other a little space. I think blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. And this is where we get the blanket statement. Yeah, if it's not of Faith, it's sin. You can go into neuroses on this pretty easily. I think the direct Context in Romans 14 is about the debate over what foods or drinks are acceptable in the sight of God. And the answer is, well, clearly Jesus declares all foods clean, so go ahead. But because some people's consciences are messed up on this, you have two problems. One, don't violate your own conscience and do something, even if it's clean. Just don't mess with your own conscience, because in your own heart you're rebelling against God, and that's an unhealthy thing to do. But the second issue is don't violate the other person's conscience in an unnecessary way that throws it in their face. And of course, don't judge the person who has a freedom you don't have. Those are all there. This has nothing to do with you deciding what house to buy, because there's nothing in scripture that says that God's going to tell you, like, where to live. He could. He told Abraham where to live, but that seems to be an exception, not the rule. He could tell you those things. He might tell you who to marry, and he might not. I think that here the answer when it comes to direction in our lives, we have examples in Scripture of people just making choices. And they're supposed to make wise choices, informed choices, not always. God told me, do this. This is why there's a book called Proverbs instead of a book called how to sense the vague hints of the Holy Spirit in making decisions in your life. But instead it's called Proverbs, which is a book of wisdom equipping us to understand, like, how to plan out things, how to prepare for hardship that's coming, how to also still be generous to others. Should I give money to this person in need? I don't need to go, do I have a feeling that I should give money? God can use that, but my feelings are generally not the Holy Spirit, as a general rule. So instead I can analyze, well, how much money do I have? How much needs do I have to meet? How much am I holding back? What does this person need the money for? Is this an actual legitimate cause? Am I feeding a drug habit, or am I feeding someone who's hungry? These are questions I want to ask about wisdom and charity and all that kind of thing. You don't have to have faith that God told you to do something in order to do the thing. That's just exampled over and over in scripture. They just. Sometimes they'll just go Somewhere, hey, let's go over here and do this. You can see in Paul's missionary journeys, there's times and Acts where he is directed by the Holy Spirit, go here. But there's other times where he just tries. He just tries stuff. He's like, ah, we're going to go to Asia. And the Holy Spirit forbid us. They didn't sin by planning to go to Asia without having a direct leading from the Spirit to do so. But they were open to the changing of the Holy Spirit that would happen and did happen. However it happened, God redirected them. He has a dream where God goes, hey, we're in Macedonia, we need help. And so Paul goes and helps read Acts. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you got to refresh yourself on it. And he heads down as this guy who needs help. So we have the example in Scripture of you just, you go where it's wise, you do what is wise, yet you do it prayerfully. You pray, God, help me see where to go, help me have wisdom, help me have insights. And sometimes along the way, God gives you direct instruction, hey, do this, do that. But you simply let me read your question again to make sure I didn't mess it up. In all the talking here, is there a difference between indecisiveness and doing things not from faith? My answer is yes. Indecisive can just be. I don't know which one of these things is best. That doesn't mean you're lacking faith because there's no faith element in this. You're just lacking discernment in which one of these is best. Or perhaps you tend to be fearful and not willing to accept the consequences of your own decisions. I know, I've been there, I've done that. And realized later that that was the case, that I was being fearful. I wanted a perfectly safe life and I'm over it. I'm over it now. But that can be. I wouldn't say it's a lack of belief in God. I think it's a desire for self protection that is unrealistic and will actually paralyze you. It'll actually cause problems that you just don't. You just don't see them coming. But you said I struggle to make decisions and feel guilty about doing things without being 100% sure it's God's will. Everybody struggles to make decisions and none of us perfectly knows God's will. You do the best you can, you pray, the Lord blesses it. But you also realize paralysis is a decision too. Not doing anything is a choice. And waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting sometimes has consequences as well. So always think you have. If you're like, I could do this or this, really think you have three choices. I could do this, this or nothing. Which one am I going to pick? Nothing is not a safe choice. Exactly. Maybe that'll help you. Maybe it'll make you more neurotic. I don't know. I hope that something I shared helps you, brother. All right, we have all the 10 questions for today. The next one's from Josie Bennett, who says, what is your opinion on the movement of the great wealth transfer that prosperity preachers teach where where believers obtain unbelievers land and wealth? Oh, I definitely have opinions about that. Have you guys heard this before? We get guys, let's see. Brian Simmons likes to talk about this. Brandon Biggs, the false prophet Brandon Biggs, who got really big for supposedly prophesying the near assassination of Donald Trump. I did a video on that exposing and I'll link it below where he's a demonstrably. He's a false prophet. I can prove it. And what's interesting is in that video I did on Brandon Biggs, he later went and deleted the evidence. A lot of the evidence that I shared in that video is no longer available on the Internet. You can only see it on my channel. So I will link that video below. And the man is definitely demonstrably a false prophet, but he'll talk about this great wealth transfer. There's others that talk about it as well. Who was it that I think was it Kenneth Copeland? There was somebody else who was talking about the wealth transfer as well. But these things kind of travel in circles. There's certain kind of like youtubey prophet type people who say stuff like this. The idea is that when Israel left Egypt, they took