I Went To A Mosque And Ate Lunch With An Imam: 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 81)

0:02 All right, we're starting off with more of a story. This is going to be about how I just went to a mosque on Sunday. So my name is Mike Winger, here to hopefully help you to think biblically about everything. And let's think biblically about this strange mosque trip that I took. Uh, there was an open house in the mosque near, ah, near where my church is. And um, that was something where one of the guys in our church was like, hey, what do you think? This looks interesting. And I thought, yeah, let's, absolutely, let's go.

0:33 So I'm going to tell you the whole story of this event. And it was the most surreal experience and maybe not for just the reasons you're thinking. There were some, definitely some twists and turns. I actually got to sit and eat with the imam. We had lunch together. He just came and sat right next to me. So we got a talk and I'll tell you what we discussed and hopefully some seeds were planted there and the uh, Lord knows, um, and we'll see if there's any follow up or not. I don't know, we'll see. But we go to the mosque and the reason we're going, I want to make it clear, is because we want to outreach to people. We want people to know the gospel. And I feel like Islamic communities are largely unreached with the gospel. They have more, uh, insulated environments. They're more of, more of a bubble than even other people in their culture around them.

1:19 And it can be a little bit of a problem, um, for trying to do outreach and so why not? They're inviting me to a mosque. Why not go? I'm not going there for ecumenical reasons, um, but I'm going there as a friendly person, as a neighborly person, as a loving, hopefully gracious, kind, caring person who will be respectful but who also cares the most about the gospel. There were a bunch of other Christians there. That was not their reason.

1:47 So for many of them that was not the reason they were there. I'll explain, but first I'll tell you about our experience. So we are asked to get there. We arrive at about one o' clock and their prayer time is starting at like 1:15 I think it was. And they do recitation which is like singing parts of the Quran. So the imam is the one who's singing and there are two separate rooms. There's one big room with all the guys and there's a smaller room with all just the ladies. The ladies have to do their prayer over there separate from the men.

2:14 And for those of us who came. Any of the women who showed up had to go into the ladies area and the men went to the men's. There was no formal greeting. There was no, like, handshake and welcome. And here's what we're doing. It was just. You sort of walked into the room and there was chairs lined up on the back wall and you were just to sit there and observe them doing an actual religious ceremony. I didn't expect that. I didn't know that was coming. And that was interesting.

2:40 Um, I think that that seems like a good strategy because it's a way of saying, like, look at how, um, serious and devoted we are and watch us pray, hear the song of the Quran, you know, that kind of thing. It seems like a good PR strategy, in my opinion. And make no mistake, this entire thing is, in my opinion, about PR strategy. Now, I care about the people. I want them to, but. But it's about PR strategy. They're not trying to make us Muslim. So it's not about evangelism. They're not trying to cause converts to their religion. So it's not about them changing anything about what you believe or do. It's about making you think that Muslims are safe and that you should be welcoming them in your community.

3:23 And that is an open question. Um, so we went there and they were super gracious and everybody was really nice. They do their prayer thing. And the way it works is inside the rooms, both the girls in the guys rooms, because I was able to see the ladies room as we were walking around later. Um, there is a large rug that spans basically wall to wall. The entire room is, uh, like a prayer rug or prayer carpet or whatever you want to call it. And it has like, specific sections. And, um, though the room is facing, it's like squared off a certain way. The carpet is angled towards Mecca, of course. And so you have these little like, like, almost like a frame where you put yourself, your body into the frame of one of the sections, one of the boxes in the carpet. And. And then they would pray. So they recite the Quran in Arabic, of course. You don't recite the Quran in English. That's not something you do.

4:12 And they sing it. It has to be sung a specific way. All of it is prepared and learned ahead of time. So they do the Quran, they sing it. They also stand up and bow, stand up and stand quietly. And they're sort of mumbling. Um, and the imam was mumbling because it was not a fully out loud recitation and there was no message I guess on Fridays or something, they actually give a message. Um, it would be interesting to hear one of their messages. But I'd want to hear one of their messages when they don't know I'm coming, not when they know I'm going to be there. You know? Um, so they go down, they get up, they prostrate. And, uh, in Islamic prayer, the prostration is very extreme. So you're to prostrate, not like laying flat on the ground, but rather you stick your rear end high up in the air and you put your head down low.

4:59 And, um, all I could. I know someone will think this is irreverent, and, uh, maybe it is somewhat irreverent. Um, let me be clear. They, uh, are worshiping a false God, okay? So that's probably the most irreverent thing I could say, is they're worshiping a false God. They think they're worshiping God. They're worshiping a demon. That's a biblical perspective on this. First Corinthians. This is not. We don't have the same God. Allah is, uh.

5:25 Now, not just the Arabic word, Allah, right? Because if I was Arabic, I would say Allah when I talked about God, because that's their language. But the Islamic version of God, right, that version of God does not exist. And that version of God is an antichrist deity. Like, it is literally, no mistake about it, an antichrist deity. Because the core of Islam, one of the most important things is God does not have a son. He. He doesn't begot. He has no partner.

5:53 And what this is. They're using their language, but what this is is a rejection of Jesus in particular. And Jesus says, if you do not honor the Son, you do not honor the Father who sent him. So modern Judaism, which rejects the Son, and modern Islam, which rejects the Son, both of them reject the Father as well. So they're not truly worshiping God in any kind of acceptable way.

6:15 Um, because they have rejected the sun. John, chapter five. So this may seem irreverent, but I know I was thinking about how in Islam, there's these. There's rules about farting in prayer time because you're prostrate and your rear ends up in the air, and you go up and down and up and down. So there's like, a whole set of rules about it, and it's. There's like, statements about, like, Satan blowing wind up people's rear ends during prayer and stuff. And it's just a whole different. You could Google it if you want. It's a whole different thing. Um, so yeah, I'm in there and I'm thinking I'm going to be respectful. But I feel the pull to ecumenicalism. Not that I'm drawn to it myself, but I feel it that there is this sense in which the culture we exist in and the nature of a meeting like this, of a gathering like this is to try to affirm that everyone's on the same page. We're all just different colors of the rainbow, you know, we're all just different sort of versions of worshiping God in truth. And that is not true.

7:12 It's not true. It's not even logically rational to say such things. But that seemed to be not what they would say. That seemed to be what the other Christians in the room would have said, those who at least said they were Christian. So, okay, after the prayer time, there's an invitation to go over to their, like what I would call like a fellowship hall type thing, right? Like there's, there's an area where they have tables set up and there's going to be food and there's going to be um, ah, a little video type presentation and some speaking and some lectures and stuff. So we go over there. It was about two hours total, the whole thing.

7:46 And um, I got to eat some really yummy food. They prepared wonderfully tasty food. It was delicious. And um, one commenter who found out I did this said I ate food sacrificed to idols. And I'm like, um, no, uh, no, it was not offered to an idol to my knowledge. But anyway, so I ate the food. And you should try to enjoy people's hospitality whenever possible. It can actually be rude not to. And so I wanted to be able to say like, this food's great. Thank you guys so much for having us here. Really appreciate it, uh, the opportunity.

8:19 But that's all a lot of Christians wanted to say that were in the room. They don't want to preach the gospel. They don't want to confront anything about Islam. In fact, they started spouting Islamic propaganda, not true Islamic propaganda. The Christians in the room, not all of them, there were, some of them were from my church and they were more like, they see with clarity. The gospel gives clarity. And you go, yeah, these people are in darkness and the false light of Islam and they need Jesus. We want them to be saved.

8:48 So I'm there eating and while we sit down to eat, who turns around and says, can we sit with you? It's the imam. And then the guy in the mosque who's like their apologetics guy. At least that's why he seemed to me. And I was thrilled. I thought, this is fantastic. I want to sit with the imam. And just like you would, I was thinking, what is the right way to approach this? Like, how do I ask the questions in the right order? Um, how do I share? I want to not to defeat this Muslim. Uh, this isn't a publicized debate. The difference between debate and one on one witnessing is huge.

9:21 Public debates aren't for the debaters. They're for the people viewing. You have to often smash the person you're debating for the sake of the one who's listening. You don't have to do that necessarily when you're witnessing. You have it sitting at a table and there's four people and you're talking. So just different approaches for different settings. And in this setting, I was just trying to think of, like, what's the right thing to do? And I'd actually texted, uh, Apostate, uh, Prophet who we kind of know each other. And I'd asked him, I said, I'm heading to a mosque. What do you suggest? What do you recommend as far as for me to think? And his suggestion, which was really good, was to just focus on Jesus. He goes, they just don't really know anything about Jesus. Focus on Christ.

9:58 Okay? So I took that advice. And when he sat across from me, the emom, I first was just letting them ask us questions. They asked us a few questions. They didn't ask me what I do for a living, which is probably good. And, uh, it would have probably made things a little awkward earlier than I wanted it to be. It got awkward later. It got really awkward at the end because of me, I guess.

10:21 Um, but initially I just started asking him about himself. And I said, so you're an imam. Uh, how long did you train to become an imam? Is there like a school you go to? And he goes, yeah, I trained for seven years of schooling. And the guy next to him was like, yeah, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of study to become an imam. He had seven years, and it was in Saudi Arabia, so that the local imam, uh, he actually was from Vietnam, but he. But from like a Muslim family. And then he traveled to Saudi Arabia for training. And he sounds American to me. But now he's the imam of a mosque, like a pastor of a mosque. And he conducts. Now their life is very different than ours because they're conducting five daily prayer sessions where they're guiding people five times a day. That's a very busy day already. Just that alone, you don't really have a lot of time for study and research and preparation for messages and things like that, I imagine.

