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Sa hello, friends. Greg Kokel here, your host for Stan Teresen, and I welcome you to the show. Glad you're with me. I look forward to sharing with you as you call in and we chat about things that are on your mind. Just give me a piece of your mind and I'll give you a piece of mine. The phone number 1-855-243-9975. That's 855-243-9975. Now, if you're listening live, you can call in. I'm thinking about through the feed, you know, if you're watching online or whatever, live streaming. That was it. And if not, then you have to dial that number when we're on the air live, which is Tuesdays from 4 until 6, and that would be Los Angeles time. Okay. 855-243-9975. I want to start out solving a problem, a textual problem. I think it's a solution, a good one, to a very, very odd passage in the New Testament. There are a lot of things that Jesus says that are odd, I think. And as I'm reading through the Gospel of Mark, for example, I find lots of places where I'm putting question marks in the margin here. I'm looking at just a couple of pages. There's a question mark. There's a question mark. Why did Jesus. There's another question mark. Why did Jesus say the things that he said? He healed somebody who was deaf and mute and then he told that person, don't go back to your village. Don't even enter your village. You know, why did he do that? I can understand him telling people who he's just healed of something. Don't tell a whole bunch of other people about it. But that's kind of hard when the person he heals is blind and that he can see. You know, I mean, people are going to notice. But in this case, he says don't even enter the village. But that's where his home is. And the reason I think he's telling people don't talk about it, is he's already overwhelmed with lots of people coming to him to have these particular needs met. Now he meets the needs and that's I mean, he's moved with compassion. This is why he fed the 4,000 and the 5,000 move with compassion. He sees the people filled with compassion. They come with all these needs. Demon possession is one of them, as well as all kinds of physical healing. And he's touched by what he sees and he's helping out, but he doesn't need any pr. He's already got people coming from everywhere. This passage I want to talk about is one of those kinds of passages where I'm just wondering, you may have wondered, why did Jesus say this? Okay, now, I mentioned about don't enter the village. I can see him saying, don't tell people. I already have enough business. But when he tells the guy, don't enter the village, don't go back to your own village, that strikes me as odd, question mark here. And here's a passage that I had a question mark for quite a while, and then it got solved. Someone with insight helped me to understand. All right, and this is the passage that's in Mark 7 about the Syrophoenician woman. Now, Jesus went up to the area of Tyre. Tyre is up along the coast in the north of Israel. This is a Gentile area. He enters the house. He doesn't want people to know about it, but he couldn't escape notice. This is all in the text. And people start coming. So he's got international acclaim. And a woman comes to him whose daughter has an unclean spirit, and she fell at his feet. And she's appealing to him to help her by releasing her daughter from the spirit, or I should say releasing the daughter from her spirit, however you want to look at it. Now, the text mentions that she was a Gentile. Okay? Not surprising. Syrophoenician woman from the area of Tyre. And she kept asking him, the text says, to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he was saying to her, in other words, now she's pestering him and he's pushing back, saying, let the children be satisfied first, for it's not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. Now, the children he has in mind here are the Jews. And the dogs is a reference to Gentiles. The Jews would refer to Gentiles as dogs. Okay, not very sweet. But here Jesus is using the language of the community he's from to characterize this Syrophoenician woman whose daughter is demon possessed. And he's putting her off. She's making an appeal. And. And he's saying no, because it's not good to give what belongs to the Jews to Gentiles. So what the heck is going on here? Why would Jesus say this? In fact, there was a meme or a podcast or a piece that was put out that said here that Jesus is racist, that he's actually sinning. He's making this racist remark. Now, of course, obviously, in our pleasant Circumstance that would be considered racist. And it wasn't even nice. Then why would Jesus say such a thing? And another person analyzing it was that the Syrophoenician woman, in her response to him, I'll read it in a moment, was correcting him, speaking, as she put it, truth to power, which I don't think she was doing that at all. But she makes an appeal. Jesus is putting her off. And I read the way he did that it's not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. But she answered and said to him, yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children's crumbs. Now, of course, he responds to her because of this answer, go, the demon has gone out of your daughter. And when she got home, the demon was gone. Now, there are two problems with this passage. One problem is Jesus response to this woman. It does look racist, obscene even, the way he put it. And secondly, if he really thinks it's not good to give what belongs to the Jews to the Gentiles, then he has just done the thing that he said was not good to do. And that's another problem. So we got to step back from the passage a little bit because there's, I think, a fairly simple answer to this. And it had to do with God's grand plan and the way the Jews at