spoils from the Egyptians. Right? That was a wealth transfer. And so, you know, the earrings and stuff like that. So what? They actually end up making the golden calf out of later on crazily. The idea is that, hey Christians, we're going to have a great revival. There's going to be a great wealth transfer. And this is often followed by by saying, if you want in, oh, it was Binny Hinn who was doing this. If you want in on this wealth transfer, this future influx of incredible amounts of money coming from the world. So it's going to be money from Elon Musk and money from Bill Gates and money from Saudi Arabia and all this. And it's going to come your way Christians. And what you have to do is you have to be faithful with your money. Now you sow a little, you'll reap much. So give to my ministry. You got to give. Give till it hurts, and then you'll be abundantly blessed. And it's so funny, because these guys have been saying this stuff for years and decades and decades, and guess what? It's never happened yet. The only people that have gotten rich are Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland and now Brandon Biggs, who seems like he's driving a much nicer car than before he started giving false prophecies on YouTube. These are the guys that get rich. The wealth transfer thing is a transfer of your wealth to false teachers. That's what I think happens on a regular basis. It's not real. I don't think there's any biblical case for it. Just because that happened with Israel doesn't mean there's some prophetic statement. We are supposed to be not expecting that kind of wealth in this life. We're just not. It doesn't mean we're supposed to be poor. But there's just no expectation of, hey, follow Jesus and give, and God will give you so much more back and you'll receive it in return. The idea, when Jesus even talked about this concept of give and get, he has to extrapolate the get part all the way into eternity in the age to come. Because it's just a mixed bag we should be able to do as Christians, is safely give. Not because I know God will give me more money in return, but because I don't trust my money. I trust in the Lord. There's a difference there. Giving, when I trust money is I'm giving to get. It's like a gambling addiction. And then giving, because I trust God more than money means I'm giving this money. I will have less money, but I will still trust God to be my provider, because I trust him more than money. See the different mentality? You're not expecting riches and wealth. You expect to have less money because you gave. Now, it may turn out as you have a lifestyle of generosity. Proverbs talks about this, that you end up also blessed and taken care of. And sometimes God will chasten the wealthy, but sometimes they die rich. The story of the rich man who gave nothing and Lazarus, who was good, you know, he was a faithful Jew. And this rich man, he dies with all of his wealth. So the point of the story there is it doesn't even matter how much money you have in this life, not in the end not in the ultimate end of things. What matters is the treasures in heaven, which is why Jesus says, store up treasures in heaven, not on earth. So the wealth transfer thing is garbage. And I think it's just part of the grift of modern prosperity. Preachers. Yeah, I could talk more about this, but let me give you a couple little bullet points. Right? It's not clearly taught in scripture anywhere. They try to find examples from the Old Testament and then they just say, that's also going to happen again. Trust me. I say so. They'll tie it to their own personal prophecies, they'll listen to each other, and they'll echo each other's prophecies. And now, because there's a bunch of false prophets saying the same thing, they think it has more power and more weight. That didn't work ever. It didn't work in the time of Jeremiah when all the false prophets were talking about the prosperity of Israel and how well they would do. And Jeremiah's like, no, you guys, it's going to go really bad. And sure enough, God's word came true. All right, number five. Aaron, Elizabeth has a question. Did I go the wrong way? Did I skip one? Oh, I skipped one. Tara, Julian has a question. Nahum, three verses five and six, is hard for me to reconcile with our holy and loving God. Can you help me understand this? Let's go to Nahum. Nahum. And on the way there, I'll say, did you guys ever notice that nahum is human spelled differently? That doesn't mean anything. I just think it's interesting. So Nahum. All right, here, chapter three. Nahum. Coming. As I recall, after the time of Jonah, Jonah preaches Nineveh repents, then Nineveh falls later on back into the same stuff. I can't remember how long later, but it's sometime later. And then we have judgment against them being proclaimed. So there was a time of revival, and there were many souls saved because of Jonah. But eventually the city went back. So verses 5 and 6. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face and will make the nations look at your nakedness and the kingdoms at your shame. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. And we could go on. All who will look at you will shrink from you and say, wasted is Nineveh who will grieve for her? Where shall I seek comforters for you? This terminology. First off, there's a certain reciprocity in the way God Deals with people and judges people. Sorry, reciprocity. There's no need to use that word. I apologize. There's a certain, like, ironic, like, equal, you get what you deserve sort of thing, and you get what you did to others kind of thing that God deals with nations. And one of those things is the stuff that they'll do to others ends up being done to them. And so Nineveh is metaphorically a city and a people who will have its skirts thrown over their face, which is a way of shaming them. This is embarrass. Imagine if this happened to you. This is embarrassing. This is shame. And it's not just about women. I think it could be said of men as well, to pull them over their face. We think of skirts as female clothing. I guess I'd have to check the Hebrew here. I'm not sure if that's actually meant as female clothing. It could be. God often speaks of nations as though they are women. And so it may be that it is. But this is again, not literal. It is metaphorical. When Nineveh takes a city and then you. Let's say. Let's say it's a female analogy. Specifically, you abuse the women. You throw their skirts over their face and you mock and laugh at them being naked and being exposed, which is something that's evil to do to them. You're going to have that metaphorically happen to