← I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
Jesus in the Old Testament? Look for These Clues! Plus Q&A
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Ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, I'm losing my voice, but we'll power through it. I got a question, really a comment from a listener who had been abused as a child, child abuser took advantage of her and she wrote in and talked about what it would be like if she saw her child abuser in heaven. We're going to get to what she said. It's very insightful. I also have another question regarding the beginning of the universe. You know, if the first law of thermodynamics says that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, how can we say there was a creation? So we're going to talk about that. We're going to get into all that a little bit later when we get to a couple of your questions. But I need to finish our conversation that we had a few podcasts ago regarding the typology in the Old Testament. I'll explain what that is in a minute. We started talking about different characters in the Old Testament that are typical of Jesus. I want to pick up the conversation there. Before I do, I want to mention tomorrow night, actually Thursday night, Lord willing, my my voice holds up, will be at Boise State out there in Idaho. And then we'll be at a church. I think the church is sold out after that. But on Friday night we'll be at a church in the area as well. But I want to mention that if you can't be in Boise, Idaho, but want to see what we're doing there, it will be live streamed, Lord willing, on our YouTube channel. Also, just want to make sure I get the name of the church here because I had it a minute ago, but I don't have it. Oh, it's Restored Community Church and that is in Eagle, Idaho. That will be the 21st, November 21st, from 7 to 9pm but the night before Boise State, we'll be doing if God why Evil? A lot of Q and A in honor of my friend Charlie Kirk. Also want to mention, obviously there's a lot going on that you're hearing from Candace Owens and others. I've addressed some of that already. But I want to direct your your attention to a couple of podcasts, one by Ali Beth Stuckey. We had Ali on last week. She did a podcast related to what Candace has been saying and so has our friend Elisa Childers. Two great podcasts you want to avail yourselves of, and we'll talk about this in a future podcast as well. But I want to go back to the Bible in this podcast and talk about what we began talking about a few weeks ago. You Know, on certain Monday nights, we're doing a series up here in Charlotte, North Carolina, just north of Charlotte, at Freedom House Church. Monday nights. It's called the Bible you never knew. And what I'm trying to point out is, is that there's so much in the Bible that at a casual reading you might not see. But if you spend a little bit of time going a little bit deeper into the scriptures, you realize that the scriptures written over 1500 years by 40 different authors on three different continents have a divine hand organizing all of these different writers over different times in different places. Because there are so many, so many events that occur in the Old Testament that really foreshadow what is going to happen in the New Testament. There are so many people in the Old Testament that foreshadow Jesus. There are prophecies in the Old Testament that are going to reveal Jesus. There are what we call types, which I want to unpack a little bit more here on this podcast that reveal that Jesus is really the center of the Old Testament. In fact, Jesus himself says this on his on the road to Emmaus when he's. He's already been resurrected. But the people he's walking with, they're not the road to Emmaus. From Emmaus, Emmaus to Jerusalem, they're walking along and it says that Jesus said to the two people that were with him, it says in Luke 24:27, it says in beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. He went on to basically say, all the Old Testament is about me, Jesus. That's what he said. That's about a two and a half hour walk. Question. If somebody gave you two and a half hours to explain how Jesus is really the center of the Old Testament, would you need that much time? Most people, when you read the New Testament and the Old Testament casually, you wouldn't need two and a half hours. You might need two and a half minutes or ten minutes maybe. Well, I know there's some prophecies in the Old Testament that point to Jesus. I know there's one place where Jesus says, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the heart of the fish, I'll be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Okay, there's a parallel there, but I don't see much else. Well, when scholars really look into this, they realize you'd need more than two and a half hours to explain all this because the Old Testament is so rich in foreshadowing Jesus that As I say it, it would take quite a long time to unpack it all. That's why we're trying to unpack some of it in this new series called the Bible you Never Knew. And one question we try and answer is this. How did Jesus and the apostles interpret the Bible? Now, in Jesus's day, the Bible was just the Old Testament. So how did he interpret the Old Testament? And what we say in the series is that they interpreted it literally and literarily. Not just literally, but also literarily. What do I mean by literarily? That God uses repeated themes and events and character traits to foreshadow Christ in the Old Testament, and that these themes, events, and character traits more richly reveal God's love, majesty, and divine hand in the Bible. There are things that occur over and over again. There are characteristics that occur over and over again. There are events that occur over and over again that foreshadow what's going to happen to Jesus. These events all occur in the Old Testament, but they're foreshadowing what is going to happen in the New Testament. Now, when we say that Jesus and the apostles interpreted the Bible literally and literarily, when we say literally, we don't mean everything's literal. Everything in the Bible is literally true, but not everything is expressed literally. Jesus said, I am the