this time in Jewish history understood their role. God's grand plan was to reach the world. And the core of that strategy is expressed in Genesis 12, 1, 3. And this is called the Abrahamic Covenant, because this is where God sets aside one man, Abraham Abram, at the time and commissions this man to be the father of a nation of people. And God says, I will do this. By the way, I'm setting you aside. I'm going to make a great nation out of you, and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. In other words, there's a protection that God is going to give on Abraham and his seed that will allow God to accomplish his purpose, which is stated in the third verse of chapter 12 of Genesis. For in you, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Now, the nations were the Goyim, the Gentiles, that is, God is taking a Semitic person, Abraham, the first Jew, if you will, to build to be the father of the Jewish race, which race would be a light to the Gentiles, so that the gods, God's rescue and plan of salvation would come to all those people. And of course, we know some aspects of it, certainly from the seed of Abraham comes the Messiah, who died for all people, etc. So we see that's God's grand master plan. It's right there in Genesis 12, first three verses, the Abrahamic covenant. And the rest of the text from there to the end of the book, the rest of the 65 books, is an outworking of that plan. Now, when God raised up Israel, he did make them separate. He gave them the law to protect them, to keep them from becoming syncretistic with the other pagan religions. But he didn't want them to be utterly out of contact with them. How are they going to reach them with the truth of the true God of Israel. And there were those that responded. I mean, look at the Queen of Sheba who came to see Solomon's riches and listened to his wisdom. And there are many, many other examples of this. But you see the theme repeated time and time again. Now, of course, early on, the problem with the Jews were that they. They didn't accept this sense of mission because they were more interested in being syncretistic with the other cultures when they weren't supposed to be. They were supposed to be separate from them, to be protected, but still reaching out to them in some fashion. And this syncretism was their downfall for a thousand years longer than that, actually, until finally the time of Jesus. After the Assyrian dispersion and the Babylonian deportation, they had learned their lesson and now they've gone the other direction. They were really bigoted towards the Gentiles and wanted nothing to do with soiling themselves with contact with Gentiles. And you recall Peter in Acts 10, when he was commissioned, his arm twisted actually, to go to see the Gentile Cornelius and preach the Gospel to him. He was reluctant because he wasn't going to cross the threshold of a Gentile. So you have this hostility. Now, what's interesting is two things are going on there in the Gospels. You have a responsiveness from the Gentiles. You have people coming from all over. You have them coming from Decapolis, you have from Tyre and Sidon, you have from east of the Jordan. These are all Gentile regions. They are all coming to the Galilee area because they know about this guy Jesus. And this is a little rough for the Jews, I'm sure, because of their attitude. Now, there's another scene, though, that's relevant here, and that is where you have Jesus at Capernaum, in, what is it, Luke 4, where he is reading the scroll of Isaiah, or at least a portion of it, and he comes to that portion, he's reading that portion that has to do with the Messiah. And as he reads it, he goes halfway through it, stops, sets the scroll aside, and then says, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Now, you're familiar with this passage. Very dramatic. I would have loved to have been there. But I've seen film characterizations of this, and it's frustrating because in the one that I'm thinking of, there was Jesus who read the scroll from the scroll and then made this comment. And everybody goes berserk in the film. Their response to the comment, today this passage has been fulfilled in your hearing is to get angry, who is this man? Whatever. But that isn't what the text says. When you read the text, it said, wow, they were all speaking, well of him and the wonderful things that were falling from his, you know, his mouth. He was doing a good job. Isn't this Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary and his sisters are here. And, oh, he's a hometown favorite. Look at this. But of course, Jesus knows better, because then he says, you know, a prophet is not without honor in his own hometown. And instead of leaving things as they were, which were pretty good at that point, he makes this declaration. They say, hey, cool. Pretty neat. Everyone's speaking well of him. He says, there were many widows during the time of Elijah, and he only went to one widow in Zarephath to help her out, even though the rest of Israel was suffering from a drought. Now, she was a Gentile, and there were many lepers, but in the time of Elisha, but he went only to the leper who was the Gentile to heal him. So now Jesus is speaking about God's interest not just in the Jews, the chosen people, but to the Gentiles who they were chosen to help go to. And that's when the text said, when they heard these things, then they went berserk. They did go berserk, but not because Jesus was claiming that he was the fulfillment of the passage of Isaiah, but because he was pointing out to them in their own text that God cared about the Gentile. And that freaked them out. And they drove him to the edge of a cliff, and they were going to push him over, because that's the way you executed people. You push them off the cliff, you