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Why am I concerned about the Upside-Down Kingdom Bible? 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 42)
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Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference:1. 0:03 {The Upside-Down Kingdom Bible} What are your thoughts on the newly released Zondervan NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible, edited by Dr. Preston Sprinkle? 2. 1:18:50 {Helping Children Grasp the Gospel} As a pastor to the youth for so long, what would you recommend parents do with their children to help them have a personal relationship with God?3. 1:21:00 {Moses/Genesis: When/How?} When/how did Moses acquire the contents and narrative of Genesis?4. 1:22:27 {Is Marriage an Oath?} James 5:12 says not to make oaths, but isn’t getting married making an oath?5. 1:26:35 {Overcoming the Grip of Sin} What’s the balance between the Holy Spirit changing us, and us trying to do good works and love God? I just feel so stuck in my sin. I don’t know how to get out of this habit. I’m scared my repentance isn’t real.6. 1:31:29 {Sin in the Millennium?} Will there be sin in the Millennium? Will that affect our glorified bodies and our lives in the Millenni...
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All right, officially live, this is the first question for today is why am I concerned about the upside down Kingdom Bible? This is a brand new Bible that just was released by Zondervan, major publisher who produces lots of Bibles. It's in the niv, which means I'm not actually talking about the translation because the translation is not new. It's the study Bible version that's new. It's all the content in the notes, and you're going to learn about it today. My name is Mike Winger. I'm here to help you learn how to think biblically about everything. Doesn't mean I do it perfectly. I don't. But we can be on that journey together. And the question, you know about thinking biblically is it's relevant to think like what kind of study Bibles you use, what resources you use. And I'm fine with using a variety. I think most people look for one study Bible that'll be their study Bible, and they want it to have good notes and be very reliable. Like, oh, there we go. Hold on, you'll hear me better now. That will just be very, like, simple, reliable. I can always, pretty much always trust whatever I read in the notes of the study Bible. Then there's another category of people who, they want the variety. They want the disagreement, they want the debates. Most people aren't like that. Okay, I'm like that. I want that variety in disagreement, in debates. Now, if you're the debate person, you might be thinking, oh, yeah, I want this Bible. I still don't highly recommend it for you, to be honest, but if you're looking for a Bible that's just sort of going to give you those reliable, faithful, like explaining and expounding the text of Scripture, I would not recommend this book. And here we go. Let's get into the reasons why Zondervan produces it with Preston Sprinkle. You guys may or may not have heard of Preston Sprinkle. He's a very controversial figure. Partly his fault, partly not his fault. I've heard stuff about him that's not true. That's been said by people who I would normally agree with on most things. I think it's healthy to realize that this is a figure who, he doesn't fit neatly into any category of whether you want to say he's conservative or liberal or something like that. As far as theology goes, it doesn't fit neatly into either category. Neither does this Bible. It just doesn't. Okay, I've heard it's a diversity, equity, inclusion Bible. Or that it's the woke Bible. And in some ways it is, in other ways it's not. And the people who usually champion those things would be angry about what's written in this text. So it's complicated. Let me start with the positives, though, because. And this is why I need to do a review of it. If on the COVID it just said Preston Sprinkles or Ron Sider's theology in the text of Scripture, they're hobby horses. If it was called the Hobby Horse Bible. And it was just kind of like people who affirm pacifism and affirm sort of diversity, equity, inclusion kind of content in some areas, but are also very pro life and other areas and stuff. If it would have said that, I wouldn't have made a video on it, probably. But it's not transparent. You read it and you think it's just about sort of getting the heart of Christianity, just about sort of grounding people in what it means to be a servant of Christ in the world. And there's elements of that there. But that's not in my mind. That's not the focus. So what is the focus? Well, first let me mention positives. The Upside Down Kingdom Bible by Preston Sprinkle and Zondervan and a number of other authors who I am not accusing here of being heretics or being evil. That's not where I'm going with it. But you can see there's a whole list of different people who are involved in this. This is just some of the. I don't know how many it was. 20 something people, 25 contributors that are male, 15 that are female. So 40 contributors altogether. The, the articles and stuff like that. It's not that I want to demonize them, but I want us to be clear and have you guys understand. Okay, that's enough caveats. Here's the nice things. Grace. There's great and strong affirmation of the grace of God. When you open up a study Bible or open up a Bible resource, you want to know, does it affirm the gospel? You know, salvation by grace through faith, the kind of real basic, real simplistic gospel of Jesus Christ. And I would say that it has some strong notes on grace in the Old Testament. They're not in the New. And I'll come to that later. That's a good thing. I read what he wrote about Abraham and grace related to Abraham, and I thought, hey, that's pretty cool. I think that's helpful to people. I think that's in line with how the New Testament uses that as well. So it was good. There's also sections of articles called Lamenting Grief. So you'll be scrolling through or flipping through the pages of the Old and New Testament. You'll have a little note or article, notes meaning a little column note or an article, like a whole page on lament and grief. There's also another group of those notes on mental health and another group of those notes on trauma and resilience. Three different categories that I think in principle are great. There is a lot of. We deal with a lot of hardship and pain and trauma and need resilience. And we deal with lament and grief in our lives. And as a pastor for many years, when I encountered Christians who were going through deep trauma, even me, when I've gone through my own hard, very hard times, I find that how we process that trauma is a lot of. We have a lot of needs there. And a lot of the counsel I give to people who are going through hard times is how they're going to process their trauma, because you can't take it away. You don't have a special pill to make them feel better. So it's about giving counsel and advice, God willing, that might help them process the trauma. And guess what? Scripture has a lot to say about that. The Book of Job, the book of Psalms. There's a lot of trauma that's being processed in the text of Scripture. David, when he loses his kid, there's all sorts of stuff. And Christians often, the ones at least I've encountered, often haven't really thought about those stories and these Psalms as being equipment for how you will handle your own issues and trauma in life. And so then you get into the middle of the trauma, and you don't know how, in your season of struggling, doubt and fear, how Psalm 73 actually speaks to you, you don't understand in the loss of your child, how the encouragement that David has in the loss of his kid is there for him and is also there for you. That's a great thing. Okay, so to have these lament and grief, mental health, trauma and resilience, that's great. Abortion is another positive in this book. Abortion is. That sounds weird the way I worded it. The commentary on the topic of abortion is actually really good. Let me read to you from the notes on Psalm 140. Okay, I'll read to you. This is right from the text itself, one of the notes they have. It says some contemporary ethicists distinguish between a human person and a human being and claim that while an unborn baby is a human being. They're not yet a person. A human person entitled to human rights because they don't have the same mental capacities as older humans. But the Bible defines our humanness not in terms of our mental capacities, but in terms of our relationship with God, the One who made us in his image. This isn't squishy relationship language with God. This is your relationship with God is you are made in his image. That is the reason why you cannot kill a baby in the womb. They're in the image of God. The same reason God gives why man should not kill man in Genesis. God made him in his image. So that's awesome. So the abortion stuff is. I've heard people do reviews of this and they basically call this like a liberal woke Bible. And that's too blunt to say that. Okay, it's not that there's no truth there, because there is some. But it's too blunt to say that because you would never get the pro abortion stuff in there. It just wouldn't happen. The other thing you would never. The pro abortion, pro, anti abortion, pro life, the good abortion related content that you have in there. Sorry, my words, they're not working. So yeah, not like liberal in that sense. Are you kidding? Here the US one of the agreed battle cries from the religious liberal or the secular political liberal. They totally agree on this. You absolutely hold up abortion as like almost a sacrament. It's an essential right as opposed to something that is evil and wrong, which this commentary says. So that's to say, yeah, it's complicated. It's not just purely some woke thing. It's not. The other thing that's good is sexuality and gender. Okay, There's a pro and con to the content on sexuality and gender. That's a category of notes and articles in the upside down Kingdom Bible. And there's a decent number of articles throughout from Genesis to Revelation on that topic. Some of them I will have a beef with. But let me first talk about the stuff that I would consider positive. The clarity with which they hold to God's design in marriage. That all homosexual acts, sexual homosexual acts are in fact sinful. And that only a man and a woman, Mary, that's the only plan God has for thriving positive human sexuality. That is great. They're very strong about this. It's not something that's being hidden. It is right out there. That is the larger battle on the topic of sexuality and gender. Then there's secondary issues where I would bring disagreement with the notes in here. And mostly I just want you Guys to know what are the notes in here? What are the positions they have? Because you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know if you read the back of the book. Where did I put it? I don't know where the front matter is. I'll show you some of the marketing that this came with. In fact, I'll just move on to that now. So those are some pros and cons or some pros. Now we'll move to the marketing. And this is right here. The Upside Down Kingdom Bible is marketed as a Bible that provides readers a practical resource to live faithfully in the modern world. This study Bible, and notice that it does call it a study Bible because some people have defended it online, saying, well, it's not really a study Bible. So I won't knock it for failing to have, I don't know, having whole pages where there's no notes, failing to actually explain the Bible. Well, because it's not technically a study Bible. Well, no, it says it's a study Bible in the marketing. So don't make up stuff to defend it because you want Zondervan to like you or something. This study Bible addresses some of the most divisive issues facing Christians today head on, with notes throughout the text that are biblically based, honest, nuanced and filled with grace. So we're going to tackle hard issues. We're going to be biblically based. So I like that. I want to be biblical and based at the same time, if at all possible. Nuanced, filled with grace. That sounds great, but it's also totally vague. What positions do you guys hold on those issues? I just gave you some on grace, on abortion, on sexuality and gender. Those are things I agree with on the commentary here. But you wouldn't know from looking at the marketing stuff. You would have no idea. It's a bit vague now elsewhere they say the following. The NIV Upside Down Kingdom Bible provides hundreds of side column notes, full page articles, essays and book introductions that skillfully and thoughtfully address topics such as. And now they list some of the topics. Race and ethnicity, creation, care, science, abortion, wealth and poverty, gender and sexuality, politics, baptism, technology and others. Okay, so we're at least getting some of the topics that are addressed. But you wouldn't from that. You would not know what it says about any of those topics. This video, my first question that's going to be kind of long today. I do this sometimes, maybe more often than I think I do, is going to be to address with clarity, what is this Bible? What is their agenda? Because there's definitely agendas. They have a pro life agenda, they've got a pro grace agenda. But you know what? They also have some other agendas. And there's nothing wrong with us being aware of those things and being transparent. I have a feeling that there was kind of a. And I could be wrong here. There was kind of a battle between the people writing the notes and then the publisher who wants Zondervan, who wants this to have wide appeal. And so they soften things and they. I have a feeling they held back some notes that they didn't include, which the writers would have wanted them to, but you'll see why. So there's a lack of transparency from the introduction to the book right on the first few pages here in this