11:13 Um, but seven years in Saudi Arabia, I thought, wow, so you really study a lot. And I thought, well, there's a lot to study because in, uh, Islam, it's not just the Quran, there's all these hadith. And the hadith, that's where you guys would really be raising your eyebrows. That's where there's some really wild, wild, different stuff. And the hadith aren't all considered authentic. So depending on which part of Islam you're in, this group of hadith are more respected and those are less respected and they have like a better, um, what do they call it? There's a term for it, it's like authentic ancestry, you know, like, or whatever you want to call it.

11:48 So I then asked him and it was just, I really believe this was something the Lord blessed in this conversation because I asked him, um, so in the Quran there's a couple titles for Jesus. Oh, sorry, before I did this, the second guy, who's more apologetics minded, I guess he said, come on guys, ask us the hard questions. After we chatted a bit about the Imam and his history.

12:10 And then I asked him, um, you know, in the Quran, uh, Jesus is featured, but he's not really prominent. Uh, but he is described with a couple titles. And one of those titles is Messiah and the other one is the Word of God. And I said, uh, what do you think that means? That Jesus is the Word of God. And I was really curious to see how he defined that term, Jesus is the Word, because we know as Christians, that's a messianic term.

12:37 I mean, excuse me, that's a, uh, uh, that's the next conversation. That's a deify, deified term. He's the word of God. So John 1:1, uh, makes it clear and I'll put up on your screen in a second. So he described it and he kind of, it felt as though he was sort of coming up with an explanation on the spot, suggesting that maybe he hadn't thought about this before. I could be wrong about that. That was my impression.

13:01 He said that the, that Jesus being the word of God, uh, meant that he was like a messenger who was bringing the words of God. That's how I would recharacterize what he said in a simple way. He kind of got there in a roundabout fashion. And so that would imply that there was nothing unique about Jesus, right? Because that's every single messenger, they're all doing that.

13:21 And, uh, Muhammad does that. So could he also be called the word of God? But we had a limited time, so I didn't get into all that. I just said, do you know where it came from, that phrase, the word of God, that Christ is the word of God, where it originally came from? And he says no. And I said, well, have you ever read the New Testament?

13:37 And he said no. He said he never read the New Testament. Now that is probably not a surprise to a lot of people, but to me it was a surprise. Not because a Muslim hasn't read the New Testament that I expect, but an imam who's had seven years of training, who has a mosque in the United States of all places.

13:59 And this guy's never read the New Testament. And I thought, if this guy's never read the New Testament, then surely nobody else around here has. And, uh, maybe they haven't. I don't know. So I said, can I show you something from the New Testament? I know that the Quran speaks highly of the Injeel. And I use that term so he understands that we don't have to debate about it.

14:20 I know the words, um, the injeel, the Gospels. And, um, so I flip open to John, chapter one. Me and a friend that was there with me, Robert, we open to John chapter one. And I just asked him to read it. And I say, can you just read it if you don't mind taking the time, read chapter one, verse one through verse 15.

14:39 And this is when his eyes did some things. And I thought it was wonderful. This to me, I'm praying, Lord, open his eyes. Show him Jesus, the Jesus he doesn't know. In fact, I'll tell you the other thing I said to him. Um, and I love your guys feedback. Do you think this was the right approach? I should have done it different. I mean, love to know. Because I didn't know what I was doing. Okay, I went in praying, but with no plan other than I'll try to center it on Jesus.

15:09 Um, so I Show him John 1 and he reads it and he starts reading it. You know, in the beginning was the Word. It's on your screen now. And the Word was with God. And, and the Word was God in no uncertain terms, you know, And I told him, I said, this is not an issue with corruption in the manuscripts. Like this is what it says because they're going to by default think that that must have been corrupt.

15:30 He, uh, was at the beginning, in the beginning with God. And he must have gotten through, like, two verses or so. And then his eyes just started darting all over the pages of the Bible, like he was just scanning all over it. And then he comes back to John 1 and. And he starts reading it again slowly, which was good, Great. Let this do its work. Let the word of God have an impact.

15:50 Um, and then he said, it's time for us to start our presentation. And so he was like, it's good talking with you. And, um, before he got up, though, I'd said this earlier. I said, um, oh, this was when I first asked him if he read the New Testament. He said, no. And I said, in the Book of Acts, which is in the New Testament, there's this time when Paul the Apostle had heads over to, um, the Areopagus in Athens. And I explain really quickly what that was. You know, like, this is where a bunch of false idols are. And a bunch of people discuss and debate religious things and philosophical things. And so Paul goes up there and he sees they have an altar to the unknown God. And he uses this, like, he leverages this to try to tell them about the real God, not some idol. The idol doesn't represent the real God, but to show them there's something they don't know. And he wants to tell them about it. And so he. He and I talked about what Paul says. You know, I see you're very religious. You have an altar to the unknown God, him who you worship without knowing Him. I want to proclaim to you.

16:44 Um, and I said. I said, honestly, I feel the same is true about Muslims. You have Jesus as your prophet, one of your prophets, but you don't know him. And you haven't even read the New. You haven't even read his words, and he's one of your prophets. And I know this is complicated, and I know they'll say that New Testament's corrupt, but it's just the truth that they don't know him and they don't know about him.

17:04 And, um, I said, him who you honor as a prophet without knowing, I'd like to proclaim him to you. And then we went into the Word of God stuff, and then that's when, uh, ah, he had to go. And he did have to go. It was time to start the presentation. So we didn't get to continue that conversation. Then the presentation began, and that's where things got really surreal.

17:23 Um, the imam spoke a little bit, but he wasn't actually, primarily speaking. There's some guy who does these open houses who he's Primarily speaking, there was two guys, main speakers, right? Um, one of them, there was like four, but two main ones. One was giving information, uh, about that local mosque. So he was telling the history of the mosque. So he just recounted like, first we were over here next to McDonald's, and then in 19, uh, 97, we went over here next to like Wendy's or something. I mean, I'm just making names up, I don't remember. It was just literally a mundane history of location changes. Um, it wasn't what you would have maybe expected.

17:58 Some story about like, I don't know, the spiritual journey. So then they, um, they have the other guy get up there and he gets up there and he says, um, that he does this stuff all the time. He does these open mosque events all over the place and he conducts them. And they're meant to create a sense of unity amongst the different religious groups and amongst. Between Muslims and their neighbors.

18:24 And. And uh, it was vague, it was unclear, and it didn't address any of the real issues, um, that you want to have. If you want to talk about, well, what does unity look like? Um, he talked about people being afraid of Muslims and laughed like, why would you be afraid of Muslims? Ha ha ha, kind of thing. And I'm like, what world does this guy live in? He doesn't know why people are legitimately afraid of Islam, its entire 1400 year history, its conquests.

18:58 Um, even just yesterday I heard about, um, another death penalty being issued to somebody because of insulting, uh, the prophet in Iran. And before that it was in Saudi Arabia like a week ago or something. This just is Islam. Islam is murderous. It is murderous. And in countries where you have 99% Muslims, which do exist, those countries exist.

19:22 The reason why it's so high is because people are supposed to be killed if they leave Islam. It's terrorism. So don't be like, you know, of course, laughing at why people might be afraid of Islam. Islam's friendly when it has no other choice. Uh, but things can change very quickly. And they have. And you can look at Afghanistan.

19:43 That's Islam. That's not just fringe weirdos. That is, um, a genuine manifestation of Islam. So they get up and they share about unity and loving neighbors. And one gentleman in the group out there raises his hand and he wants to share and he's kind of working through what he wants to say. Public speaking is a little bit nerve wracking and doing it in that environment can be a little stressful, I imagine.

20:05 So he gets up and he shares a few Things about loving your neighbor and which were all true, nothing problematic with it. True stuff. At the end of it, he ends by saying, who is my neighbor? And then he puts the mic down, and he's done. And to the Christians in the room, that's a trigger phrase. Who is my neighbor? Everybody knows what that means. We're talking about when Jesus said, yes, you must do love your neighbor as yourself. And then the response was, yeah, but who's my neighbor? And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. So it's a way of saying, whoever I encounter in life, that's my neighbor, I should try to love them. I don't want to limit it to just Christians and just this or that.

20:41 Well, the Muslims in the room had, as far as I could tell, had no idea that he was quoting Jesus. And that went in for maybe 30 minutes of people going back and forth on the topic of who is my neighbor? It was odd. Um, so he says, well, my neighbor is. You know, in Islam, we say, you're supposed to know, uh, 40 homes in each direction, 40 neighbors in each direction.

21:07 So he's trying to answer like, who's my neighbor? You know, and he goes, and I don't really. Nowadays, you don't really know them that much. And I don't really know them that much. But it was. But he's trying to say, look, Islam's good. We really care about our neighbors. And that was most of it. And then Christians would get up and they would say. And it started to turn into just empty platitudes.

21:23 It's the kind of thing you get when there's something that nobody wants to talk about and they're gonna just filibuster with, let's talk about unity and neighbors for 30 minutes and say the same things over and over again. And I know that sounds cynical. Uh, I don't want to come off that way, but that is entirely what I thought I saw. Doesn't mean there wasn't sincere people in the room trying to help, trying to do good things. But I'm listening to this, and I started thinking, oh, I didn't tell you this. A bunch of students from Biola were there.

21:57 And I started thinking, here we have older Christian people standing up and filibustering about neighbors and not actually saying anything about, what do we mean unity with Islam? What does that mean? What are the limits of that? Um, and they were opening up for questions. They were like, ask any questions you want. And people didn't want to ask questions. They wanted to ask Something like, um, uh, how long are your services? Like, it was just sort of all the questions nobody cares about that they were asking because they didn't want to address other things.

22:29 Um, and I was looking at those students from Biola in the back, and I was thinking, they're seeing these older believers who are giving an example of weak gospel free ecumenism towards Muslims. Like, uh, Vatican II towards Muslims, that kind of thing. And I was concerned about them as well as the Muslims in the room now. And I'm thinking, this is not healthy. So finally I raised my hand towards the very end, it was about 10 minutes before they were supposed to be done, that I asked a question. And I'm trying to remember what I said for you guys to consider. And again, if you want to push back and say you think I should have done something different, you may be right. Um, this is just what happened. And I share this partly because I want to encourage you guys to outreach to Muslims more, to have conversations with them more, and to not worry too much. If you get something a little bit wrong, just go for it.