drop rocks on them, and Jesus found his way out. So you have a conflict now between the Jews, who are thinking he's cool in many ways, but at the same time pushing back on him, especially when he mentions the Gentiles. And you have Jesus who understands that God's goal has always been the whole world, not just the Jews. A blessing to the goyim. So this brings us now to our passage. And here's the way I think it should be understood. And I didn't get this. I didn't figure this one out. Don Richardson, who was a missionary, who wrote Peace, Child and Eternity in Their Hearts, great books, read them many years ago, who was involved with the US center for World Mission, where I was trained many years ago. He gave one of the classes. And he talked about this passage because the emphasis there of the US center for World Mission is everywhere. God sending us everywhere we know that. Go into all the world, make disciples. The world is in view. But he gave an understanding here, an insight that we thought was great. When Jesus said, let the children be satisfied first. For it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. He was not giving his own opinion. He was parroting the view of the Jewish leadership. And then the woman answered and said, yes, Lord. Interesting. But even the dogs feed on the children's crumbs. The dogs under the table feed on the children's children's crumbs. So she recognizes who Jesus is. He's the one he's pushing back by this statement, which clearly he doesn't believe himself, or else he wouldn't have done the thing that he did, which he just called bad or not good. No, he was parroting the false, bad, distorted, corrupted theology of the Jewish leadership at the time, and then acted in a way that was contrary to it. And she kind of had this idea. She knew there was trouble. The Jews weren't accepting everything. That's why there were crumbs falling on the table. But she's going to be there to get them. And then Jesus responded by delivering her daughter, which, by the way, is not. He had done that for Gentiles all through the Gospels. This is in Mark 7, but there are lots of other places before that and after, and the other Gospels as well. He is delivering those people who came to him, Jew or Gentile. In fact, in, I think, Matthew 8, Amy showed me this. Of course, I'm familiar with the passage, but that's the reference. There you have the centurion who is a Roman soldier, who appeals to Jesus for help for his servant. And Jesus is going to go with him to help the servant. He said, lookit, you know, I'm a man who knows how authority works. All you have to do is say the word and my servant will be healed. And Jesus said, I haven't seen such faith in all the Jews. And those people outside of Israel will come from the east and the west to be seated at the kingdom, but the children of the kingdom will have no place there. The Jews. So we see this theme throughout, and we just see this kind of coy, playful interaction between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. And no, he wasn't racist. And no, she was not speaking truth to power. That's just silly. That's not what was going on there. I mean, obviously, even if you don't know why it happened, all the detail I just offered you is it's still she's not speaking truth to power. Oh my God, she's not chastising Jesus. Oh my goodness, what people do with the text. Anyway, there's a thoughtful reflection, and I give credit to Don Richardson for that, but I think that's what was going on in that passage. We'll just call that Jesus Feeds the Dogs, if you want a title. All right, let's take a break and we'll get to some of the calls that you have when I return on Standard Reason Would you like an STR.
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Speaker to speak at your event? Greg, Alan, Tim, and John are available both in person and online. Simply email bookingstr.org to schedule them today. Our speakers can address a wide range of topics from bioethics, gender issues and science to theology, philosophy, and how to respond to other worldviews, all from a biblical perspective. Whether it's a Sunday sermon conference or online event, we are here to equip Christians to effectively influence the culture for Christ. To explore speaker bios, learn more about the topics we cover, or discover additional options, visit str.org then email bookingstr.org to secure Greg, Allen, Tim, or John for your event.
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As a high school teacher, I always had a red pen close at hand. When I wasn't in front of my students teaching a lesson, you could find me assessing assignments, grading essays, and evaluating exams. The red pen played a crucial role in the educational development of my students. With it, I questioned their assumptions, exposed their errors, and challenged them to think critically. You see, a good teacher doesn't merely tell his students that they're wrong. A good teacher shows his students why they're wrong so they don't make the same mistakes twice. He corrects because he cares. Last year I was scrolling through social media and frankly, I was discouraged at all the bad thinking that undergirded much of what I was reading. Then it hit me. What if someone applied the red pen to this Flawed thinking. And Red pen logic with Mr. B was born. In the last few months, Red Pen Logic has grown in popularity through our engaging and shareable educational graphics and videos. We are helping people, especially young people, assess bad thinking by using good thinking. And we have a lot of fun in the process. So here's your homework assignment, like the Red Pen Logic Facebook page so you don't miss our next graphic. And subscribe at the red Pen Logic YouTube channel so you don't miss a single video. Class dismissed.