door. That's not literal. It's a metaphor. We don't think he has a doorknob and hinges. What we mean or what he meant was that he is the way to salvation. When the Old Testament says the eyes of the Lord go to and fro across the earth, we don't really literally think God has eyes. He's an immaterial being. What it means is it's a expressive way of saying God sees all things. So not everything in the Bible is expressed literally, but everything in the Bible is literally true, meaning it really happened. So that's what we mean by literally, but literarily. There are so many events going on in the Old Testament and even literary devices that are going on in the Old Testament that are also repeated in the New that focus the reader's attention. And we unpack some of these in the series. But I just want to highlight typology, because we started talking about this a few weeks ago. We didn't finish the conversation. And when we say typology, there are characters in the Old Testament that have characteristics about their life that are like Jesus's life. They're typical of Jesus. So Adam, for example, has characteristics in his life. Jesus is the Second, Adam, Isaac has certain characteristics in his life that are typical of Jesus. Isaac is the sacrificial son, just like Jesus is the sacrificial son. Joseph in his life is a savior of his people. Jesus is a savior of his people. Moses in his life is a liberator of his people. He gets his people out of slavery from Egypt. Jesus is a liberator. He gets us out of slavery to sin. And Joshua. This is who we covered just the last night in our series and I think you can still see it on YouTube. It's up for about a week. Now. These, this series, the Bible you never knew, will soon turn into a course and a, a DVD set. But we talked about Joshua being a conqueror and let me just review some of the parallels between Joshua's life and Jesus's life and then we're going to see how the battle of Jericho and the book of Revelation have similar characteristics or similar events going on. This is eye opening when you see it. In fact, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Talk about first the parallels between Joshua and Jesus. First of all, they have the same name. Yeshua, it's a variation of the same name. Joshua and Jesus essentially have a variation of the same name. They both succeed Moses. Of course, Joshua succeeds Moses directly and brings his people into the promised land. Jesus succeeds Moses in the sense that he is bringing grace. Whereas Moses had a covenant that relied on law. Not that people were saved by the law, but the law showed them they needed a savior. Jesus brings forth a new covenant, a new covenant of grace. And by the way, that new covenant was predicted in, in Jeremiah. Both Joshua and Jesus are sons of Joseph, different Josephs, but they both have a father who an ancestor by Joseph. Joshua is literally a descendant of Joseph, the Joseph in Egypt, about 500 years prior to Joshua. They both renew a covenant while Jesus provides a new covenant, whereas Joshua renews the covenant of Moses. They both had the Lord's armies. Joshua and Jesus both had the Lord's armies. Where does Jesus had the Lord's armies in the book of Revelation? We'll get to it. They're both opposed by an evil, wealthy and walled city. The city of Jericho opposes Joshua. Where the evil and walled, wealthy walled city that opposed Jesus is Jerusalem. And I'll unpack that more in a minute. They're both, excuse me, opposed by Jerusalem, you say? Well, I know that Jesus was opposed by Jerusalem. Where is Joshua opposed by Jerusalem after Joshua takes Jericho? A little bit later in the book talks about five kings that oppose Joshua. One of them is the king of Jerusalem. So that corresponds with what Jesus would experience later, that the city of Jerusalem and its people were opposed to him. Joshua has two spies, Jesus has two witnesses. Joshua conquers the city by God's power and so does Jesus. Jesus says before this generation passes away, all these things will occur. And he was talking about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, which he predicted in about 30 or 33 AD. A generation is about 40 years. In 70 AD it really happened. Now I'm not saying everything that occurred in 70 A.D. is what Matthew 24 is talking about or what the Book of Revelation is talking about. There's a near term fulfillment and a long term fulfillment. Obviously it's not the end of the world yet. The end of the Book of Revelation hasn't happened yet. But there are things that both Matthew in the Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation talk about that had a near term fulfillment in 70 AD and will also have a longer term fulfillment at the end of the world. And this is common in the scriptures, that there are dual fulfillment prophecies. You have a near term fulfillment and a long term fulfillment. And here is one of them also. They both rescue a prostitute from the city. Joshua rescues Rahab and her family and a prostitute comes out of the city of Jerusalem. Who is that? We'll get to it. They both save Gentiles, Joshua saves Gentiles. Who's he saving? Just Rahab and her family. They're Gentiles, they're not Hebrews, they're Canaanites. And Jesus saves the Gentiles. It's not just saving Jewish people, he's saving Gentiles. And Joshua leads his people into the promised land. Jesus leads his people into heaven. So these parallels between Joshua and Jesus show that Joshua is a type of Jesus. In other words, there are characteristics in Joshua's life that prefigure or foreshadow Jesus. And in fact, as we talked about in the series the Bible, you never knew Moses as a liberator is a type of Christ's first coming, whereas Joshua as a conqueror is a type of Christ's second coming. Jesus, when he comes first, is a sacrificial lamb and he liberates us from sin by his sacrifice. But when he comes again, he is going to judge the living and the dead. He's going to be a conqueror. That's what the Book of Revelation talks about. And so Moses is prefiguring Christ's first coming. Joshua is pre figuring Christ's second company. And we coming and we can see Jesus clear using both of these lenses. Now how does the conquest of Jericho in the book of