23:17 I'm, um, going to rail publicly against the dangers of Islam, but I'm also going to evangelize Islamic, uh, Muslims when I can. So I think that both of those things are really good things, immoral things to do, and people just want to pick one or the other, actually. Um, usually they want to pick platitudes and feel good. Never evangelize or demonize. Uh, never evangelize, but we should attack Islam and evangelize Muslims at the same time.

23:44 So I finally, I raised my hand and I had a chance to share. Um, and I'd waited a while just thinking about what I might say. And I knew that it might not be welcome, but I didn't realize how unwelcomed it would be by the Christians in the room. Um, so I shared, um, that in the conversation that had just happened, I thought that, uh, most Christians would have understood that the man who said, who's my neighbor, that he was talking about Jesus story, ah, of the Good Samaritan.

24:16 And, um, and I was just like, you know, a lot of Muslims, it seems, don't actually know much about Jesus and haven't read his words. And I didn't call it the imam because I wasn't trying to embarrass him. So I could have said, even your imam, I probably should have, to be honest, said, even your imam told me he's never read the New Testament. I probably should have mentioned that. I just, I didn't Because I didn't want to embarrass the guy personally. Um, but, uh, maybe it wouldn't have embarrassed him. I don't know.

24:40 So I shared, you know, that Muslims I spoken to, they often know very little about Jesus. But you showed us a chart where you said Jesus is one of your five great prophets, and yet you don't know his words. And you guys didn't even know that that was the story of the Good Samaritan. I know that. I, uh, would like to encourage you guys to read the words of Jesus, to actually learn what Jesus says. Seek Jesus. Discover who he really is. Learn what he taught. Now, my philosophy here at this moment was if I could just get them beginning on the path of learning about Jesus, it could be the thing that changes their entire lives, that delivers them from a false gospel. It's not even a gospel, it's just a non gospel of Islam.

25:18 Uh, from a false religion, from false light. Just get them learning about Jesus. Stoke that curiosity. Use the fact that they see him as a prophet to try to encourage them to learn about him. I don't know if it'll work, if it does work in any of those cases or not, but I hope so. Um, so then I said, you know, I had a friend or a guy I knew wasn't a friend, I wouldn't say. But it was that guy we talked to many times who was from England. And he had called, uh, my old church, um, and he asked if he could talk about Jesus. I kid you not, he was a Muslim who wanted to talk about Jesus. First time he called, he just had questions about Jesus. And I thought it was weird. I was like, is this real?

25:55 He just wanted to ask about Jesus. So we talked. He called again months later, or maybe it was a month, it was sometime later. And he had given his life to Jesus, but it cost him. And what happened was he kept talking about Jesus to his family. Muslims, he's one of their prophets, right? But he kept talking about Jesus to his family and about wanting to know more about Jesus and learn more about Jesus and believing in Jesus, and his family jumped him and beat him up and crippled him.

26:23 I shared this when I was on the microphone at the open discussion time, and I said, and his family had crippled him. Uh, but he ended up believing in Jesus and it changed his life. I said, but I just get the sense that there's. There's a resistance to learning about one of the prophets. So, um, that's my memory. This was like, on Sunday. It's Friday now. So that's my best memory of what I shared. I'm sure there's some details I'm forgetting or getting a little bit off. But then, um, the guy that was holding the mic reached over and tried to hand the mic to the imam.

26:55 And, um, uh, the emom didn't want it. So he just said. He said no, and he just shook his head and he didn't want the microphone. And I think that, honestly, I think this imam was just put on the spot in an unexpected way and he just didn't have an answer. Um, he hadn't learned the Islamic apologetic responses to the things I shared yet, but the guy next to him had.

27:20 So he took the microphone and he goes, we know the words of Jesus. We know the story of the Good Samaritan. Which I'm sitting there thinking, and maybe at this point I should have said it. Your imam told me he's never read the New Testament. But I thought, these Muslims know this isn't true. They all know. They don't really know the words of Jesus. Like, they know this, right? They only know that he was born of a virgin. They know like a handful of little things about him there in the Quran.

27:43 So I figured that the Muslims know he's. He's not telling the truth. Um, I don't know if he would even have known it was the story of the Good Samaritan. I don't know. Maybe he would. Maybe this guy would. Maybe this is the guy that knew new stuff. So then I said, well, let me ask you a question. The Quran says that Jesus is the Messiah. I had already covered the word of God earlier, so I thought I'd tackle the Messiah. So the Quran says Jesus is the Messiah. What do Muslims think that means? The word Messiah?

28:08 Um, because they have the term, because it's in the Quran, they can't get away from it. Jesus is the word of God and he is the Messiah, but they don't have a meaning, a definition for it. So what does it mean? And he just says, well, Messiah. And I thought this was, uh, he was sitting at the table when I brought up the word of God in the Messiah. So I don't know if he had a chance to Google it because he gave me the Google. I've heard it before. It's not a surprise. But the quick, shallow answer, which was, um, well, messiah is a term that means anointed one.

28:39 And Cyrus was also God's anointed one. And so there can be many anointed ones. That is perfect. That is exactly the answer I would have expected for someone who actually has done a Google search on this topic. Um, but it's totally deceptive. So language changes over time. Okay, when in Cyrus's time the term Messiah is used, and I tried to share this super briefly here. I'll just say it the way I said it. Then I shared, um, the word Messiah in Hebrew, Mashiach. I think I'm probably pronouncing it wrong because my Hebrew doesn't exist. But, um, Messiah in the Hebrew does mean anointed one. The etymology of the word. The etymology of the word. Now, etymology is just the parts of the word mean these things. It's not the meaning of the word, the etymology means anointed one, but the word itself. The Messiah as a singular person, as one person. Not a bunch, not a bunch of messiahs, not a bunch of different anointed ones. The Messiah was believed in the time of Jesus to be the one on whom all of the prophetic hopes of the Bible were resting.

29:50 He was the ultimate deliverer and the ultimate one who would fulfill the prophecy of God, the Messiah. And there was no response to that except the guy next to me who was at one table over from me, a Christian, at least. He says, I mean, I'm not trying to judge whether these people are real Christians or not, although you're going to want to in a second.

30:14 He, uh, reached over, stood up. I didn't even see him. He wasn't even in my vision. He kind of came slightly behind me and he grabbed and pulled the microphone out of my hand so that I wouldn't be able to speak anymore. And I thought, well, that was kind of the last thing I wanted to say anyways, um, was that you guys don't know and you should, you should learn about Jesus, discover Jesus.

30:33 And he pulled the microphone out of my hand, just aggressively so. This guy was sitting there thinking, oh, I have his note. He gave me a note too. I'll read it in a second. If he saw me reading this, he'd probably be really insulted. But, uh, he did it first. It was surreal. I'm laughing because the situation was surreal. In the room, I have to tell you, is a number of people I've never met before. A few people from my church who I think were on pretty similar page. As far as we want to evangelize Muslims, they need the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don't just need to have a happy hand holding moment. They do these open mosque events all the time. It's like every year they're Doing it. And if they're never talking about the gospel, what's the point?

31:13 I don't get it. Um, if they're never pushing back on Islam or even asking hard questions, it's just a PR campaign to dull the consciences of American citizens to the dangers of Islam. That's all it is. That's all it is. And it further deincentivizes evangelism towards Muslims. When you do stuff like this, if you don't even address the necessity of having the gospel.

31:36 So, um, this guy pulls the microphone in my hand. Uh, he's one guy I'll talk about in a second. And then there was another lady in the room. She's got a little white collar, you know, she's the minister of the United Methodist Church. It's not too far from where my church is. And me and my wife drive by there every Sunday when we go to church. And we always see their banner, which always is full of rainbow and pride statements. And they do interesting things. Like once a year they do a, uh, uh, bring your pet to church and we're going to have a blessing of the pets.

32:06 But it's pretty clear that this United Methodist Church is an apostate church, okay? Not just because of one of those things, but because of all of them and then their views of even the gospel. Um, she was there and I thought, oh, it makes sense. These kinds of events are probably largely attended by Christians who think that evangelizing people is rude and stuff like that.

32:29 Um, which is the response that came in the room. So he pulls the mic away and the room sort of reacts. There's a lot of discomfort in the room all of a sudden, more than I would have expected with Christians. You would have thought they would have been like, yeah, hey, we're just trying to talk to you about Jesus. But no, um, the response is, uh, the leader of the thing who goes around doing all these open house things, he just says, um, you know, we don't really need to talk about all of those things. We know those differences exist, you know, but we respect Jesus. And it's like they don't respect. Like that's not true. It's not true. One of the greatest sins in Islam is to believe that Jesus is real. What do you mean, real? I mean like the real Jesus, the one that actually exists, the one who is the son of God, who died on the cross and rose again, like that is shirk. That is one of the highest sins of Islam is to believe what I believe about Jesus. So it's deceitful to be like, he's one of our prophets. No, you do not have the same Jesus. You have an antichrist Jesus.

33:22 Literally, your version of Jesus denies the core of the gospel and the core of the nature and personhood of Christ. So no, we don't honor Jesus together. That's not true. Um, so I didn't share all that. But that's the background that's there. So yeah, it's silly to pretend we do. So then other people started sharing and, uh, the guy that grabbed the mic, he says, I think what my brother here is really trying to say is. And then he said, I don't remember what he said. It was just a platitude. It was something like, um, uh, I love you, you love me, we're a happy family.

34:03 Something like that. I don't even remember what he said, but it wasn't at all what I was trying to say. Um, which should have been evident. But it was weird that this guy felt that he could speak for me and not only his understanding of Christianity or truth, but for me. He could speak for me. That was odd.

