January 2025

A lot of January questions.

I think I noticed that even one came in the mail, somebody sent one through snail mail Sue: That still works. People can still do that.

It’s kind of surprised me a little bit. Anyway, let's get started.

Well, Matthew says,

It's based on the time that the wise men gave to King Herod. He used that time frame to decide how many baby boys he was going to murder, and it was two and under. So that's what it's based on. We believe that they came probably in sometime, perhaps in the second year of after Jesus had been born.

Sure. And that would make a really long nativity play if it was accurate.

So the wise men did not come to the manger. They were living in a home by then.

From YouTube @mlady8137 says,

This is really a very good question, and I'm glad that people ask it because it strikes at the issue, ultimately, of the justice of God. And the Bible does speak about our spiritual condition before we come to Christ as being blind. It speaks of us about being lost. The Apostle Paul makes some very difficult statements, saying that the person without the Spirit cannot understand the things of the Spirit, and yet we can witness to someone, and we can share the gospel, and they can comprehend it enough to put their faith in Jesus Christ. So we're given statements that make relative generalities about the spiritual condition of man. But if you take those in more of a black and white sort of a way, you're going to say, there's no way anybody could be saved. In fact, Calvinism, or a form of Calvinism, actually uses this to say, you have to become born again to receive the Gospel, to even hear the Gospel, which I think is nonsense. I believe what we're talking about here, and what this question is grounded in is, frankly, a lot of unknowns as it relates to our spiritual condition, how much God works with people when they have a desire to know the truth, and so many other things that really come into play. In other words, what I'm saying is we grapple. Trying to understand these things while seeing through a mirror darkly. And this is one of those passages. In fact, I've mentioned several times that at the at the end of the 11th chapter of Romans, after the Apostle Paul has absolutely done a masterful job of talking about salvation, he ends that chapter by saying this, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Then listen to this. How unsearchable His judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. So here's the Apostle Paul who has just written this incredible piece about the salvation that is ours through Jesus Christ. And then he ends it by saying how beyond us all of this is? It comes down to a statement that I've quoted many, many times from the book of Genesis, Chapter 18, when Abraham was questioning the whole process of God's justice, as it related to his nephew, Lot, and the fact that God had communicated to Abraham that he was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding villages, and Abraham asked the question, will not the Judge of all the earth do right? And when we're thinking about this, just as this person who wrote in was thinking about it, we have to factor in that God is perfect in justice. In other words, no one's ever going to say to him. When we do know the facts that wasn't fair. He is perfectly fair, and his justice is without flaw, and that's the thing we have to keep in mind. Knowing answers to questions like this has more to do with knowing God than it has to do knowing the facts behind the question, if that helps.

That's a quotable right there. I like that. Another YouTube user, I won't try the handle, says,

Well, the burial clothes weren't clothes that you would wear. They were just pieces of cloth they would wrap around the dead person. So burial clothes really just means cloth. Now, how much they dressed Jesus before they even put the burial cloths around his body? We don't know. Because when the Romans crucified people, they took off all their clothes. We see pictures of Jesus on the cross with a loin cloth or something around his midsection. That's put there for to be modest and to be respectful. The Romans didn't have that kind of respect for people they were crucifying. They stripped them naked. So I'm guessing that Joseph of Arimathea, who took Jesus' body down off the cross, and probably with some help of others, they probably clothed him in some sort of garment, and then they wrapped the body in what we called the burial clothes. But they were just long strips of cloth that were almost glued together with these heavy ointments and lotions and things.

But the question is, where did he get clothes to wear? What they're asking.

Like I said, Joseph of Arimathea, very well had. There were clothes beneath the burial closet very possibly. When you have the power to be raised from the dead, you could probably find some clothes too.

Probably. @Stevenpage3121 says,

Yes, I believe there is. And I've said this many times, get busy serving. Just serve. Assuming that Steven attends a church, most churches, ours included, we're constantly putting out information where people can get involved, whether it's children's ministry, men's ministry, women's ministry, ushers, security ministry, you name it. Just start serving. Just get involved. Do what you need to do. Audio, visual ministry, there's so many things that churches today want people to connect.