Revelation have similarities? What are some parallels here? Now ladies and gentlemen, once you see this, you can't unsee it. Let's take a look at it. Notice that in the book of Joshua, when they're outside the city, a man appears who is actually the pre incarnate Christ and he has a sword. You remember in Joshua, this pre incarnate Christ says to Joshua, or Joshua asks him, are you with us or are you against us? And the pre incarnate Christ, the theophany says neither. It reminds me of what happened in the civil war with Abraham Lincoln. Some advisor came to him during the civil war and said, Mr. Lincoln, do you think God's on our side? And he said, let's pray that we're on God's side. Okay? And this is what appears to be going on here. God is not on anyone's side. Let's make sure we're on his side. So Joshua falls at the feet of this warrior with a sword who turns out to be a pre incarnate Christ. It's holy ground. And that by the way, reminds us of what happened with Moses in the burning bush. Prior to that, 40 years or so prior to that, it's holy ground. But now fast forward to the book of Revelation. What happens in the book of Revelation is very similar to what happens in Joshua. This is Revelation, chapter one and John is speaking. This is verse 12, it says, I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands. And among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze, glowing in a furnace. And his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he had seven stars and coming out of his mouth with a sharp double edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. John is bowing down before this, this, this appearance of Christ as well. So both of the books, Joshua and the book of Revelation, particularly Joshua, around Jericho, begin with God appearing with a sword. And they both, in both instances Joshua and John fall at the feet of this pre incarnate Christ or this appearance of Christ both. Both in Jericho and in Revelation, there is a wealthy evil city walled up against God. Obviously Jericho is the walled up city in the book of Joshua. What is the walled up city in Book of Revelation? Well, if you go To Revelation chapter 11, there's a big hint. I think it gives it away. Actually, it's not just a hint. It talks about the two witnesses. And in Revelation 11, verse 7, it says this. Now, when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will attack them and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. Where also their Lord was crucified. What city is that? Yeah, it's obvious. That city is Jerusalem. That's the city that's walled up against Jesus. That's the city that's called Babylon in, in the book of Revelation, also called Sodom and Egypt. All these different names for the walled up city because the people of the city were rejecting Jesus. He called judgment down on it. And 40 years later or so, the judgment occurred after they crucified him. There's a gentile prostitute in both cities. Rahab is in Jericho. And who is the prostitute in Jerusalem? I'll get to it. There are two spies in Jericho and there are two witnesses in the book of Revelation. Then they're both delivered from death. The seventh trumpet indicates battle in Jericho, and it indicates battle also in in the book of Revelation. In fact, check this out. This is hard to unsee as well. Let me find it. Hang on a sec. I had it here a minute ago. Notice the sevens that appear throughout both Joshua and the Book of Revelation. Hang on. What happened to it? It's over here somewhere. Here you go. Here are the sevens. First of all, in Joshua, notice there are seven priests, there are seven trumpets, there are seven days, and there are seven times on day seven that they march around seven times on the seventh day. So there are seven. Seven priests, seven trumpets, seven days, and they march around the city seven times on the seventh day. Sevens everywhere. Have you noticed how many sevens there are in the book of Revelation? Let's just do a quick summary here. Book of Revelation. There are seven churches, seven spirits, seven golden land stands, seven stars, seven letters, seven seals, seven angels, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven heads, seven crowns, seven. Seven flags, seven bowls, seven mountains, seven kings, seven Beatitude, seven lampstands, seven eyes are horns. Seven thousand killed, seven promises, seven colors in the rainbow. Sevens are everywhere. There's some parallels here, but the key one here is the seven trumpets indicating battle. That's both in Jericho and the book of Revelation. Notice that in both cities, Jericho and Jerusalem, Book of Joshua, Book of Revelation, God judges and destroys those cities, and he does it through his power. In Jericho, they don't really do anything. They just march around the city and God brings the walls down. By the way, as we've talked about many times on this program, archaeologists in Jericho have found that the walls oddly fell straight down and out. No other city we know about has had walls fall down like that. When a city's walls are breached, the walls are normally battered inward. In this case, in Jericho, the walls just oddly fell straight down and out. Both John garstag in the 1930s, Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s, and archaeologists since then have all said the same thing. They oddly fell straight down and out. Now, Joel Kramer, archaeologist Joel Kramer, who has a great YouTube channel on archaeology called Expedition Bible, got to check out Joel. He does great work. We've had him on the program a couple of times. Anyway, Joel says as soon as archaeologists discovered that, all the other archaeologists should have said, you know, the Bible's right about Jericho. Yeah, but a lot of them still won't admit it. I mean, once you find that, you go, well, you gotta. You gotta realize Jericho has to be. Or I should say the Book of Joshua has to be an eyewitness account. Why? Because how would they know if they weren't eyewitnesses? What happened to the walls? It's not like somebody could write a thousand years later, here's what happened to the walls of Jericho. There was no archaeology back 2000, 3000, 4000 years ago. Archaeology is a relatively new