Bible where it says, welcome to the upside down Kingdom Bible. It says, our authors come from dozens of different denominations and different partisan persuasions. And this is where they're talking about how much diversity they have. And again, this is a lack of clarity between the marketing versus the actual product. So dozens of different denominations, different partisan persuasions. And we believe that there's great value in ethnic, denominational, age, sex, and healthy theological diversity. Most people reading that would think, oh, I will get a diverse number of opinions, I will get some disagreement, I will get some debates there. And it will be representative of the actual people writing the notes having different positions on the same issues that they're talking about. That's what I would get from that. Anyways. Most people will expect more diversity theologically than they will get. There's actually basically theological unanimity in the book. Some would argue with me on this because they're being pedantic, sorry to use that word. You may have one author who would not have the DEI kind of side of things, but that author who wouldn't have that, he never talks about that. He's only going to comment on other unrelated issues. Everybody who comments on race and ethnicity is going to do so from a woke perspective on that particular topic. That's just what's going to happen. It won't be any diversity. The diversity is in things like, well, we have different skin colors in the team. We have different genders in the team, male and female. We have different. Yeah, they're in different denominations. Okay, fine. But if they speak on politics, they all have the same basic politics. If they speak on gender and ethnicity or race and ethnicity, they all have the same views on race and ethnicity. So there is no healthy theological diversity. They will sometimes try to say, some people think this, but they're always going to favor and nudge toward the same conclusions. And you don't know what those conclusions are because it doesn't tell you anywhere. You have to read a bunch to figure it out. So what are the conclusions? Non violence. Nonviolence is favored throughout the commentary on this work as opposed to say, just war theory, that kind of thing, which they're not going to demonize but. But nonviolence is favored. It is implied as more of a Christian to be more of a Christian commitment that you should be a pacifist. And no surprise, I've got three of the contributors who've written three books on pacifism that I've read for previous research. I did. I just went to my library, my books. Bookcase in the other room. I have bookcases in like three or four rooms. Three rooms. Three rooms in our house. Anyway, the pacifism is strong in this work also egalitarianism. Everybody who writes on women, the most popular topic throughout the text of this book is an egalitarian. They're egalitarian leaning. They're pushing egalitarian views as opposed to complementarian. If you don't know that topic, basically they have a non traditional view of the role of women in the body of Christ and in ministry. So they're all egalitarian also. Therefore, believe it or not, the governmental redistribution of wealth. Does that surprise you? This is something you wouldn't expect in a study Bible of any kind, that they're going to be talking about that. But sure enough, I'll share with you some specific quotes because this is going to take a while. Sorry, it just got longer the more I studied. The governmental redistribution of wealth is actually promoted by Ron Seider, who is well known for having a belief that this was. This was something he wanted and he contributed before he passed away. So this must have been a while ago when they got this note from him, before he passed away. I think it was two years ago, approximately. But he was well known as being a proponent of those things. Doesn't mean he's not a believer. But I want to know. I want to know. I want to be an alarmist about things, but I want to understand that you're taking the word of God and you're telling Christians this is your Christian commitment to God, to Jesus, to the Bible. Should also make you committed to the government. Taking money and redistributing it, taking land and redistributing it amongst people in ways that we describe as equity. That's important to realize that that's where they're coming from. You wouldn't think that based on the advertising. There's other stuff too. Certain more liberal views of immigration, creation, care and climate change is very much baked into the passages where they talk about those issues or the articles where they talk about that stuff. If you have any debate in your mind about the climate change issue, you'll see it's very one sided in this. Very much on the typical climate change activist kind of content. So like it or don't like it, agree with it or disagree with it. That's not really my point. My point is for clarity and transparency. What is this thing? Let's just know what it is. So I would call it not a study Bible. I would call it a special interest Bible because it's not interested in showing for you what does Isaiah mean here? What does Hebrews mean over here? What does this Bible passage mean? There's no interest in that. The interest, in my opinion. That's my read. There's no interest in that. That's my genuine take on this. Now they will use the passage, they will talk about what it means, but that's not what they're interested in. The commentary seems to be primarily interested in these topics. I'm going to put them on your screen. There's 29 topics. These are the 29 topics. And the topic of women, race and ethnicity, leadership and power, violence and warfare, wealth and poverty, migration, death in the afterlife, social justice, politics. These are the sorts of things, sexuality and gender, science. You can keep reading all of the 29 topics. These are the things that they care about. There is not a concern for what is Genesis communicating here. It's how does that inform my commentary on science that's the main concern. So the topics are limited to these 29. You could probably think of important topics the Bible talks about like fulfilled prophecy, messianic expectation, things that the New Testament is very much obsessed with that do not find any place in the articles or anywhere in the content. The eschatology or end times, it's not on here. The Bible actually is concerned about that, but there's no content on that as far as I know. And they're also, not only are they limited, the topics are also imbalanced. And so you'll notice the topic of divorce gets nine articles or notes in the book, baptism gets 10, technology and media gets 14. That's towards the bottom of the list. The top of the list here I've arranged based on how many, whichever topic had the most presence throughout the study Bible. Women Gets the most. By far. By far. Race and ethnicity, the second most popular topic for notes and articles has 60 in this book. Women, the topic of women has 99. 39 more than race and ethnicity, which is the second one. The average number of articles or notes any topic gets is 27. If I average it out, I did the math and I may have done it right. 27. On average, women gets 99. Right. Almost four times the number. So women is a major interesting topic and I'm interested in what they say about women because it's all from an egalitarian perspective, which I would say is an unbiblical view being strongly and one sidedly promoted in the book in a slightly complicated way. But in the end when you work it all out, it's strongly and one sidedly promoted. Yes, that is my genuine opinion. People are going to think, well, no, but we offer alternate explanations. You do, but there's a way of offering alternate explanations that devalues them, that diminishes them, and that nudges people in one direction rather than another. And every nudge is in the egalitarian persuasion. They could have done it way harder, but they didn't. They could have, but they didn't. That doesn't mean that they didn't do it though. I hope that made sense. You'll understand as I go, because I'm just getting started. This is going to be a 17 hour stream just begun. I've just begun. I need more coffee and food and maybe some sort of injection, some sort of artificial stimulus to keep me going. I'm joking, guys. Okay, so is it a study Bible? No, I call it a study Bible because they call it a study Bible in their marketing. It is not actually a study Bible because study Bibles are interested in teaching you what the Bible means. It's helping you study the Bible. It's a special interest Bible that's interested in special topics. Let me give you some examples so that you guys can understand. This here is First Kings. All right? Now you'll notice right here there's an article on leadership and power. And then over here you have what is just an empty column. So First Kings, just an empty column. This is free real estate for them. They could share anything they want right here, tell you anything they want about Solomon's officials and governors. Now, as I flip, I just flipped one page over and here we have some really important stuff, Biblically speaking. This is Solomon building the temple. That's kind of a big deal. And there's no notes on either side why are there no notes? They're not interested in that. Flip one more page over. What do we have here? We have Solomon building his palace and the furnishings in the temple. And we have theological meaning that's in those things. And we have emphasis that has to do with eschatology, about how he increased the number and quantity, like the size of everything, how big and amazing everything was. Flip another page. And we have, again, no notes. I could keep going. Solomon's prayer of dedication. The ark is brought to the temple in First Kings 8. And there's not a single note about the ark of God being brought to the Temple. This amazing pinnacle moment that started with promises back in Exodus that is finally taking place here in First Kings about God giving a place to dwell. I turn another page. He dedicates the temple, and God appears to Solomon. And there are no notes. Why? Because it's not a study Bible. I turn another page, another page. The Queen of Sheba visits Solomon. We talk about Solomon's splendor, and there's finally an article. And what are they interested in? Race and ethnicity. Ah, this is not a study Bible. You get the point. They're not explaining passages. If you go to passages that everybody has their head scratching on, right? You go to Hebrews and you have these Hebrews passages where everybody's like, what does that mean? This Zondervan study Bible doesn't give you any commentary on that. Hebrews 4, Hebrews 6, Hebrews 10. It doesn't tell you what they mean. These things that make you go. Everybody's scratching their head. And this Bible does not produce a resource for you to think about that. Instead, you'll have, like, race and ethnicity showing up there. And you're like, okay, you obviously are concerned about something different than what the Bible authors are concerned about. I hope that that becomes clear. Let me give you one more example. There's one. There's one here. I'll show you. First, there's a reason why I put a big question mark on Psalm 110, and that is because Psalm 110 is the most commonly quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament. The New Testament, Jesus. Basically, throughout the New Testament, we have Psalm 110 being quoted over and over again. It's part of major theological teaching that happens in the Book of Hebrews. It's part of major debates Jesus has about his very identity and who he is and, hey, who Jesus is. That's kind of a big deal. Like, we should have some articles on that. Maybe there is not a single Note on Psalm 110 in this Bible. Further, if I go to say, Hebrews 1, where Psalm 110 is quoted and is quoted powerfully and importantly, there's no commentary on it in Hebrews 1 either, because this Bible is not interested in that. But if I flip over to John 19, I will get an unexpected article on politics because it's a special interest Bible. So the concern is not what is the Bible interested in, it's what are we interested in? Here's our list of topics. Now, let's find passages that we can leverage to talk about those things that we care about. Now, some of those articles are great. Some of those are relevant, Some of those are good. It's like, hey, this really weighs in on politics. Here's a great place for an article on politics. Other times it's just hobby horsing and we're just taking the text. And so it goes both ways. But it's a special interest Bible. All right, let's talk about what sides it takes. And this will be mostly cons, okay? For the rest of the time, and more often than not, I'm going to talk about things I disagree with here. Doesn't mean I'm demonizing the authors. Preston Sprinkle, I'm not saying he's an unsaved or non believer or he's my brother, none of that stuff. Because plenty of people are saying stuff like that. For example, there was misinformation about this Bible produced on Twitter through I can't remember the name of the who did it. They took an interview that Preston Sprinkle did with one of the contributors, a woman who contributed to Old Testament Commentary on Women, which I would disagree with. I think she did a bad job, to be honest, scholarly job. But you can do a scholarly job and have it be scholarly and not good at the same time. But in this interview, she was saying, I don't recommend women's study groups. Women's Bible study groups read certain books of the Bible. I don't remember what example she gave me was Ezekiel or something like that. And she says instead, she recommends they read study books like Esther, you know, that are more women related. This, I don't really have a problem with that personally. Okay. A women's Bible study group, just saying, I recommend that they focus on certain books of the Bible over others. I don't really have a problem with that. But people took this and I know Answers in Genesis