You're listening to k I Am sixty on demand. Rubell, Welcome to the
Jesus Christ Show. Thanks for taking my call, my pleasure. How can
I help you? Okay, Um, it's just something I've always done.
It's just you know, when if you don't believe someone, you make them
swear to God. And I figure if you swear to God and telling the
truth, that's not a problem. If you swear to God and you light,
you burn in hell. So that's like, I don't see the difference
between that and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth. So I'll be God. Is that people? People always tell
me if that's a sin to swear to God even if you're telling the truth.
Well, the two are different. One. In the case of being
in a courtroom, you are swearing to tell the truth. You're not swearing
to God. You're saying, so help you God, meaning that there will
be consequences to you not telling the truth. When you swear to God,
you are putting yourself in coming in with God in regards to any particular topic
that you will not follow through with. Even if you think you're telling the
truth, you will not follow through with an example of this, and I'm
going to give you just a tiny bit of homework as you can go through
and you can read the Abraham Abrahamic covenant found in Genesis twelve one through three,
and you can see the ceremony that takes place there between God and Abraham,
and how God the Father even put Abraham to sleep so that he wouldn't
walk down this aisle and be a part of this covenant, as was normally
the case when two people were making a covenant, they both walked down this
aisle. It seems quite strange by today's standards dealing with these these offerings.
And for the point of understanding, you had these two halves of animals and
they would walk through, and the two parties would pass through to show that
their bond with this covenant and this belief. Well, if in this particular
safe case, this covenant was with between God and Abraham, God didn't even
want Abraham to walk down it for many reasons, one of which is that
Abraham would not have been able to live up to it, as any man
would not have been able to live up with it to it. So God
represented both sides in this case, and God ended up being the one who
made the covenant with himself, so Abraham ends up being a party to it,
but a silent party in this particular case. And when you swear to
God and I know, it becomes kind of a just vernacular and it gets
thrown around. It does a couple of things. One, it makes a
promise to God that you cannot keep because you're human and you're fallible. And
two, on the flip side, it makes it. It makes it trite,
It makes it small and meaningless to throw around God's name in that context
and to say, you know, say these things. Also in scripture,
another part that might be laying into this is it says, let your yes
mean yes, and you know me no, that's it. So if you
have to go to the place where you're starting to swear all the time,
that means that that implies that other times you're not telling the truth. That
if you have to say no, this time, I'm really telling the truth,
but last time I lied to you is what it's implying. And so
it's better to get to a point, especially with your friends, that the
confidence is in the person saying it. That if you're saying, if you're
making the claim that you're making the claim based on the best knowledge you have
and doing it wholeheartedly and not somehow you know, going well, no,
most of the time, I'm I'm full of garbage. But this time,
no, I'm actually telling the truth. Watch. I'll even swear to God
one don't bring me into it. If there's something that you're you want to
stand on, stand on your own, say believe this to be true.
And you note that I believe it to be true because it's coming out of
my mouth. Sandy, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. Hi Jesus,
thank you for taking my call. I have a question about Genesis one twenty
seven, where God says, so God created man in his own image,
oh, one twenty six, possibly X, yeah, let us make man
in our image. He's he's speaking in plural there, and it confuses me.
You know some people, Uh, you're in good company. Some people
get confused by that. And there actually is about three different explanations that people,
theologians and the like go to when it comes to this particular passage.
The most simplistic answer, um is the direct answer, and that is that
in the Hebrew the word elohim, which is used there for God is actually
plural. It's the word by its very nature is plural. So some say,
just by way of assumption, that the basic grammar begs for that response.
So it says that the name of God in this sense is plural.
Then it goes on to say, let us go down and make man in
our image has to be plural because the name of God in that context is
plural. So academically that's the simplest answer. Now people get confused and go,
well, why is God's name plural in that case? Well, God's
name goes from plural to singular throughout scripture depending on the context. But God
in the Judaeo Christian belief system is always one. It's always one. The
schmah is Hero Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord is one.
The word there a God is that means one is very important. So
as a as a belief system, that's that's a monotheistic belief system. You
believe in one God. That doesn't make God plural. That merely says that
the massiveness of God is a plurality. But God is not plural. It's
not many gods. So the debate goes on here from there and goes from
the just the simple word study into the possibility that it could be. There
are some that believe that it's merely God speaking to the Godhead, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And there, yeah, absolutely
there are many wonderful theologians that believe that, not putting him in the wonderful
theologian category. But my producer Neio believes that also. In in addition to
that, there are some that even maybe on a stretch, look at this
as a possible use of the majestic we you know, the old elizabeth Ian
we are not to muse or the Queen Victoria that those type of kind of
majestic terms always speaking in plurality, but the context doesn't really denote that.