science. It's only within the past couple of hundred years, where have there been archeologists, you know, some of the liberals will say, oh, you know, Joshua was written, you know, after the exile, like after 586 B.C. nonsense. First of all, Joshua has over 300 place names in it. There's, like, somewhere, and it averages about 15 places a chapter in the Book of Joshua. This is not an invented story. Also, it's got all the details right. Archaeologically, what the Bible says happened to Jericho, that's what the archaeologists find. How could this not be an eyewitness account? It is an eyewitness account. So God destroys Jericho just by his own power, and then God destroys Jerusalem in the form of the Roman army. The Roman army just shows up. And of course, Jesus says in the olivet discourse, Matthew 24, when you see armies descending on Jerusalem, flee to the mountains, get out of the city. Why did he say that? Because he knew destruction was coming. And you know what? In 70 AD the Christians got out of town. They believed Jesus's words, many of the Jews didn't. And they died. They believed what Jesus said. Now, there has to be a near term fulfillment to this in addition to a long term fulfillment that is coming. Why does there have to be a near term fulfillment? Because if it's just about the end of the world, what sense would it make to flee to the mountains? I mean, the world's going to end there too. No, there is a near term fulfillment to Matthew 24, flee to the mountains. They did. In fact, Revelation 18, verse 4 says, Come out of her, my people. Come out of her. Come out of what? Come out of the city. Come out of the city of Jerusalem, my people. Who are my people? Those who have faith. Not, it's not an ethnic thing, it's those who have faith. In fact, in both cities, Jericho and Jerusalem, in both books, Joshua and Revelation, a faithful gentile prostitute is saved out of the city. And who is the faithful prostitute saved out of Jericho? Of course, Rahab and her family. Who is the safe, the. The. The faithful gentile prostitute saved out of Jerusalem? That would be us. Yeah, we are represented by the faithful prostitute. We're all fallen, we're all sinners. We need to come out of the evil city and be saved by the Savior. In fact, what we said in the series about Rahab is that Joshua carries out God's judgment and Rahab represents repentant sinners who need to be saved by grace as they are rescued out of the evil city. That's what happens in Jericho. The same thing is true as what happens in, in Jerusalem. We are represented by a prostitute and the believers back in 70 AD represented by a prostitute. You need to come out of the evil city and be saved. And then another parallel between the destruction of Jericho and the book of Revelation is that Rahab marries. She's given in marriage to a Hebrew, I think his name is Salmon. She's a gentile prostitute who marries and she turns out to be the great grandmother of King David. A prostitute? Who would invent this? This is embarrassing, right? Rahab is King David's great grandmother. In fact, she's one of four women mentioned by name in Jesus's genealogy, that is in Matthew chapter one. Who are the four? Tamar, who also posed as a prostitute and was impregnated by Judah. I don't have the time to get into all this sordid story, but Judah was really her father in law, and the offspring of Judah and Tamar was in the bloodline of Jesus. And then you've got Rahab, also a prostitute, by the way. Rahab was in the ancestry of Boaz. We talked about Boaz in this series last night, which again, you can see on YouTube. And then you've got Ruth, who's a Moabitess. We talked about her as well. She's not a Hebrew. She's in the bloodline of the Messiah. And then you have Bathsheba. But the interesting thing is in Matthew, Bathsheba, in his genealogy in Matthew chapter one, doesn't use Bathsheba's name. What does he say instead? He says uriah's wife. Uriah's wife. What is that? That's a slam. Why is it a slam? Because Matthew's telling the truth. But he's telling the truth in an embarrassing way. He's saying that David was wrong, obviously, to impregnate Bathsheba and then kill Uriah to cover up the crime. But he highlights that in the genealogy. He says Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife. He doesn't even say Bathsheba. This is embarrassing. And as we've talked about several times on this program, embarrassing testimony is one of the reasons for us to believe that both the Old and New Testaments are telling the truth. Because you don't find this anywhere else. You don't find embarrassing testimony admitted by the writers of their own history. For example, when you go to Egypt, where we just were last month, the monuments to the pharaohs are all monuments of propaganda on how great the, the, the current pharaoh is. In fact, current pharaohs, new pharaohs would etch out, scrape off the names of the old pharaohs and say, you know, I'm the greatest pharaoh and the pharaoh was God. So that nothing embarrassing could ever take place in a pharaoh's life. But the Bible is filled with embarrassing details and stories and people and events of the supposed heroes of Judah and Israel and even the supposed heroes of the New Testament filled with embarrassing details. Which is why Dennis Prager, conservative Jewish man, not a Christian, says this. One of the main reasons I know the Old Testament is true is because no people group would ever invent such an embarrassing history of themselves. Yeah, I mean, the whole Old Testament is how evil the Israelites are. And I would ask Dennis this question. If embarrassing testimony is evidence for the Old Testament being true, isn't it also evidence for the New Testament being true? Because there's a lot of embarrassing things that happened to the apostles and even to Jesus that they never would have invented. Yeah. I would think. I would think that would hold. If it's, if embarrassing testimony shows the Old Testament is telling the truth, it should also show the New Testament's telling the truth. In any event, there are so many parallels between the battle of Jericho and the Book of Revelation that some of you are probably going to go, okay, what does this mean for our interpretation