34:22 He, um, gave me a note. Afterwards, he handed me this note, was like, here, here's my number. I thought you might want to have it. So I got his number and his name here. But I won't, obviously. I'm not trying to. I'm trying to highlight what happened to learn from it, not to target any individuals. Um, he says, I would be happy to share some insights on effectively reaching others. There is a better way, my brother.

34:40 Um, well, the better way is not pretending that the gospel doesn't matter. Uh, the better way is not acting smiley amongst a deceitful presentation of the nature and dangers of Islam. Um, that can't be the better way. We got to realize there's conflict with the gospel. In the Book of Acts, there's conflict with the gospel. When Paul goes to the areopagus, he's conflicting, I'm saying it wrong now, conflicting with them, uh, because he goes there and he says, um, I want to tell you, God is not your idol.

35:14 He made all this stuff. He shouldn't be worshiped and given food as though he needs to eat and things like that. He confronts the core of their beliefs and their practice in a very offensive way. But that's the gospel. The gospel always does that. It is offensive and confronting in its very nature. So there's a better way, meaning a non confrontational gospel is. No, you don't get it.

35:37 To the Greeks, it's foolishness. To the Jews, it's a stumbling block. Um, is that right or did I reverse it? It is an offensive thing. And that's okay. That's okay. It's all right. In the Book of Acts, we don't see a lot of friendship evangelism. Not that you can't ever do that, but if that is like, the way of evangelism, if friendship evangelism, the singular way of evangelism, you're not going to evangelize. No wonder why your church never baptizes new people.

36:02 Because you're not actually. So people who say there's a better way often have ways of building friends. Not Christians. And, um, anyway, that rant's over. So then, um, the imam, not the imam, but the guy that was hosting the event, he gets up there and he says, um, after a number of people try to like, sort of soft pedal the awkwardness of the room that I've created, which I'm totally comfortable with, let's talk about it.

36:27 Right? Why not just say we don't read the New Testament because we think it's corrupt? They don't want to say that, but that's something they believe. Why not just say you? Yeah, we don't know very much about Jesus, but we don't think it's important. Just be honest. Let's have a dialogue. Let's walk out with clarity at least, if not agreement.

36:42 So, um, then, uh, the guy gets up there and he says, um, you know, people are afraid of Islam and afraid of Muslims. He's trying to change the conversation and people laugh like people in the room laugh. And the laugh was, hahaha, I can't believe people are actually afraid of Muslims. How ridiculous.

37:07 Now let's be clear. I'm not afraid of every Muslim. Islam is dangerous. It presents a very real present danger to various nations and to individuals. The number of terrorist acts from Muslims is sky high compared to any other radical group. The amount of horrible evil things that happen because of Islam all the time, sky high. The rates of pedophilia sky high. The rape gangs in England, unspeakable.

37:43 Um, the death penalty for apostates for insulting Islam in multiple countries. The age of marriage in numerous countries has been lowered to six years old or simply no age limit at all because of Islam and oh, Mike, you're lying. This is propaganda. This is truth. This is truth. We're just allergic to saying that something's evil. Islam's evil. Okay, so the local Muslim doesn't mean he's in any danger at all. And he Comes from a culture that is more hospitable than your typical American is, so that is understandable. He's probably a pretty hospitable guy and he may be a wonderful friend, but that doesn't take away the danger of Islam. And we have to hold both of these things together and go, yeah, I can meet. I have met Satanists that were really nice guys. That doesn't take away the dangers of Satanism.

38:32 I have actually met them. So this is wild thinking to think that we can do this. And that's exactly what they did. They laughed at the idea that Islam was dangerous. And then I remember that, um, the female United, uh, Methodist minister, she says, uh, it's because of, uh. What did she say it was because of? Um, she was going to say why people are afraid of Islam. And she said it was because of lies. It's because of lies. That's why they're scared. It's because of lies. And she probably is a super nice person who probably would support you and encourage you no matter what you were doing, which is part of the problem. Um, but it's because of lies. That's why people think Islam is something to be worried about or scared about or something.

39:16 And that's not true. And to hear them echoing this at this event, I was like, this would be ecumenical if it wasn't for at least a handful of Christians that showed up that actually care about truth and light and the word of God. And we're seeing, of course, as unloving and unkind. That's fine. That's fine. I'm okay with that. You can see me as that all you want. The point is, that's the example in Scripture, I see. I'm following what Jesus and the apostles did. So if they're unloving, then fine.

39:42 Then the other guy grabs the microphone and he says, um, oh, it was prompted by. This is the last thing I'll say. Then we're going to go to your questions. I know this is a long story time here, but then somebody, uh, else, another one of the Muslims, gets up on stage or in the front and says, um, I just want to know why is it. And I skipped a bunch. They directed a bunch of questions at me, but I never had the mic again, so I couldn't answer anything. Um, he says, why is it that we see, uh, in the mosques in Orange county, which. That's where most of the Muslim mosques are in the area. There's a ton of them in Orange County.

40:16 Um, why is it that people will pick it outside, and they'll hold up signs and they'll be protesting outside of a mosque. But I don't see them doing it in front of the Hindu temple or in front of the Buddhist temple. And I remember hearing this thinking, I didn't know anybody was picketing outside of mosques. And I'm thinking, what's the nature of the picketing? Is it primarily political?

40:35 Is it, uh, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. What are they doing? Do you approve of it or not? I don't know. And do they not do it at Hindu temples or Buddhist ones? I don't know that either. I didn't know they did it m in Muslim ones, so I have no idea. Right. So I wouldn't have answered the question because I don't know the facts.

40:51 But that's when the guy who took the microphone from me grabbed it and he says, I just want to apologize on behalf of Christians for that behavior. That's not our heart. That's not who we are. Some people are like that, but we're not really like that. And I'm sitting there thinking, this is not real.

41:11 It's not real. What's real is telling a Muslim, you know, you've got Jesus wrong. That's real. This, this play acting, it's not real. And I don't think the Muslims believe it either. I think it's. It's a means to an end. Okay. I think that that seems relatively obvious. Right. What I could have done and didn't do in that meeting was I could have said in Islam, what is the penalty for people who leave Islam?

41:36 Like, if I come here and meet your people and one of your people leaves Islam and comes to be a Christian, how do you feel about that? Like, let's just be honest with each other and not just pretend. Because they apparently have had these meetings in the Catholic church down the street, in the United Methodist church down the street and in the mosque, and they just.

41:57 I had stumbled into what had been an ecumenical thing, but it's ecumenical in an imbalanced way. And this is the last word I'll say on it. To the Muslims, it's about being accepted and welcomed into society as a harmless additional religious perspective. That's it. To the ecumenical Christians, it's about pretending everybody is okay. And there's many paths to God.

42:22 And this be welcomed in the end result of it, if they ever gain true foothold and true power will be, yes, you should have been afraid all along. You really should have been. Not of those guys specifically, but of what was going to happen down the road as a result. Um, that I think is accurate. I think it's true. It's historically accurate, it's logically consistent.

42:43 And yeah, appreciate your guys, your guys thoughts on this. Um, I hoped to put a, a stone in their pebble about Jesus because when Muslims really get into Jesus, their lives change. They not just leave Islam, they become Christian. So. All right, we're going to go to your guys. Questions. That was my interesting experience. Did I ever change? Yeah, I did. Sorry. Question number two.

43:06 This comes from Noah Hunt, who says, hey, Mike, I have a very analytical brother, A Catholic lawyer. Any advice on how to move the needle when conversations always go to by what authority? Um, yeah, well, one thing you can do if you have an analytical brother is find analytical Christian sources that are defending Protestantism. And one of the ones that I think you could find really useful is Gavin Ortland. So check out Gavin Ortland's YouTube channel. It's called Truth Unites, I'm pretty sure.

43:37 And uh, check out. He has got tons and tons of stuff. And you can talk about Sola Scriptura, but there's tons of angles to take. It depends on your conversation with your brother. When he says, by what authority? One thing to do is say, what do you mean by that? And just focus on understanding his perspective, understanding his view, understanding the nuts and bolts of how it works in his mind so that you could say it back to him in a way that he would agree with. You mean this? And he goes, yeah. Then you construct a thoughtful reply. But you need to know that and specialize it because you've had many conversations with him and he gets stuck on this one point, then focus on that point, specialize in that point, get good resources and dig into it. Um, one of the things that I find useful and you can find, if you type in my name, you can find a bunch of Catholics related content I've made. But when it comes to Sola Scriptura, if you type my name in Sola Scriptura, there's a video of Sola Scriptura, what it is and why I believe it.

44:31 And that touches the. By what authority? And there's some arguments in there I present that I don't usually hear that I think are pretty helpful. You can decide if it's something you want to share with your brother or not. So I'll link that video down below after the stream. But I'll give you one, um, one little highlight, which is Jesus and the way that he handles the Pharisees. Um, now that One's going to take too long to explain Jesus. And, uh, excuse me, Galatians, the book of Galatians. In the book of Galatians, and I talk about it in more detail in my video, Paul writes to them, even if we or an angel from heaven should come and preach to you another gospel other than the one that we have preached, let him be accursed in that word, anathema, which means, like, you know, a curse from God.

45:15 And this is a pretty big deal when he says this in relation to, um, the concept of sola scriptura. And this is a view that almost. It routinely gets almost deliberately misunderstood by some people. So I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to share it. If they understand, they do. And if not, then go watch my video. Maybe it'll help.

45:38 Um, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is one, is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. And if that was a danger in the first century, would it not be a danger after that that there are some who will distort the gospel of Christ?

45:58 They don't say, get rid of the gospel. They twist it. It's a distorted gospel. It's like, here's the gospel, but with a twist, a fatal twist. Something that's been done to the gospel message that's not right. But then he says the part I want to highlight, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you, a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed, as we've said before. So this is not a new idea.