And then lastly, there are those that believe that it's the Father speaking to
the Holy host of angels, but that doesn't sit true in the context because
it says, let us go down and make man an our image, and
angels are debatable as far as being made in the image of God to begin
with, let alone going and creating creation further based on another creation, which
is angels. So the most likely explanation is dealing with strictly that it's just
the language. The way the language was speaks that the name of God Lohim
in this case is plural. Therefore led Us grammatically has to be plural as
well. But I think that since the rest of Scripture as you go through,
often speaks of the Trinity. And I'm gonna reference Matthew three, sixteen
and seventeen, Second Corinthians thirteen fourteen, First Peter one two, is you
know, spoken about throughout scripture. Now, it's not necessarily fully developed in
the Old Testament, but if you read Psalmn one ten one, Isaiah sixty
three seven, Isaiah nine or sixty three seven, nine and ten as well,
and Proverbs thirty verse four, I think that you get a good insight
as to the Trinity as something that exists and is obviously deeply rooted in in
scripture. Jim, welcome to Jesus Christ show all right. Jesus is great
to talk to you. My pleasure, Jim. How can I help you
conundrum and some of my some of the churches I've been in in the past.
As I realized that my um I was kind of just a Christian in
name only the way I lived my life for years and years, and as
I get into your words and start studying and being in a lot of Bible
studies, realizing that my fruit was rotten and people would know me that I
wasn't living the way I needed to live. Well, now, as the
more I study, I all know others by their fruit. And the biggest
thing that that seems so hard to get a pastor to address, especially a
male pastor, is immodest dress among women, especially in church, especially cleavage.
And you know, I brought up to h the church. What if
I wore my cap in church every Sunday? They said, well, people
will be asking you to take it off. And I say, why,
what's the difference between you know? They said, you know, there was
obvious raisons for that, but nobody, even the women, won't go to
some of the other women and say, look, darling, we'd like you
to dress a little well modestly, or the Lord would like you to or
that's and then what's really weird is when somebody has a cross. A lady
has a cross hanging right between that area herd deca lodge. So I don't
want to, you know, people say, well, we're not supposed to
judge. I understand that, but anyway, it seems to cause a stumbling
block for men. To me, it seems to cause a stumbling block the
men who have problems with sexual addiction. And so I just wondered, what
do you think about all that? Well, there's many verses, and I'm
going to try and get to as many of them as I can in the
time that we have allotted. First of all, the hat issue is a
specific issue spoken about and First Corinthians eleven fourth through seven about a man wearing
a hat, and so that might be a little more specific. But as
far as a woman showing her cleavage or not showing her cleavage, there's not
necessarily a specific verse for that in scripture. The misunderstanding in scripture deals a
lot as far as what modesty as you kind of have to know based on
yourself. There are all kinds of weird fetishes out there where men like ankles
or feet or hands, and you're not going to have the women cover their
hands or their feet or their ankles just because there's men that have issues with
it. That would be silly, wouldn't you agree. So there's there's a
balance in an understanding here. First Timothy two nine and ten. First Peter
three two through five will give you an idea of certain verses that talk about
modesty and dress for women in particular, But you kind of have to know
more than that. You kind of have to know the history of what took
place here in the biblical times. It's not about women wearing pants or not
wearing pants. That it's totally fine with women wearing pants. It's really speaking
about the beauty of an individual should come from their faith and their understanding of
God, not from adornment. That's the first thing. As far as modesty,
the rules of modesty are going to change as they've changed throughout the centuries.
So it's going to be hard, Jim, for you to say.
Now, you may know it when you see it, you may say that
that bothers me, but to dictate that to someone else, there's not going
to be a biblical precedent for that. There's not going to be a place
where you can say you can't do this specifically, because in scripture it talks
about general ideas or things that we're combating the view or to the appearance of
being a pagan, not so much just for the sake of looking a particular
way. So modesty is going to change, and you're going to have to
kind of change with it. If something bothers you, then you need not
to look at it. But woman showing or cleavages less necessarily the end of
the world. Okay, we were up against a break there and Jim had
such a great question. There's more to it that I wanted to get into.
It's not that women should be able to do whatever they want anymore than
a man can do whatever he wants in church. And but when it comes
to cleavage's there's an area of discernment that's going to be different with different people.
There is nothing inherently vulgar about cleavage. The interpretation of that cleavage would
be based on an individual person. So if it's something, it's really the
way a man looks at the cleavage that's the problem. And so there's kind
of a marriage that should be done between the two. A woman should not
be putting a man in the area of lust and a man should not be
lusting. So to what point that happens, And truly it doesn't. You
don't need cleavage to lust, So at what point should be the discernments discernment
of the individuals in any particular case. Are there women that dress inappropriately at
church? Absolutely, I see it quite often that it looks like women are
going to a beauty contest. And some of these churches really have very cliquish
popularity contests. And these are the wealthy groups, and they're very fantastic churches.