of the Book of Revelation? I don't know if it means a lot for our interpretation other than to realize again that the Bible is not just literally true, it's literarily true that you can see parallels between events in the Old Testament and events in the New Testament and even events in the future, because that's how God gets his point across. He emphasizes certain things by putting, by highlighting what happens and foreshadowing what will happen by current events. Looking forward, you should see maybe some of these things reoccurring. Looking backward, you can say, wow, look at all these characteristics in Jesus's life. Well, people like Isaac and Moses and Joshua and Boaz and David and Jonah and Noah, and all these people have characteristics in their lives that Jesus has in his life. This is a tapestry put together by a divine hand through the hands of men, that God has inspired men living in different places at different times to write all this down. And it appears it requires a divine hand to do so, because this could not be coordinated, certainly not in, in ancient times when people didn't even know one another. And yet they're writing about the same things. So Joshua is a conqueror, whereas Isaac is a sacrificial son. Joseph's a savior. Moses is a liberator. Joshua is a conqueror. And then we're in future shows. We talked a little bit about Boaz last night. You can look at the YouTube if you want to see more of that. We're gonna, in future shows talk about David, Jonah, Hosea, Daniel and Esther. These are all types of Christ to a certain extent. So check out the Bible you never Knew series on YouTube. As I say, you only see one of the episodes up there. We'll re release the whole set next year sometime when we're done with it. There's also these characteristics in the text that might not be obvious at a casual reading, but on a deeper reading you can see them. And they're called chiasms, from the Greek letter chi. Think of a greater sign, for example. This is hard to describe on radio, so I'm just going to do it very briefly. But in, in the west, we typically look for a climax toward the end of the story that that's the central theme of the story is toward the end. The Greeks and the Hebrews would often make the climax. The middle, the middle line is the focal point. And there are chiasms throughout the scriptures. There are big chiasms, like whole books are chiastic, where the central point is the point, that is what people should be directed to by the text. And then there are little chiasms that occur over the space of a few verses. Like for example in the book of Ruth. This has probably been read at a wedding where Ruth says, where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die and where. And there I will be buried. People read that at weddings and it's so nice and it's such a great sentiment, but has nothing to do with weddings. Ruth wasn't saying this to a spouse. Ruth was saying this to her mother in law, Naomi. Okay, but people take it out of context and say, I like that. So I'm going to apply it to my life. Okay, but that is a chiasm. What do I mean by that? It builds up to a central point. What's the central point? The central point of the chiasm is your people will be my people and your God, my God. That's the central point. And as I say, some books are chiastic. The entire book is chiastic. Where the central line is where your attention ought to be directed to. Do you know what the central line of the Gospel of Mark is? The central line is where in the transfiguration. Let me find the line directly here for a second because I want to make sure I get it right. I think if I'm not mistaken, it's Mark, chapter nine. I want to look it up. I think it's nine seven. But I'm doing this from memory, so let me see if I'm right. Mark, nine, seven. Yeah, this is it. This is the center of the Gospel of Mark. Chiastically it builds up to this point and then it recedes in a mirror like fashion from that point. This is in the middle of the transfiguration. Then a cloud appeared and covered them and a voice came from the cloud. This is my son, whom I love. Listen to him. So God at the transfiguration is telling everyone that Jesus is his son. Listen to him. That's the central point in the Gospel of Mark. And scholars have identified that being the central point. And if you consider that as the central point, it makes a lot of Sense that you ought to be listening to Jesus. Okay, so there are these chiasms. That's why, as I say, the Bible's not just literally true, it's literarily true. They use literary devices like chiasms to get your attention to say this is the main point you ought to walk away with. All right, let me see what else, what else we need to talk about with regard to this. Well, there's more coming. Let me just say that when Jesus says, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. He's telling the truth. That if you look at the Old Testament with an eye toward identifying these typologies, with an eye toward identifying these prophecies, with an eye toward identifying these theophanies, you will see that the Old Testament is telling you about Jesus before Jesus ever comes. In fact, we could put it this way. In the Old Testament, Christ is present in theophanies. That's when people show up like the pre incarnate Christ outside of Jericho. He's patterned in types. So Joshua is a type, as we mentioned. So is Isaac, so is Moses, so is Jonah, so is David. And he's promised in prophecies. He's present in theophanies patterned in types promised in prophecies. And when you look at the book of Revelation and the, and the battle of Jericho, you go, wow, look at all these parallels. Now let's get, now go to a couple of questions that. The first isn't a question. The first is a great insight. It comes from Rebecca. And by the way, if you want to send a question or comment in, it's hello@cross examine.org hello@cross examine.org I'm sorry I can't get to all of them but we do our best here. This comes from Rebecca. Check this out. Has to do with child abuse, she says. Dear Dr. Frank, thank you for all your amazing biblical teaching. You and your ministry have truly been a tremendous blessing in my life. I'm so incredibly sorry for