You're listening to KFI on demand. Freedom is a wonderful thing. Freedom can
be abused just like anything, and for the believer, it must be controlled.
So it just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something.
And that's the age old dilemma with everybody, really with any system of
freedom. This happens in the United States as well, but it will happen
on a day to day basis with you as a believer. You'll be around
all kinds of people, whether they are non believers or that maybe they're young
believers just new trying to learn get their footing, and people will be watching
you, watching you and what you do, how you interact, the things
you say, and your desire is to have that freedom and explore that freedom.
Thank God for that freedom, but also not to misuse it or to
put it in a light that causes confusion and a stumbling block for those around
you. You will let people down, and there will be times where you'll
do things that are completely okay under the blood on the cross, but will
somehow make someone else stumble. And for instance, is there's nothing wrong with
drinking wine. However, if you're in the presence of an alcoholic it's not
the best thing to do. As a matter of fact, that you can
very much be a stumbling block depending on where the person is in their recovery,
and that by knowing that you should be compassionate towards that and forego the
drinking on your own. And that's just a simple analogy or a simple example
rather of how it can come up in your life. And New Testament times
it had a lot to do not only with drinking, but with food and
the concept of food, paganized food or food that was sacrificed to idols.
Sometimes you know, sometimes you didn't. That's quite why most people pray today.
When you're praying over a meal, oftentimes you're not sure where it came
from, and so you're giving God the glory for the food just in case
it was sacrificed by someone else for some other reason, and sort of cleansing
it while giving praise to God. Well, those things happened two thousand years
ago as well. The battle when going to eat something thing isn't going to
make someone stumble. Plus, there were things that the Christian believers would eat
or consume that they're Jewish brothers and sisters would not, and these things can
sometimes cause confusion. In First Corinthians eight thirteen, it says, therefore,
if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never
eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall. And
essentially it was better to just cut that food out of your life than it
was to make someone stumble. Best case scenario, you kind of cover all
edges. And I'm not saying you have to be that dramatic about it,
but really it's about having that instant come into play. Protect yourself and others
by knowing if someone has a weakness or a concern or a sin, that
you don't want to lead them down, especially young believers. You know,
being with a young believer and an old believer should be inspiring and often is,
but sometimes can be a little confusing. The older believer has kind of
whittled through a lot of the garbage, maybe things that people have placed in
the way, or certain traditions that are really more about tradition than they are
about anything else, and all of this and that can be confusing sometimes.
Even First Timothy four twelve says, don't let anyone look down on you because
you were young, but you're accountable too, goes on to say, but
set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love,
in faith, and impurity, regardless of your age in Christ. And what
I'm calling you to here is to be be aware of your surroundings and the
things you do and the things you say, and the things you know,
and how you interact and all these things because others see them. And it's
not just the world. It's those that claim to be Christians as well that
are going through their own struggles. Now, some may care, some may
not care. There are some believers that just don't focus on those things,
and there's some that people refer to as legalistic and get very very specific about
every little thing. But the truth be told. Scripture says that you're to
make no one stumble, and it's not. It's not about judging everyone are
going back and judging each other. It's about understanding that what you can do
affects and as much as you're trying to you know, sometimes you may do
something and if a nonbeliever sees you, say, oh, well, they're
not a believer. They don't really get the whole thing anyways. And it's
under the blood of the cross and I'm fine, and they don't get it.
But it's not just about that. It affects Christians alike Romans fourteen thirteen.
Therefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make
up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of
a brother or sister. So think about the things that you do, sometimes
maybe in spite or out of frustration, that you may do that would cause
stumbling from another believer, the way you act, the things you do.
I know, I have this conversation with my producer Neil all the time,
a little too free spirited wrestles with being an individual in his faith versus being
an actual stumbling block. And that's going to be a concern of yours as
well that you're going to You don't want to be a cookie cut You don't
want to just do everything that everybody else does or anything that you have to
hold on to your individuality most certainly, but do it in a way that
it isn't causing others to fall or to sin, to stumble, because in
doing that, you remove God from the equation. Now you're you're making it
about the sin, or you're making it about the mistakes in people's lives that
you're kind of giving them excuse to do them more, and people struggle as
it is. You know, a research came out recently, and this is
one of those things that they've been going back and forth on them been studying
for a long time, is how people react to visual stimulation or other types
of stimulation that remind them of something. For instance, they've made note that
if an athlete is watching a sports game, they had different responses than your
average Jane or Joe, and they're a little more intense. However, everyone
watching kind of puts themselves in a game. You ever wonder why, wow,
how can so many people sit around watching a football game or a basketball
game and they tend to say things like oh we won or things like that
when they weren't playing at all. Well, the body, even though it's
not playing, sees the action and almost puts itself in the action. That's
why adrenaline can raise while watching a game. I'm sure if they had a
bet to or had money on the game, that kind of helps the cause
as well. But physiologically, there's other stuff going on and new studies coming
out that when when a smoker or an ex smoker. See somebody smoke on
camera, they're watching a film, they feel the urge and the desire smoke
as well. Now, as a believer, when you're doing certain things,
you may be doing something that motivates someone else in a way that could be
destructive in their life, causing them to stubble. And this puts extra weight
on you understanding who you are, what you do, and how you are
around others. Being an example or living as an example is always going to
be difficult, And as believers, there's this extra balance because you're to be
living in a way that compels the world to ask about the hope that lies
within you. As it says in First Pew three fifteen, you're called to
that living in a way and dealing with problems and circumstances in such a way
that others will notice. But also you're called to defend younger Christians and younger
believers and others in your own flock by the things you do in liberty.