you guys. You're going to be powerless and weak and taken advantage of, and you're going to be struck. God's going to ruin them. I'll make the nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame. Your shame is the idea here. Not just the imagery of sexual kind of things, but rather shamefulness. That shamefulness. Think of the Garden of Eden. They cover their shame as they cover themselves with clothes to be publicly exposed physically, like that was a shaming and debasing thing, and that's what God's doing to them. But you're saying it's hard for me to reconcile this with our holy and loving God. I think that it's hard to reconcile it with a purely loving God. It is not hard to reconcile it with a holy and loving God. That's the phrase you used, was holy and loving. And I want you to think for a minute about what it means that God is holy. The fact that God is holy. See, he's not just good, because often I think of good as nice and caretaking, but the goodness of God is much more piercing than that. And he is nice and caretaking in Settings that are appropriate to do that. But he's also holy in a scares you to death sense. God is holy in a sense that terrifies us because we are unholy. He is so righteous. I remember one time I cleaned something in the house and my wife was like. I was like, I cleaned it really good, babe. I just told her I cleaned it so good. And she. She was like, really? You did? Because she doubts me for some reason I don't understand. And. And so she came in as a joke. She came into the room with a white glove on. And I genuinely thought I had cleaned so good that even the white glove treatment was going to be fine. And so she just reaches up to like a windowsill or something and goes like this. And she's like, eh, that's what God's holiness is. Kind of like, this is my own overestimating of how clean I made the room. But this is what our overestimation of our goodness is, is we come into the presence of God and he's got the white gloves on, and you're like, well, that's not fair. I didn't maybe do that. Good God, I'm not ready for white gloves. And he goes, eh. Except that what he shows us isn't just trivial little bits of dirt on a windowsill. It's like, here's the hatred in your heart that is murder. Here's the lust in your eyes that is adultery. Here is the sinful wickedness that is inhabiting your soul, that you've tied yourself to and you have chosen to participate in, and you've given yourself. You've become a child of Satan, not of God. The extremity of this is terrifying. And it all ties back to the holiness of God. God is that holy. So that Isaiah, when he sees God, Isaiah's hourly, you think of him as a very righteous man. He's a prophet of God. What do you find that's bad about Isaiah? He's one of the few characters in scripture you don't really see bad stuff about Isaiah. Sure enough, though, Isaiah, he goes into the presence of God. He goes, I saw the Lord seated on the throne, high and exalted. The train of his robe filled the temple with glory. And he says to himself, woe is me, for I am a sinful man. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. I want you to think for a second he sees God. And the first thing he does is say, woe is me. Because he has been brought in the presence of the spiritual white glove, saying, look at your uncleanliness, look at your sinfulness, look at how wicked you are whenever you think. And it's fair. Tara, it's totally understandable for you to see God's judgment and feel uncomfortable with it. It's okay. And you don't necessarily have to fix that. You can just say, I feel uncomfortable with it, but I know my feelings. They're not reliable. Okay? I trust the Lord. That's a fair thing to do. But I want us to realize that through Scripture there is this continual theme that our sins are a bigger deal than we think. And that when we encounter God and when God's judgment finally comes, that judgment is more intense than we expect because we never thought we were doing something that bad in the first place. If you're a parent, you understand this. There are times you've caught your kid doing something that was actually really bad, and your kid just thought it was not allowed. Right? There's a big difference. You thought, this is really bad, and your kid thought, this is not allowed. That's how we often treat our sins. We're doing things that aren't allowed and not things that are actually evil and very bad. But coming into God's presence, he deals with it as it really is. So my way of putting this is when God's judgment shocks my heart, it's because my heart is numb to the depravity of sin. And my heart doesn't understand God's holiness. I think his judgments are harsh because I think his holiness is some small, menial little thing. I don't think he's really pure and perfect and holy. I just think he's loving. I think he's good in some sense, but I don't think he's absolutely holy. Holy, holy, perfect in every possible way. If you were to write out, think of it this way, perfect morality. Every standard of morality in absolute perfection, in thought life, in behavior, in motive, in every single thing. You would be describing God. And so God judges us based upon the standard of his own holiness. Now, he also gives us, in Jesus, the only way to meet the standard of his holiness. Because you have to say immediately, this is an impossible standard. Like, I'm never going to be this holy. I will die and go to hell. Everyone will. This is. We're all doomed, Mike. And I'm like, yes, you are now understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ. You are now getting it. And it's sobering to know that God, every one of us before God, we stand as guilty and will be judged. But God in Jesus gives us his own holiness, like clothes us in his righteousness, so that we can stand before God and go, I have not earned this at all, but you have made me as holy as you are, and I can now pass the test because I'm in Christ. And he passed it for me. It's an amazing thing. And it turns what was horror at how strong God judges sin into a reverence for how holy God is and an awareness of how incredibly gracious he's been to me. And all of a sudden, I feel like I don't have a lot to complain about in my life because I've been forgiven by a holy God and it's all I can think about. All right, let's go to the next question. This is question number yeah, I went the right way. Number Sorry, five. Okay, So I look at the camera and my numbers are reversed. So it looks like a two to me. And sometimes that throws me off. All right, question number five. Aaron, Elizabeth says, hi, Mike, Is it a lack of faith in