And these are all the books we've written, and these are all the
music CDs we've put out, and all of these things. And it gets
to the point where the gospel is kind of put in the back seat and
people are wearing all their fancy clothing and look how wealthy or look how productive
I am in this world. And yes, that can take away from from
the cause of Christ, but you also have to A woman may say,
hey, a guy and T shirts and jeans does it for her? And
is she going to dictate now, I don't want T shirt and jeans.
And you know, baggy pants looks like you're a gangster type pants looks like
you're trying to show off your goods. There's you're going to have to use
discernment and it's not going to be one size fits all the clothing. The
background dealing with the clothing of biblical times, it was incredibly different from what
you wear today. It was very similar that what men and women wore.
There was very few things that differentiated. And men often wore, you know
that this kind of loose woolen robelike cloak, and it referred to in scripture
often as a mantle. This this outer garment, and they have belts or
something fastened around the waist, sash, and a coat that went over that
long piece of piece of cloth, sometimes leather sandals. Men would wear turbans.
I know you don't think of it that way. You don't see a
lot of biblical depictions that way in movies, but that's the truth. Women
sometimes and in some cultures would wear a veil, but not necessarily across the
board. So there are some specifics that are talked about in scripture. Cross
dressing is one of them, and part of that is due to the confusion
that it caused. There were so many similarities in biblical times of how a
man and a woman looked, and there were rules and laws as such.
Men weren't supposed to touch women that weren't their wives. Some of the cross
dressing would cause confusion. Now there's other insights. Some people say, well,
they has to deal with sexuality in these types of things, But there
were basic concerns that if you didn't know that you were reaching out to touch
a man or a woman, that could cause problems. And the appearance was
very similar. So those distinctions were important so that men would not get themselves
into a situation and women would not get themselves into a situation. In the
New Testament, when it talks about proper dress for women, it says in
First Timothy two nine through ten, I also want women to dress modestly with
decency and propriety, not with braided hair, or gold or pearls or expensive
clothes, but with good deeds appropriate for women who profess to worship God.
Does that mean that a Christian woman cannot braid her hair, or gold or
pearls or expensive clothes. No. The context of this is trying to overshadow
any of those things, to make the individual not be about those material goods,
but it be about the goods of the heart, good deeds, those
things that were appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A lot of
these Biblical writings were countering a concern at the time. The epistles are really
dealing with things that were going on in the church at the time that they
were trying to combat, and so that comes out quite a bit in the
scripture, and sometimes when reading it, people don't put it in its proper
context, and therefore it gets misunderstood that there was a battle going on between
the Pagans, between new people coming to church and understanding this thing, this
new church that was different than just temple to them, and an understanding is
what should be done there now a lot of the New Testament epistles the letters
are dealing with these cific abuses during the early church growth, and some people
feel, some theologians feel that Paul was very big on declaring all people equal,
men and women equal, and that wasn't always the case in some religious
views at the time, and that everyone was part of the family of God.
You can reference Galatians twenty six through twenty nine, and there are a
lot of theologians and scholars that believe that at this time there were women that
were feeling their new stated liberation and going overboard. And you see that all
the time. There's people that they get a new lease or they have a
freedom that comes to them, and the first desire is to swing the pendulum
all the way to the other side and not find balance. And some theologians
believe that these statements in First Timothy to nine through ten and First Peter three
two through five, we're addressing this kind of swing to the opposite side as
the early Church was saying. No, men and women are equal and women
have rights. I know that sounds different than what some people would like to
tell you Scripture and the New Testament says, but that's the truth. Scripture
was about liberating women and showing the equality between men and women, and not
saying that there isn't different positions, because there are. Everyone has different positions,
and women give birth, men do not things like that. But some
feel that during the time historically women started going overboard because of the repression and
the oppression and going overboard, and this was to squelch that in response saying,
hey, hey, hey, hey, tone it down a bit.
It's not about that. It's still it's about your heart and that's what God
wants to see and not your adornments. And don't cause someone to stubble stumble.