46:24 So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you, ah, a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. Who had more authority than the we. Well, Paul is the apostle to the Galatians. He is the, uh, founding apostle of their church. Talk about apostolic succession. There's no succession. He's Paul the Apostle, and he says, I gave you a message, the gospel. And that wasn't just how to get saved. It was primarily how to get saved. But of course, it was everything they knew about Jesus. And he says, I want you to take what you heard from me and I want you to use it to test even me.

47:07 That is, he gave a message. The message which we now have. We all agree there's no debate on this. That message is enshrined in scripture. Scripture is this is the message of Christ, right? We have this gospel, we have all the stuff he taught them and probably more in the New Testament. But it's this principle that the message once received, now has more authority than even the one who brought it initially, because this message carries with it God's very authority inherently.

47:35 And so they're to test Paul or anyone, an angel from heaven, anyone, the Pope, the entire magisterium, the entire gathered ecumenical bishops of Roman Catholicism, or of the entire consensus in Eastern Orthodoxy, all of them tested based upon a message that was prior delivered. It doesn't teach sola scriptura like it gives a detailed explanation, um, of it. It doesn't do that. It requires it of necessity that you let Scripture be that final authority. Why?

48:16 Because here again we agree. The Bible contains that message that was sent down from the apostles and from Christ. We carry that in the New Testament. We all already agree on that. Now, your brother could punt away and he'll go, but how do you know the New Testament is. You only know it, it's God's word, because the Church tells it doesn't matter.

48:37 That's not true. But even if it was true, it doesn't matter because you only knew the Gospel because it was Paul that gave it to you. But Paul still says it's this gospel that you've already received the information you have, that you, in your own judgment, must use to evaluate any teacher on planet Earth to see if what they're saying is accurate according to those words. That is private judgment to test even church authorities. It's inescapable. I've never heard a good argument against it. I've heard scoffing against this passage. I've never heard a good, logical, rational argument against it. Some try to say, well, but the Galatians didn't have everything you have in the New Testament.

49:14 It's completely irrelevant. They had the gospel and we have certainly the things that he's teaching them in the Book of Galatians. And we have this beautiful thing. What did Paul teach the Galatians? Well, we have this book called Romans. Romans. Paul couldn't go to Rome, he couldn't travel to Rome. So he said, I've wanted to get there, but I couldn't. So I'm going to write out my knowledge in the Gospel for you. So he writes this 16 chapter book to give them the stuff he's already given the Galatians, what he would have said if he'd been present.

49:41 So, yes, I can use the book of Romans to know what Galatians The Galatians were judging the rest of the, um, messengers with and. Yes. Sola scriptura. Powerful, powerful argument. I don't know why more people don't use it. What's the flaw here and here? We'll get some Catholic videos in response, I'm sure, and you're welcome to make the response videos, but I just want to. Whoever watches the response videos of a Catholic, ask yourself, did they accurately represent Mike's view? Because I've never had it happen.

50:09 Not yet on this concept. All right. Number three. Das of Christ says, if Sean Bowles truly repents, dies, and never makes amends, can his victims ask God for justice in heaven? If he's justified through Christ, are his victims now owed justice? Bowles is only one example. Totally fair. I understand just using him as an illustration.

50:33 Let me drink my coffee. So Sean Bulls. Many of you know he is, um, fake prophet and sexual, um, harasser. I'll put it that way. Who is propped up by many leaders in the Charismatic Church when they, um. Actually, I'll just say this. Uh, Bill Johnson and Bethel propped him up even after they knew about him.

50:56 After they knew about him and they knew about him before they ever admit that they knew about him. And I'll maintain that. And they can take me to court. Let's subpoena the witnesses. Um, so they propped up a guy that was. They knew faking prophets they had. They might be like, well, I didn't really know. You can pretend whatever you want about your internal knowledge. You had the evidence and the witness testimony that was compelling and should have compelled you.

51:20 Um, and you say you didn't know. You weren't convinced, but I don't believe you. Sorry. I've been lied to a number of times in the process of these videos by leadership. So I. I've learned to be. To follow the truth where it goes. So, um, let's say that this guy really repents and dies. Like, he repents and boom, he's. He dies. He repents.

51:42 Five seconds later, earthquake or something, heart attack. He passes. Um, so he never makes amends. He never makes it. Right. He never contacts the people. And some of the people I know because I've talked to some of his victims, they would actually like it if he repented and then told them, like, I did this to you. I want to confess what I did, and I just want to say I'm sorry. It was evil, it was wrong, and I'm so, so sorry I hurt you. Is there anything we need to do now that would somehow Help, um, alleviate some of the grief that I've caused.

52:14 Uh, and there are plenty of others who don't want to talk to him at all. And even if he said he was repenting, they wouldn't believe it, and they don't want to talk to him. And that's. That's fair, because you don't know if it's real. But let's say he doesn't, and then he dies. Then your question is, um, can his victims ask God for justice in heaven?

52:31 Um, if he's justified through Christ, are his victims owed no justice? The answer, I think, implied in your question, is, yeah, uh, you don't get to ask God for justice in heaven. Now, there is a type of justice. There's consequences eternally. So if he repents right now and dies, you know what he has to show for his ministry, for his years and years of ministry? Nothing. It's all going to burn. It's all going to burn. It's all gone. He enters in as one who has escaped through fire, the scripture tells us.

53:01 So he enters in, but he enters in with nothing. No treasure, no stored up treasures in heaven. What does that look like? That's a whole other question. But he enters in with none of that, right? So there's consequences. Whereas somebody else who was a faithful minister and served the Lord and loved God and loved their neighbors and honored Christ, that person enters in with, um, greater treasures. Greater treasures. Greater, you may say, crowns to lay down before the Lord, as opposed to just squeezing in. I mean, we all squeeze in. Well, squeezing in is not even really fair to say, because we come in through the righteousness of Christ. And so he doesn't squeeze in.

53:40 But if Sean repents, then that means that the counsel I give to somebody who's like, I'm going to see this guy in heaven who repented and then never made anything right with me. Everyone in heaven, though, we have to see the same way through the cross. So to scoff at the forgiveness that Sean would receive would be. It would require me to scoff at the very cross of Christ. Because it is him who redeems Sean. It is him who you want to see. There's no justice for Shawn.

54:10 Jesus took Shawn's sins upon himself on the cross. He bore them and suffered and died a horrible murder full of shame, to bear the iniquity of the people. And so Christ's. There was justice for Sean, but it was meted out, to use an Old Testament or an Old King, uh, James style phrase, it was meted out upon Jesus.

54:32 So if you look at Shawn and you're thinking, I'm bitter at him, I feel like he should pay. You need to look at Jesus and you have to say you didn't pay enough for him. That's the consequence, logically. So you've got to get the cross in view. And the last thing you said was, um, are his victims owed no justice? And to that I want to say, um, we're owed justice in a sense. But if you want to go based on what you deserve, then do you want to go to heaven? And everybody who is owed justice because of you is now going to get paid off through you somehow?

55:10 Is that what you want? I mean, it's not biblically what happened, but is that what you want? Do you want it for yourself or just for Sean, or just for whoever? I know Sean's just an example, but somebody does something evil, and you have sinned more than you've ever known in your life, and so have I. And there's people that I've hurt and didn't even realize it, and there's someone that I've injured or caused harm to. And I did realize it, but the harm I did, I probably don't know how bad it was. I probably don't know how deeply pain, um, how deeply I've pained people, just like other people have hurt me really bad. And they genuinely don't get it. They think they did something wrong, but they do not get it.

55:44 I don't want justice, okay? Jesus took justice on the cross. I want mercy and grace. And when I see that Sean is forgiven, and I hope he repents, I hope he repents. And I don't believe he is. And he should be excommunicated from any church. He's part of. As part of the hopefulness that his soul can be saved in the final day.

56:06 Um, but if he repents, or if the person I've wounded or hurt repents, or the person who hurt me did some horrible thing to me repents, I want to be able to rejoice with Jesus about that and not be like the brother. I mean, this is the story of the prodigal son, where the son goes off and he does living with pigs and all this because he just spent all his inheritance on all kinds of wrong, evil things. And then he comes back and the father runs out to greet him, and he says, kill the fatted calf. Let's have a great celebration. My son is home. And the older brother is like you, throwing him a big party. You don't really Throw me a party. I'm here all the time. Uh, and there's this entitlement that the older brother had that was a bitterness towards the forgiven soul.

56:49 So that is a true spiritual danger for every Christian, is that we might have a bitterness towards the forgiven soul because we don't realize the condition of our own hearts. My counsel to you would be, look deeply at your sin and then look deeply at the cross. And now look deeply at the guy that you wish would pay for what he did.

57:09 If he comes to Christ, that is a far better thing than if he has to pay for his sin because he's apart from Jesus. So pray for when you feel bitter towards people like that. Pray for them. Pray for them to repent. Pray for them to be forgiven. Um, to actually. And this is real forgiveness, not just wipe, uh, the slate clean. Don't change the soul. God changes them from the inside out. It'd be a beautiful testimony of God's grace.

57:33 Number four, this is, ah, an anonymous question says, Is Isaiah 65, 1720 referencing the millennial kingdom? Spanish, because verse 17 makes it sound like it's about the new heaven and new earth that follows. But Revelation 21:1 4 says, There is no death there. Let's look at it. And I tell you ahead of time, we're probably going to give you an insufficient answer to this question, because this is an open question to me as well. I've looked at, uh, Isaiah, uh, I have more work to do on it for sure, tons more. But I have looked at it carefully and tried to figure out what is this, Is this millennial kingdom? At the end of Isaiah, there's a whole section that's like, is that millennial kingdom or is that eternal kingdom? And it makes me wonder if I'm missing something in my understanding of how these things will play out. Now, I don't feel too bad about that, and I'll tell you why.