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Do children need to consent to puberty? Some transgender ideology advocates think they do. And I offer two reasons why they're mistaken in the latest episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schliemann. Look for this episode on itunes, Spotify, your favorite podcast app, or at the top of the homepage@str.org okay, a quick update on our realities coming up. We're just four weeks away from Dallas, and the main Auditorium sold out. 2,523 people already signed up for the main auditorium. Now there's still tickets left. The overflow holds 400 and 150 of those tickets are sold. Two hundred and fifty left. Now, we always oversell a little bit because people don't come, they buy, and then they don't show up. So we understand that. So we try to oversell a little bit, just like the airlines. But if you want to go to the Dallas reality, you need to strike the iron while it's hot this week. And by the way, even in Philly, which is eight weeks out, we are halfway there. Early Bird is still going for Philly. It ends on Friday. So you save a little bit money if you sign up by Friday. But you're going to. But we got 531 and the auditorium holds a thousand, so it's a little bit smaller venue there. But just want you to know now, this is a great reality. In fact, we've had a number of people respond from the fall sessions, Southern California, Seattle and Minneapolis. And they said this is the best one they've ever seen. People have gone to multiples. So I mean, I have a favorite. It's not this one, but this one's great and so you don't want to miss it. And by the way, J. Warner Wallace is back. He was gone last, last season, so to speak, and now he's back and so is. Let's see a whole host of people stand, a recent crowd. Megan Almond, Trip Almond. It's just, it's just a really, really great Jason Jimenez. Okay, so it's sign up. By the way, we are live streaming this in Dallas and you can sign up for that if you want to. We've had a lot of groups that have done that. Just can't make the trip. Okay. All the Information is at realityapologetics.com Reality apologetics.com For the Dallas, February 21st through 22nd for Philly, March 21st and 22nd and way out in April, the 25th and 26th will be in Dayton, Ohio. So there's the skinny on that. All right, let's we're going to go to open calls or make that open mic calls. And this is calls that you have kind of sent to us in advance. You can find out about that by going to our homepage str.org and under podcasts, find live broadcasts and then go ahead and follow the prompts and you can leave your question there so that we can get to it when we have shows that don't have either off schedule or don't have a lot of callers. So let's start with that today. And let's hear from Steve about shaking the dust off your feet. Okay, Steve.
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Hey, Greg, and maybe Amy, here's the question that came up today. Is it ever appropriate or okay to shake the dust off your feet, so to speak, when it comes to family, we're taught in scripture, right? At least Jesus tells the disciples, if the towns won't listen to you, essentially to shake the dust off your feet as you're leaving, kind of removing the burden from them and letting them know that they're not in charge. They're just to deliver the message. And if people aren't listening, don't stay there. Well, is this an appropriate attitude to approach family with? If they know who you are and you've been clear about your faith after multiple conversations kind of discussing and refuting their beliefs, in this case a Roman Catholic beliefs, and pointing them towards the truth, presenting the gospel, is it appropriate to wash your hands of it, so to speak? Now, obviously this does not mean leaving the family and not being willing to answer questions, but and remaining ready to have the conversations to any questions that may come up anytime they may ask. But over after a decade, would you all say that this would fall into a case where they just aren't listening and they just aren't interested, at least at this point in that after having been presented with the gospel and clearly and blatantly rejecting it, it's okay to wash your hands and dust off one's feet and then just continue in prayer for them what say you, my friend?