me not to pray for a miraculous healing, for a fatal diagnosis in my baby I'm carrying and instead be praying for strength, comfort and peace primarily? Aaron, I don't think you should. This might. Okay, you guys might think I'm being overly pastoral. My answer here, But I don't think you should burden yourself with this, with this. With this concern. I think you should pray as you feel prompted and led. And let me give you some encouragement on this. The. There are times when God heals and there are times when God does not. And every Christian needs to have categories for that and needs to be okay with both of those. To trust God for healing and to trust God for not healing. That's really important. And part of this could be your heart going, I, for whatever reason, am not expecting God to bring healing. I anticipate he won't. Not because I don't believe him, but because I don't think that's what he will do for whatever reason, you feel that. And so now you're preparing yourself in ways that might be really important for your own future as well. So God may heal and you can pray for that. But I'm not one of those who's like, you can't even pray. Lord, give me strength to deal with this if my baby is not healed. For people who say, you can't pray for that, they're not preparing you to deal with life the way that scripture does. And it gives you preparation for the incredible, wonderful Gratefulness of a miracle and to fall on just God's presence and God's love and God's care and God's the promises for the future of being able to see even our babies one day again. These are things that you need to be able to prepare yourself for as well, potentially. Now, I have an example here. I'll give you two examples of prayers I've offered to people in the past. One, there was a guy who came up for prayer, and I have no special gift for in miracles or anything like that. But there was a guy who came from prayer and he had a diagnosis of cancer. He was very scared, and we prayed for him. And when we prayed for him, I had this uncommon confidence that God not only could heal, but was going to heal this man. And he came back later and was like, it's gone, it's gone. And we praised God and we thank God for it. And it wasn't like my prayers did this or something. We were all praying for him. But there's another situation where my own grandmother, when I was still pretty young, my own grandmother got diagnosed with cancer. She had had cancer twice. The first time we all prayed for her. She sought a bunch of medical treatments and stuff and chemo and all that. And she recovered. And then she got it again. And this time I remember my mom telling me, just being super open with you guys, like, God's going to heal her. I know God's going to heal her. And I felt as though this statement that God was going to heal her was coming from a place of fear, not necessarily a place of faith. Like, I'm just too afraid to think about if he doesn't. And that's fair. Hey, we go through. These are hard things to go through. And people respond in different ways and they process it differently and they go through stages and stuff. And that's understandable. I'm not criticizing, I'm just acknowledging. But I really had a sense in my spirit, I'd say this is going to offend some people who think this doesn't happen. But I had a sense in my spirit that. And this is going to sound weird to many people, especially God always heals people, is that God was not going to heal her and that instead he had given her the cancer the first time and now this warning so that she could make sure that she was right with God. And she actually used that time to try to be right with God. She, one by one, reached out to her grandkids and was like trying to talk to them about God because This was sort of a silent thing in our family nobody talked about. And she sort of went back to these roots of Christianity that she had. And it was a beautiful thing. And I was able to help prepare my mom a little bit, a little bit for what was going to be one of the hardest things she ever went through, losing her mom. And I don't know if maybe the Lord is giving you wisdom about what's coming or if maybe it's just you trying to process these, prepare yourself for what you think might happen. Either way, I think it's okay for you to pray as you feel led right now. That's my point. Pray as you think is needful right now. And don't listen to someone who people get involved in up in your business in ways that are not helpful here because they feel how important the situation is and how hard it is and they want to help and sometimes they cause harm. Have grace for them. But you can pray as you feel is appropriate because I think that there's a variety to the way that God works in these situations. So, yeah, we're going to pray for you right now, Aaron. Father, we lift up Erin and pray for our sister that you'd give her courage and comfort, that you'd help her, even guide her in her prayers. Bring people around her and her family in good ways, and please help unhelpful people who think they're helping but are not to just be quiet. We pray, but we also ask, Father, that if it is your will, that you would bring healing. I'll pray for that. That you would bring healing. And if indeed you have another plan, that whatever happens, Erin and her family would really sense the work of Christ and the help of God very, very closely. In Jesus name, Amen. All right, let's go to question number six. This is James Bird who says, hey, Mike, did Jesus limit. Did Jesus's limits he placed on himself while on earth disappear once he resurrected or was exalted to heaven? It's a really interesting question. Matthew 24:36. No one knows the day or the hour except the Father. Could Jesus know now? And this is like a whole, whole line of thinking and reasoning is like, does Jesus know now the day and the hour? Because when he was on earth, he says, no one knows, only the Father. But does he know now? I don't know for sure the answer to this question. Maybe I haven't worked on it enough myself. There's definitely a sense in which here. Well, let's look at Philippines 2 and let's see if we can sort of understand. I don't think it's directly answering the question, but see if we can understand what it's saying here. It describes the mind of Christ, the mindset of Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped. Okay, so this is previous to his incarnation, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Now, well, I'll read the next verse. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Now, if this was the full story of Philippians 2 here, we might say, okay, obviously there's resurrection and all that, but we might say, so whatever limitations Jesus took, he maintains those limitations. So, like, setting aside his omniscience, he has it, but he's not using it, or only uses it with the permission or agreement of the Father or something along those lines. Clumsy as my words are to say that, admittedly. But then we have verse 9. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So there was an exaltation. And then the question we have is like, what does that entail, the exaltation of Christ? How does that affect his. The frequency or the continual use of things like his omniscience, that sort of thing. And it's hard to say. We just know there was. Where he sets those things aside, where he chooses not to use those is in the incarnation. And then he has an exaltation. Does that mean it reverses that? In some sense we know he's still human. He doesn't set aside his humanity, but his humanity is different. So in First John 3, is it we have the following. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children, and we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared. What am I going to be like in my resurrected state? Well, there's a connection to Jesus resurrected state, and it may in a fuzzy way connect to your question about whether his omniscience and all those sorts of attributes are regularly, you know, just continually being used as they would have been before the incarnation. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him. So Jesus is not just resurrected because we would already be like him in so many ways. He's something more glorious, it seems. At least that's one way of viewing this, because we shall see him as he is. There's a current state of the way Jesus is, and it's something that. I don't even know what that is exactly yet. This is written by John, who traveled with Jesus for years. In Jesus resurrection, we get hints at this about he's. It's the same body. He is resurrected, but there's some sort of alterations that have been made. And we see him, he just seems to pass through a room. He's unrecognizable at one point and recognizable at another point. There's something going on here, and it's not clear what it is. Even John doesn't know what it is. So I can't tell you exactly what it is. But there seems to be in the exaltation and the glorification of Jesus after his death, after his resurrection, that there's a case that can be made that, yeah, his omniscience and all these things are continually being practiced by him, even though he still has humanity. He's fully human, fully God, of course, and I would lean that way. But I have to admit that me leaning that way is not off of perfectly solid evidence. And maybe others would have a better case for it than I've presented. There's some thoughts. Let's go to question number seven. Believe has a question says, how do I respond to a Christian who thinks things like abortion and transgenderism are wrong, but that they shouldn't vote to have the government legislate against it to restrain or correct non Christians forcing it on them? This was like Jimmy Carter's view. Did you guys know this? He passed away recently. And I was looking into it a little bit because I was curious, like, what does this guy believe? Like, I'm not old enough to really remember Jimmy Carter or his administration or much of that or any of that. I wasn't alive. So I was looking into a little bit to find out, because he's one of the most openly religious presidents we've had. But I don't think that me and him would have similar beliefs about a lot of stuff. And so I think that's. I was curious. So his view was the government should not legislate against abortion because of the separation of church and state. And that's what I think. This kind of Comes down to, is there a reason why abortion. Let's take them separately. Abortion should not be legislated against because we're not trying to force our religious beliefs on people. And I would say, as a Christian saying, I'm not forcing my religious beliefs on people. That's a very clumsy thing to say because that's the same reason I think murder should be illegal is because of my religious beliefs. Are those not. Where do you get those beliefs? Christian? Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not murder. If a man sheds blood by men, his blood will be shed after the flood made in the image of God. This is why you can't kill them. These are religious beliefs that murder is immoral and wrong. And yet we want it legislated. So you can't just say that separation of church and state means no religious beliefs are legislated. Theft being wrong is a religious belief. You might pretend it's not, but it just is a religious belief. That's the nature of saying that theft is wrong. Now, you could try to say, but secular atheists often believe theft is wrong. Yeah, but they do it without being consistent in their worldview. And I'm not going to advocate inconsistent worldviews. Let's be consistent. So what about abortion? I think as a Christian, I want to look at Scripture and say, does God expect nations to legislate against things like abortion? And the answer is yes, he destroys the Canaanites. And one of the reasons is they were burning their children in fire to baal. And there's no substantive difference between the child in the womb and out of the womb. That makes one killable and the other one not killable. Jesus. There's a cool passage in Luke where it talks about Jesus as a child and as an infant. And it makes it clear that there's this, like, it's Jesus. It's the same Jesus. In fact, my shirt's perfect today. Former embryo. It was me in the womb of my mother. It wasn't something that became Mike the person Mike. It was me in my mother's womb. It was Jesus in the womb of Mary. It wasn't some other entity. It was John in the womb of Elizabeth. Luke affirms both of these in Luke chapter one. So, yeah, biblically, that's there. And God definitely expects governments to stop murder from happening. And that's just what abortion is. It just is murder. There's no logical way around it. We just don't say it out loud because we're afraid people will get mad at us. I'm like, so we have to make abortion so clear what it is that people instinctively know that it's wrong. Because when you play games with terminologies and stuff, and you act like it's not us killing our own kids. So, yes, government has to legislate against parents killing their own children. Every government does, or they will be judged by God. That seems very clear in Scripture. What about transgenderism? Christians who think transgenderism is wrong, but