58:22 Before Jesus came, they had all kinds of ideas and knowledge of the Messianic prophecies, but they had put it together in a way that was in a lot of times, a lot of times very wrong. When he finally shows up and he lives and dies and rises again, and then church starts, everything falls into place. They go, yes, I see. It's all in scripture now. We just didn't get it. I think that the second coming, the millennium, which I think is pre millennial, I think we're premillennial. I could be wrong.

58:49 Um, and then the eternal kingdom that comes after that, where heaven and earth meet, you know, revelation that you're talking about. I think when those things come, we're all. Probably a lot of us are going to be like, yeah, I didn't. Now I get it. Now I see crystal clear how all of scripture comes together and harmonizes in what we're seeing here.

59:06 But there's a proper place for humility where you go, man, we got a lot confused about the first coming. It's okay if we get some stuff confused about the second and that we give ourselves permission to just not be sure about certain things. Not as a sense of false humility. But, like, for me, I go, what is this? Let's read it. For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness.

59:40 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it and an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days. For the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

1:00:02 Okay, that's where if you're like me, you go, oh, that was an unexpected addition to what I was reading there. Because I heard new heavens and new earth, and I figured that's eternal kingdom. So why is there the discussion of sinner dies a hundred years old and accursed and young man die? Uh, what is this about? And there's commentary on this, and they try to explain it in different ways. Like maybe they're saying people don't actually die. It's just the principle that, um, if a person died at 100, they would be called young. Right? That's the principle. So no one's actually dying. And the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

1:00:43 Maybe this is saying that when the sinner. If a sinner was to die at 100 years old, you'd be like, oh, you must have been cursed by God. Like, how could you die at only a hundred? So maybe it's just talking about how we live forever, and that might be the case. It's just a slightly unexpected way for the Bible to do that. But, uh, I don't know for sure the answer to this. I lean towards thinking this is new heaven, new earth language. But this language here just gives me A little bit of pause and I go, I have an interpretation that could work, but am I making it work? Maybe.

1:01:14 Maybe I need to do more work on this. I don't have the clarity for you, but I can present, uh, some humility that hopefully I have on the topic for those who might benefit from that in verse 21. Actually, did you want me to keep reading? No, it was just through verse 20. But you can read. There's a bunch of other stuff that's, uh, written here that you might be trying to work out. Like, is that talking about the new heavens and new earth? Um, yeah, and it's poetic and all this other stuff. So the other verse is Revelation 21, verses 1 through 4. And here it seems more abundantly clear that it's talking about a new heaven and new earth, like which Peter talked about.

1:01:52 Um, the elements will melt with fervent heat, and we await, uh, a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells. And so this seems to be talking about, like, the eternal state. Okay, not some temporary millennial kingdom or anything, but the eternal state. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven. And the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

1:02:12 And I saw the holy city. Now, some people think the phrase the sea was no more means that in the new heaven and the new earth, there's no ocean. That's not what I think this passage means. Just in case that's been you. I think that in their terminology, uh, earth refers to, uh, dry ground above water, and the sea was no more. Right. Just like the earth passed away and the sea was no more. You're thinking planet earth. And then the sea's. No, no, no, no, Earth. Like, here's the ocean and everything above it, that's earth. And then the sea also passed away. So it's just saying now we can think the planet.

1:02:49 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. So there's also a Jerusalem, uh, comment, just like there was in Isaiah. And, uh, yeah, he's definitely alluding to Isaiah here. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eye, and death shall be no more.

1:03:17 There's no more death. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. For the former things have passed away. This has got to be the eternal kingdom. There is no death. It's going to be a, uh, forever and always kingdom. And it's going to be heaven and earth have met. Now, God's not in heaven, just filling us with the Holy Spirit. He is present, right? And the new Jerusalem is discussed, and the light and all this beautiful stuff.

1:03:43 So I take this to be seemingly, clearly, to me, it seems clear that it's about the eternal kingdom and the Isaiah passage. I tend to think that it's about the new heavens and new earth that Peter talks about, Revelation talks about. And then that pressures me to try to interpret the concept of dying and sinner dying under the curse. That this is a poetic way of saying people will be living forever, um, or living a very long time. Maybe Isaiah doesn't specify forever in that passage, but revelation does.

1:04:15 So that's my tentative interpretation of Isaiah based upon a more clear passage that I think in Revelation. And this presents us with a rule of hermeneutics, which they say is, you interpret the unclear with the clear. It's a rule that is often abused, but it can be very, very useful. It is a rule we should have as we're approaching Scripture.

1:04:37 All right, number five, question five, from Parker Brantley, which says, my wife and I lost our baby, Rebecca, due to sids in April. I'm so sorry, guys. Um, I can't even. I can't even imagine. You say we are now pregnant again. Is there any advice? And can you pray for us? Thank you, brother. Absolutely. Um, advice as far as pregnancy, I don't have. Okay. I don't know the first thing about safety and all that kind of thing in pregnancy.

1:05:08 Um, I know that if it was me, I'd be scared. And if you do feel that way, that's okay. Um. It's okay. There's a time where you kind of almost step outside yourself and you go, I see myself. I see. I'm afraid. And that's totally natural. Of course it is. Um, when I'm faced with terrors of life, like the kind of terrors where you're like, that really could happen, and there's nothing I can do about it, you know?

1:05:39 Um, I try to tell myself some of the things the Psalms have said where it says, like, I will yet praise him. There's times in Psalms where, um, the psalmist is just declaring he's going to praise, like he's demanding it of his. Of himself. I will yet praise him. And he does it also with this. This may seem vague or weird, so forgive me if it's a little bit strange, but the psalmist can speak sometimes as though he's projecting what his hopes are for a future state his heart will be in, but it's not in yet. And that's why he says, like, why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? Place your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him. Um, and then he talks about how God is the help of my countenance, which is a really interesting phrase, the help of my countenance. My countenance, which is. You can think of it as your face, right? But. But your face represents how you're feeling. And it's like that sense of my whole attitude. So not fixing yourself, like being the solution to your own anxiety or fears. But there's, uh, a different kind of fixing where you fix your eyes on Jesus, right? I can't fix myself, but I can fix my eyes on Jesus, soul, hope in God. I will yet praise him. I will yet trust in him. And this requires, among other things, when you have something so precious as a child, is just recognizing the value that God is and the goodness of God and who he is.

1:07:04 Maybe this isn't landing for you. I'm sorry. If it's not. My encouragement would be to fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, the one who loves you, the one who loves the child you lost, the one who has with him the child you lost. And, um, he's got Rebekah with him. And, um, you can trust him, and you can trust him with your grief and your sorrow. And you go through seasons of hardship and read the Psalms and let the Psalms teach you how to work through that stuff with the Lord. Because it's like a blueprint, it's like a model of examples of how to grieve towards God. It's really amazing if you really look at it that way and notice what they do and what they don't do in the Psalms and how they'll walk up to the edge and not go beyond it with the complaints or the griefs and the hardships.

1:07:52 And a lot of people go beyond the edge. But there'd be just some advice I would give to you, and we would all love to pray for you. We're going to pray for you guys and your, uh, uh, baby. Uh, Lord, we pray for this couple and their little baby, and we pray that you'd protect this child in the womb, that you would just keep them from even having the scares. May there just be a smoothness and an ease in this pregnancy. And we pray that they would bring this child into the world, um, into the outer world, uh, with joy and pleasure and rejoicing. And that you would comfort their hearts for the loss of their Rebekah. And let them find that there is comfort in your scriptures and there's comfort in your spirit, and may they find comfort in each other. And we do pray that the two of them would have the tools on how to help each other to deal with grief or mourning or fear, and to encourage each other and draw closer, not further, through this time. In Jesus name, amen.

1:08:50 Amen. God bless you guys. All right, six. This is an anonymous question. It says, when I repent of habitual sins, I trust I'm forgiven. But I get afraid that God might discipline me. So I walk in fear. Is it wrong to ask him not to for mercy, since I know I would deserve it if he did? Psalm 6:1 2 makes me think that it's okay to ask, but I feel so wrong asking.

1:09:15 Look at Psalm 6. It says right here. O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. I'm going to read more. My soul is also greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long? Let's just read more of this psalm. I think it ties into some other stuff here. Turn. O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol who will give you praise.

1:09:52 Um, the psalmist in this particular case seems like he's worried he's actually going to die, like the discipline he'll receive from what he's done would actually end in death. And he's praying for deliverance from that. Uh, I'm weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes.

1:10:15 You ever had weak eyes? Because of grief I have. Uh, depart from me all you workers of evil. For the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

1:10:32 So in this passage, I think that he's. Yeah, he's asking like, lord, don't rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. It's not that he's saying, like, I don't want any discipline from God. But he is asking for it to be more gentle, like, for forgiveness and grace, and that he be rescued. Because even though he's like, my enemies are bad guys, yet he knows that there's things he's done that have earned him some suffering.

1:10:55 So he's praying for grace. And there's nothing wrong with praying for grace. Lord, I've done things that have earned me suffering, but I pray for your grace. But I think it's good to include in those prayers, Lord, if there's chastening that you want me to go through, that is for my benefit. I want to submit to that.

1:11:12 But I pray that you would go easy on me for my sake. I'm just worried about the process. And just be honest. Just be honest. Because, uh, as a father loves the son he's disciplining, he's chastening. So God, he chastens those he loves. Hebrews tells us this. You can trust God's hand of discipline. You can trust it.

1:11:31 So I would recommend, um, not praying, Lord, don't discipline. Maybe a better prayer is, lord, even if you chasten me, I pray that it would be with your grace. But I want to learn the things I need to learn. And I trust your hand. And I think that's a beautiful thing to pray. You don't have to. I'm just giving some counsel to you that I think is healthy. All right, we'll go to the next question. This is number seven in James 1:25. How would you describe what the law of liberty is?