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All right, Steve. I think the simple answer is yes, it's okay, with some qualifications. You offered a lot of qualifications, and I'm behind all of those. It has to do with the whole notion of shaking the dust off your feet. Now, this is a phrase that comes from the text, obviously, and there does seem to be, I do not know the etymology of that phrase, the history of it, what kind of figure of speech in the context of their culture. It represents. We know, based on the way it's used inductively in the sentence that Jesus used to describe the action, that it's all right, we're moving on. Okay? But I think that. And again, I don't know what it's meant to suggest, say, the connotation of it, but I don't think that what we ought to be doing, and even. I'm not even sure if this is what was intended then, is to do that in a derisive way. All right? I told you, your blood is on your own head. Okay? I think that might be part of what's going on in terms of the attitude. In other words, the point is, okay, I did my job. What am I going to do? You could lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink. But that doesn't necessarily entail the notion of an attitude of derision. Maybe this phrase entails that, I'm not sure, but I'm giving my own counsel here. It might just be suggesting, okay, you realize you've done your job. Time to go. All right, exit stage left kind of thing. And you see when you've done the job and then you move on. Now, in this case, they're moving from vill village to village. And so you spend an amount of time with one village and then you move on. You can't just keep staying there in the same village in that circumstance and hammering away hoping that someone is going to believe. No, you bring the message because the goal was to keep moving from villages. Now, we're not in the same situation here as itinerant preachers in the circumstance you just identified Steve as with a family member or family members. Okay, so I think I would take that concept then, pretty much the way you described it. You feel like you've done your due diligence, you've communicated everything you can communicate now it's just time to let it go or maybe take a rest now. Of course, you never know when the Holy Spirit is going to strike in their lives. I mean, this has been true. I mean, look at my own life. There were people who talked to me a lot about Christ. I had no positive response to that. Then my brother Mark did a bunch of times and I brushed him off. But there was a time later when that changed and then I became a Christian. So you never know. It's good to always be ready. But at the same time, you don't want to, you know, kick a dead horse or bruise the fruit or whatever metaphor you want to use to describe going too far. Sometimes you let it go. And I can think of some circumstances, people close to my family, I just don't go there anymore. It's not productive that there's another way for me to comport myself that I think is going to be more productive in that circumstance. Now, if the occasion arises where I can have an impact or answer a challenge or have a conversation, fine. And I can be praying and praying and praying and praying, much like you said, Steve. But sometimes we just let it go. My dad was an example of that, where the three brothers, Greg, Mark, David. Actually it was David, Mark, David, Greg. That was the order of salvation chronologically. When we became believers in the mid-70s, early-70s, my dad was very negative towards that and made fun of it, even and dismissed it. And that was the case for many, many years. And we did our deal talking with him and had our time and then that was it. We just let it go. And then years later, a year before he died at about 72, he just turned 72, he became a Christian, not through Mark or David or Greg, but through other circumstances. It included the influence of his sister, older sister, who was a godly woman, a real saint. But you never know. You never know when the Holy Spirit is going to strike. You never know when God is going to reach into a circumstance. Now the things that we had said, I trust that God was going to use that. I don't know how that all works. I have a phrase I've used before to describe circumstances like this. And the phrase is it is our task in the moment, at the time, but it is God's plan, problem, our task, God's problem, our task in the moment, God's long term problem. My dad wasn't our responsibility. We could do what we could do and then the Holy Spirit had to take over from there and do what he was going to do, if he was going to do anything. I don't know. We didn't know at the time. I do know now. It doesn't always work out that way. I understand that. Nevertheless, you never know. You never know. And Especially with family members. There are all kinds of dynamics that are involved there and many times it is a series of difficult circumstances that takes the non believer by the side by maybe not by surprise, but takes them to their knees either figuratively or literally in submission to God. That's what happened with my dad. Just heard another testimony today. Remarkable situation. Much like that resistance for a long time, maybe a little openness. But then the Holy Spirit struck. It was really neat. So you never know. So stay with them, Steve. Love him. Be a good example to them of a good Christian. Brush off the dust from your feet, but not in a derisive way like okay, blood's on your head, it's your funeral. I just think that that tone, especially with family members, is not going to be helpful. Okay, that's my thought on that. What about. Let's see who's next here? Melissa. Melissa. She has some questions about the second coming. Melissa.
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My name's from South Carolina. I wanted to clarify my understanding of the second coming of Christ and I'm reading and I don't agree with the term the Rapture. I believe that Jesus is coming for the second time. I'm just not sure with this whole pre Trib post trip I my mindset when I look at the scripture and I'm trying to justify what I'm reading on your website on the wrap on Rapture is that you take the stand that Jesus is coming and it most likely would be post tribulation in that Christians will live through the tribulation. There won't be this removal of all the church Christians and then the tribulation happened. I guess I've never been a fan of the Left behind series, so I just wanted to know if you could address that. Thanks, Greg.