the loss of your dear friend Charlie. He was certainly a precious human being and be greatly missed. I pray for you every day. Thank you Rebecca. She goes on to say I wanted to share with you that I 100 agree with you when you say if there is no God then nothing is right or wrong. I was abused in my childhood and for many years I felt as though no one cared. It was the worst feeling. It almost drove me to insanity and I probably wouldn't be alive. I self mutilated and Even considered transitioning to a man at one point in my life because I thought I would be safer, not because I actually believed I was in the wrong body. Life was very confusing, but I knew this one fact. If I knew nothing else. God cared about what happened to me. He knew it was wrong. He would bring me justice. He would make all wrongs right. There had to be a God. I recall someone asking you, if a child abuser repents, did they go to heaven? That is in fact a very, very difficult question. And I thought about it for a very, very long time. And this is what I concluded with the help of the Holy Spirit. And I can only speak for myself from my own personal experience. If I saw my abuser in heaven by the grace of God, I will be there. Seeing him would actually bring healing because then that would mean he realized that what he did was wrong, he was sorry and asked Jesus to forgive him. And if he is in heaven, then it was true repentance. But if he isn't in heaven, then it would mean he didn't think what he did was wrong, he wasn't sorry, and he didn't ask Jesus to forgive him. That would be sad. What do you think about this perspective? Maybe it can help someone. Thank you Frank, for all you do. Blessings, Rebecca. Rebecca, I think that's a great insight. I think you are correct because the sacrifice of Jesus can pay for any sin. It's grace. You can't earn it. He paid the price for all of the evil that all of us have done. But that can only be appropriated and applied to you if you choose to have it applied to you. Because God is not going to force anybody into heaven against their will. If you don't want Jesus now, you're not going to want him in eternity. And Jesus is in eternity. So when you do get to heaven and you see people that have sinned against you, even completely heinous crimes like child abuse, first of all, you're not going to have a sin nature. He is not going to have a sin nature. And all of that will have been paid for on the cross. All the sins will have been paid for on the cross. So I think you are correct. It would be healing. And look, there's only two things you can get in the afterlife. You can either get justice or you can get grace. Does any of us really want justice from an infinitely just being God? No, I don't want justice. I want grace. And if people don't want grace, then they'll get justice. That's why I think by the way, people will say, well, how can you enjoy heaven when you know your loved ones are in hell? If they are in hell and they're being punished at the appropriate le level of punishment, that's their choice. They made that choice. Justice is a good thing. Grace is a better thing. But if you don't want justice, or I should say, if you don't want grace, you're going to get justice. Nobody in heaven and nobody in hell is going to be treated unfairly. In heaven, you're going to be treated with grace. In hell, you're going to be treated with justice. Both are fair. In fact, grace is more than fair. You're getting something you don't deserve. You're getting. You're getting forgiveness, and you're getting paradise where in hell you're getting what you deserve. You're getting justice. And justice is a good thing. There are people fighting for justice. They say they are anyway on college campuses, everywhere and throughout society. I'm fighting for justice. I'm fighting for justice. Be careful. You might just get it. Yeah, you might just get it. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's good to fight for justice here on earth, but it's amazing how much, how many, how many people want justice here on earth, but they don't want it in the afterlife. That's where you're heading. You're either going to pay for your sins or Jesus is going to pay for your sins. If you pay for your sins, you'll get justice. If Jesus pays for your sins, you get grace. So I think it's a tremendous insight, Rebecca. I think you're correct that when you see people who have sinned against you and when people see you and you've sinned against them and you're in heaven, that's all going to be washed away. All that animosity, all that pain is going to be washed away because you don't have the sin nature anymore. You don't have the angst anymore, the anxiety anymore. You don't have the pain anymore. You don't have the tears anymore. All that's going to be gone. And you can all rejoice in the Savior that he saved both of you, because it's not like you deserve to be in heaven either. I don't deserve to be. There's no deserve. We're all sinners. We've all sinned. And now we need a Savior. And once we have a Savior, we should put sin behind us. We should live for him to the best of our ability with the help of the Spirit. We don't keep sinning so grace can abound. Paul says, may that never be. In fact, it's been put this way. If you're living like hell, you're probably going there because if your heart hasn't been changed by Jesus, then you're not truly saved. And if your heart has been changed by Jesus, you should want to follow his commands. Not that you're perfect in following him, but you should want to. You shouldn't want to wallow in sin. So it's a great insight, Rebecca. Thank you for sending it in. And I'm sorry you had to go through that. But I think the Holy Spirit has helped you understand the true reality of sin and how wicked it is and how nasty it is, how off putting it is. But also we have a great Savior that can cover it all and can renew us with him and our loved ones, who have also accepted the free gift, by the way. Let me say one other thing about this. A lot of people get confused and they. They think, oh, the reason you go to hell is because you don't accept Jesus. No, that's not the only reason you go to hell. The reason you go to hell is because you've