Searches every word across every teaching, article, and Q&A on the site.
Searches every word across every teaching, article, and Q&A on the site.
Pastor Paul: Hi everyone, welcome back. I'm Pastor Paul LeBoutillier, here with my wife Sue. We're back with more Bible questions. What do we have first? Sue: Good. Alright. Let's start with Giovanni, who asks, "Is it bad or unwise to date at 18 years old? Also, is it unwise to date for two years plus before actually marrying? I'd like to date. I am 18, but I don't think I would be able to marry for at least two years. I was just wondering if dating that long could be dangerous because of temptation. I've heard different answers from different people and would like your perspective on it." Pastor Paul: The reason you're going to get different answers from different people is that people are different. Cultures are different. Family backgrounds are different. Yes. There's a lot of variables. Individual abilities to maintain a relationship without falling into sexual sin is going to be very different. You've got some couples who are separated by maybe hundreds of miles during an engagement period. Well, for them, they could probably have a two-year engagement and not have a problem at all. By the same token, you've got people who are living close and they say, well, but we've got to wait two years. Well, that can be very unwise. When you see each other every day. Yes. Because that move, that desire to fulfill all areas of intimacy is very, very strong in a couple. Is it bad or unwise to date at 18 if you know that you're not going to marry or you wouldn't even be able to think about marrying for a couple of years? Yeah. I would say in most cases, I would encourage someone not to start dating if they know they're not going to be able to finish to get married. I think you're putting yourself into unnecessary temptation in a situation like that. We live in modern day Corinth. Sexual perversity and freedom is incredibly rampant. I think it's unwise. I would start dating when you're ready to get married. I mean, that's just wisdom. Sue: Sure. Yeah. Very good. Luis is from Portugal and said, "This past Sunday at church, we studied John 20, 20 to 23, but I'm still struggling to understand verse 23 in particular. I understand that this passage has its context, but what did Jesus intend to communicate to the disciples through these words? Could you please help clarify the meaning of this verse?" Pastor Paul: Well, let's start by looking at the passage that Luis is struggling with. It's really the statement at the very end. John 20, 20 through 23 is the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to his disciples. It says, when he had said this, he showed them his hands in his side. And then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. And Jesus said to them again, peace be with you as the father has sent me, even so I am sending you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. And here's what Luis is kind of stumbling over. It's where Jesus says, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. And I suppose Luis and others read this verse and it almost sounds like we're given this kind of freedom to arbitrarily waltz into someone's life and say, you're forgiven and you're not, you know. But these things are always meant to go along with the gospel, okay? So Jesus wasn't saying to these men or to the body of Christ at large that we are free to arbitrarily extend forgiveness or arbitrarily withhold forgiveness. He's telling us that our authority is connected to the gospel and that when people come to faith in Jesus Christ and they receive him as their savior, that we have the freedom and the authority now to be able to say, your sins are forgiven and they are forgiven. And that's the essence of what Jesus is saying. When you say that, it is done. It is done in heaven. And when you say to someone who rejects the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, your sins are withheld. Well, that's what's going on in heaven too. He's saying, it's not just your words, there's a foundational connection between what you're saying and what's happening in heaven because it is in keeping with what you know to be true about the gospel message and whether someone receives or rejects it. Sue: Right. That's very good. Larry is from Illinois, and he said, "My wife was recently teaching the women's group on Matthew 25 and came to verse 31 to 46. Some say that as Christians, we must stand before the judgment seat of God. But if we are justified through faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross, has not God already judged us?" Pastor Paul: Listen, there are a lot of passages in the Bible where Jesus talks about judgment. He does talk about the fact that everybody will stand before the judgment. And people, you know, hear those statements and it causes them to actually doubt the veracity and the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross. The fact is, we are told in the scriptures that when Jesus gave his life on the cross for us, he bore our punishment. And