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You know, it's funny, just the other day I have a songbook from my church Hope Chapel in Hermosa beach from those days, from the seventies, from the Jesus movement days. And I love the songbook and I love the songs in there. But one of the songs that's in there was the Larry Norman song I Wish We'd All Been Ready. And it's a song about the Rapture and those who are left behind. Now it seems to me, by the way, just a qualifier, that it wasn't too long ago that I answered this question. I don't know if it was on STRS or here, but I'll address it again because maybe there's people who haven't heard about this. The whole Rapture idea here in Southern California is huge and among Evangelicals around the country, and this is a noble eschatology, there are very thoughtful theologians who hold the view that the church is going to disappear. Real Christians, characteristically, their view is seven years before Jesus visible return. And in those intermittent intervening seven years, that's the tribulation period, which born again Christians prior to the Rapture will escape. Now there will be people who become Christian during that time, but I wish we had all been ready. They weren't ready. They didn't become Christians. And so now they've got to endure the tribulation. So on either view you have Christians through the tribulation. But on one, those who become Christian before the so called Rapture are going to be with the Lord. They're going to meet the Lord in the air and forever be with the Lord. And then they're going to be Christians to come afterwards who didn't trust the Lord. And therefore they're going to have to endure the tribulation until Jesus comes in visible form at the end of that tribulation. Now, I do not hold to the Rapture for a number of reasons. I was schooled in it. In fact, the one single person in the world that probably made that doctrine most popular, he wasn't the first one to come up with the doctrine that happened mid 19th century, but that made it most popular was Hal Lindsey in the late great Planet Earth. And I knew Hal Lindsey as a New Christian. I was part of a Christian community that Hal Lindsay was a part of. I had dinner with him many times. I was at his home, I babysat his children. And in this environment, this is what we were taught. So I'm not starting with any kind of ingrained hostility towards the idea. I just have abandoned the notion the more that I studied scripture regarding this issue. And I'll give you the piece online called the Rap on the Rapture. I go into some detail there. There are two books that help me work through this. One by George Eldon Ladd and it's called the Blessed Hope. And the other one by Robert Gundry that's titled the Church of the Tribulation. And those two together did a scriptural analysis and a somewhat historical analysis of the doctrine that was very convincing to me. But I'll try to give the basic idea in a nutshell. All right. The first thing that got my attention was that this particular teaching about the Rapture, what I just described, was actually not a teaching that the Church was aware of for almost 1800 years. It's just not one of the alternate ways of looking at eschatology of the end times, there were different premillennial post millennial amillennial views. But the rapture part, that was kind of new. All right, now that caught my attention and I wondered, well, if this is such a reliable sound biblical doctrine, why is it that nobody seemed to see it for all those years? That to me, captured my curiosity. And then I went back to the main texts that teach well, the rapture, in other words, the texts that are cited as examples of rapture verses 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15. And I noticed something that surprised me. What I noticed was that nobody used the word rapture. And I'm not troubled by the use of the word that comes from a Latin word actually to be caught up, probably the Vulgate or something, because in 1 Thessalonians 4 there is that caught up language. We who remain until the Lord's return will not precede those who have fallen asleep. Those who have died in Christ, they'll be resurrected first, and then we who are alive will be caught up with him in the air. That's the Rapture. I'm not troubled by the word, I'm just troubled by the notion is not really in that text the way people describe it, because there's a text that tells, doesn't use the word rapture, use a different word to describe this event. And it also tells you when it's going to happen. And we find the exact same pattern in 1st Corinthians 15 a different word is used to describe it and it says when it's going to happen. And the word that's used to describe in First Thessalonians 4 is resurrection. And I don't have it right in front of me, but the dead in Christ will rise first and then we will be caught up. Okay, so it's talking about the resurrection, and then it says when it will happen, we who remain until the coming of the Lord. Well, wait a minute, this isn't that tricky. So what Paul is saying in 1 Thessalonians 4 is he's giving us some information. Don't worry about those who have died. You're going to be reunited with them. You can comfort one another with these words. You're going to be all together again in the future. All right? And here's how it's going to happen. When the Lord comes, you're going to have two things happen. One is the dead in Christ will rise first, and then you have those being caught up to be with them. So in A certain sense there is a physical resurrection of those who died and then there is a resurrection of people who didn't die. Some of us will be, in a certain sense, resurrected. I'm using the word loosely now because a resurrection is a resuscitation. So you only get really resurrected if you die. But in this case, there's a transformation that takes place because the people that Jesus is going to raise haven't died. He's just