sinned. You know, people say, well, do I go to hell just because I don't believe in Jesus? No, you go to hell because you've sinned. To say that you're going to hell just because you don't believe in Jesus, which is a sin in itself because you're, you're rejecting God. But let's leave that aside. There are other sins that get you to hell as well. To say that I'm going to hell just because I don't believe in Jesus would be like saying, I'm going to die because I don't go to the doctor. No, going to the doctor isn't. Or not going to the doctor isn't the reason you die. The reason you die is because you have a disease. Now, maybe you could prevent dying by going to the doctor. The same thing is true when it comes to salvation. Maybe you could prevent eternal death by going to the great physician, the great doctor, Jesus. But the reason you're going to die is because you have a disease. And the reason you go to hell is because you've sinned. The remedy is to go to the doctor. So that's up to you. You want to go to the doctor, Maybe you can be healed. You certainly can be healed. If you go to the great doctor, the great physician, be healed of your ultimate problem, and that is death and separation from God. So great insight, Rebecca. Thank you so much. Justin writes in and says he's reading I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. He says, I'm reading this. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I came across the part where it speaks about the surge method of explaining the universe. Meaning he's talking about the evidence that we put in the book by the acronym S U R G E. Second law thermodynamics, universe expanding radiation afterglow, great galaxy seeds, and Einstein's theory of general relativity. Okay, don't have time to unpack all those. He's talking about the first 1s. Second law thermodynamics. He says it mentions the first law of thermodynamics, that all energy is constant or finite. Actually, the first law of thermodynamics says the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. In other words, the only thing that that changes is the transition from usable energy to unusable energy. There's only a finite amount of energy in the universe, and the longer the universe goes on, the more usable energy is used up, and therefore we have more unusable energy. In other words, we're running out of gas. Think of the universe as having a giant gas tank like a car, right? You only have so much gas in that gas tank. Eventually you're going to run out of gas. Now, scientists say it's billions of years from now. Don't worry about it. But one day, all the stars are going to burn out. We're going to go to heat death. Okay, now, what does this have to do with the beginning of the universe if there's only a finite amount of energy out there? If the universe was eternal, in other words, if it didn't have a beginning, we'd have run out of energy a long time ago. Just like if you started driving your car an infinitely long time ago, would you have energy left? Any energy left today? No, your. Your gas tank would be empty. Okay, so that would mean that if you're driving your car right now, you must have started driving a finite time ago. You can't be driving from all eternity and still have gas today. Same thing is true of the universe. The universe had to have a beginning, because if it didn't have a beginning, we would have run out of energy a long time ago. Anyway, here's the problem for Justin. Justin says, I'm doing my own research. I keep coming across where the first law of energy is indeed constant, but it talks about how energy is not created, nor can it disappear, but can only be transformed. If we agree that the universe did have a beginning, which I believe, then does the first law contradict itself for the scientific community? If the universe had a beginning, energy had to be created. And he has a question mark there. Yeah, because sometimes here's. Here's the problem. Sometimes people will state the first law of thermodynamics this way, that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. But when they say it that way, that's a philosophical statement. What they're saying when they say that is inside the universe, a closed system. If nobody is putting energy in from the outside, then the total amount of energy is constant. You can't create energy, you can't destroy it. You can only transform it from usable to unusable. Okay, but that is an atheistic way of looking at the universe. It's assuming that, first of all, nobody put energy in to begin with, and nobody is putting energy in from outside the universe. How do you know that? You can, can't know that. You can't know that nobody created the universe and say there isn't a source of energy outside the universe. That's the very question you're investigating. As we said earlier, if the universe can't create energy by itself, we would have run out of energy a long time ago if the universe was eternal, because the tank would have just run down. Now, there's other evidence the universe had a beginning. All the evidence points to the fact that the universe had a beginning. So if we have a finite amount of energy now, or a finite amount of energy from the beginning, then the universe also must have had a beginning from this second law of thermodynamics perspective, because as I said, we would have been. Our gas tank would have been on empty if the universe was eternal, if time did not have a beginning. So when people state that energy can't be created or destroyed, that's a philosophical statement that takes an atheistic perspective. If space, time and matter had a beginning, which is what the evidence shows, there has to be a cause outside of space, time and matter that brought it into existence. And by definition, it would seem that if space, time and matter had a beginning, the cause would have to at least be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing. Power, energy. Right. Also intelligent to have a mind to make a choice, and personal to choose to make a choice. So that sounds like the attributes of God. A spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause that appears to be the cause that gave the universe its initial amount of energy that we've been