Scripture does say that that a brother should not cause another brother to stumble,
so in the case of cleavage. In the case of a woman dressing
attractive, at what point do you say, hey, that's causing me to
stumble and it's infringing on their liberties or freedoms. As a Christian, that's
something for you if you really feel that, you you know, you feel
moved to go up to somebody, and in the case of being at a
church and you feel that a woman's dressing inappropriately and you want to approach her
and say, I in no way want to make you feel embarrassed or feel
bad about yourself. It's just a struggle for me here at church to focus
on God. When I find that some people are wearing mini skirts or you
know, halftops or things like that, I think it's very appropriate to go
up and say, hey, I have an issue with this or it's really
distracting. And I don't mean that to make you feel bad in any way
shape form. That's just the truth of it. And it's hard for me
to get past that and get to that point of worshiping God. But when
you start, you know, saying, well, then there may be something
that she finds distracting and you go back and forth, and that's when problems
arise. It is difficult for male pastors to speak on these things because it
may be looked upon as patriarchal lean on women and women alone. It's not
very fair in the eyes of a woman that since women don't look at men
as sexual objects in the same way in the same sense, that it doesn't
affect men. So now that women are the ones that are constantly having to
deal with this, because the guys can't see them in fitted pants or a
fitted top without thinking that them sexually. So I would say that it is
very much a combined effort that men need to see women differently and women need
to understand that men do look at them, and the combination should birth a
new modesty in the church. But what is modest now, for better or
for worse, is different than what was modest two thousand years ago, and
that can't you can't pass that up. I don't think that's fair to take
it out of context and not understand that. So the battle does continue,
and and I understand that a lot of men deal with this and women.
I want you to know that and to think about that when you're dressing as
men and women should be going to church for God and not to show off
their latest outfits or to somehow show off their bodies. Charlie, Welcome to
Jesus Christ show. Hi, Hi, Charlie. I have a kind of
a theological question for you. If God is all knowing, then does he
know those that are going to be saved? I was told that salvation does
not come through choice, that God knows your actions prior to you taking them.
And the question I have them going along those lines. Did you die
for everyone as the Bible says? Or is there limited atonement for the eLAC
that you read about in Ephesians, in Second Peter and there's a few other
books. Because I'm always I always hear the scripture reference that none should perish,
and I was just curious as to what your take was on that.
Yes, this is one of those theolog called dilemmas that sometimes it's right in
front of you and people don't seem to see it. When it comes to
being all knowing, that doesn't mean dictating, Charlie. You remember that that
old silly show The Newlywed Game, Yea, And the premise was that the
husband and wife, the Newlyweds one would go where they couldn't hear and the
other would sit and answer questions that they thought the spouse would say, and
then they'd come back together and you'd see how many of them you got right.
So, what's your wife's favorite ice cream? And the man, the
newlywed man, would say it's chocolate, or they might even word it this
way. If we had chocolate vanilla here for your wife to choose to eat
today, which would she choose? And the man would say chocolate. Now,
that's because he knows that individual. And this the whole premise of that
show was just to point out how well they knew each other, and it
doesn't dictate. And that doesn't mean that the husband is forcing the woman the
wife to eat chocolate ice cream. It's that the man knows her so well
through his love for her and attentiveness, that he knows that she would choose
ice cream. That in no way forces her choice. So God's foreknowledge doesn't
force the choice of the individual. He simply and I say simply, because
he's God. He simply knows what choice will be made by the individual.
But that doesn't mean that the choices or the availability of those choices aren't there
for everyone. Of course they are. But if you don't like vanilla,
and you'll never eat vanilla no matter what. Then vanilla really isn't even a
choice to you. Only the chocolate is or anything that's not vanilla. So
there are individuals that will reject God no matter what. They just don't want
to know God. They don't want to be accountable to God here. They
certainly don't want to be with God in heaven for eternity, which is what
heaven is. Everyone thinks, well, heaven is this great reward. It's
like, oh, we get to go to heaven and we're going to have,
you know, fast cars, and we're going to be able to eat
all the ice cream we want and do what. That's not what heaven is.
Heaven is being in the presence of God and worshiping God. And if
you don't want to do that here on earth, God allows people not to
do it. So it comes back to the fact that if God knows what
your choice will be, has no way an effect on what your choice is.
It doesn't mean that God forced the choice. He just knows what your
choice is going to be. Now, as far as the elect it depends
on the definition of elect Some people feel that election is not done on God's
end. God wishes everyone. God desires everyone to be saved. The blood
in the cross is there for everyone. You're correct across the board. But
there are those that will receive and there are those that won't. And the
ones that receive are the elect because they will receive, not because they are
somehow separated from everyone else by God. And therefore God is playing a game
with everyone and saying, well, you know it's impossible for you to win
this game, but you're going to play it anyways. It's not like that.
It's everyone does get a fair chance, although God does know who will
receive and who won't, and it's still more valuable to have that option and
reject it than it is to not have been created at all. There's no
moral value in nothingness, so you can't say, well, why didn't God
just create those that would choose him? Then there isn't truly a choice or
a value in that process. You have to have the ability to accept or
reject for there to be value in that choice. And just because God knows
what you will choose doesn't mean you didn't have that value or didn't have that
ability to choose. There's a major, major difference between God knowing and God
forcing you to make that choice. Do you understand the difference between the two,
Yes, yes, I do. Okay, good good, You're very
very welcome. Kf I am sixty on demand