Jesus himself declared victoriously on the cross, it is finished. It's paid in full. It's done. So for those who are of faith and who are trusting Jesus and what he did, the judgment is passed. It is truly passed. And so Larry and his wife can be able to say, listen, what Jesus is saying is he's saying He's basically giving a general statement regarding those who have not allowed Jesus to remove their punishment and their judgment. Sue: So yeah. Good. Good to clear that up. Sue says, "Hello, Pastor Paul and Miss Sue." Pastor Paul: You mean there's another Sue? Sue: There's another one. Somewhere in the world. There's two of us, apparently. Pastor Paul: Wow. That's incredible. Sue: "Thank you for your Bible teachings. As the Bible speaks about remembering Christ through communion, what biblical support is there for doing it only quarterly instead of more often?" Pastor Paul: Here's the thing. There is no support for doing it in any sort of a timeframe at all. There's no support for doing it weekly. Sue: Or daily. Pastor Paul: Right. Or monthly. Sue: Right. Pastor Paul: Or yearly. Sue: Yeah. Pastor Paul: All the Bible says is, as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me. And that's the point. There are no specific instructions. There are people who think there are. Sue: Right. Pastor Paul: But they're wrong. There aren't any specific instructions. He's saying, when you do this, make sure it's all about remembering. Yeah. Right? As often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me. How often are we to do it? He doesn't say. Sue: Yeah. Pastor Paul: Just when you do it, remember. That's it. Sue: Right. That's it. Pastor Paul: And by the way, some churches do it every service. Sue: Sure. Pastor Paul: And some do it once a month. Sue: Yeah. Pastor Paul: And some maybe do it somewhere in between. So the reason is, is because the Bible doesn't specify. Sue: Right. Laura is from North Carolina. Pastor Paul: Oh, okay. Sue: And she said, "If someone has heard the gospel but does not trust Jesus before the rapture and is left behind, do they still have a chance to be saved during the Great Tribulation?" Pastor Paul: I can tell Laura hasn't gone through my Revelation study, because I answered this question. Sue: Yeah. Pastor Paul: Yes. Yes. Many, many people will come to faith in Jesus after the church is caught away. And they will come to the Lord. They will realize the things they were told were true. They will embrace Jesus as their Savior. And most of them will be martyred for their faith, because they will refuse to follow the beast. Sue: Yeah. Yeah. So the point is that the opportunity for salvation does not end at the rapture. Pastor Paul: That is exactly true. Sue: Yep. Georgette said, "Did the Lord create the earth in just six days, or did it take many years? The reason I'm asking is because in 2 Peter 3, 8, it says, with the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. Can I have some clarification on this, please?" Pastor Paul: Yes. Peter wrote that saying, you know, with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day. He's making a statement to help human beings who are caught in time—we're really prisoners of time—to help us to understand how God dwells in eternity, and that God doesn't view time in the way we do, because He's not bound by time. What Peter was not attempting to convey was an equation by which we can figure things out that are related to time. For example, the Bible says in Genesis that the Lord created the universe, or all that needed to be created, in six days. And there's no reason not to believe that it was literal six days. None whatsoever. The word that is used there for a day is used in the same way for just a 24-hour period elsewhere. So it's not an equation. It's not a clue to help us date how long things took, you know. So no, it's God created everything in a literal six days. Sue: Yeah. Jason is from Iowa, and he says, "My question has to do with the number 40. Sometimes given as 40 days and 40 nights, sometimes just as 40 days in the Bible. In the past, I belonged to a mainstream church in which the pastor taught that 40 days and 40 nights was just an idiom for a long time and was not meant to be taken literally. Are the references to a literal 40 days and nights, and how much does that matter?" Pastor Paul: One of the rules of interpretation that I've always abided by in my own personal study of God's word is, if a passage appears to be literal, take it as literal unless the context or other information in the passage causes you to think otherwise. Sure. I don't believe, first of all for Jason, yes, the number 40 pops up a lot. Yeah. So is there a pattern there of a repetition of 40? Yes. Are they literal days? I believe they are. What does it mean? I have no idea. I've told you many times in the past and others that I've never gotten into numerology because it's just not a study that God has led me into. As a Bible teacher, I try to just teach what's there and I don't really go digging too deeply for what isn't there. So I don't know what those things mean. I do know that it's a repeated term, a repeated number, as is the number seven, as is the number 10, as is the number 70. And then we know in the book of Revelation that the number of the beast is man's number, which is 666, never quite reaching seven, the number of perfection. So what do all those things mean? I don't know. I do not know. And one of the reasons I've never really delved into it is because I've never really seen the purpose behind it. Sue: Which kind of answers his question, how much does it matter? Pastor Paul: Yeah. Well, that's a good question. You and I both know Jason. He's a wonderful man, supports our ministry. I wish I could give a good answer here, but it's just not something that I've ever dug into or just spent a lot of time trying to figure out because I've always felt like the things that are there and very obvious in the Bible, there's so many of those that I felt like to take time away from what's obvious to study what's not would be kind of a waste of my time. Sue: So he might have to kind of continue his search elsewhere. But I like what you said about if it can be taken literally, go ahead and do that. Pastor Paul: Yeah. There's no reason not to think that the rain during the great flood didn't actually fall for 40 days and 40 nights, that Jesus wasn't 40 days in the wilderness being tempted and so forth, and that any other numeric reference isn't literal. Sue: Sure. Yeah. Alright. Thomas said, "I was recently pointed to a section of scripture that has me questioning if Enoch actually died. The verses that bring about the questions are between Genesis 5, 24 in Hebrews 11, 5, and the verses of John 3, 13 in Hebrews 11, 13. I'm not expecting a full theological explanation, but there is safety in a multitude of counselors is why he's asking." Pastor Paul: There you go. The first two passages that Thomas quoted there, Genesis 5, 24, and Hebrews 11, 5 are very clear. And they say that Enoch simply lived a period of time, and then the Lord took him. And then Hebrews 11 goes on even clearer and says he did not die. Okay. So the Bible is very clear on this point. Now, what is happening here is that Thomas is looking at some other passages, and he's trying to figure out if maybe these are contradicting what he had read previously about Enoch not dying. So he's wondering, well, maybe he did die. And the first passage he looked at was John 3, 13, which is Jesus saying, no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. And Thomas is thinking this thing through, and he says, if Enoch was taken, he had to have been just taken to heaven. But Jesus clearly said, nobody has gone to heaven except the one who came from heaven, and speaking of himself. So he's saying, well, then maybe he did die, and he's just kind of in his grave waiting to be resurrected, right? And then the other passage is in Hebrews 11, which is really interesting because right after the author of Hebrews clearly says Enoch did not die, he goes on to say in verse 13, as he's mentioning all these people who had faith in God, he says, these all died in faith. And so Thomas is like, well, wait a minute. He told me earlier that Enoch didn't die, and now he's saying these all died in faith. Enoch is the exception. The writer of Hebrews knows that Enoch is the exception. The Bible says it in Genesis that Enoch is the exception. He doesn't have to say, they all except Enoch died in faith. So what is happening is Thomas is allowing verses to kind of shake him a little bit on what is clearly revealed. So here's what we need to do in these sort of situations. When something is very clearly outlined in the word of God, such as the fact that Enoch did not experience physical death, okay? If we hear something that seems to rattle that, there's an exception that's being spoken about, and we need to look more deeply into it. And I'm thankful for his question because that's what he's trying to do, is look more deeply into it. And the fact of the matter is, Enoch was taken by God, but he didn't go to heaven. He went to paradise. He went to Abraham's bosom. Jesus tells us in a passage in Luke that that's where people prior to his death, burial, and resurrection were kept. They did not go into the grave and fall asleep, right? Your body is the only thing that dies. Your soul and your spirit can't die. They keep living. And so people prior to the death of Jesus and his resurrection were taken to a holding place. And again, Jesus explains this in the book of Luke when he's talking about Lazarus, the diseased beggar who dies, and he talks about where Lazarus was taken, and this isn't the same Lazarus he raised from the dead. So people weren't taken directly to heaven under the old covenant. They were put either in a place of punishment or torment, awaiting judgment, or they were put into a place of comfort based on their faith, right? Once Jesus was raised from the dead, now heaven's opened. And as Paul says in the New Testament, we are confident, and we say that it is better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. So we are now present with the Lord when we die now in Jesus Christ. That's the answer to the question. Sue: That's really good. There's a gal from the Philippines who says, "When our ladies group is receiving prayer requests, we're told to always ask for the full name of those for whom we are praying. Given my background in the new age where I grew up in a culture of folk healing, full names were often used for workings, which makes this practice of getting full names feel uncomfortable or uncomfortably familiar," she says. "I know God knows exactly who we're talking about without a full name. So I'm struggling with where to stand on this and how to respond or react." Pastor Paul: Well, bless her heart. She's being triggered by something from her past. And she says here, and she makes a very nice word of it, under the new age group she was in, they would do workings, like incantations and that sort of things. But they would always require a full name of the person to whom they were doing this. And now here she is, a born again believer, and they're asking for full names when they pray for people. Well, I would tell this person, sounds like, it looks like her name is Ish from the Philippines. I would say, honey, this is a trigger for you because of your past, but they're not doing what's wrong. They simply want to know the person and speak the person's name before the throne of God to bring that person personally. Now, can God know who we're talking about without a name? Of course. Sure He can. Do you absolutely have to have a name? No. Is it helpful sometimes to have a name? Yes. I like to have a name when I'm praying for people. We get prayer requests from people quite often by email, and I will, and they'll often leave out the name, pray for my uncle. He's going through surgery and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I'll write back. I'll say, yeah, we'd be happy to pray for your uncle. What's his name? And usually we only want like a first name, but we simply want to personalize it, rather than saying, this person who wrote in, her uncle, it's kind of impersonal. And so the desire to have a name is to personalize a prayer intercession. It's not to make it more effective or to fill God in on something He doesn't know. So I would just tell this gal, this is kind of your trigger, and you need to know that everything that they're doing is okay. And this is not what you did in the past, and you don't need to worry about that. Sue: Yeah. And this speaks to probably many people's triggers in different ways. We all have something in our past that we would rather forget about. And then we enter into a church environment, a group of Christians, and there's going to be things that we're just going to have to move through. And we really probably need to ask ourselves the question, is it really this important, or is it inside of me that I'm making a bigger deal of this? Pastor Paul: Yeah. Is this a deal to me, or is this a big, a really, truly a deal? Sue: Yeah. So it's great that she asked, and that's a good answer. Appreciate the question. Joyce says, "Once in a sermon, the pastor said, the internet is given by the devil. Is that true?" She wants to know. Pastor Paul: I would not agree with that statement, because I don't believe the internet is good or bad. I think it can be good or bad depending on what we do with it. And what that all boils down to is really the heart of man. It is man's heart that can either do good or do evil. And the internet is certainly used for evil in some cases. Sue: Well, the internet is made up of input. Pastor Paul: Yes. Sue: Well, it's made up of people's input. And so those people being either desiring to do evil or desiring to do good, that's what you're going to get on the internet. Pastor Paul: It's really like anything else that is a thing. It's all how we use it. The thing is not evil in and of itself. Mankind is evil and can use things for evil or good. Here we are on the internet, and we're answering Bible questions. We've got teachings from the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation. I don't think that's the devil. You know what I'm saying? That would be kind of defeating his purpose. So it is a thing, and it can be used for good or bad, depending on the people that are employing the internet. So the inspiration is use it for good. Use it for the kingdom of God. Take what is given and use it for the kingdom of God and for his glory. In all that you do, do it for the glory of God. Sue: Right. And that would stand for the internet, for your home, for your car, for your possessions, for your employment, all those things. Pastor Paul: Everything. Sue: Everything. Use it for the glory of God. Pastor Paul: Amen. Sue: Amen. Pastor Paul: And that's it. Alright. Well, those are the questions that we have for this episode. Good questions. Thank you for sending them in. If you would like to send a question our way, just address an email to questions at lifebibleministry.com and we'll get to your question just as soon as we can. Until we meet again, God bless you. Have a good rest of your week. Bye-bye.