going to raise, lift them up to be with him. So at the resurrection, which happens at the coming of the Lord, both dead people are raised Christians who died in Christ and living Christians are raised up to be with him and transformed. That's all it's saying and encourage each other with these words. There's no intimation that there is this secret rapture that happens or this seven year rapture that happens beforehand. It's just you have the first coming and you have a second coming. You have two comings, first and second. And at the second coming, the dead in Christ rise, the living are caught up with Christ in the air. I thought, this is pretty straightforward. And then I went, this is why I don't even like the pre trib, mid trib, post trib language, because it's all tied to kind of the rapture concept. We're making it too difficult. We just have one coming and we have a second coming. At the second coming, there's a resurrection. And we have the same details. In 1 Corinthians 15, the entire chapter is about resurrection. And then he says, which is the order of the resurrection? First, those who are those. Those who are his. Wait, now, I should be reading it now. But he says it's going to be those who are his at his coming and then comes the end. Those who are his at his coming and then comes the end. That's the sentence. So in other words, Jesus comes back again. When he comes back, there's a resurrection. Now why the resurrection of the living? Some people have said, wait, what's the point of going up and coming down? We're just going up to be with him. He's coming back. We go up, then we come right back down. The point isn't to go up and come down. The point is transformation. To get the rotting bodies out of the grave and to get the mortal bodies into immortality. For flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But the mortal shall put on the immortal and the perishable shall put on the imperishable. That's 1 Corinthians 15. That happens at the second coming. And the trump will sound. And in fact, when we read Matthew 24, we see something similar. We don't see resurrection there, but we see the coming of the Lord is visible and powerful and conclusive. You don't need somebody to tell you he's in the room and he's over there or down the street or whatever Jesus said. No, as the lightning strikes from the east to the west, so shall this coming of the Son of Man be. So these are the basic details that I looked at. And frankly, there's not a single scriptural objection to that view that I have ever seen that is not easily addressed. Well, God has not destined us for wrath. 1 Thess 5 yeah, he hasn't. He's not coming down. His wrath is already satisfied regarding us. Now we could get the wrath of the world. And we've been doing that. The body of Christ has been. So anyway, all this came together. I read those two books and that answered some more things to me. And one thing that kind of settled on my mind, that goes back to the earlier observation, is why didn't Christians understand this particular detail of eschatology for 1800 years? And then I realized why no one would come up with the Rapture concept. It seemed to me if they just went back to the text and read it. But if you already have the Rapture concept in your mind, then you can go back to texts and see hints of it or what you think are hints of it. In other words, you have to get the idea from the outside. You're not going to get the idea from the inside. And that to me is problematic. And by the way, historically, that's the way it happened. In the mid 18th century, there was an external revelation with the Plymouth Brethren that had to do with the Rapture as part of a resurgence of premillennial theology, which I think is sound premillennial theology. That's my view. And so this is a resurgence of that view. And then this got attached to to it, the pre trib Rapture. Pre trib premillennial. It's a package deal. And once the idea was there, people thought they could find references to the idea in different passages. So there you go. That's my view. Lots of people disagree. I have no problem with that. The fulfillment is the final interpretation is my view. However, here is my concern. I haven't spoken publicly on this for a long, long, long time. Many, many years. And I usually just I don't have a talk. I'm an apologist, not a theologian. I don't talk about those issues so much. But when I during a Q and A at an event and I express to the audience that I don't hold to the rapture at all, I hold to one second coming, the first coming, the second. And at the second coming, there's a resurrection of the living and the dead. That's it. Not hard, not difficult, completely consistent with scriptures. I don't see a problem there. When I say that to audiences though, especially from churches that are strong rapture churches, I see fear in people's eyes. They are shaken up. And I guess part of the reason is they have reason to be respectful of my point of view. I'm not just making it up. I got reasons for it. I'm not just emoting. I'm not just indoctrinated. And so the thinking is, well, what if he's right? What's been going on there? They have been banking on the idea that when the tough times come, they're going to be rescued from the tough times. Remember in John 17 when Jesus prayed for the Christians and he didn't just pray for his disciples. He prayed for you and me. He prayed for all those who would become believers through the witness of the disciples. That's in there. John 17, that's a paraphrase. You can read it yourself. Just go there. He prayed for us. He didn't pray that God would take them out of the world. In fact, he says that I'm not asking you, Father, to take them out of the world. I'm asking you to keep them in the world. In other words, keep them, protect them in the midst of the challenges of the world. Because the world is what we are here to reach. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. In but not of. This is our area of responsibility. We have work to do. And that's standard stuff. And by the way, all pre Trib folk believe that. So I'm not dissing them, I'm not suggesting they're lesser Christians. But I do think it's interesting just as to the fact of the matter of the doctrine that Jesus said, you know, I'm not asking that you take people out of the world, the believers, but keep them, keep them from the evil one. His exact words I don't have in front of me. And this is our commission. And for the last 2,000 years, there's been plenty of tribulation that plenty of Christians have experienced. It wasn't the Great Tribulation, but I don't know why the Great Tribulation is called the Great Tribulation because it's a worldwide event. It seems to be at least. And that's why it's the Great Tribulation. But I don't think what happens to any individual Christian during the Great Tribulation is going to be much different than what happened to individual Christians during the localized tribulations that have happened to them over 2000 years. Christians being butchered and beheaded and tortured and tormented. I talked about a couple years ago a fabulous book that everyone should read called Live not by Lies because Rod Dreier's book, it gives you guidelines for living in a very secularized culture, very anti God culture, which is a culture we live in right now. In the last portion of that book was a section we talked about Christians suffering in communist countries. Now, I'd worked with Christians like that. I spent five and a half weeks behind the inner curtain in 1976, meeting with Christians that had been suffered, that had suffered. One who was so badly beaten it knocked every tooth out of his mouth. He had all steel teeth. I know this because he grinned so much. It's amazing. Filled with the Spirit, right? But he had endured that and many others did as well. Things like that. In the Back of Red Drear's book is almost accounts of unspeakable brutality. It was hard to read. So Christians have been enduring tribulation for a long time all over the world. Not in our country. It's been pretty easy, all things considered. Even so, God has allowed that. Why would. I don't have to ask. I don't see why the pattern should be any different. And in fact, I don't think it is going to be different. We're just going to enter a time where it's really going to get bad for everybody all over the world and the same resources are available to everyone. And that is the power of the Holy Spirit and our conviction that we will not recant. And it's my view that we're better off to be prepared for the hardest times. And incidentally, God for those concerned about, well, the wrath of God is being poured out on the world during the tribulation and we're not destined for the wrath of God. Well, this needs to be qualified. I think certainly we're not destined for the. The eschatological wrath of God the very end. We're not going to hell. Our names are written in the book of life, okay? But the fact is, when God judged Israel for their waywardness and their idolatry, he still, you know, 7,500 who did not bow their knee to Baal as he spoke to Elijah there in 1 Kings 19. They suffered underneath the judgment that was going to the nation itself. They were part of the nation. So, you know, there's a sense in which there's corporate suffering that just goes along with it. So it may be that when it says that God has not destined us for wrath, he means the eschatological final hell, but the obtaining of salvation is the rest of that verse. So that would tie to that passage, that notion nicely. That's what he was referring to. But it also may be we end up suffering some aspects of God's judgment on the world. People think that Katrina was God's judgment. Some say the fires just recently in Southern California was God's judgment. Some said that the hurricane that came up the coast a couple of months ago, that's God's judgment. People have said that, oh, look, there are a lot of Christians that got hurt of that. And if you want to say, well, God's not going to hurt Christians in this final judgment, well, he's certainly capable of doing a surgical strike. Look what happened to Noah. The earth was all judged, but Noah was spared and God made provision for sparing Noah. So nothing in the text that I can see requires one generation of Christians to be snatched away from the earth and rescued from the devastation that will follow. I don't see that. I'm expecting, and by the way, well, I'm expecting if I live in that age, to go through the tribulation. And almost without exception, all of the church fathers expected to see the Antichrist. So I guess that would take you mid trib, at least according to some characterization. But I think the simplest way Occam's razor is, look, there's going to be an end times disaster for the world followed up by Jesus returning. And when Jesus returns, there's going to be a resurrection and the dead will be raised and the living Christians will be raised after a fashion, putting on immortality. And that's what First Corinthians 15 says. So anyway, there you go. That's my radio wrap on the Rapture. There's more online about that. You could look up that piece@str.org and you can check out those two books by Ladd and by Gundry. He's actually the publisher. He's the brother of the publisher of Zondervan. Anyway, check that out and see what you think and weigh it as best you can. Look it. Some guys say you want to stay. You can say I want to go in the Rapture, I said. Look, it's not about what we want. It's about what's going to happen. Do I want to go? Sure. I'll go with you. If it's just a matter of what my wants are. And one guy put it this way. He says I'm a pre tribber until the tribulation starts. Then I'm a mid tribber until we're halfway through the tribulation. Then I'm a post tribber. Okay, fine. Be ready. Be watchful. Greg Kyl. Here for Stan. Teresa. Give him heaven. Bye bye now. Ra.