1:11:58 Oh, that's. That's an interesting question. Every. This is one of those phrases where every time I come to it, I think again, like, do I understand this phrase? Like, I need, um. Look at all of the references that it offers here. Isn't that interesting? So I'm going to back up a little bit. It says here, um, but be doers of the word. This is verse 22. Be doers of the word and not hearers, only deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like.

1:12:38 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. Um, where are we here? If anyone thinks he's religious and does not bridle his tongue. Here's a specific example of a doing thing. If you think you're religious, but does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father. Is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

1:13:11 So it's interesting that two examples of what you would do in the doing of the law of liberty, or looking at the perfect law, is not, um, Sabbath obedience or specific 10 commandment stuff. It's bridle your tongue and then take care of those who are weak or disadvantaged, orphans and widows in their affliction, and keep yourself unstained from the world. It's very much like Book of Acts, like the advice Gentiles get about following Jesus.

1:13:42 So what is perfect law of liberty? Um, I think that if they were to just say the law, you might think it's talking about the Old Testament. But when it says perfect law, the law of liberty, well, the law of liberty is probably not the Old Testament law. It's probably more likely because that law didn't put anybody free. That law brought people into bondage.

1:14:05 It led to everybody's bondage. Their experience was that of bondage. M. Then we have, uh, 2:12 where he mentions it again. Let me back up. Um, he who said don't commit murder also said. He who said do not commit adultery also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you've become a transgressor of the law.

1:14:24 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. Again, there's this law of liberty, and it's, I think, contrasted with becoming a transgressor of the law. That's my impression here, although I think a more thorough study would be good for me before giving a ton of details here. Every time I come to this, I'm always still kind of going, hmm, so Galatians has some parallels. I'll just read these verses. Galatians 2:4. Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery. And the slavery was obedience to the law, like the letter of the law, for salvation, you got to become under the law of Moses.

1:15:05 Um, that would not be a law of liberty. Right? That's the law that brought bondage. Um, Galatians 5:13, Paul says, for you are Called to freedom, brothers only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. And this I take because the law of liberty in Christ, it sets me free from the law of sin and death.

1:15:24 That means in Christ I fulfilled the law. I'm free of its requirements, but I'm also free of my carnality. In my flesh. I don't have to keep sinning, so I walk in liberty and freedom from both of those things. The letter of the law, but also, um, the bondage of sin, so that I'm able to live holy unto God is the idea. That is how I would probably characterize the law of liberty.

1:15:48 Um, first Peter 2:16. Live as people who are free, uh, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. And uh, two more verses. Second Peter 2:19. They promised them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. Echoing Jesus. He who commits sin is a slave of sin. And John 8:32. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

1:16:14 So, yeah, the basic idea here is I don't think law of liberty refers to the Old Testament law, although you learn things from the Old Testament law that are educational and true, and there's moral truths that are there for sure, but you're not under the law. It is this, um, new covenant experience in Christ. The new. You might call the new law the law of liberty, where I'm free from both the sin and die of the Old Testament law, but I'm also free from my flesh and its controlling powers so that I might walk freely in holiness, where he writes his law in my heart, not just on stone tablets, you might say. So trying to bring some different thoughts together.

1:16:54 All right, number eight. Cameron Donaldson says, help. Learning to think biblically about everything has made me very annoying to my believing loved ones with a bad theology. How can I lovingly correct them without being the. Well, actually, guy, I have that meme in my head when I read. Well, actually, it's the dude with the glasses kind of chubby.

1:17:14 Um, so that's a great question. Um, I don't. I don't know if I'm the best one to answer it. Um, I've gotten a lot better about this over time. Um, when you, when you, when you love the truth of God's word in you, love the details of it. And there are, there are those who are not accustomed to thinking about those things. And you're constantly bringing it up like did you know this or that or you quoted that verse, but did you know this? Like, your passion can be seen as very annoying and unwelcomed. Um, and it's sad. And this is kind of what Jesus says. The prophet has, uh, no honor in his own country, his own town.

1:18:01 That this is kind of the thing. Like, if you're the person in your circle, and I'm not talking about myself here, because that's weird, but if you're a person in your circle who is getting really serious about Scripture, and yet you have a lot of people who just aren't. They think they are, but when's the last time they studied a book of the Bible? Never. Right? Um, and you start telling them, like, did you know this or that or this or that? You're trying to draw them into your love and passion of Scripture. But it can be seen as you're just constantly telling me that I'm wrong about things.

1:18:31 And so here I think that we can just have, um, some wisdom and say, imagine Jesus walking with the disciples. How frequently did they say or do something that he could have corrected? Like, how often do you think that happened? Was it, like, every 10 minutes? How often was it. Jesus himself would have been selective about what to say and when.

1:18:59 Um, another example of this is in the book of Hebrews, where he says, I long to give you guys the meat, the nutritious but harder to digest stuff of God's word, but I have to feed you with milk because you're like babies. There is a sense in which you go, where are they at? Uh, in their walk with God and in their knowledge of Scripture? Let me give them the food that they can digest.

1:19:24 So I would say, limit how often you correct things. You don't need to correct everything all the time. And am I offering correction that is digestible to the person I'm giving it to? And it may not always be. And there's times where you just offer rebuke. It's not a normal thing, but there are times.

1:19:39 But in general, I go, okay, what can they handle? And so I often find myself wanting to say 10 things and saying one thing, because I think this may benefit them. I'll just say one little thing. But, Mike, you just left, like, 10 wrong ideas on the table. And I was like, dude, I would never be able to get through them anyways. They would never receive it, not in this setting. And I would lose the one because I tried to give them so many.

1:20:02 So being patient with people and knowing God's patience with you is a good thing. And that's how I've handled that. That's like a wisdom thing. I'm trying to apply a few different things. I see in Scripture, Jesus is not constantly correcting every little thing, it seems, from the disciples. And this, um, this sense of meeting people where they're at and realizing that their sanctification, their growth, is step by step and not leap by leap a lot of the time.

1:20:29 So there's a few thoughts for you. Yeah. Um, I'd also recommend reading the Book of Proverbs. Just read through the Book of Proverbs and think about reading it specifically. Looking for tips on how to interact with people that you're finding conflict with in these areas. Yeah. But, uh, as a general rule in life, the less often you talk, the more people will listen.

1:20:54 Which I know having a YouTube channel where I do long videos makes it. But in life, I don't do. I don't monologue for an hour and a half at people in real life. Okay. The less you engage, you say one thing. They heard it say 50 things. They lost a lot of it. So, uh, let's see. Number nine. TheBarncats119 says, can you explain the 314 generations and how they don't match other genealogies in the Bible? Why did Matthew combine some generations to make the number 14 work? I'll explain some of that. It's a little bit much to explain like Matthew compared to, like, a bunch of different genealogies in the Bible, but we can talk a little bit about it. So, um, in Matthew's genealogy, uh, he sets it up in a unique way. He says the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. That's not how Luke sets it up at all. So it's genealogy of Jesus. And then he calls him the son of David. He jumps up a whole bunch of generations right to David, and then he jumps up a whole bunch more straight to Abraham. Because this is a messianic genealogy. He specifically wants to show the messianic quality that Jesus has. Luke does it differently. Luke doesn't start with Jesus, and then he works his way towards Adam. And, uh, here we start with Abraham, um, and we work our way down to Jesus.

1:22:12 The names in Luke and Matthew don't line up perfectly. I'll use Luke and Matthew as example. Luke will have many different names, and then all of a sudden they come together. But there's a lot of disparity between the two, which, in short, has caused many people, including myself, to think that Luke is giving Mary's genealogy, and Matthew is giving Joseph's genealogy. And there are some hints at this in the passage.

1:22:35 Um, so why would you do that? Well, Jesus is born of a virgin, so his biological ancestry comes only through Mary. But his, uh, supposed. What they thought was his father. And as well as his adopted dad, the one who actually raised him was Joseph. And so we have the genealogy of both of them, and they both go through David and they both go through Abraham, of course.

1:22:58 So then you read it, and he is going to say at the end that there are, uh, from Abraham to David, 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, there are 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon, the deportation to Babylon, to the Christ, from Babylon to Jesus, 14 generations. But when you actually count the numbers, this isn't what it sounds like. Right. So Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob. Then we have Judah, uh, and his brothers. And, uh, so we'll take that as Judah. Ah, and his brothers. Anyway, I'm not going to try to count them all while I'm reading them on screen. This is kind of hard, but, uh, there's one off.

1:23:43 There's not enough. There's like 13 in the next. There's 14 in one category, 13 in the next category. Well, he counts David twice. And you're like, what? He counts David twice? Yeah. No, he literally goes, uh, from. Let me scroll down. Um, as my memory serves, that is the second grouping is the one that you don't have enough, uh, for 14. You have 13. I think it's the second grouping.

1:24:10 And that the reason is that he counts him twice. So, um, he goes from Abraham to David are 14 generations. That includes Abraham and David. And then from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. That includes David as well. Right. Then you have 14. So what is he doing here? Well, we're not Jewish and we're not in the first century, so it doesn't click for us.

1:24:33 It's a memory device. It's, uh, among other things. So one thing is you're helping remember the genealogy of Christ because you're breaking it into 314 statements. Also, David sees the son of David and David, if memory serves me, it comes out to 14. And so there's something about the, the, um, uh, numbers associated with the name that are also being connected to this concept as well.

1:24:58 Genealogies and recounting genealogies is an important thing in their culture at that time. And it's important for the nature of who Christ is, making it memorable, making it simple, making it easy. That is useful. And that was common because you're literally giving a big list of names. One of the things he does is he wants to have three sets of 14 and he changes things a little bit. Matthew will skip a generation. He'll skip a generation because it's, oh, that's his grandpa. Like, maybe I'll skip a generation. And the reason for this is to simplify things. Maybe he has a particular reason why he doesn't want that guy's name listed. It's not part of the point he's making.