And not every spiritual gift is ultimately going to be used inside the church, but inside the church is a really great place to find out what your spiritual gift is to try things out and then you can go from there.

I have said many times that I had no idea what my spiritual gift was until I was asked. You and I were asked to be part of a youth group, and we still had no idea we were going to be teaching. And then when the other youth leader left us in charge of this youth group, somebody had to teach the Bible. And I just got up, and it was through that I understood that God had given me a gift of teaching. So I just really encourage people just get involved. And even if you have to spend a year or two or three or five just checking things off as not your spiritual gift, you're still going to be actively serving in your fellowship, and that's going to be a blessing to your fellowship, and you're going to learn things that you're not gifted for, but that's fine.

Useful. @bojibear7957 asks,

It appears that he does based on a passage in the book of Revelation. That quote is in Revelation, Chapter 12 and verse 10, and it says, And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of Christ has come for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before God. It appears that at that point in the Great Tribulation, there's a point where Satan is cast to the earth, if you will. But even then, we don't really understand this whole concept of Satan being able to appear before God and whether or not he still has the ability to accuse us before God. Even then, we really don't know. There's a great deal. We just don't know.

All right. Dave asks,

Great question. I like this question. And I should say the answer really depends on what you mean by membership. Because in 2000 years of being the Christian church, the Body of Christ, we've come up with a lot of interesting definitions of what it means to be a church member. Some churches have requirements to being a member, like even water baptism is required for some people even to be a member of their local church.

Or attending a certain class or classes.

Absolutely. So it really depends on what you mean. First of all, we need to understand that when we come by faith to God and accept what His Son Jesus did for us on the cross, and we embrace that sacrifice, we are made members of the universal church. We are members of the Body of Christ. Now, the Bible doesn't actually speak of membership in the sense of joining a local fellowship. However, it assumes that people who are born again are going to be members of a local body. In fact, the author of Hebrews exhorted the body of Christ and said, don't forsake the assembling of the believers because some people already were doing that. They were staying away from the gathering of believers. So they were told, don't do that. Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves. In other words, it was assumed you'd be part or a member of a local body. So we're members of local bodies, but that's not going to get you into heaven. Being a member of the Body of Christ is what gets you into heaven, and that happens when we become sons and daughters of God through Jesus Christ. So the Bible doesn't speak about the formality of church membership. One of the things we've said here for over 34 years at Calvary Chapel Ontario is we don't keep a formal membership list of the people who come. We simply embrace people as members when they commit themselves to this fellowship and attend and support the fellowship. And I feel that's more in keeping with what the Word of God says or doesn't say as it relates to membership.

Sounds good. Jill says,

Jill, the Bible seems to lead us away from a yes answer on this question. And what she's asking is, do people get a second chance? It doesn't take any faith at all to look at Jesus in the eyes and receive him then, you know what I mean? We are saved by grace through faith. I've never seen Jesus before, but I believe in him. That's what faith does. To kind of put it into a picture where someone goes through their entire life as an unbeliever, and then they die, and then they open their eyes and they see Jesus, well, who wouldn't believe in him at that point? So Jill is saying, does God give people a second chance after death? The Bible seems to say no. Again, in the book of Hebrews, we read a particular passage that says that after death comes the judgment. Man is given once to die, and after that the judgment. So it would seem that our opportunity to come to Christ is limited to our time in this life. Now, if God wants to do something different, that's his business. I'm just telling you what the Bible seems to lead us to conclude. The Bible does not lead us to conclude in this second chance after death scenario.

All right. Patrick says,

It means that his spirit was transported into the presence of God, minus his physical body, simple as that.

And we have a really hard time.

We have a hard time of that, because everything is all physical to us. And so we read about somebody who says, I was in the spirit and we're just like, it sounds like a dream, but we forget that our spirit is a very essential part of who we are. In fact, it is who we are. When the physical body dies, this the spirit lives on. And that's the part of him that John says was caught up to be with the Lord. And Paul talks about being caught up to be with the Lord in 2 Corinthians. And he says, in his passage, I don't really know if I was in the body or not. I can't really tell. You can kind of tell from the way he talks. He kind of doubts it. But he says, I'm not really sure. And he repeats that several times. So interestingly enough, if he was not in his body, but was just in the spirit, it felt so natural to him that he wasn't really sure.

Interesting. Tommy says,

You might have to wait a couple 1000 years because there's a lot of people to go through.

Go to the Sign Up sheet when you get there.

When you get there, get on this. I don't mean to make light of the question. And besides, there is no time in eternity. There's nothing in the Bible about this. There's not one single word about whether or not we get one on one audience with Jesus. I would assume that, he's God, he can do whatever, and I'm assuming that we will, but it's an assumption.

Sure. We'll find out. Pierre from South Africa says,

Actually, I've not been seeing the same thing happen. I mean, that specific thing. Now, there are a lot of groups that say you got to do it our way. You got to say it this way, and you got to believe in this little line of thinking. So that part of it is not terribly uncommon. And whenever I hear a group saying, you have to do this exactly like we do it, I get a red alert. I get a warning going off in my head and I think that there are usually serious spiritual pride issues behind that. Yeshua is the name of Jesus, as it is spoken in Hebrew. So this could be a Hebrew roots sort of a movement that is saying, if you say the name Jesus, that's Greek, and that's wrong, and that's pagan, that's probably what they're saying here, which is really unfortunate. It's really unfortunate. No, Pierre, I've not seen that exact sort of a thing, but my opinion is that is a group to be avoided at all costs.

Jennell says,

There's a couple few different things going on here. First of all, just defining First Fruits. First Fruits is very simply giving God the first. You receive your income, and before you do anything else with it, you give him the first portion. And the first portion is biblically referred to as the First Fruits. She asks, should this be practiced in churches? No, it should be practiced in individual hearts. Churches can teach about it. I've taught about what First Fruits means, but this kind of moves on to the second part of her question is, is the giving of First Fruits offering mandatory? Nothing related to giving should be mandatory in churches. I'll just say that. I believe it is biblically and morally wrong for a church to mandate giving. And by saying that, I'm going to make a lot of people angry.

Probably also going to relief a lot of people too.

I might do that too. But 2 Corinthians 9:7 says that each man should give what he has decided in his heart, his heart to give, not reluctantly, and this is the big one, or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver, and you can't give cheerfully when you're under compulsion, or if it's just simply not in your heart to do. So the Bible is very clear on how we are to give. We're to give as our heart leads us to give, and I just want to encourage pastors, churches, leaders, stop demanding giving from your people. It's not biblical, and it's wrong, and it turns people away from the gospel. It really does. I'm not bragging on me. I'm bragging on the Lord. In over 34 years as a church, we have never once taken an offering at this church, never one time have we taken an offering. It doesn't mean we don't receive donations. We do. We have offering boxes located. We don't even tell people where they are. They have to find them, and sometimes that's a little humorous in itself, but we don't talk about giving. We don't talk about money unless it comes up in the Scripture. And I believe that's biblical and in keeping with 2 Corinthians 9:7. Now, am I saying that a church that takes an offering is wrong? No, not necessarily. But if you're putting pressure on people along with that offering, that’s wrong.

We live in one limited culture, and honestly, in our culture, this works very, very well, but we can't impose our culture on everyone.

Not necessarily, you're right. But the statement that the Apostle Paul makes in 2 Corinthians 9:7 transcends culture. And each is to give according to their own heart, not under compulsion. So pastors and leaders need to stop compelling people to give.

Good. Ashley says,

I'm not sure if she's quoting me or somebody else. I'm not sure if I use the word stupid. If I did, that was probably wrong of me. I would refer to Rehoboam as a foolish young ruler. And the reason he's considered a foolish young ruler is because there had been tensions between the northern part of Israel and the southern part of Israel long before Rehoboam was born. His grandfather David dealt with those same tensions and difficulties, and the kings were well aware of them. And Rehoboam should have known that he needed to tread lightly and carefully and diplomatically to keep the nation together. But he didn't do that. He was very foolish. He listened to his foolish young advisers, and he was very brash and very hurtful, frankly, to the people of the northern kingdom. And he ended up causing a geographical split in the nation of Israel between the northern and southern kingdoms. And it was a very foolish thing for him to do, frankly, and it tells us right there, he refused to listen to his father Solomon's advisors, who were wise and gave him good solid advice on how to treat those people from the north and so forth, and he just wouldn't listen. And you're foolish when you won't listen to your elders.

That's true. @naomijung5647 says,

You got to remember, the Israelites plundered the Egyptians, and that means they took all kinds of things and they loaded stuff on wagons. The Jews assumed that they were heading somewhere to start a new life. So they probably thought, we got to have some building supplies. So I'm willing to bet they just loaded on wagons as much stuff as they thought they could pull and they brought it all out into the wilderness.

And it says that the Egyptians were favorable to them. It’s like, here take this and please just go. Get out of here.

They were giving them all kinds of things. So that's where it came from.

Which is really handy when you end up someplace without a Home Depot, because how are you going to build everything? Here's our mailed in question. It's from Shirley. “I'm blessed by your teachings and enjoy the Q&A sessions. Jesus spoke to the thief and promised that he would be with Him in paradise that day. But Jesus didn't go to paradise that very day. Am I missing something?” That's a good question.

It's a good question. But the question, Am I missing something, is something that we all have to say yes, I'm missing a lot. We know so little about what Jesus did during that time that his body was in the tomb. Again, a person's spirit doesn't die. Where did he go? What did he do? Who did he talk to? We believe that Jesus descended to the place of the righteous dead, setting them free and taking them to heaven. There were a lot of things that happened in that period of hours that his physical body was lying in the tomb. And for him to go to Paradise, it was no big deal. And for them to happen that very day. No big deal. And keep in mind, Paradise could apply to the place of the righteous dead, not heaven necessarily. So I don't see there's any issues here. First of all, there's just so much we don't know. Jesus wasn't just lying on a slab in a tomb between Friday evening and Sunday morning, it wasn't like he was unconscious or that there wasn't any activity going on. He was busy before His resurrection and taking this guy to paradise, no big deal.

That's very good. David says,

The area of Elam or the Elamites were part of the Persian kingdom, it's modern-day Iran today. They're considered just like the rest of the Persian kingdom, although they at times squabbled with Babylon. So we consider it part of the same kingdom. And yet they had interactions, one with another, even conquering Babylon at one point. So why did God bring vengeance upon Elam? Well, for probably the same reasons that he brought judgment upon any of the pagan nations. He gave them a period of time, or even like the Canaanites, he gave them time to repent. He gave them time by showing them him his nature, his attributes through the glorious creation. These groups also years ago had heard about what God had done for Israel when he set them free from Egypt. We know that. So why did he judge them? He judged them because they refused to turn to the Lord, the one true God who created heaven and earth, and eventually judgment fell. Plus, the Elamites were like the Babylonians. They could be very cruel, conquering people, and God would judge nations for that as well.

All right. Arnold says,

He was on the island of Patmos. But don't think of John being in a prison cell or in a cave. They basically dumped people off on the island of Patmos knowing that they couldn't leave. There was no boats. So they let them move around, and they were free on the island to go where they wanted. They just couldn't leave, and it's what we call a penal colony. Australia used to be used for that very purpose. So you have a guy that is a criminal, and you don't want to take up jail space, you ship him off to Australia.

Problem solved.

But he's got the whole island. He just can leave. He's marooned. So John was enslaved. I should say this, he was marooned and not enslaved.

That's interesting. Steve says,

No, it was not. Mount Moriah is where the Jewish Temple was ultimately built by Solomon. And to this day, Mount Moriah is the Temple Mount, so it's not exactly Golgotha. I know that picture goes well in story form that Isaac becomes this picture of Jesus being sacrificed and so forth. And it was on the very same mountain. But, no, it's where the temple was.

All right. Greg says,

Well, it's very simple. It's because when John uses the word brother, he's referring to a brother in Christ. He doesn't use brother in the more generic humankind, mankind sense. He always uses it to refer to a brother in the Lord.

Elizabeth, “What exactly does Repent and Repentance mean? Do we need to Repent or have Repentance to be saved? If yes, how do we do it or get it? Thank you.”

We've come up against this several times, and this is kind of that classic thing where people are overthinking. And I think a lot of people mistake repentance with sorrow, and it doesn't necessarily. I think people will hear about repentance and they'll say, I don't remember being terribly sorry for my sin. Repentance and sorrow are two very different things. The original word in the Greek literally means to change one's mind or to change one's purpose. So when we talk about repenting, we're talking about turning away from the direction I was going because I've had a change of mind and I'm changing and I'm going toward Jesus now. She asked in her question, do we need to repent to be saved? Well, yeah, because you have to turn away from the direction you were going in order to come to Jesus. When you come to Jesus, you've changed your mind about life. You've had a change of mind. That is a repentance. We got to be careful. I'll say this again to not only Elizabeth, but anyone else who's listening, who has really been challenged by the idea of, have I really, truly repented? If you've come to a Christ, you've repented. You have to repent to come to Christ, otherwise you'd still be going the same direction you were going before you came to Christ.

All right. Steve says,

No, it doesn't. One thing you have to remember is that God is always giving a chance, a second chance, a third chance to people to get their hearts right with him, and he never indiscriminately determines that some people are lost and some people are going to be saved, and I'll just decide who they are. And though it doesn't matter if they ever get a chance, Zechariah 13 is very simply saying that only a remnant of the people of Israel will ultimately be saved. And that's the point. He's not getting into the why. He's not getting into details about why, he's simply saying a third will be saved, and he doesn't explain what the reason is for the other two thirds of the people not being saved. This has led some people to believe, just like Steve and others, was this just an indiscriminate decision by God to say you're saved, you're not, you're saved, you're not, and just because it isn't explained why a person is lost doesn't mean that God simply chooses for them to be lost.

All right. Liz, who is actually from the North Coast of Ireland says,

It all depends on how yoga is presented, doesn't it? If yoga is nothing more than stretching exercises, they probably wouldn't call it yoga then, but they might if it incorporates certain stretching postures and stuff like that. But we got to remember that yoga originated many, many, many years ago in India, and frankly, it was a very big part of both Hinduism and Buddhism as it relates to meditation practices, and they would use yoga postures and the mantra that they speak, which is usually a Sanskrit word that would speak of something metaphysical. It really is a non-Christian, other religious sort of a practice. So if someone's yoga classes involved the Hindu or the Buddhist background of meditation, I would avoid it. I think it's something that Christians should be very wary about.

Well, what I pick up on here is she says, I've done one class, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. My entire life, if I come to the conclusion of, I've done something, and I'm pulling back and saying, I'm not sure, it's probably because it's not good. If the red light, or if the yellow light is on, it's probably because it's turning red for me.

That's a good point.

Fortino says,

Well, this confuses a lot of people. And it confuses all of us from the standpoint of truly comprehending how God in the person of Jesus, could be both divine, could be God and man at the same time. And it just blows people's mind, and they can't wrap their mind around the fact that if he's God, then who's he talking to? And it's because they don't understand the basic concept of the nature of God, which none of us understand from the standpoint of comprehending it. However, we can understand what the Bible reveals. And what the Bible reveals is that there's one God who is manifest in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So the person of Jesus, the Son, is communicating with the person of God, the Father, through the agency of the person of the Holy Spirit. And we see all the persons of the Godhead there. And yet people just kind of go ping when they hear that, and they're like, I don't get it. You're not going to get it, because we're talking about God here, and we're talking about something that is beyond human understanding, except simply to know what God has revealed. So I would say to Fortino, go back to your friend and say, I'm with you. I'm in the same boat. We can't explain some of these things, but we simply know that they are true, because the Bible reveals them.

Very good. All right. Deborah says,

You can tell Deborah hasn't gone through my study. In the book of Revelation, because I explain this. I explain the fact that I believe that each of the letters to the churches, while they were written to unique churches at that time. I believe they are also indicative of time periods in the history of the church age. And when you get to this statement in Revelation, Chapter 3, where the Lord says, I will keep you from the hour of trial, he's talking to the church that will be on the earth, which I believe is us just prior to the tribulation period. And he's basically promising that they will be taken out before that, what he refers to as that hour of trial comes upon the whole earth. So I would just encourage Deborah to go through my Revelation study and listen to how I develop it there.

Very good. Tie says,

First of all, the Bible doesn't actually reveal any names of the week. Did you know that? That's kind of an interesting thing, other than the Sabbath, the seventh day was always referred to as the Sabbath. And then I suppose, for the Jews, every other day was just either leading up to the Sabbath, or since the Sabbath. But we do, however, in the Bible, read about names for the months of the year and we know which was the first of the months of the year and how they progressed. The question, though, that Tie is asking is, why did they get changed? They got changed because mankind is constantly moving away from God, and so he has to come up with his own way of figuring things out, and we've come up with different calendars and different names. And frankly, the fact that we've named days of the week or months different, that's just the tip of the iceberg we've gotten away from God's original intent for things. But when you think about the even the names of the days of the week, they're centered on Roman gods, most of them.

And before that, they were centered on Persian gods.

Sure. You have different people who've come up with different ways. Sunday, it was the sun's day, the day of the god of the sun. Man has always looked at the celestial bodies and identified them, and then decided there was a god for each one of them, or that each one was a god, however, and they came up with names to honor. These supposed deities. You have Monday, which is the moon's day. So you got one day for the sun and one day for the moon, and on and on and on it goes. This has just been happening ever since man was put on the face of the earth. We've just been progressively getting farther and farther away from God's original intent for everything. So I don't think it's a major issue. I wouldn't go around changing the name, or trying to change the names of the months back to the original Hebrew names. I don't think God thinks that's important. It doesn't matter what we call those things. The only thing he cares about the most is that we recognize Jesus Christ as our Savior and our King. And I would let the rest of it just go.

All right. Matt says,

This gets into some challenging stuff when you're dealing with Daniel and the prophecies given to him concerning the 70 weeks, and how those things figure into the last days, the great tribulation and so on and so on. The first thing you gotta understand is that the 70 weeks of Daniel pertain to the Jews. You got to remember that the first thing Daniel was told is, 70 weeks are decreed about your people. So this isn't something that's, frankly, given to the entire world as it relates to the specifics, this was to the Jews. But Matt is right when he says that the passage, the wording putting an end to sin, seems to suggest that sin is going to be completely taken away. And yet, we know that the 70 weeks of Daniel only bring us up to the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom. And that's that 1000 year period where Christ reigns upon the earth. We know that it's going to be an incredible time, but people are still going to be mortal, some people, and there will still be sin happening during that time period. So how are we to really interpret that phrase putting an end to sin? It all comes down to that. This is one of those areas where language can be a very challenging thing to understand sometimes, because we look at it as I'm assuming Matt's an American, like you and I are Americans. We tend to look at things, we read them, and we just take them very black and white literally. He's going to put an end to sin, and that means no more sin. Well, that phrase, to put an end to sin means to hide out of sight to cover, in other words, to cover over sin. So it is also use that phrase, or those words are also used to talk about sealing things. Seal this up until a later day, cover it up. So God seems to be saying here that he's going to seal up the sins of the Jews, and he's going to seal that up. And I personally believe that it means that the Jews, at that time, at the end of that 70 weeks are going to, as we know from Zechariah, come to the Lord as a people, and their sins are going to be covered because they're going to cry out to the Lord, and in that sense, he's going to put an end to sin. He's going to cover sin. In other words, sin will be atoned for. The word atone means covered. So it's that idea. It's not literally bringing all sin to a final end that doesn't happen until the time of eternity.

Very good. Very interesting. Jacqueline says,

There's a lot. And I don't know if I can answer every single aspect, because I'm not sure I even fully understand everything that Jacqueline is asking. First of all, the statement that God cannot be in the presence of evil is nowhere found in the Scripture. God's in our presence and we're evil. I think that there is a truth to the idea that God's holy wrath is aroused by mankind's sin. There's no doubt about that God is also very patient, long suffering, and we know that. When Jesus came around during His earthly ministry, around a demoniac, they would just begin to flip out. They sensed, this just incredible presence of God in the person of Jesus. And we know that there is this difficulty. But we also know that Satan can come into the presence of God. We know that. It's in the Word of God. So the other thing we have to remember when it comes to our own lives, there are different statements or prepositions that are used for the relationship of the Holy Spirit to a person. Before they get saved, the Holy Spirit is with a person. When they accept Jesus as their Savior, the Holy Spirit comes in with the person. And when they are empowered by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit comes upon. So you've got those three things. Some people would even ask, how can the Holy Spirit even stand to be with me before I've come to faith in Jesus Christ? We don't understand all the dynamics of this, but obviously he can. All we know is he can. He can be with a person who is unsaved, drawing them, opening their heart and mind to things, and bringing them to a place where they ultimately accept Jesus as their Savior. Once they do, the spirit can now come in, because the sacrifice has been made, the vessel has been cleansed, and the spirit can now reside inside a person, whereas the spirit could not before, because we hadn't yet been cleansed. So there are some dynamics here. But again, if you take it as a hard and fast, God can't be where evil is. You can't even begin a sentence by saying God can't. There are some things you can say, God can't lie. God can't change. But when you're talking about him being limited by evil, that God is limited. No, God's not limited by Satan. Satan doesn't limit God at all. The evil of man does not limit God at all. I hope that answer Jacqueline’s question.

I think it does. Locadia says

First of all, there's several things that are being assumed here. One is that since there are generational blessings, there must also be generational curses. That doesn't necessarily stand, but I never said that there are no generational curses. People hear me talking about generational curses, and they jump to conclusions. I never said there's no such thing as a generational curse. What I said was there's no generational curse for a believer. Because what I said was, when a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, the old is gone, the new has come. They're a new creation, a new creature in Christ, that's what I said. What I object to our churches, pastors, teachers, leaders, telling Born Again Christians that they are laboring under a generational curse. That's not biblical. What God said when he talked about generational curses is there would be these generational curses for those who hate him, a person doesn't come to Christ and hate God. They come to Christ and they love God and that coming to Christ breaks the generational curse. So I never said that there were no such thing as generational curses. I just said for believers, the coming to Christ breaks any generational issues that might be going on.

Very good. Denzil says,

He showed them a whole lot more than his armory. He showed them His treasures. He showed them everything. It says there wasn't anything. He didn't show them, if you read those chapters. But, no, I don't think that's why Babylon ultimately conquered Judah. They conquered Judah because Judah fell into paganism and sin, and God was judging them for that. What happened with Hezekiah was kind of a foreshadowing, and because he had given into the Babylonians to show him everything, God spoke through Isaiah, the prophet, and said to him, there's coming a day when the Babylonians are going to come and conquer. But, no, it wasn't specifically, because it might have been foolish for Hezekiah to do that, but that certainly wasn't the reason that they ultimately conquered Judah.

All right. @RyanStjohn65 says,

In Revelation 22 actually, Jesus describes himself as the root and offspring of David and the bright morning star. And people have wondered about that for a long time. But if you know anything about the morning star that it shines rather brightly. It's a star that shines just before sunrise. I'll just say this. There's no biblical explanation for why Jesus used that title. We have to kind of figure it out. And what we know is because the Morning Star starts the new day, or ushers in the new day. We believe that it's a statement that Jesus is making, essentially saying that he is the beginning of a new day, and his coming will be the start of a new era when he returns again. So it's kind of like him saying, I'm the one who will usher in a new day.

Sure. Could some of those things even have been a figure of speech at the time that would have been so much more readily understood to the audience?

Absolutely. I think there's a lot of things that were known at the time that just has been lost in antiquity. So we scramble to figure out what it means.

So we're trying to be figure things out. Sophia says,

So she's asking, is there anything in the Bible that talks about where people go who do good deeds but don't put their faith in Christ? Sophia, I need to tell you that good deeds don't come into the salvation equation at all. In fact, the Bible says that even the best possible good deeds that could be done by a human being on Earth are not enough to earn them salvation. Our salvation has zero to do with us living a good life or doing good things in this life. God simply doesn't take that into consideration for salvation. It doesn't mean he doesn't take it into consideration in any way. But as it relates to salvation, being saved, there is only one way to be saved, and that is by putting our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ, who bore our punishment on the cross for us, and when we embrace that and accept that by faith, we are saved. And that salvation goes out to anyone, regardless of the kind of a life they've lived. Because salvation doesn't have anything do with our deeds. Now, having said that, there are going to be some people who are going to say, Pastor Paul, are you telling me that I can live however I want in this life? I can swear and drink and carouse with other people and it doesn't matter that I'm saved, and it doesn't matter. Here, it's not what I'm saying. I'm saying God doesn't take those things into consideration for your salvation. He takes those things into consideration elsewhere. But when we are saved, when a person is genuinely saved, if that person still wants to go out and live like they did before they were saved, and that just goes on and on and on, I would have a real hard time believing that that person ever got truly saved, because when we get saved, we receive the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit begins to work in us to will and to act according to His good purpose, and that's called Christian growth, Christian maturity. And if someone is never desiring to live, to will or to act according to His good purpose, I would struggle to understand how that could even happen if the Holy Spirit's truly living in them.

But the real key that she's asking here is, is there a loophole for people who do good things?

I'm saying, no, there's not. There's no loophole, because works don't come into the salvation equation.

That's it. That's our last question.

That's our last one. Wow, that was a lot of questions for January 2025.

You did a good job.

This is obviously our first Bible Q&A for the year. We're going to keep doing this. You keep sending in your questions, and we'll keep doing our best to answer them according to the Bible. Thank you so much for sending those in. And we get them from all different places, don't we, from YouTube and Facebook and sometimes even they mail them in. So, before we go, we want to let you know that Sue has written a new book, and it is called Leaning into the Presence of the Lord, and it's a lovely book. Where can they get a hold of it?

You can get a hold of it on Amazon or through our website. You can order a copy there, or just put my name into Amazon and get a hold of it there.

And this is a special book because you wrote it during a period of time when you were receiving treatments for cancer.

Right. So I started blogging just solely for the purpose of our church body and my friends and family to get an update on me, but got a lot of feedback from people saying, I want these devotions to hand to somebody else. So my treatment is over. There was 35 weeks of devotions that I wrote, and it's not a book about cancer, it is just a collection of devotions as the Lord just took me through a season that was maybe one of the more difficult seasons of my life. And I think other people could benefit, regardless of what challenging season. In fact, I think the byline is 35 devotions for challenging seasons or something like that. So it's a great opportunity. It's a great thing to have if you want to hand to someone who's going through any challenging situation in life.

Well, I think we all know that when somebody is going through a very difficult time, we're more open to the Lord, and the Lord begins to speak to us in ways during those difficult times that he may not otherwise. And I feel like there's just so much the Lord showed you during that 35 weeks that you wrote down and shared with so many other people, and it was such an encouragement to so many, and that's why you decided to put it into book form. But, anyway, let's remind them leaning into the presence of God.

Nope. Start over, Leaning into the Presence of the Lord.

There you go.

And the whole premise really starts with the fact that even when Moses was faced with a challenging time, the Lord encouraged him by saying, but I will be with you. And that really is the foundation of these devotions, and really a foundation for any challenging time we have, because the Lord says, but I will be with you.

That makes all the difference.

All the difference. So the challenge for us is to lean into that, to lean into his promise and his presence that says, but I will be with you.

For sure. Get a copy of that book. You are going to love it, I'm telling you, and you're going to want to give gifts. Give that book as a gift to many others in your life who are going through a challenging time. Thanks so much for being with us today. It's always a pleasure, and we'll look forward to the next time and until then, God bless. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.