offered a review of the upside down Kingdom Bible. And they said that what this woman had stated was she says that women as a category shouldn't read certain books of the Bible. They should just stick to Esther and other books that are more about women, like Ruth. That is not what she said. That is a distortion. But that's the kind of thing that gets everybody up in arms. All right, let's hate on this thing. Let's come against this thing. Let's destroy it. All right, so trying to bring some balance here and some wisdom. All that to say now I'm going to disagree a lot. All right, so sexuality and gender, while it does have God's good design in marriage. And the liberals will not be happy with this. The liberal religious liberals or the political liberals who are often very similar in their views, they're not going to be happy about this stuff. Know this. Don't pigeonhole this as a liberal resource. In some ways it's very conservative. But within that there's what's called side B theology. And this is something Preston Sprinkle is well known for promoting. Side B theology is a little complicated, but I'll just keep this part as simple as I can. There's two problems I like to point out. Here it is, picture number 12. Boom, right here. It's kind of on your screen. You can sort of read it. And there's two problems with this. This is the commentary in Romans 1:26 27. I agree and disagree with it. It says two further things are important to note. First, Paul does not, does not condemn same sex attraction, but same sex sexual behavior. In his culture, many same sex acts were committed by men who were married to women and would otherwise be considered to be straight. It's the act, not the attraction, that is in focus here. Second, Romans 1:24 32 lists sins committed by humans, even church going straight people. And here's the second thing I'll disagree with. Unless you're free from all slander, arrogance, greed, strife, deceit and disobeying your parents, among many other sins, then you have no right to use Romans 1 to condemn gay people without turning it to yourself in your own self condemnation. Which is precisely Paul's point. In Romans 2, verse 1, Paul indicts us all and points us all to Jesus. They're contradicting themselves here. I don't know if you guys caught it. Let me share with you problems with just that one section. Romans 1. They affirm, yep, God's design in marriage, same sex sexual behavior is always wrong. But then it goes on to what's called side B Christianity. That's what they've called it. I Don't know why it seems weird to me. They say Paul does not condemn same sex attraction, but same sex sexual behavior. Notice that this, this article doesn't point to specific verses. For the most part it's just a commentary like here's our conclusions. Let's look at the actual passage itself. Here's the Bible, Romans 1:24 here. I'll go to the NIV. This is the very translation that they're using. Therefore God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts. The desires themselves are called sinful by Paul. He calls the desires sinful. And they're saying he doesn't condemn same sex attraction. Well, the desire itself is a sinful desire. Then you have in verse 26, because this God gave them over to shameful lusts, that is desires that are in and of themselves full of shame. The very desire is shameful. Now can you be tempted and not sin? Yes, you can be tempted with same sex attraction. It's a sinful desire, but you can resist it. And you can say I choose to resist it. But if you yield to it, if you give your heart to it, if you give your fantasies over to it, same as being attracted to somebody else's wife or something, you enter into sin internally merely on the level of attraction and desire and mental activity. That's it. But this is where the Bible seems to clearly disagree with the commentary. 127 says Inflamed with lust for one another. This is the problem with women. It wasn't just that they committed shameful acts, it was also, it was not one or the other. It's also that they were inflamed with lust for one another. The desires themselves are inherently sinful. A desire to kill someone, to murder is inherently sinful. A desire to commit same sex sexual acts or just sit there and fantasize. And desire and lust after somebody of the same sex is also inherently sinful according to scripture. You can argue and try to nuance this, but just and just acknowledge. For those who will try to pick apart this video I'm sharing, I am not the one who offered a non nuanced approach. That was the notes of this Bible. I'll put them on your screen again. Just so someone can remind themselves there is no nuance here. They need to be able to say the desire itself is inherently sinful. Step one. Step two. If you yield to it, even mentally, if you give your heart to it, your fantasies to it, you give into it in some sense, even mentally, not just physically, you are sinning because You've yielded to a sinful desire number three, and that includes the acts themselves are also sinful. Instead, they just said the acts are sinful. And then they implied that these two categories, either the middle one doesn't exist or it simply is acceptable. This cripples preaching as well. The same thing I just had on your screen. It's wrong for us, anyone, to condemn gay people without turning into your own self condemnation. And you're a hypocrite if you try. This is not the message of Romans. I'll put it back on your screen because you might want to reference it. I know it's a little fuzzy, but here they're contradicting themselves at the very bottom. They get the point Paul's making. Paul indicts us all and points us all to Jesus. The point is don't condemn. The point is not don't condemn gay people because you're also a sinner. No, no. The point is you and them are all condemned. Everyone stands condemned before God. The point is universal condemnation. So really, when I preach to somebody and I say, I'm going to point to your homosexual activities and homosexual proclivities as something that derives from sin, something that is, if you yield to it in any way, is actually sinful. In the same way that I'm going to say I have a whole bunch of my own issues too. I am condemned and the only way I can be saved because I would stand in God's wrath and judgment is through the grace of Jesus Christ rather than there is no condemnation for you, so I can be free from hypocrisy. I'll say, no, we're all condemned and we need Jesus desperately. And that's Paul's argument through Romans. He's trying to get us all to realize we're sinners, not to stop telling each other we're sinners. You just don't point the finger without realizing you're also wicked and lost apart from Jesus. That's the lesson. A distortion of what Romans is actually talking about. Again, this comes up in a note on First Corinthians, chapter three, chapter six. Here we go. There's two words that are used in 1 Corinthians 6 that they get the right. Generally get the right end of. Okay, in the translation. This is part of the prose, right? Bible translators, translations that render Malakoi and Arsenicoites as homosexuals are both linguistically inaccurate. And. Hold on, this is the part they don't. They don't. This is where they go from being right to being Eh, are linguistically inaccurate and potentially harmful. And here's where the side B thing comes in. Paul does not condemn people who experience a certain temptation or attraction, which is what homosexual or gay means. But those who engage in ongoing sexual sin without repentance, Partly true. The condemnation is those who engage in ongoing sexual sin without repentance. Partly false. Ongoing sexual sin can be in the mind relating to temptations and desires that you're yielding your heart over to. Jesus says, you look with lust, commit adultery. It's not look with lust and go and try to actually do it physically and then maybe we'll start to finally call it adultery in the heart. No, it's just you look, you yielded yourself to that desire, even just mentally, that was a sin. So yeah, you can be experiencing temptation and not sin, but you yield to it in some fashion or another of any kind, it becomes sin. That's the sad reality and why we need Jesus. So they define the word homosexual or gay as being an identity. People who experience a certain temptation or attraction. I don't think Christians in general are agreed on that. I think they're pushing that definition in a way that is unhelpful even to lots of people I know who suffer same sex attraction. They have temptation there. And they go, well, I don't consider myself homosexual. And then this study Bible note is now in a Bible saying, yes, you are a homosexual. We declare it to you now. That's what it means. Where's the nuance? It doesn't exist there. They're not interested in nuance except when they are. Again, in the note on Sodom and Gomorrah, we read the following. Let me read to you. You guys know the passage Sodom and Gomorrah? It says whenever the story of Sodom is reflected on in scripture, gay sex is rarely if ever in view. I don't know what that means. Rarely if ever. Is it in view or is it not? Is it rarely or is it never? Which one is it then? It lists a number of places in the new in the Bible where Sodom is talked about. Isaiah 1, 10, 17, Isaiah 3, 9, Jeremiah 23, Lamentations 4 and Matthew 10. Those who have studied this passage in this topic will know, why isn't Jude in there? Why is Jude. Jude is the key passage in the New Testament on this topic and it's just ignored in the footnote or in the, in the, in the study note on Sodom and Gomorrah. Let me read more. It would be hypocritical. They say for straight Christians to condemn gay people by citing the story of Sodom. Does the Bible prohibit same sex relationships? Yes. Okay. That's the part we agree on. I'm not going to pretend they don't say that. Thank you. I'm glad you had the courage to say that. The liberal side of things are going to come against you. Hard for that, but they go on. There are other passages that speak to this. It is misguided to use Genesis 19, Sodom and Gomorrah as a weapon to condemn gay people for experiencing an attraction to the same sex. According to Ezekiel, arrogant people who don't care for the poor are the real Sodomites. This does the old error of pretending like Sodom and Gomorrah. There was only one sin. And if you can identify it as arrogance or neglecting the poor, you can just stop identifying any issues there. Jude makes it clear that this was same sex sexual proclivities. They went after strange flesh. And I have a study on video on this somewhere. But basically Jude makes it clear that this study Bible is wrong. And it's crazy that they don't even include any Jude as a reference. They don't talk about Jude. They're making these proclamations on this topic they've picked. They don't talk about Jude. And when you flip to the book of Jude. Hold on, let me just go to it real quick. Shouldn't be that hard to find. When you flip to the book of Jude. Here's everything they've got on Jude. Death in the afterlife. Wait, Jude. It's a one chapter, tiny little book. You've got all this real estate here. Where's the article that explains why you don't think Jude contradicts your previous note and where you really came against Christians calling them hypocrites and stuff. If they don't do what you say, like where's. That's weird. How do you just ignore it? Did somebody write an article on Jude? And then Zondervan said, oh, we don't like that. And they pulled it. And they're trying to. Like they don't want to. I don't know. I have no explanation for this. It's very strange. But there's more. The note on the Song of Songs. Check this out. This is about whether lust is actually okay. And that's what we're kind of getting to with this side B thing. I think what it actually boils down to at least this piece of it. There's other issues with side B about cohabitating and things like that, the issue of when is homosexual sin or any sin, heterosexual sin, when does it become sin? And the biblical perspective is that it becomes sin when you give your heart over to it in some fashion. That could be with looking with your eyes, with intent. That's giving your heart over to it could be fantasizing in your heart. A lot of sins just happen internally and like jealousy and things like this. That can be the case in their note on Song of Songs to try to push the opposite view that lust is okay, effectively. At least that's how I read it. Let me read it to you. Maybe you think I'm exaggerating. That's fair. They say the man details the physical beauty of the woman, beginning with her head in Song of Solomon, chapter four, and slowly moving downward. And this is not for kids, y', all, in case you didn't realize that. He expounds on her eyes, hair, teeth, lips, mouth, temples and neck, concluding with her breasts, which he says are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. The Bible condemns. Here's our commentary on this. Condemns lust and having sex outside of male, female marriage. But as seen here and throughout the song, there's nothing wrong with three things noticing, enjoying, or even being enamored by the physical beauty of another person. Hold on. They did say the Bible condemns lust, so there's the nuance, perhaps. I don't know what they think lust is. What is. How do they. Do they define lust differently than everybody else? I don't know how they define lust. I'm sure there's an answer there. I'm just not sure what it is. But here they offer three things. It's okay. There's nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with three things noticing, enjoying, or even being enamored by the physical beauty of another person. And the example they gave was a man being enamored by and enjoying a woman's breasts. That's the example that they gave, not me. So are you able to look at my wife and do that? Can you notice? Yes. Nobody says you can't notice. Can you enjoy and be enamored? But, hey, Mike, I'm not lusting after your wife. I'm just being enamored by and enjoying her breasts. That's all I'm doing. That's all I'm doing. I don't see the problem with that. Lust is wrong. I admit lust is wrong, but I'm just enjoying and being enamored by another person's Breasts, like that's nothing wrong there. This is weird. I don't now I have to admit I'm pulling out bad examples. It's not like you find this stuff on every page. You don't. Most of the notes you'll be like, okay, I thought you were gonna make a point there, but you just kind of asked a few questions and left it open ended and you don't really say much. Most of the notes are kind of like bleh. You didn't really. You brought up interesting things and you didn't even answer them. And I'm just like, eh. That's most of the notes I'm pulling out the ones that I think are gonna be the most eye opening because that's what I would want to know if I was you. Let's talk about capital punishment. Capital punishment is like I said, here's three of the contributors who I just happen to have their books on nonviolence and pacifist leaning material. Call it that because they're going to nuance. They're going to debate everything to avoid being categorized as pacifists probably, but it's pacifist leaning. The Christian Case for Nonviolence. That's what Preston Sprinkles book is called. You've got Ron Seider who writes some of the articles and stuff here and Miles Wernz who writes articles on this topic and he wrote the Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence. And here's what they say when it comes to capital punishment because you're thinking, Ah, Romans 13, the government does not bear the sword in vain. It's God's minister and avenger. God's wrath is brought by the government. Implying that teaching, let me say teaching that the government, when they're rightly using their capital punishment authority, that they're actually doing the will of God. So capital punishment is a biblical thing. Romans 13 for here's their commentary. It says the flow of Romans 12 to 13 along with the teachings of Jesus does seem to indicate that Paul is not calling on Christians to celebrate the government's use of force. This is. I can actually put this on your screen. Here we go. Violence and warfare. You can read. There's more there. You can read the whole thing if you want. I would say that this is actually bad. Okay. It's not a question of what do I celebrate. Okay. Notice how cautiously they had to word it here. Paul isn't calling on Christians to celebrate the government's view. Why is a celebration in view? Like I don't have to have a Dance party because of capital punishment. I can just see that it's just and proper. I don't have to celebrate it. I don't delight in the death of the wicked. But that doesn't mean that it isn't right. That's weird. To strawman those who the other side here to talk about celebrating now, maybe they would respond and go, we're just trying to get it so Christians don't celebrate. Don't get all excited when someone dies. Hey, I'm fine with that. But that's not really the thrust of this. What you're really getting at here, I believe, is pacifism. I think you're just doing it in a very passive aggressive way, to be honest. Yeah. So Romans 13 clearly supports government using force and that it is God's will and that includes capital punishment. Does that mean every time they use it, it's right? No. Does that mean that every person who experiences capital punishment deserved it? No, it doesn't mean any of those things. But you can't get away from the text. Like, I'll let the Bible be the Bible. This commentary has an agenda and the agenda is pacifistic, or at least pacifish. Ick. Pacifistic. Ish. It's kind of like a pacifism light, if not at least at the minimal on Genesis 9:6, where God institutes capital punishment. Okay, that is my take on this passage. And a lot of others would say the same and it'd be perfectly fine to hear people debate it. But I'm convinced whoever sheds human blood by humans shall their blood be shed. For in the image of God has God made mankind. Right. Here's the justification. You can't kill people because they were made in God's image. And here's the penalty. I will give humans the authority to actually exact capital punishment. Romans 13 just reiterates that. Here's their note on Genesis 9:6. This passage has sometimes been used to justify capital punishment. Some believe that to kill a killer is to participate justly in the world. However, many others believe that the greater ideal. The greater ideal is to follow the teachings of Jesus, who offers a new way to address the issue of capital punishment when he tells his followers to turn the other cheek. Matthew, chapter five, Sermon on the Mount. Turn the other cheek is the central text for pacifists. Like it is their number one central text, Turn the other cheek. This assumes a pacifist reading of Jesus. Turn the other cheek. And it does it in words that I find unhelpful. Many others believe that the greater ideal is to follow the teachings of Jesus. And I'm like, come on, this is bleh. To talk like this. How about just be honest about your debate and say this is seen as justifying capital punishment. We see this as in contradiction with the teachings of Jesus. Say what you think. There don't be like greater ideals. Follow the teachings. Just be straight about it. But interestingly enough, when you go to Matthew 5, I mean, I checked like five times because I couldn't believe my eyes. Matthew 5, there's no note on capital punishment. There's no note. There isn't a note on turn the other cheek. It doesn't exist. So in the Old Testament, they interpret Matthew 5 turn the other cheek as anti capital punishment, which it's not. This is them reading political stuff anyway. That's a whole other debate. But when you get to the New Testament, the very passage, that's the heartbeat of pacifism. Matthew 5 has nothing. And I have to think that they wrote an article and Zondervan told them not to include it or to change it, and they didn't want to change it, so they left it out. Something weird's going on there because it's like they could go for the kill shot right on that article, but they don't. There's just nothing. But yet they obviously take that interpretation of Matthew 5 because there it is in the commentary on Genesis 9. There's just no note there. What is going on there? So violence and warfare. All the content on violence and warfare is pacifist. Ish. And again, Preston Sprinkle is pacifist, at least nearly pacifist. He's very. He waffles a little bit here and there, but he seems to be very much in line with the pacifist side of things for the most part. And then Miles Werntz, he's a pacifist type guy again. He wrote that book, the Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence. Now let's move on to wealth and poverty. Wealth and poverty is an issue that they very much care about. Ron Seider wrote the articles and notes on many of them, not all of them in the Old Testament. Here on wealth and poverty, Ron Sider was a Christian leader who thought government should redistribute land and other things. This isn't the same as full on, like Marxism. Government controlling the means of production. That's a little different. Ron Sider thought that government should redistribute land and other things, things that would be considered like education and all that kind of thing. Let me read to you what Christianity Today said about him in 2020. They says while he did not agitate for outright socialism. Don't ask me why they said agitate there. That's just what they wrote. He did not agitate for outright socialism. He did call for a central power in the world to oversee massive wealth transfers. A worldwide welfare state. I don't know if he would have used the phrase worldwide welfare state, but definitely there's something going on there. Their article on Jubilee is where this comes out really clearly. So every. Let me just set it up for us. Every so many years, there's the jubilee year. Every set of seven. Seven years. Seven years times seven. Then boom. Jubilee year. All the land goes back to the Israelites, families who had that land to start with. It's the year of jubilee. It's a way of making sure that they can't piecemeal, sell off the land of Israel or lose their tribal boundaries, that sort of thing. This is the commentary they offer on that. The theological foundation for this radical we are only stewards of the land. God is the absolute owner and God demands economic justice. This text does not provide justification for either communism or unrestricted capitalism. God is not saying that the state should own all the land, nor is the ideal that a limited number of rich people own all the land. So he's opposed to communism, state owned land or unrestricted capitalism where he sees as rich people. The text points to a basic decentralization of wealth. This is huge. He's saying the Bible itself is telling us we should decentralize wealth. Economic justice, he goes on, demands that every person and family have access to the productive resources so that if they act responsibly they can earn a livable wage and be dignified members of their society. When he says economic justice demands. He doesn't have a verse for this. He doesn't have scripture for this. This is a pre existing political commitment being read into the Bible. And he just says it. Economic justice demands and you as a Christian are therefore bound by it. Next, he goes on in the last paragraph here. In many parts of the world today, land is no longer the basic capital. So it's not just about land. In other words, the most important means of creating wealth in an information society, education and access to technology can also function as forms of basic capital. So before I read this, this is how he thinks you should apply the year of jubilee that you read about in the Old Testament into your Christian life and your political advocacy today. This is a very political text. So implementing this text today means that everyone must have access to whatever basic capital, whether land, fair loans, technology or education they need in order to earn their own way. This text does not propose haphazard handouts by wealthy philanthropists. The year of Jubilee was an institutionalized structure, presumably to be implemented by the state. Returning the land was not a charitable courtesy of that the wealthy might extend if they pleased. No matter how rich you are, Jubilee comes, take the land, distribute it. Now he thinks equally. That's not what scripture did. The year of Jubilee doesn't even look the way that he's describing. If you were a foreigner, because you'll see this is going to be so long. Today's video. I should have warned the mods. If you have to leave, I get it. The year of Jubilee is different in Scripture than it looks. As you're reading the articles in this book, the Upside down Kingdom Bible presents immigration as an important issue. And it is, and we'll get there. But they present it in a very one sided fashion. Not all sides of scripture, things they would like and wouldn't like to say, have to say all of it, but rather very one sided. The year of Jubilee would have taken land that belonged in the tribe of, say, Judah from an immigrant who bought that land from an Israelite and it would have given it back to the original family that had it. It would have just taken it and given it back to those people. Now when they sold the land, they would have sold it knowing, hey, in seven years or 15 years how many years we're going to be giving this land back. So in a sense it's like a lease, but it would have hurt and limited immigration in Israel in a way that they would never have been comfortable with the writers of this book and their particular sort of liberal perspective on immigration. Instead what you get is this like twisting of the, of the year of Jubilee. Just very unexpected. All right, let's. So Ron Sider's commentary is throughout here and that's one example of his politics being there in the New Testament. The politics is mostly coming from Mike Bird who describes himself as a, as what Americans would think of as like a liberal socialist. I think he was exaggerating. I think it was hyperbole when he said that. I think I'm pretty sure it was. But. But he describes himself as being more liberal. He's a very sarcastic guy, so I think he was maybe being. Using hyperbole. Anyway, so women. Let's talk about the women category again. This is what they care about more than anything else. There's 99 articles on women. There's only 60 of the next highest topic that gets articles and they're to my knowledge, I checked out every one of the contributors to the articles on women and they're all egalitarian. Now there are non egalitarians contributing to this work, but not on the topic of women. On the topic of women, it's all, as far as I can tell, every one of them is egalitarian or at least what I would consider egalitarian. Sometimes people don't like to give themselves labels and fine, I'm going to give it to you anyway because I'm allowed to say things that are true. First Timothy 2. Let's go to first Timothy 2 in a minute. But first I'll say this. In many cases the egalitarian stuff is not that strong. You should know this. I'm not trying to say like red alert, red alert, hyper egalitarianism throughout every text. That's really not the case. It's often subtle. The articles on women will just say things that are very subtle, very soft, and they might nudge people towards egalitarianism. Never the other way. Never ever the other way. So sometimes it's very subtle, very soft and they could have hit way harder. They could have done stuff. I've read tons of egalitarian works. They could have hit way harder if they wanted, wrongly, I think, but still could hit harder when it comes to say, 1 Timothy 2. This is like one of the central passages to debate. And they basically, their commentary basically says, hey, there's a lot of disagreement here. And they go, there are not two or three positions on this passage, but dozens. Then they say scholars interpret, assume authority very differently. Those of you who don't know, this is where Paul says, I don't allow women to teach or assume or have authority over a man. Super. I have like an 11 hour video on this passage. Super in depth. And I'm willing to go into how scholars interpret it and all that. In reality, scholars don't interpret it that differently. If you class them separately, this passage, what you'd think if you read the article is there's tons of scholars, scholarly chaos, you know, who knows what it really means? But really what you have is complementarian scholars. And they have kind of like one small number of interpretations, very small number of differences there on what saved through childbirth means. There's tons of argument there, but most of the passage very, very uniform. You know, what does authority mean here? Authentein, what does it mean? They all are pretty much in agreement across the spectrum. Then you have the egalitarians and now you've got dozens of views and all kinds of chaos and variety of interpretations and total disagreement. And you wouldn't know that reading the article. You would have thought it was just, you know, it's up in the air. Scholars don't know. I would say this. There is no reasonable interpretation of 1 Timothy 2 that supports egalitarian beliefs or stops it from defeating them. Their article on First Timothy 2 nudges you, nudges you towards egalitarianism. It does not push you. It's a nudge, but it's in a passage that should hard push you away from it. Because it's just. That's what the Bible teaches. You should be honest about it. First Corinthians 14. I don't have a note on this to put on your screen, but they ignore one of the prominent major interpretations of this passage presented by, and I think the right interpretation of this passage. They just ignore it. They talk about. They spend two sentences in the short little thing, two sentences talking about the interpolation view, the idea that First Corinthians 14, verses 34 and 35, that they aren't even original, that Paul never wrote it and it doesn't belong in your Bible. And this is like such a tiny, tiny minority view. This is like, why are you spending two sentences on that? And you don't spend even one sentence talking about the view that this is talking about the judgment of prophecy. But they say critiquing prophecy, but that's not the same as explaining it in any way. It seems as though it was written to obfuscate obvious possible interpretation and to highlight a far out there unlikely interpretation because that would help the egalitarian case. That's my interpretation of their interpretation. So I think it breeds confusion and then nudges towards egalitarianism. Romans 16. On Romans 16, I have this one. I have a picture for you. Or do I. Did I not include it? Maybe I can grab it real quick. On Romans chapter 16, they say that Phoebe was a deaconess and Romans 16 lists a number of women. And it's actually one of the hot passages in the debate on complementarian egalitarian can women be elders and pastors? You know, anything going on there? And of course that affects marriage and stuff as well. Here I can put on your screen. This is the article on Romans chapter 16. And in it they say a variety of things. And I know it's super small. I'll try to. I can zoom it in at Least somewhat for you. I'll let you look at the first part right now, and then I'll scroll down in a second. They say that Phoebe, she was a deaconess and a letter carrier. Okay, well, that's. Both of those things are true here. I'll scroll down now. You can always pause if you want to read more. I can even zoom in some more. Is this the note I was looking for? I hope it is. They say in the article on Romans 16, when a letter carrier brought correspondence, that person would generally read the letter to the intended recipients and would answer questions or offer clarification on its contents as a representative of its sender. Hmm, that's interesting. It's this underlined part that's on your screen now. This idea that the letter carrier was like an authoritative. Effectively, what they're doing without saying the words is Phoebe functioned as a Bible teacher teaching Romans to the Romans on behalf of Paul. That's the claim that you get in the egalitarian literature. And it's based on this idea of letter carrier, which I think is a bad claim. I think it's anachronistic. I think it's weird. I think we're pushing our views. Letter carriers did not, to my. I don't believe, carry that kind of authority. It's just that egalitarians haven't been saying this one for very long, so there's not a lot of scholarly stuff pushing back on it yet. But it'll get there, and they'll stop saying after a while because you're reading way too much. And they're like, you're going, here. Can you take the letter for me, by the way? You have to theologically explain what I mean in Romans 8:11, where I talk about the future of Israel and the nature of the church and Israel and all that. Okay, all right, good. Because I need to have someone who can thoroughly explain my knowledge in the gospel if they're going to carry my letter somewhere. It's just. It's on the. On the face of it, it looks silly. And then when you look at some of the ancient texts, it also looks like they're assuming way too much. We even have an example of a letter carrier being told, don't say anything more than what I write in my letter, showing that he's not being trusted to expound and communicate all this extra content. So it's just not the case. But they could be way stronger. It just leaves you in this fog of confusion that sort of suggests egalitarianism. That's how most of the egalitarian type, women articles are ready. The majority of the ones I noticed I didn't read all 99. However, some of them are more bold. Other times they're very bold, and the egalitarianism comes out a lot more strongly. So in the intro to First Corinthians, they say this One cannot have church unity when hierarchical, economic, social, gender, or ethnic oppression or exclusion is allowed to remain. Your church can't be unified. Remember, they gave a list of things here when gender exclusion is allowed to remain. This is a strong egalitarian claim. This is why I think that it was in the editing process that it became less strong of their egalitarianism. That's my guess, because this is the kind of thing an editor would miss, but that the writers would know about, that Zondervan might not notice, it might not change. I think I have a feeling that Zondervan kept softening stuff, and then that's why we get the result we have, where sometimes it's bold and sometimes it's nudging. Now, this isn't taught from the text, just as you can't have church unity. And then it lists some things we'd agree with and some I would not. Social exclusion, right. When I go to a men's retreat, there's gender exclusion right there. Social exclusion right there. That's the very nature of it. Men as pastors would definitely fall in that category. But the text of 1 Corinthians doesn't actually teach that. In fact, he gives rules about excluding women from certain things. In 1 Corinthians, Paul does. Let's look at Lydia. In the Book of Acts, chapter 16, we read about Lydia. She's this lady who sells purple, which means she's well off. She's in a rich trade. It's like someone who sells nice cars or something. Lydia is seen as a leader in the church in Philippi. Let me read you the verses first, and then we'll show you how they get there. So Acts 16, verse 13 to 15. On the Sabbath. Here we go. On the Sabbath, we. This is Paul, Luke and whoever else. We went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of the. One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia. Now they're coming to a new area to preach the Gospel to in particular, the Jews that they find. They find Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. As in, she was not already a Christian. She was a genuine Jew who just was waiting on the Messiah, but did not yet know Jesus. Then she responds, and she comes to faith, and she's transformed. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. If you consider me a believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my house. And she persuaded us. Lydia, did you know this passage means Lydia was a leader in the church? I know you just saw her get saved eight seconds ago. And she just asked them to stay in her house as they were traveling missionaries looking for places to stay. They're actually leaders in the church. This is not uncommon for. I knew to look up this passage for this reason. Not uncommon for egalitarians to make this kind of claim. So here is where it says it. This story depicts her as an early leader in the church in Philippi. It does. Do they explain how do they prove it? Do they offer some sort of debate or nuance or disagreement that's there? Is there theological diversity? No, it just does. Trust me, she's a leader. Stop asking questions. Because they have this whole thing of if you're hosting someone there in your house, then you're officially their leader. This is not good reasoning. I deal with this in my video series on women in ministry. But egalitarianism hinges on stuff like this. These are the point examples, which they will hinge their other views on as well. So it's actually a pretty big deal. If you look at the notes on the Song of Songs, let me read you a few quotes from it. Feel how egalitarian this is. The women in Song of Songs are among the most vocal women in the Old Testament. I mean, is it true they're vocal? Yeah, they're vocal. I mean, but that's meaningless. It's relatively meaningless that they're vocal because they're singing. The Daughters of Jerusalem. They're singing and they're talking back and forth, and the crowd of women speak. But you can feel the egalitarian implications. Right? They describe the woman in the Song of Songs as having an active speaking role, which implies female teachers. Right. To have an active speaking role is to generalize. This woman talking with her romantic interest as if she's teaching from the pulpit on Sunday mornings or something. Let me read you another quote. This woman, who is too often overlooked, provides a biblical model of a strong, confident, and assertive femininity, which is also faithful in wholehearted commitment. Lot's wife and daughters. There is an aversion to saying something bad about a woman in the scripture in this Bible, 99 articles on women. But they generally usually avoid saying something negative about a female. They'll say a little bit, but usually it's to soften it. Lot's wife and daughters. In this passage, they say God expresses his high value for women in different ways. He grants mercy to Lot's daughters while respecting the agency of Lot's wife, who chose to disobey God's commands. So when Lot's wife turns back and becomes a pillar of salt, they're like, God is expressing his high value of women because he respected her agency, allowing her to turn back and say, okay, I'll turn you into a pillar of salt if that's what you want, because I respect your agency. This is weird. Like this is just a lot of the baggage of the author being pushed onto the text of scripture here in the story of Tamar, Tamar who deceived her father in law who was lying and deceiving her, and she dressed as a prostitute, slept with him, had a baby, right? In this story, Tamar is a woman with personal agency and responsibility, which she uses in the pursuit of righteousness. That's the description of Tamar in Job. Job's wife, who is obviously went through major hard times, just like Job. Everything Job experienced, she experienced, except for the physical sickness. Everything else she went through too. Those are her kids. That was her property, it was her land, it was her cattle. It was her too. It was her reputation as well. But it's obviously focused on Job. But still she went through a lot. And she says to her husband, curse God and die. I would just say she's angry. She feels that Job must have done something wrong, that he must have deserved this. That's my interpretation of Job's wife. Now she's wrong, but it's understandable where she's coming from. So I'm not trying to demonize her. I just don't want to be a kid about what's happening. The commentary from the upside down Kingdom Bible, which wants to elevate women as much as possible, says the comment of Job's wife in verse nine, are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die should be regarded as a representation of short sighted pragmatism voiced out of concern for her husband. Concern for her. So she's like, honey, I just, I'm worried about you. So curse God and die. And now some translators will argue it doesn't really mean curse. It really means bless. Then you should have argued for that in your commentary or something. But even then it's just not. And she's called foolish. Later on in the same chapter, she's called foolish for these things. So it's not just this, like, oh, short sighted pragmatism. They just can't say it like it is. When it comes to, like the woman of wisdom in the book of Proverbs, like the woman who is wisdom. Wisdom's a woman in the book. Beautiful stuff. Really cool stuff. Great opportunity to talk about women right there. Or honor your mother and that sort of thing. But when you get to the foolish woman, the foolish woman folly is also a woman. We got nothing. There's no articles of any kind on that page. We're not going to talk about that. When you get to a wife is the crown of her husband and stuff, then there's an article on that, I'm sure. But when you get to like a contentious woman or it's better to live on the roof of a house than in the house with a contentious woman, we're not going to talk about that. There's no commentary on that because we're not interested in women as a topic. We're interested in women as an agenda. It's a special interest Bible. It's agenda driven. That's just the reality of it. Now, I don't think the authors see it that way, but that's because they're coming from those agendas that they think are fully Christian. Okay, next topic. Migration. What does it say