running down ever since. So, yes, if the laws of nature run this universe, you can't create or destroy energy. You can only change its form. But that says nothing about whether or not there's something outside the universe that gave it energy to begin with. And since all the other evidence shows the universe had a beginning, it would seem that there is a being out there that infused this universe with energy. Robert Jastrow, who was a founder of the Goddard, the Goddard Space center, was not a Christian, was an agnostic, wrote a book called God and the Astronomers back in the 70s, and then he updated it in the early 90s, I believe. And he says that if the universe is winding down, someone must have wound it up. In other words, someone had to instill this universe with energy in the beginning. And then if you want to say after that, he just lets it run down. Okay. But of course, if he's outside the universe, he can intervene in it, and at any time if he wants to. And as we've pointed out elsewhere, God does three things. He creates. He sustains the universe, and he intervenes in the universe through miracles at certain points. So he creates the universe and the laws that govern it, then he sustains the universe and the laws that government. I mean, did you ever ask yourself the question, why do the laws of nature exist to begin with? And why are they so persistent and consistent? Because there's a mind behind it that maintains those laws. Laws come from lawgivers. And this was Aristotle's point. You know, Aristotle didn't think the universe had a beginning. He thought it was eternal. But he still believed there had to be a mind outside the universe that created the laws and sustains the laws every single second. So there's a cause for the laws every single second. It's not just an historical cause, it's a cause. Right now, every single second the universe exists, it's being sustained by a mind. That's because these laws are so consistent, persistent, and they go in a direction. And Aristotle knew nothing of fine tuning at the time. Now, when you add fine tuning, you go fine tuning to this whole thing. You go, this is. This is beyond any explanation other than a mind. There's got to be a powerful mind out there that created and sustains all this. So. Let me just wrap it up here by saying that all the evidence we know about to this point shows the universe had a beginning. In fact, let me just add one other thing. This is. Has nothing to do with science. It's just philosophy. And this is called the column cosmological argument that time had to have a beginning. How do we know that time had to have a beginning? Because if there were an infinite number of days before today, the day we're at right now never would have gotten here. Why? Because you always have to live another day before you got to today. Because there's an infinite number of days. Think about it. If there's an infinite number of days before today, would you ever get to this day? No, you wouldn't. Because you'd always have to live another day because there's an infinite number of days. I realize this can give you intellectual constipation if you think about it long enough, but it's simply pointing out that there has to be a beginning to time. And if there's a beginning to time, whatever created time is timeless outside of time. If you're timeless, do you have a cause? No, because you don't have a beginning. So the question who made God? Is an illegitimate question because no many. Nobody made the unmade, nobody created the uncreated. There has to be an uncaused first cause. That uncaused first cause is what we mean by God. So since time couldn't be infinite into the past, it had to have a beginning. And whatever created time must also be timeless. And by the way, according to Einstein, space, time and matter are correlative. That's the theory of general relativity. They're correlative. They came into existence together. So space, time and matter came into existence together. I mean, you can't have matter without space and time. Where are you going to put matter if you got no space? They came into existence together. So space, time and matter came into existence together, which means the cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, and intelligent. So bottom line to this, Justin, is when people state that energy can't be created or destroyed, that's they're making a philosophical statement. They're assuming atheism, they're assuming naturalism. And even if you agree with them that inside the universe energy can't be created or destroyed, that says nothing about whether or not there could be an outside source that infused energy at the beginning and could infuse energy later. If he wants to. If he wants to create a new heavens and a new earth, where none of this runs down, he can do so. That's where we're heading. And you can go with him, by the way, by trusting in Jesus, because everybody's going to live for eternity. The only question is where everyone's going to be resurrected. The only question is where are you going to be resurrected to? All right, friends, great being with you. You're not going to want to miss the next podcast. We're going to have Robbie Starbuck on. If you don't know who Robbie Starbuck is, you've got to look him up. Robbie Starbuck is someone that actually has gotten major companies to basically dispense with their DEI programs. And yet he's also been the target of, I think, Google AI. Google AI has been making up fraudulent histories of Mr. Starbuck and actually made up fraudulent charges and fraudulent court cases to try and stop what Robbie is doing. And he's actually suing Google AI. We're going to talk about it in the next podcast. You're not going to want to miss it. Don't forget about the podcast I mentioned that have addressed some of what Candace has said. We'll put them in the show. Notes Ali Bestuckey, Alisa Childers. We gotta follow the truth where it leads, friends. And we can't insinuate people are guilty when we don't have evidence. You can ask questions and ensure that you don't implicate innocent people. You can do both of those at the same time, and we should. All right, friends, great being with you. See you here next time. Lord willing. God bless.