we shouldn't have the government legislate against it. The government doesn't have to legislate against transgenderism. It has to legislate for it. It's kind of weird the way it works. If the government just ignored the transgender issue, if there was no sort of people forcing it, it would just. It just wouldn't happen. But when you allow people to sue somebody because they. They. And the government actually enforces transgender ideology so they can sue you because you won't let them use the bathroom they want to use, you won't let the girl into the boys club or the boy into the girls club, or you won't let this person do this stuff they want to do because of their gender, you actually have to make a law that says, I'm going to enforce transgenderism. So I would say this is kind of reversed. Government cannot enforce transgenderism. That would be an immoral, sinful, evil thing to do. Biblically speaking, I have great grounds for this. God made them male and female. And again, you might say, but, Mike, that's your religious belief. These are all religious. Your belief that religion shouldn't be legislated is a religious belief about legislation. There's no way to escape this fact. So it's just a question of what impact Christianity has when it intersects with politics. It's not whether there's an impact. The old school idea of separation of church and state was not to protect the state from the church. It was to protect people and their religious beliefs from state control. It was to give freedom to people, not to oppress religion and secularize government in the modern sense, as I understand it. But I would say if you privately believe that transgenderism is a great error and it's bringing harm on individuals, then you would, at minimal, as a Christian, say, we can't have government promoting transgender ideology in the name of protecting transgender people. It's actually hurting them. Not protecting them. It's actually causing them harms. So we can't have a government do that. Minimally, that would be the requirement. But the death penalty stuff is, to me, more clear. In Scripture, you kill People, you die for it. This is government's role. It's their job. I have a video on the death penalty. If you are a Christian, like probably the majority of you are, if you're a Christian who thinks the death penalty is wrong, I think that you are. I think you're mistaken. And I think so based upon the testimony of Scripture, I have a video where I go through a bunch of reasons why I would encourage you to think about it, take into consideration. And after that video, half of you will fall back on. Okay, fine, yes, they're supposed to, but humans do it so bad that I'm still against it. I recognize you may end up landing there, but that didn't stop God from telling nations that if they didn't enact the death penalty on murderers, that there was blood on their hands. So I think that we just don't have that as an option. We have to do it. We have to do it. If we have to do it better, then we have to do it better. That's the role of government. So, yeah, okay. All right, I'll go to the next question, but I'll link below the video on the death penalty for those who want to check it out. That's how I'd respond to Christians who think things like that shouldn't be legislated. All right, number eight. Paul Fuer says, I feel the need or desire to make good money. That is that it's necessary to feel secure, to be a provider, and yes, to have some nice things, a house, vacations, etc. Am I the Luke 12 barn builder? Let's look at Luke 12. I'll point out on our way there. There was a lady named Lydia who was a seller of purple in the early church. And purple was. She was like. She was rich, probably. Lydia was rich. Jesus, his ministry was provided for through the support of rich women. Believe it or not, Luke talks about it. There were several women who were well off who helped fund the ministry of Jesus. The Bible refers to there being rich people who are in fact Christians and doesn't tell them they can't be rich or continue pursuing paths that bless them financially. But in all of these cases, there are people who are generous and are giving and they don't rely on their money. And James has this amazing thing he says about let the rich glory in his humiliation. There's a phrase to ponder for a while, James. Let the rich glory in his humiliation. I love that phrase because it took me for a long time to understand it. The idea is that you are very Generous. You're a very generous person. So the Luke passage, the one you're talking about, it's not about a generous person, it's about a greedy person, selfish person. In the meantime, when so many. Let's see, hold on. We really want to get to the rich fool. Here we go. Verse 13. Someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. It's interesting how maybe pastors can take word from Jesus here. If someone in the church is trying to involve you in something that is just like, this is just not my job and my role as your pastor. I like what Jesus says, but he said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you, like, this is not what I'm here for. And he said to them, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. This is the thing we start believing when we're coveting. Coveting comes, it seems, from a belief that your life consists in your possessions. That's why you want that you think that your life consists in that. So he's targeting the heart of coveting in this. If I don't have this, is my life perfectly fine. Yeah, it's the same. Why am I coveting these things? And he told him a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentiful. And he thought to himself, what shall I do for I have nowhere to store my crops? What do you think he should have done? He's already rich. He has like this incredible abundance of crops coming in, and he wants to store it all for himself. He doesn't want to give it away, doesn't want to bless others. He's already rich. He wants to be so filthy rich, he never has to work another day in his life. That's what he wants. So he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample grain goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. This is a party mentality. Let me make my life about my own pleasure. My life is about making me happy. And this can be the pursuit that rich people do is they develop a situation or people who don't have to work for a living. You might not feel like you're rich, but you don't have to work for a living. You are rich. You are abundantly rich. As far as anybody else in the world that has ever existed is concerned. And so they can start just pursuing pleasure. So in the morning I go on a walk and I breathe in the fresh air and then I have my little cappuccino. And then the next couple hours I do a little bit of shopping online or maybe I go over here. Then I do my yoga class and then I go over here and I got my Pilates thing and I go over here and I go to my book club and then we go out and watch movies and you're just pursuing pleasure at all times so that you have an entirely selfish existence. That's what he's getting at. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. The problem isn't being rich. The problem is laying up treasure for yourself and not being rich toward God. Now there's a balance here and I struggle with this too. I go, how much am I supposed to save for retirement versus giving stuff away once you start actually being able to save for retirement? Most of my life I couldn't. But once you start being able to, you start to try to think like, well, what's the right amount? And you know, there's a certain amount of you're just going to give away. At least if you're a Christian. If you're a believer, I assume you're being generous and you're giving financially and to your church and to ministries or poor or somebody who needs help. You know, your friend passes away and left a widow and you just give them a check. You know, this is what you do as a Christian. But how much do you pack away versus how much do you give away? And a lot of people don't ever have these dilemmas because they never had an option. They just give some of their money away and they hope there's enough left one day for them. If you're having these debates, you are well off compared to most of the world throughout time, we're abundantly rich compared to most of the world throughout time. Be generous. That's the short answer to your question is you have the desire to make good money, do it selflessly, make the money not just for you, but for others. And be a real, not just in theory, right? You know how people go, well, if I win the lottery, I'd buy this person a house. I give away this to charity and they don't really do it. Be generous with the money. You Actually have not with hypothetical riches, you may one day get start being generous now with the money you've got and have that practice and habit of giving and giving and giving that should be incorporated there to protect you from this. So it's not the danger of money, it's the danger of the love of money. It's not money is the root of all evil. It's the love of money is the root of all evil. What you have could be used in great ways to serve God. This desire for wealth that could actually be used in great ways to serve God if the desire is for the usefulness of wealth for the kingdom of God. But if it's just wealth to make your life better, then I would very seriously say, let me take this year, this next year is January now. So this next year, and let me pray God, show me my attitude towards wealth and what it should be and fix it. And show me where there's any bondage in my life to eat, drink and be merry. There's any of that going on. I want to enjoy all things to you. I want to eat this juicy steak and go, thank you, Lord, for this juicy steak. Praise God. But I also don't want to have any covetousness in my heart that has me. So I'm not rich toward you. So I'd encourage you that. And I say read through Luke. Start at the beginning of Luke. Luke focuses on wealth a lot in the Gospel of Luke. Read through Luke very patiently this year. Think about the passages that talk about wealth and then, sure, pursue money for the kingdom of Christ. All right, let's go to question number nine. Philagape says, what do you think of invoking biblical figures like David, Cyrus and Jehu when talking about President Elect Trump? Does his election have spiritual significance? I appreciate your ministry. Yeah, well, I mean, this is challenging because it's not inherently wrong to say, look, God did this with this world leader in the past or this, this person. And I think he's doing that with, with Donald Trump or with somebody else. Fill in the blank. It's not inherently wrong. So it's not like as soon as someone invokes this, this, this person of the past, you know, Cyrus or somebody, that's who I've heard Trump compared to as a Cyrus. It's not as though that's inherently wrong, but that doesn't mean that it's accurate either. And in my opinion, every president is significant. Every world leader is significant. Every election is full of God's ordination and God's plan. And God's intentionality and God's sovereignty. And surely you could probably compare these guys to a lot of biblical characters in hindsight. The question is doing it in foresight, and that's what's being done. A lot with Trump is like, in foresight. It's not even just what he did in his first term, it's now. Here we are at the beginning of his second term coming up, and now, in foresight, we're predicting, we're putting our hopes on what we think is going to happen, he's going to do. And that's where there's a lot of human guesswork being done. In hindsight, we're all going to be able to look back and go, trump was like this. And I could name a character maybe like him or like some combination, you know, what was he like? Was he like a Gideon, Right. Success and then, ooh, failure, big time. Was he like Cyrus, secular guy and who just ended up. Or was he like a Nebuchadnezzar who ends up having this real conversion experience, which has not apparently yet happened? I don't know. In hindsight, I'll know. But when you're doing it predictively in foresight, that's where I think the sketchiness comes. And what I have noticed, for those of you who are online saying things like this, like, Trump's this, he's this, he's this, is that it does often come off to other believers as though you're very adamant about this. You're not like, oh, I think that God's doing this, but almost like you're mad at anybody who doesn't see it the same way as you on this one issue. And that, I would say, is the danger of becoming divisive over these political things. Obviously, I'm willing to be divisive on abortion and stuff like that, but which biblical character you think is a parallel of Donald Trump is not one of them. I can just wait four more years, and then I'll tell you my perspective on that. Yeah. Does his election have spiritual significance? Yeah. America has definitely been at a crossroads. And definitely you compare the Biden administration, when it comes to spiritual things, to the Trump administration, spiritual things. There are dangers on both sides, but Trump's administration would at least have the potential of representing more biblical views on. More biblical. Not totally biblical, but more, as opposed to less biblical views on marriage and on personal responsibility and on the sense of like, hey, let's work together and let's be joined as one, that kind of thing. And there's other stuff that's political. That's not in my purview, usually, to talk about. But the issues of, like, big government versus small government and things like that, that's radically different, it seems, heading into a second term than even his first term. He was very big government in the first term for whatever reasons you guys all can debate. So there's. There's things coming. We'll see. We'll see where it goes. Yeah. All right. Question number 10. Ryan Bass says. Or is it Bass? Could be either one. Hey, Mike. Hey, Ryan. I love watching your videos, and I've learned a lot, and it has drawn me closer to God and the Word. I'm grateful to hear that, Ryan. Tremendously grateful to hear that, brother. Very cool. Genesis 1:26. God said, Let us make man in our image. Who is the US that he's talking about? And I would say there's a few theories on this. Okay, so some say the US is like a royal we. Like the Queen of England saying, like, we. Do not find that amusing or something. You know, there's a statement there. It's the royal we. I'm speaking collectively for everyone because I represent all people. Or maybe just a way of saying, I say we because I'm so important that I'm going to pluralize the terminology of myself. So it could be like the royal we. That's one view. Another view is that God is here going to create man in the image of him and some other group. And so either you put angels here, or there's this thing called the Divine Council that it's not part of the. I'm not signed up to that theory. But there are Christians who hold a view called the Divine Council worldview. And they'll say, there's this group and God's making them in making humans in their image, not just his own. Which also carries a lot of baggage with it, because now you're saying either angels or divine beings, that they're actually also in God's image, which to me, creates some challenging problems. And I don't hold to that view. Another view is that it is meant to teach the Trinity. And that's rough to say the Trinity is being taught in Genesis chapter one. It's rough because it's not clear. The Trinity I believe, is in the Old Testament, but the clarity with which it is in the Old Testament is not nearly as strong as it is in the New Testament. And many strong believers would be like, mike, you shouldn't even say the Trinity's in the Old Testament. Like, that's Too clumsy. You need to say something else, like the groundwork for the Trinity is laid, or what is buried there is then unearthed by the spade of the New Testament, so to speak, that kind of thing. Maybe they would put it those ways, but I'm inclined to think that this we is in reference to the Trinity. In hindsight, I don't know that the early readers would have known what it was talking about. And maybe they would have been like, I'm not sure what that means. You know, God's just referring himself plurally for some reason. So I do think it's just God. It's not angels. I don't think anywhere in the Scriptures at all are angels said to be participating or other beings participating in the creation of man. Later on, we read in Scripture after Genesis, in the image of man, God created. And then he speaks, like in Isaiah and stuff, of creating alone and how he created without the help of anyone else. And that would seem to imply creating man was also alone, because that's the creation account, Genesis 1. So it has to be him alone being a we being plural. I would say that that is like laying the groundwork for the Trinity. Maybe it's not teaching the Trinity like I get, because the Trinity is much more than just saying God can be spoken of as we. It's more than that, but it's consistent with that. And that's where I would. Where I would go with it personally. So it's not that it's teaching the Trinity, but it's consistent with it and it's laying groundwork for it that later on can be used after we get the full revelation of Scripture. And there's a lot of places like this in the Old Testament where it's like, oh, that makes sense once you understand the Trinity. So that. And for someone goes, But, Mike, the objection they would have is, Mike, you're interpreting in a way that would not have been the understanding of the original readers. And the Bible's not limited to how the original readers understood it. That's certainly important. But it's not like you can only understand what the original readers wrote, not according to scripture. 1 Peter talks about this and says that holy men of God wrote and they desired to understand the stuff that we now know, showing that there was a greater understanding of ancient texts after the coming of Jesus. Paul talks about this when he says that in the reading of the law, there's a veil still upon the people of Israel, at least the ones who don't accept Christ. And that veil is keeping them from really understanding what they're reading. There are things the original readers aren't understanding until they come to Christ. And when one comes to Christ, the veil is lifted. So I have biblical reasons to think that there is more going on in the Old Testament than was even apparent to the original readers, especially as those things pertain to Jesus. We let us create man. There's more going on there, especially as it pertains to Jesus. That's kind of like the doctrine of the Trinity. It doesn't teach the doctrine. There's a lot more to the doctrine than that. But it's consistent with it. And certainly as the veil comes off, it makes sense in light of it. That'd be how I'd answer that one. All right, you guys, that's it for today. I plan on being with you next Friday. We will talk about more Bible. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your holy, holy word. We pray that the veil would come off our eyes more and more as we read it. That we would see connections, real ones, not ones we make up in our head, but ones that are there because of the revelation of Jesus Christ Christ. We just pray our appreciation for your word would grow and we lift up this new year that's coming. And we have our plans and our hopes. And for some reason, many of us, we become more aware of where we're at in our lives and the things we want to see change. And we pray, Father, that you would help us to not only be aware of what needs to change, but be aware of the path that leads to that change and to do that unto you. In Jesus name, Amen.