about immigration? There's a subtle problem here in the migration article on Matthew 12. The sheep and the goats. That's where Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats. It turns this idea of sheep and goats into nations that didn't handle immigration properly. All right. King Jesus identifies the poor and peasant like the least of these in the empire, turning the whole value system of the kingdom upside down. If you read the article, you'll read more of it. This whole parable, the very concept of it, appears to exchange the idea of Jesus disciples in Matthew 25 with immigrants. Sorry, I'm stumbling over my words. Forgive me. Jesus is concerned with how people treated his disciples. As much as you did it to the least of these. You did it to me. Who are the least of these? According to the commentary, the least of these are like the poor and peasant. Like the least of these. I'll read to you the king Jesus identifies the poor and peasant like the least of these in the empire, turning the value system of the Kingdom upside down. I guess that's what I already read. Sorry, I just was getting confused in my notes. The implication is that as you read the whole article, immigration and how Nations Handle Immigration is how Jesus is judging them in the final day, as opposed to the least of these being the least of his disciples, not just another separate category, some of whom are immigrants, some are not, but a separate category of just immigrants, whether they're Christians or not. That's not what Jesus is about. That's what this article is about. And you can see this in the interview that Preston Sprinkle does with the guy who wrote the immigration articles, many of them. He expressly says this is what he's doing with Matthew 25. He's making it about immigration. There's plenty of other stuff on immigration. The idea of blessed are those who are persecuted. I'll put that on your screen. I'll just give you one more example and move on. Here it says, it is right for families to have food and security. It is right for children to have enough resources to flourish. It is right for parents to have the opportunity to nurture and take care of their children and safe environments. It is right for humans to migrate looking for better conditions that are unavailable to them in their homelands. So migration is a human right. This is not with nuance. I don't know if you're like me, you're like, well, I kind of agree with this, but I can sense that what you're going to do with it is have certain government policies in place and certain sort of favoritism type rules in place. And I feel like we're not going to end up agreeing because you're too generic. So he says it's right for them to migrate looking for better conditions that are unavailable to them in their homelands. If we believe then that supporting and advocating for the migrant community is also the right thing to do. Excuse me. If we believe that all the things he just said, then you should support and advocate for the migrant community. Jesus invites his disciples to consider the way of justice and righteousness as an essential part of their commitment to follow Him. This path is not without risks. And here's where we get to why is this note on the idea of blessed are you when you're persecuted? He says, but to all who are reviled and persecuted for righteousness sake, Jesus promises the blessing of God's kingdom. It's saying you're going to be persecuted because you advocated for immigrants. Now that may be the case because sometimes you should, as a Christian advocate for immigrants. But it's not just they're a category of people that should always be seen as good and positive. That's silly. But to defend the defenseless and to see people who are genuinely oppressed and to raise your voice for them, that is a Christian value. This takes it to a different level, I think. And to take Jesus statements about persecution for righteousness and for his namesake and to turn it into basically an immigration issue is weird. They also ignore passages that conflict when it comes to immigration. They won't talk about the passages in the Old Testament that limited immigration, that resisted immigration. It went both ways, right? There was treating immigrants well, loving them, taking care of them. There was also sometimes rejecting them, refusing them, not letting them permanently buy land. Israel just doesn't look like your conservative or your liberal agenda. It just doesn't look like either one of them. So I'm opposed to anyone trying to pretend that it does. There's lots of buzzwords, all right, we're getting close to the end here. There are lots of buzzwords there that are like racialized language oppressors, environmental crisis, forced displacement, socioeconomic this and that, social justice, creation, care. Those are all types of buzzwords you're going to see that are all sort of more on the liberal leaning side of things when it comes to those types of issues, not when it comes to the first stuff I mentioned in the opening of this review that started four hours ago. There's political theology from the New Testament. It's produced by Mike Bird. He believes that it is. Mike Bird says himself he believes it's ridiculous that Americans don't have universal health care. Moreover, that is a Christian commitment. If you're a Christian, you should support universal governmental healthcare. Why do I say that? Is it because I'm personally opposed to it, so I'm defending my anti healthcare views? No. If somebody made a study Bible saying, as a Christian you have to oppose universal health care, I would also be opposed to them. I would say stop hijacking the Bible because you're so convinced of your political plan. Treat these things as separate things. Say, I'm convinced of this, but don't grab the Bible and hijack it for that purpose. That's inappropriate on race and ethnicity. I won't read more of the stuff on that, but I'll just mention you've got guys like Derwin Gray who offers commentary on Matthew through acts, and you have Jamar Tisby who writes an article in this work. And these guys are woke, as they're very woke. They're very Much on the woke scale. Okay, high up on the woke scale. And they're providing their commentary on ethnicity. Now, that's not going to be the case for other authors. Other authors aren't going to be woke like that, but the ones who are writing on relevant issues are. So what does that make the work in relation to those types of things? It's kind of woke when it comes to creation care. On Revelation 11:18, when God says he'll destroy those who destroy the earth, the commentary they provide in that passage, God will destroy those. Who is that God is destroying people who have environmentally destroyed the earth, whereas the passage itself is talking about people who commit slavery, people who commit murder, people who abuse others, who oppress the poor. In a real, genuine sense, it's about those kind of destruction of the earth things. And then it's an allusion to Jeremiah 51:25, where destroyed the earth is about Babylon physically attacking other nations. It's not about pumping pollution in the air. Now, if you want to try to make a case that somehow that can be included, fine, make a case. But their emphasis on creation, care and climate change is strong enough that they're hijacking God's prophesied judgment of the nations and saying it's about that. And that's not true. It's an agenda skewing Scripture. Now, I'll mention. I could mention more. There isn't real theological diversity here. Another example is, and I kind of hate to use this example, because it's about Chris Date. Now, I know Chris Dayton. I would consider him a friend. I love Chris Date. I like him a lot. From the first time we met. We had lunch years ago, and I just immediately was like, I like this guy a lot. I respect him. But he's also a conditionalist. Now, he's probably pretty conservative. He's probably the most conservative guy who helped out with this entire work. He's a conditionalist, as it comes to end time stuff, not eternal conscious torment. Right? That's not his view. And he writes every article on the afterlife. Death in the Afterlife is written by Chris Date, one person who has one particular view. That's a minority view, and he does try to share. Here's a debate. Some people have this, some people have this. But it's without doubt that his articles, of course, nudge people towards a conditionalist view. That's fine. But Zondervan does not make it at all clear that this is what you're getting when you open this Bible. Like, I have books on this stuff. Where is It. Oh, I guess I moved it. It's in a different bookshelf. You know, I got Edward Fudge's like book this thick on conditionalism and why he believes, and that's fine. I bought it, paid for it. But imagine if it wasn't honest, if it was just like what happens when we die and you have to get like two thirds of the way through before you realize it actually has a theological agenda. That would be inappropriate. Let's see a couple more little things, then I'll move on to your guys questions in the longest stream I've ever done. Well, actually it's probably not the longest, but it's pretty long. So grace is under emphasized. I mentioned a positive grace is in here and that's very good. But for some reason there's only a few articles on grace. Well, there's 26, but they're all in the Old Testament. Not a single article on grace or note on grace in the New Testament. And I thought that was really weird. The New Testament emphasizes grace dramatically, consistently, and it's a huge issue. It's a lot bigger of an issue than immigration. It's a lot bigger of an issue than climate care or lament and grief or any of the other things that are on the list. The identity of Jesus is big too. There's no articles on that, but there's no New Testament article on grace. And I don't understand why that is. And I don't even have a theory on that. I think that's just strange. It's the only category that has no New Testament notes. Even though the notes on the Old Testament that I did read on grace, a few that I read I liked. I thought they were good. What else? The contributors are one sided. I kind of mentioned this, right? Who comments on women, egalitarians who comments on the afterlife, conditionalist who comments on politics, people with liberal economic views, who comments on race and ethnicity woke guys who comments on violence, pacifist guys. It's all very one sided and you should be aware of that. Do I recommend it? Obviously no, it's too biased. Without being transparent. I'd rather just read a book like openly advocating for pacifism, like Preston Sprinkle's book on that or Ron Seider, who actually his book was the best one I read on pacifism, even though I think it proves that it doesn't work, biblically speaking. But I'd rather just read that than have to constantly be on my guard. I don't know what they're trying to tell Me what side they're going to come from. And I keep reading things going, well, what is that about? Too much bias, too much reading my own agenda into the text of scripture. Too much eisegesis misusing scripture for my purposes that I don't recommend it. So that's that. Oh, my goodness. That was the longest first question I've ever done. I should have just made it its own video. I thought about it. My wife said, no, you're busy. You don't have time to do more videos. She's probably right. So unconventional. Let's take your questions now. All right. I got to figure out where my. Where my cues are. Okay. I might move a little quick for understandable reasons. Question number two. Dazzle me. Fine. Says, as a pastor to the youth for so long, what would you recommend parents do with their children to help them have a personal relationship with God? Because your question is really centered around family. I would recommend talking to family families who you dads, who you've seen be successful in this regard. So I can come up with ideas, but obviously all my experience and focus has been on in church ministry. How do we do this? Getting students to read the Bible on their own is one of the biggest things that you can possibly do. Having creating time and structures in your family where that becomes a thing that can be good. Where then you guys discuss and get feedback on the things that you're reading. You have them ask questions, that sort of thing. Personal relationship with God. Learning to deal with sin and confront sin issues. Learning to know that God's grace and kindness is there, to understand the gospel and to see this is a big deal for kids. When they start to see that their friends at school and their friends in their friend circle are in a spiritual war, they usually take their own battles more seriously. Help them see the needs of the people around them in their community. And I think that they will be more serious about their relationship with God. But one of the big dangers I would mention for anybody is if a student or a child is willing to tell you about the troubles of others but never their own, it's because they have troubles that they're not dealing with and they don't want to talk to you about them because maybe they don't believe it will help. Maybe they're embarrassed. Maybe they need help there. So the kid who comes up in youth ministry and says, hey, Mike, can you pray for my friend? So? And so he's becoming Buddhist or something, or my friend, yeah, he's using drugs. And my friend over here she's suicidal. Pray for them. And they ask you to pray for others, but they never come for themselves for prayer. They never tell you about any of their own struggles. Maybe that's a relational issue with you and them. But if you're the parent, especially, try to learn how to cultivate a comfort in them discussing those things with you and confronting those things with you. I know it's not easy. Okay? I'm just. You asked me for some thoughts. There's some thoughts. Reading the Scripture and prayer are key, though. Number three. Bolekrin Vencho says, when or how did Moses acquire the contents and narrative of Genesis? So we don't have a clear answer in Scripture on this, but we do have strong implications. Moses, it said, went up onto the mountain and he spends how long with God? 40 days on the mountain with God. He does go up multiple times. And then he has what's called. In fact, the name is hinting. In the Old Testament, it's called the Tabernacle of Meeting. This is where Moses would actually meet with God. And it says they spoke face to face. I think this means it was conversational. Like Moses could ask questions, what about this? Or what does that mean? And they spoke face to face. And during this time, Moses is receiving Revelation and he's writing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers. He's writing these things and we don't know all the process of writing. Did he write part? He write part, and then he compiled more. And then maybe somebody else wrote the end of Deuteronomy tagging on. Because it was after Moses died something Joshua did and something. It was somebody else. But the extended period of dialogue between Moses and God offers this open window of somewhere in here, somewhere in here, Moses gets this information from God about all these things. We don't know exactly where. I could talk more about that, but for the sake of today's Q and A, I don't want to take too long because I've already already brained it. James 5:12. This is an anonymous question says James 5:12 says not to make O's, but isn't getting married making an oath? Yeah, good point. Okay, so don't make O's. Let's just read the passage real quick. Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear. Not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple yes or no. Otherwise you will be condemned. I'm still in the niv, by the way, I used for my review of the NIV upside down Kingdom Bible. I just use the NIV every time, because I thought it would be appropriate since I was reviewing that. But I'm moving over ESV at the moment. So, yeah, don't swear by heaven or earth. Just let your yes be yes and your no be no. This echoes Jesus as well. Matthew 5. 34. He says, I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is. It is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. Jesus is trying to get away. Get them away from Jesus. Gives us more context than James. Let's look at what is he combating here? What is Jesus coming against here? You've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. And then he says, but I say, don't take an oath at all. The context of this, we actually get this from other passages as well. I wonder if I could find one where they were actually saying, hey, if we, if we swear by this. No, I'm not. I'm not finding it. Forgive me, you guys know what I'm talking about. But they were saying, like, hey, if you swear by the altar, you're only bound to your oath this much. But if you swear by the thing that's on the altar, the food that's being sacrificed, then you're bound more or less so that they were trying to, like, have layers of. Of commitment. How much is my oath and how much can I break my oath? And then you have the problem of those who are swearing as a way of having no word. I have to promise to you, because me simply saying yes is not believable. So I'm going to be like, but I promise this time, I promise this time. So that the habit of making oaths, this is important. The habit of making oaths is a way of covering up a habit of telling lies. The person who swears the most I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise is also the person who has to do that because nobody believes you because you lied so many times. So let your yes be yes. Anything that changes the situation where everybody knows, if you say, I'm going to do it, you'll do it. If you say I'm not, you won't. You should have such character that they know if you say yes, you mean? Yes. Does that mean that I can't do an oath when I get married? No, I don't think it does at all. The nature of Jesus's commands here when he says, like, don't do this, don't do that, is it's meant to be a sweeping statement, sometimes a little bit hyperbolic. That is meant to teach a main point. It is not meant to be this sort of strict policy. Let me give you another example. Jesus says, if you say to your brother, you're a fool, you'll be in danger of fire, of the fire of hell if you say to your brother, you fool. Yet in the same Gospels we have Jesus calling the Pharisees foolish fools, blind guides, hypocrites. He calls them fools. What's the difference? They really are fools. It was a real accusation of a true thing. It wasn't just an angry, just outburst of saying something mean like you just call someone a name because you're mad at them. So when you realize there's context here, what is it about taking oaths that's bad? It's because you don't have solid character to start with. And you're using these O's to cover that up. And then you're layering, possibly layering and breaking those oaths as well. Marriage is an oath. God takes oaths. He makes a new covenant with us. That's an oath. He swears by himself because he can't swear by any higher. God makes oaths in scripture as well, but they're fully reliable. The main point is to be fully reliable. All right, let's go to question number five. Anonymous question. What's the balance between the Holy Spirit changing us and us trying to do good works and love God? I just feel stuck in my sin. I don't know how to get out of this habit. I'm scared my repentance isn't real. Welcome to the massive giant group of Christians who feel the same way. Let me read it again. How many of you guys feel the same way? What's the balance between the Holy Spirit changing us and us trying to do good works and love God? I'm struggling with sin. How much of this is it going to be? The Holy Spirit's going to do it for me versus I'm going to do it. I just feel so stuck. You say in my sin, I don't know how to get out of this habit. I'm scared my repentance isn't real. I don't know how to fix your fear. I struggle with answering this Question a bit, but I'm going to be super straight and honest with you. I don't know if your repentance is real either. The reason you don't know it sounds like, again, what do I know about you? I know two sentences about your whole life, but I don't know if it's real either. I can't just tell you it's real to make you feel good. If I'm in habitual sin and I'm unrepentant in my attitude towards it, I know that that repentance is fake if I'm in habitual sin. But I am in this constant battle where I'm like, I hate this, I repent and then I fail again. I hate this, I repent and I fail again. I hate this, I repent, I fail again. It's understandable to go, am I even real? That's a fair feeling to have. But this can lead us into this place where we're paralyzed with this fear of am I real? Is my repentance real? Is this real? Is that real? And you turn into this little shaky chihuahua Christian instead of saying, I just need to be more serious about this. I just need to be more honest about this. I just need to be more genuinely repentant about it. And stop focusing on how do I feel in the moment I'm telling this to you the same way I would tell it to me. Stop focusing on how do I feel in the moment where you become self obsessed about your emotions and you think, instead, what steps have I never taken to overcome this sin? What's the most successful thing I've done in the history of me battling this sin that has actually helped me overcome it? Am I still doing that or did I stop doing that? Who am I hiding this from that would help me overcome this sin? What obvious steps should I take that I just don't feel like taking? Like, I really want to stop gambling. And you have like gambling apps on your phone that you won't delete. You still have accounts with all these gambling websites that you won't, you won't delete and close the account. You're like, I will stop gambling. I refuse to actually delete the accounts. Are there obvious steps you should take in the sin that you're dealing with that would help you be more serious about repenting rather than evaluating? I just want to feel better as I continue my same habits. Double down on being serious about overcoming those issues in your life because you can because of this scripture right here, 1 Corinthians 10:13. No temptations overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful. You believe God's faithful. Well, then you believe this. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. The Holy Spirit's already at work holding back the temptation. And with the temptation, he'll provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. And the issue right now is you need to endure temptation. You need to experience temptation, not yield. And then do that again the next time, and then do that again the next time. And you will find that the further you get from the last time you committed that sin that you're struggling with, the more you'll see how bad it is, the more you'll get strong against it and the more you will feel the freedom and the liberty and the blessings that come when you've set aside that thing. Now I know there's plenty of Christians who will hear all that. And you will still for the next years to come, you will struggle with sin. And all I can tell you is cling to Jesus with everything you've got. Yes, there's got to be people out there who pretend to follow Jesus and aren't real Christians and they should be scared. And then there's real Christians out there who are just struggling with sin and God knows their hearts and they're his and they're forgiven. And one of the issues with the sin that they continue to repeat even though they don't have to, but it feels like they have to because they just haven't stopped. So feels like they can't because they won't. But maybe they're still believers and some of them I think are. And I don't know the difference between them. So I don't have more that I can share with you on that, except that the best indication for me would be not only repentance really turning from it, but that regular attitude of keeping short accounts with God, taking every step you can to repent and distancing yourself from the sin as much as possible, no matter how often you have failed and fallen. So repent as much as you can would be my advice. I feel as though I've not answered that as well as I should have, and I do hope you find some help in it. Brooke Trout has a question says, is there sin in the millennium? Will that affect our glorified bodies and our lives in the millennium? So the way I hash this out, so I'm pre millennial, I think there's going to be a thousand year reign of Christ on earth approximately Whether it's more or less, it's can be called a thousand years because it's this very long period of time. And during that time we have believers who have new bodies who are glorified. We will not sin. But you have, I think, and boy, I'm out on a limb on this. This is totally conjecture. This is not what I know to be true. This is like an extrapolation of a guess and an implication. This is super conjecture zone is that we have people who have survived through the tribulation and they live on into the millennium and they continue to have kids. And there is a growing population of people who were born and exist in the millennial time who aren't Christians, who have new bodies, who are glorified. They will not sin. But are this sort of multitude, mixed multitude you might call it. You almost think of the Israelites coming out of Egypt and they have the Egyptians who are the mixed multitude in their midst. That doesn't make it true. I'm just trying to draw an analogy. Those people will, at least at the end of the millennium, they'll start a rebellion against God. And so Satan is released after the thousand years and he gathers together the armies and they come against the Lord and he strikes him with the sword of his mouth and boom, final judgment comes. So that's obviously a sin. And if premillennialism is true, which I think it is, then there's sin in the millennium, at least at the end. So there must be the capacity to sin for individuals in the millennium. But that doesn't make sense with regenerate Christians and new bodies and stuff. So I'm theorizing that it is the people who survived the tribulation and then populate and further repopulate the earth. So yeah, there's my answer. If that feels a little like a stretch, it does to me too, which is why I share it with so much caution and hold it so loosely. That's my response. Number seven, John 17:3 says, I'm a new parent doing research. I've heard the Bible supports corporal punishment and scientific studies say corporal punishment has negative outcomes. How do you reconcile these two things? So I haven't just heard it personally, I'm convinced my theory on the millennium here I hold very loosely. I'm convinced the Bible is for capital punishment, but the Bible also shows governments doing things wrongly all the time. So those two things are just true. You have to do capital punishment and you have to do it right. And they often don't do it right. So that I'm convinced of. And I have a video on capital punishment I can link down below. So you've heard the Bible supports corporal punishment. I would say. Oh, excuse me. Corporal punishment, not capital. You know, what I did was I read your. I'm going to start over. I read your question. In the hindsight of me having already done all this discussion on capital punishment earlier in the stream corporal punishment, you're talking about spanking your kids, that sort of thing. You say scientific studies say corporal punishment has negative outcomes. I'm skeptical of that. So I don't doubt that some corporal punishment does have negative outcomes. And certainly I have experienced that from my stepdad growing up. I remember him, he was high or something. I'm sure he was high. He might have been drunk or both. And he went to spank me and he hit me all up and down my legs with a belt. Whack, whack, whack, whack. So I had just all these welt marks all over the back of my legs. If I had gone to school in shorts the next day, they would have called, you know, CPS the. Yeah, thank you. Sarah. Sarah, I got the correction. She's on top of it. Corporal, that was not helpful. Okay, that was wrong. But I don't have scientific research on this. But I'll say the parents that I've seen who use more gentle parenting techniques and refuse to do like sort of spanking for real young kids, that. That has not. Doesn't look like it's working all that great to me. In general, I do think the Bible is strong on this, you know, that discipline, even spare the rod, spoil the child. Yeah, I know. You know, the thing is, we're so loaded with our anti corporal punishment mentalities that we picture a rod being like a, like a billy club and you're like beating your children black and blue and that. That's like, what? But obviously this is not the case. My mom would use like a little switch when she was growing up, this little switch, and it would just be like it's a small pain that does not cause actual harm. And then the debate is whether this causes psychological harm and mental harm and that sort of thing. And I'll just say I doubt the scientific studies that conclude corporal punishment as a rule has negative outcomes. I just don't think that's true. How can I say this? I would take advice from real parents over scientific studies any day of the week. I think scientific studies of real parenting is just a very flimsy science. This is not like, you Take one molecule of hydrogen and you get two of this other thing that is not this kind of science. You call it scientific studies, but what you're doing is not. It's like an incredibly soft, flimsy science, very prone to bias. Yeah, yeah. I don't put a lot of stock in it. You asked me what my thoughts were on that. How do I reconcile those two things? That would be how. The other thing is, I would then, if I was really going to dig into the research, if I cared enough to dig into the science on this particular topic, then I would want to look up, you know, what was their method? What were they actually measuring? What metric were they examining? What conclusions did they make? What was the difference between the data versus the interpretation of the data? These are all important things when it comes to this sort of stuff. Study. Are there other studies that conflict with this? What about when we zoom out and look at societies as a society, Here's a society that is more in favor of corporal punishment. Here's a society that is not societally. How are those kids doing? How are those situations going? Does this study distinguish between corporal punishment in a reasonable way versus abuse? Does it distinguish between those? Or are abuse cases being included to a degree that would actually skew the results of the studies. There's just like a whole bunch of other things to consider. Number eight. J. Towell says, hey, Mike, there are some scriptures where the disciples don't recognize the resurrected Jesus. Is this because they are prevented by Jesus or did he actually look different? That's tough to answer. So Luke talks about this in particular on the road to Emmaus. And there they are. And they say, let me see if I can find. There's a couple verses in particular that I'm thinking of. Let me see if I can find them and just put them on screen for you guys. So while they conversed, Jesus himself drew near with them. This is after the resurrection. And it says their eyes were restrained so that they did not know him. The implication here is that they actually see him. And I can't read that just now. They see him, but there's a restraint that's on them, not something on him. It's not that Jesus himself is unrecognizable. There's something in their eyes. They're not able to see him. And then this correlates with him explaining to them the Scriptures. And it's actually really cool when he says, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, he expounded the Scriptures to them and all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself. So he's metaphorically lifting the veil off their eyes to see Jesus in the Old Testament. Then they drew near and this is where they start to see him. It came to pass as he sat at the table with them that he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew him and he vanished from their sight. So in the Luke example, it's their eyes. They didn't see him, they didn't recognize him, but their eyes are changed, they're enlightened. And this seems to be a parallel. It's a beautiful story. It's parallel with he opens the Scriptures to them to see Jesus in the Old Testament just as their eyes were opened to see this resurrected Jesus and understand who he was. That doesn't explain all of them though, because you have like the appearance to where it's thought that Jesus was a gardener by Mary and he's like Mary and she realizes it's him and you're like, what, did he look different there? Or maybe she's just covered in tears and she's not seeing clearly and she's not and she just sees someone coming and she has a habit of not even looking at people's faces because she just assumes it's somebody else. Where did they take him? And she's looking at the tomb. I don't really know. The Luke example seems to indicate it was not him physically. When Jesus shows himself also to the disciples and he shows up a week later, and now Thomas is with them. He says, thomas, look at his eye. And he says, look, it's the same. I'm adding words here, but this is correct interpretation. It's the same nail holes in my hands and the same spear hole in my side. This is where I was pierced. Meaning it's literally the same body. Come and touch it. For Thomas to be able to be in this moment, it would have required that Jesus looked like Jesus. Does that make sense? For this to make sense, it seems like it would imply Jesus looked like Jesus. So could have been their eyes more than his appearance. There may be other verses on that I should talk about, but that's what I got for today. Man of Mom 1 says, what is the significance of the water and blood? In first John 4, 6 and 8. Come on. First John 4, 6 says, we are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth. And the Spirit of error. Okay, and then verse 8. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Did I read something wrong? First John, 4, 6, and 8. I know what verse you're thinking of. 5, 6, and 8. Is that what it was? You were just one chapter off. That's fair. I do that too. Don't. Don't feel bad about it. Okay. First John, five, six. This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. And I'll just read on. For there are three that bear witness in heaven. The Father. Hold on. I'm bouncing around. I really want to do ESV for this. I'm going to avoid a whole other debate that's going to confuse our question. For there are three that testify the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agreements. So we see that Jesus came by water and blood. So water and blood are associated with his coming. And we also see that there is a testimony, the testimony of the water and the blood. So what is the testimony of the water and the blood? Well, blood seems obvious. It's talking about Jesus, humanity, and also his death. Those could be the two things that are being discussed there. Jesus Christ came by blood. He's human descendant of Adam, ultimately through Mary, he's also God, and he also comes by water. So what is the water? Water could be referenced to the baptism of Jesus Christ. And that when Christ was baptized, there was like a testimony related to the water because God speaks and says, behold, you know, this is my son. And John says, I was told that when I went baptizing the one on whom the Spirit descended and remained, you know, that he's the one that I was the forerunner for. So these things are all related to the baptism of Jesus. And that's like a testimony related to his baptism that can be said. Jesus, he not only came through that baptism, but also by blood, Meaning it ties Christ's ministry to John the Baptist, ties it to the Old Testament, ties it to future Christian baptism. But also by saying with the blood, it avoids later Gnosticism views where, like, they would say Jesus didn't have a real human body or his body wasn't really him, and other views that became a problem later on. So I'm inclined to think water here is referencing baptism, and blood is referencing his crucifixion and his physical body. Now, the other option is that water represents birth. He was born, literally born. And the water Testifies virgin birth. He was born of Mary, physically birthed. They're at the water breaking water may be discussed in relation to pregnancy in particular, and that he came by that and by blood, so that he was not only born of a woman, but he was a true man. That would also work. I'll just put up a couple for you to think about. All right, let's go to question number 10. Marissa Locke says, what do you think our relationship will be like with family members in heaven? Will we know each other? Will we sort of be related? I know there won't be marriage. Yeah. But I mean, dude, my wife's going to still be my best friend, so tough luck there. Absolutely. We're still going to be connected. It won't be marriage. But it's not that there's a lack of relationship. Obviously, I'll have a special relationship with anybody who I'm related to, who I knew on Earth or who I cared about on earth, who I see in heaven. But I will continue to develop deep relationships with everybody else that's there. Over the millennial, over the years, over the millions and billions of years, we'll develop plenty of deep personal relationships. It'll be wonderful. And without our sin nature to ruin it, it's going to be amazing. Imagine hanging out with people and none of you sin, including you. Not in your heart, not in your life. It's funny how the world thinks of that as boring, how distorted how our brains got to be to think of that as boring. So, yeah, you will know each other. Yeah. There's even knowledge of. Like in Revelation, the martyrs in heaven are crying out, lord, how long until you avenge our blood upon those who killed us? If you can in heaven, remember the people that killed you, you can certainly remember the people you loved. Remember the people you knew and cared about. You will carry those relationships with you. When David lost his son, he says, I can go to be with him, but I can't bring him back to be with me. He was speaking about a future relationship he could have with the son he lost. That's powerful. So, yeah, you will know them. You will know them, and you won't lose those relationships. They'll just get better. They'll just get better. So I won't be married to my wife. My relationship with her will be even better in eternity than it is now. All right, bonus question. May as well, since it's a marathon stream anyhow. Bonus question from Christian Anthony. Who's Christian? Anthony Liang. Good to hear from you, Christian. He says, hey, Mike, what's your favorite Lord of the Rings character. I bet it's Treebeard. That's funny. Treebeard is for those who don't know. Treebeard is the character who speaks very slowly and says it takes a long time to say anything in Intish. That's their language. It takes hours and hours to say anything. And he says, and I don't say anything unless it's worth taking a long time to say. Which is my favorite quote from Treebeard for sure. Because I feel like that's. Feel like that's my philosophy, at least what I aim for. Favorite. That's a really tough one. There's different levels of favorites, right? So Treebeard definitely has a special place for me. The ints are just super cool. If you read how Tolkien wrote about them, the description of them is just like really, really neat Stu. Then you've got like Samwise Gamgee, who's kind of like this amazing, like stalwart, won't give up hero character even though he's totally underrated. Then you've got like Aragorn. And I think I liked his the way he was presenting the movies better than the books. I'm just gonna nerd out on you guys. You asked the question. It's a bonus question. We're not thinking biblically. We're just thinking about Lord of the Rings. But let's see, who else was it? I really liked Faramir in the books. I really liked Faramir a lot. I liked the way his character came off. He was an insightful, thoughtful, deep thinking guy and had a lot of integrity and character. Like the way he came off, I don't know. I don't know. I'm never good at favorites. All right, well, that's it, you guys. That was my review of the Upside Down Kingdom Bible, which believers who wrote and contributed to this, at least as far as I know. Okay. And I'm not going to assume they're not because we disagree on these other issues. I was very honest about the flaws and the problems. Doesn't mean that they're all problems. If you read through it, you'd probably agree with a lot of the stuff you read. You read and you think that was good. But you can't at least don't think of it as a study Bible because it's just going to be empty pages where you have a lot of questions about what the Bible means. And then it's going to be very topical agenda, sort of focused content. It's scholarly, it's written thoughtfully, it doesn't mean that it's right. And even if you do agree with the perspectives they have, you're probably better off just buying a book on egalitarianism or a book on pacifism or a book on conditionalism than you are reading this. My opinion, My two cents. Sorry, Zondervan, you made it. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and we pray that you give us discernment and wisdom on how to disagree. As Christians, it's a little bit tough to talk negatively about the hard, hard labors and work of believers who I would happily fellowship with in many cases and yet see it as a problem for the body of Christ at the same time. So we just pray for wisdom and discernment help us to hold on to as much unity as we can, but without being fools and without kidding ourselves about differences and disagreements. In Jesus name, Amen.