1:25:36 That was not a bad thing. Okay. They weren't expecting the genealogies to always be identically perfect with each other. And so I think that we have to recognize genealogies in these texts. In Scripture is like its own genre, almost the genealogy. And it's strange and foreign to us because we're so divorced from our ancestors. I can't name 10, Father, Grandfather, great, great, great, great, great, great. I can't name them even. And, um, that's just our culture. But they needed to connect it and Jesus needed to be remembered as being genetically connected to David, uh, and Abraham. There's a few thoughts for you. Um, yeah, these things should not trouble you.

1:26:20 I've seen someone make an atheist make a really big deal about this. Like, it's not really 14. And you're like, hold on, slow down and just think. The authors of the scripture are pretty smart guys. Matthew writes brilliant, brilliant stuff. Do you think he didn't know how to count the names, or is he trying to say something different than what you think he's saying?

1:26:37 I think he's trying to say something different than what you think he's saying. We're just not familiar with genealogies. We'll go to the next question, number 10, last one. Um, this is from Jason Lawrence, who says, Mike, if Scripture permits, casting lots. Proverbs 16:33, Leviticus 16, 8, Joshua 18:10, and Acts 1:26. Is playing the lottery without greed sinful?

1:27:01 This is like the. I found a loophole. You know, let's talk about two different issues here. Casting lots and playing the lottery. These are completely different issues. Just. I know it says lot. Ery, um, casting lots was. It was a chance thing that you did. You threw lots to. But we have no examples of them gambling with lots. Like, to get money, I'm going to put money in, and then the winner gets more money than they put in.

1:27:30 Um, we did see them casting lots even in the Book of Acts when they. They offer two guys to potentially replace Judas in Acts chapter one. And Peter's like, lord, we think both these guys are qualified. Um, this is my paraphrase, it's not a quote. Um, both these guys seem qualified. Uh, may you guide us into who should replace Judas, because they were partners, two and two and two. Somebody had Judas as his two by two partner, and that guy had no partner now. And now there was not 12 apostles.

1:27:56 So they cast lots and Matthias is chosen. Um, now some people say they think this was bad, that this is before the Holy Spirit was given and they were casting lots. And so Paul is the real 12th apostle. It's not Matthias. I don't hold that view at all. I don't think the passage is implying that. That's a whole other discussion. I'm not going to get into it. But basically these examples of casting lots are, um, the Israelites or the apostles or whoever saying, lord, we've gotten our discernment as far as we can. We genuinely can't tell what you would want us to do beyond this. So we're going to throw lots, trusting that you will, assure the result is your will. It's a way of making random chance the deciding factor when you just don't have the wisdom to go any further. And you got to move forward and trusting that God is in charge. Now, I will acknowledge that we don't see them doing this after this.

1:28:49 Um, this is the last time we see lots being cast. And many people, especially modern, you know, Christians are like, that would be weird. You don't cast lots. I'm not so strict on that myself. Okay, I don't do it. I can't think of any time I've rolled a die. If it's between 4 and 6, we'll move to Texas, and if it's between 1 and 3, we'll move to Hawaii or something. Which we're not doing either of those. But I've never done something like that to make a decision.

1:29:19 Um, I pray, I seek the Lord. I try to make the wisest choice I can, but I can't say it's unbiblical, even though many, many people do say it's unbiblical. Uh, I don't think they have a strong case for it. I think they can just say, after the Holy Spirit was given, we don't see them doing it. So the Holy Spirit should be guiding us. He's our guider, our guidance. We don't need lots. And I say, that seems like a valid case, but I wouldn't put ironclad you know, rules based upon it. Because, you know, what happened in Luke and John, Jesus, uh, was it Luke or John?

1:29:54 In Luke, I believe it is John. I can't remember. Now, Jesus breathes on the disciples, not the giving of the Spirit to everybody. He breathes and he says, receive the Spirit and he breathes on them. And that's before Pentecost and the falling down of the Spirit. And so, uh, can you really say that Peter didn't have the leading of the Spirit in this? Like, I don't know. I don't know. So I go, look, lots were valid in the Old Testament. They were used even in the New Testament at one time. I'm not going to make a big proclamation against that, even though I personally don't like the idea. Okay, yeah, it rubs me strange. But I can't just make rules on Scripture, um, that aren't clear in Scripture and that seem to go against at least one clear New Testament passage and against a trend in the Old Testament. So what about gambling, though? Is gambling like casting lots? No, I'm not making decisions. I'm not seeking God's will. This has nothing to do with discernment or, uh, help me, Lord, by guiding my life. It has nothing to do with that sort of thing. I'm trying to get money. So, like, if you play the lottery, you said without greed, like, if you play the lottery, you're playing to win money.

1:31:04 I'm not going to call that necessarily greed because greed is sinful. But you are trying to get money. It's not casting lots to discern God's wisdom. Um, yeah, it's just not the same thing. It's a completely separate issue. Is gambling inherently sinful? That's the question that you really have to ask. Is gambling inherently sinful? There's two different ways to ask it. Is gambling sinful versus is gambling inherently sinful? If it's inherently sinful, it's always wrong, no matter what. If you bring five bucks and go to your buddy's house on a Tuesday night and you guys pull out poker chips and you play Texas Hold' Em and you all put five bucks in and the winner gets 25 bucks because there's five of you, and next week you do it again, I'm like, that's inherently sinful. If gambling is inherently sinful, that was actually wrong. You did it. A lot of people believe that. I don't think we have scriptural warrant for that.

1:31:56 I don't think we do. And there's some gambling that can be done where you're playing odds and you're actually making money reliably. Now I don't do that. I don't know how to do that. I'm informed that this is a thing. Um, but it's also dangerous. Okay? People have lost money. It's addictive. Uh, you have control. You could stop it. It has that effect on many people. And how many college educations have been dumped into the slot machines of Las Vegas?

1:32:20 Gambling is something that is often sinful in my opinion. You shouldn't say it's inherently sinful. I don't see validation for that in scripture. That seems to be more of a tradition that we have. And so if somebody says, I want to go to the movies and it's going to cost me 20 bucks and I'm going to watch a fun movie and I had a good night and someone else goes, I'm going to go to a casino and I'm m going to spend 20 bucks and I won't spend a penny more and I'm going to just play some games and ah, like it's paying for my entertainment and maybe I'll win something and maybe I won't and I walk away and I never spend more than the amount I intended to spend going in.

1:32:58 I'm like, I don't see a moral problem here. Unless by exposing yourself to this, you're entering into what becomes a problem over time. And I just don't have the wisdom to tell everybody that, yes, that's the blanket rule. None of you can do any of this stuff. So I've given it a lot of thought. Maybe I should do a video on gambling sometime. I don't think it's inherently sinful. I don't think there's a case to be made for that. I think it's risky. I think that it can be done foolishly.

1:33:24 But. And I don't gamble, I don't enjoy gambling personally. Um, I don't want to go and put money on a roulette wheel that feels like such a waste of money. I have no desire to do it. So I'm not defending my own behavior here. Um, the one thing I would probably enjoy is, and I've never even done it, it would be like a $5 Texas hold' em game with some buddies. And I wouldn't even want it to be a lot of money because I don't want it to be about that. I just wanted to have it be fun. Like have it where there's a little bit of like weight when you put your chips in it means a little bit of something to make it more fun.

1:33:54 I would enjoy that. Never done it, never tried to plan it. But I wouldn't see sin in that. I would see a group of guys spend a good time together and enjoying each other. And if someone says, but I'm going to put more in, I'm going to risk it. I'm going to risk more and more and more. And they start doing it compulsively out of, like a carnal desire. Yeah, absolutely. That's sin.

1:34:17 But that's how I would answer that question. Um, playing the lottery without greed. I mean, I'm sure that's possible, but, uh, but it's more about keeping it in its place. Moderation. I guess that's my answer on that. I probably should do a video on gambling and answer a lot more questions about it and bring more text of scripture to the front to discuss it. So consider this just me off the cuff sharing a few thoughts. Um, so for those who are going to do videos about how evil Mike is, that he's like, he's such a supported gambling this, then, uh, maybe wait till I actually do a fuller teaching on it now. You won't wait? You're already making your video.

1:34:53 Sorry. I get attacked so much online. I've become numb. I've become numb. All right, bonus question from Sarah Zimmerman. Oh, it was comment. It was, uh, happy boss's day off to the best boss ever. Uh, thanks, Sarah Zimmerman. Uh, she's an amazing, amazing, uh, director of communications, I think, is. Is that the official title I keep forgetting?

1:35:18 Um, but who also assists me in many ways. So thanks, guys for joining. We'll be back next Friday. And the first question I'm going to tackle, unless I do a video independently of it, is the death penalty. Should it be televised? I might just do a video independently before that because it's such a topic right now. And I think I have clear scripture that. A scripture that's fairly clear on it, that weighs in on it, and I think provides us with really good clarity. So I'm going to, uh, be doing that. So maybe I'll do it next time. In the meantime, um, I have one other announcement, but I'll make that as a separate video. So let's just pray and we'll go about our days. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for sticking around for so long. A long one today, my goodness.

1:36:00 Um, Father, we pray right now for Muslims around the world. We pray for Muslims that need Jesus, that the light of the gospel would pierce more and more into Islamic communities and to synagogues, that people would have dreams of Jesus, that they would encounter Christians and be asking questions, that they would start reading the Bible, even if in secret. And we pray for their protection, that as Muslims get saved and they turn their hearts and lives to Christ, that they be protected. That government rules and countries that persecute former Muslims would be changed, and that the door would be open so that the fake 98% Muslim ratings of some countries wouldn't have to be there anymore, because people could openly proclaim that they're not Muslim or that they believe in Jesus.

1:36:43 So we pray that you would move the world to change those things and that you would release the grip that Islam has, uh, in the countries and communities that are under its terror. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen.