Episode 2

Pastor Paul LeBoutillier Pastor Paul: This is Episode 2 of our Bible Q&A. Are you ready to tackle some questions?

Yeah, we got some good ones coming up today. Are you ready?

Yeah.

Roxane says,

I can understand the confusion here because there are several places actually where Jesus does tell us to persist in prayer, keep praying, even told parables keep knocking until you get an answer. And then she made reference to Paul's statement in his second letter to the Corinthians, where he says that he went before the Lord about a particular issue which was a thorn in his flesh. And eventually the Lord said, my grace is sufficient, my power is made perfect in weakness and she's right. That does suggest acceptance of his circumstances and the recognition that God's power was able to help him to deal with it. So here's the deal, what you're hearing in 2 Corinthians when Paul says he relates what the Lord told him that was after he had persevered in prayer. So he's simply giving you the result of his perseverance and his continuing to press through. He says that he went before the Lord three times to get this answer, and eventually the Lord gave him an answer. So you're really talking about two different circumstances here. Paul's telling about what happened after he persevered. Jesus tells us prior to that answer. Keep persevering in prayer. Keep praying. There are so many times that I get emails from Christians who have just become tired of persevering in prayer. So they'll write me and say, Pastor Paul, I've been praying about this, but I haven't gotten an answer. And then they write to me and say, what do you think? That's not where I want to be? That's not the job that God has given me to answer people's questions when they haven't persevered in prayer. I write them back and I say no, no. You go back to the place of prayer and you keep pressing in until God gives you the answer that you're looking for. We tire so easily in the place of prayer and it's very common for people just to think, I guess God's not going to answer me, but that's when we have to go back to the Word and remind ourselves that Jesus said keep pressing on, keep praying and don't give up.

Very good. In Paul's case, that was his answer.

That was the answer that he got.

The answer that he was praying for.

He was looking for an answer and he got it. It might not have been the answer initially that he wanted, but it was the answer that the Lord gave.

Good advice. All right. So Kim's question to you is, “Pastor Paul … what Bible do you use?”

Well, I use many different translations of the Bible. I teach out of the English standard version, but that by no means is the only Bible version that I use when I'm studying the word. I use my computer to study and so I keep about 5 different English translations of the Bible open simultaneously and they are the ESV. As I said, the new King James Version, which I like very much. The New American Standard Bible. The 2020 revision is excellent. I usually keep two versions of the NIV open, the 1984 revision and the 2011 revision. And sometimes I'll also keep the King James just to kind of see what wording is used there. And often I'll keep the new living translation open just as an aside because I get some interesting nuances from that as well. We have so many Bible versions available to us today, readily available, that I think Christians should read several different versions. In fact, I was talking to a Calvary Chapel pastor a couple of years ago and I know that this guy is a new King James fan, I suppose is the best way to put it. But he was mentioning to me that as he was reading through the Bible, he decided to just try a different translation for the whole read through the Bible. He was reading through the NIV, in fact. And I thought to myself, that's really good. Because he's studying mostly using the new King James, but by reading another Bible translation, it can really give you a lot of interesting insights.

And I've noticed when you're teaching, even though you teach primarily 90 plus percent from the ESV, occasionally you'll have a preference and you'll move to another one and say this handles this particular passage better.

Because I don't always like the ESV the best in terms of how it renders a word or a phrase and sometimes I like it better in the new American Standard Bible or the new King James or even the NIV. So reading all of those translations is, I think, very helpful in our study.

Kim had some additional questions here. She went on to say,

You know what, I don't really, I think my recommendation is to read a modern English translation of the Bible. If you're an English speaker and that's your primary language, find a modern version. So just find one, get a good one and read it.

When I was teaching children's ministry years ago, I learned the fact. I learned the grade level that each of the translations were pinned at. And it was the first time I really understood that the King James, for example, is like a college level reading. So I was teaching children at a level that was a fifth grade reading level in its reading and that just hit the mark for that situation.

I don't recommend people get a King James Bible because there are too many archaic words in it that have changed their meaning or lost their meaning since that Bible was originally translated. There's no reason to read the King James Bible exclusively when we have so many excellent modern translations available.

She had a third part to her question. “Should we have an accompanying Greek dictionary?”

That's not a bad idea. I mean, if you're really digging deep into words, having a Greek dictionary on hand can be helpful. I recommend you pick up like a Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. You can still get those on Amazon. They're under $30. Also, a Vines Dictionary of New Testament Words is also a good resource to have and those can be very helpful.

Good. All right. We'll move on to Sandrah who said,

There's no reference in the Bible to a Jezebel spirit. That doesn't mean that thing couldn't exist in some demonic way, but there's nothing in the Bible about it. I think that it really kind of got started when people interpreted the passage. There's a passage in Revelation where the Lord is confronting one of the churches to whom he was writing about a woman Jezebel, who was leading people into immorality. And Jesus was saying, I'm going to bring judgement and a lot of people interpreted that passage in Revelation chapter 2 to be symbolic rather than literal. In other words, they didn't believe that there was a literal woman named Jezebel at that time. So they believe Jesus is referring rather to a spirit. There's really no reason to believe that, so I don't personally see anything in the word that there is a demon or spirit referred to as a Jezebel spirit. I don't see it.

All right. Joetta says,

We've talked about this. I wrote about this in my book Pastor, I Have a Question and kind of go through and treat this probably a little more thoroughly than I'll be able to do right here. But Joetta is referring to a passage in Paul's letter to Corinthians where he makes reference to a woman's hair and her long hair being a covering. And the thing that you have to understand about Paul's comments is he was talking to women about submission to their husbands. That was the point. The point wasn't hair. The point was submission. Now, back in Paul's day, a woman communicated socially her position of submission to her husband by her long hair. And that was just a universal symbol. In fact, Paul makes a statement about a woman's long hair being a sign of submission, or a sign of authority actually is the phrase that he uses. So my question to anybody who is dealing with that passage today is this, is long hair on a woman still considered a sign of authority? It was very much in Paul's day. Now, if you see a woman with short hair, do you immediately say, oh, there's a rebellious woman? There's a woman who is not under authority. She doesn't have the sign of authority on her head. No, we wouldn't say that today. That's just not something that we think because the length of a woman's hair doesn't speak today of her willing submission to her husband. So this is the important thing for Joetta and for anyone else who is dealing with this question to understand. The heart issue behind this whole passage is an attitude of submission and surrender to authority. And however that is communicated today, that is what's important. It's not applying ourselves to the way things were communicated 2000 years ago in society.

I think about in our Church of the senior crowd of women, 98% of them have short hair. So it would be kind of funny to think that all of a sudden an entire generation of women is no longer in submission to their husbands.

I mean, it just doesn't say that.

It doesn't hold.

It doesn’t hold. There are other ways women communicate their authority or recognition of their husbands authority and submission to their husbands and those things should be understood and attended to.

Theanna says,

Well, because there are still going to be people during the Millennial Kingdom who are mortal and they're going to live and die during that 1000 year. And there is going to be people living on the earth who still have a sinful nature and who through that nature are going to struggle with rebellion against God. So Satan is going to be released one last time at the end of the millennial Kingdom in order to be that final test for those who still have that sinful nature. Now, those won't be believers. The New Testament church has already received their resurrection bodies when Jesus returns for the church prior to the great Tribulation. So these are going to be people who survived the great tribulation, who lived during the millennial age and now are really coming to a place of final testing.

It's something difficult for us to understand because it's unfamiliar. We've never experienced that before.

No, we have not.

All right. Last question is from Leonardo, “Will all Israelites be saved since they are chosen people of God or some remnants only as the Apostle Paul mentioned in the book of Romans.”

I believe it's Romans Chapter 11 where the Apostle Paul talks about the fact that all Israel will be saved and he's referring to the time when Jesus returns. He's not giving a blanket statement that just says all Israelites will or all Jews will be saved just because they're God's special people. He's not saying that. Jews are saved the same way that Gentiles are saved, and that is through putting their faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. What Paul is specifically mentioning in Romans is how the remnant of Jews at the time of Christ's return at the conclusion of the great Tribulation will turn to the Lord as a collective nation. And this is referenced it prophetically in the book of Zechariah toward the end of that book. And the prophet Zechariah makes mention of the fact that in a day sin is going to be wiped out as far as Israel is concerned, and the penalty of it, because they're going to see their Messiah, their savior, who returns for them at the conclusion of the great tribulation. So all Israel at that time will be saved. But that's not a blanket statement for all time.

Very good. All right, that's it.

That's it for this one. We'll see you in the next episode of Bible Q&A. God bless.