So this wonderful thing, liberty that gives you that freedom to do all kinds
of things, also gives you the most intense responsibility. There's a lot of
bondage and freedom. And I know it sounds strange, but quite frankly,
in that comes the responsibility of what to do and what not to do,
even though you're allowed. It really focuses not on what you can do,
but focuses on what you should do. First Corinthians ten twenty three says,
I have the right to do anything you say, but not everything is beneficial.
I have the right to do anything, but not everything is constructive.
And this is where discernment comes in and where you play the part of learning
what's going to be beneficial what not just what you can do, but what
you ought to do, what you should do. And there are going to
be things that would be legal technically under the blood of Christ, and that
you have freedom, but honing that freedom and maximizing it and doing good things
is really the path that God calls you justever you want for whatever reason.
Yes, when you have the blood of God on your side, it allows
you a lot of freedoms, much more than even much of the church gives.
There are churches that seem to spend their time looking to take away your
freedoms. However, that's not that's not what I call you to call you
to have the freedoms but simultaneously have the discernment and the ability to weed them
from your life if they cause division or if they cause people to stumble.
And it really should motivate open discussion between believers, healthy, healthy discussion amongst
believers. It's kind of a family in house discussion because there are going to
be those that say, well, this makes me stumble, so you should
stop doing it. It says that if you ate meat and it made someone
stuble, that you would stop, so you should stop. And that's not
the case either. It can't be just used to as leverage to get people
to do what you want them to do because you think it's right or wrong.
It has to be about harmony and learning that what you do does affect
others. And just because it's legal and under the blood and there's freedom doesn't
mean it's good or healthier constructive. Hi, Kathy, welcome to the Jesus
Christ Show. Hi. I love your show. Well, thank you.
I will preface my question with this. A position friend of mine recommended the
book The Language of God by Francis Collins. Collins right, and he said
to me, I'm a scientist and a believer, and this book is a
must read, and so I recommend it. It's my book club and we
are all, like twenty five of us are just really into this book.
And really it's so it's not anything new, as you know, but it's
so interesting to hear Francis Collins as a scientist and as a Christian and explain
the biological part or the scientific part of the Bible, the DNA project and
all this in such a way that for the first time, I feel like
I really do understand sort of where God was coming from. And I asked
a friend of mine about this book if she had read it, and she's
a very fundamental Christian, and she believes that the Earth and that the universe
is six thousand years old, and she, oh, gee, I don't
know. I'll have to run that by somebody at my church. Anyway.
I just want your opinion on what do you think about the suppose Well,
we don't. My producer, Neil is the one that puts his thumbs up
or thumbs down on books. I don't endorse books on the program myself,
but but I will tell you this. We will look at a couple of
things. One Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project. He's a
former atheist and an incredibly brilliant mind. He is a Christian and he is
a huge fan of C. S. Lewis as well, who gets quite
a quoted rather quite a bit in the book. So there is there is
debate that goes on because of this particular the case he makes for a kind
of God directed evolution, and there are Christians that will land in different areas.
Now there's there's kind of a breakoff of different belief Now you've got an
intelligent design, you've got a basic creationism, you've got the atheistic type of
evolution, and then you've got what people call theistic evolution, and now you've
got this kind of God directed evolution, which is a little different as well.
So I would say as a whole, I think it's wonderful that you're
reading it. The concept of the universe or the concept of people being six
thousand years old is truly based on a misreading of scripture. So it's using
scripture in a way that it wasn't meant to be used. They're taking the
chronology of man and saying that this is a true chronology, and this is
every single generation. So all you got to do is add up the averages
of generations and you'll come up with a rough estimation, and then you tie
in the Jewish calendar to that. You think, okay, well, this
is roughly about what it is. And it's really not a fair look or
an honest look at how old man is or how old the earth is,
or any of those things. So, but there is a discussion that goes
on. We talk about reason reasons dot org. The folks that reasons to
believe that are old Universe creationists. There are those that believe that the earth
is much older than six thousand years, much older, and and some people
look at them and say, oh, they're not Christian because of this.
It's silliness that goes on. I think it's incredibly healthy, Kathy, that
you're doing this, and I'm happy to hear that it's inspiring you and that
the type of discussion in the book is one that piques your interest. In
any work by man, anything that's written by man, one needs to have
the sense of an old cow and eat the hay and leave the sticks.
There's going to be some great stuff in it, and maybe some not so
great, or maybe some areas of gray area that aren't so well defined.
Also, it's fine to understand science by the way of God, and sometimes
it's okay to understand God by way of science, because after all, you
can learn a lot about an artist by looking at their art. But what
you don't want to do, ever, is overshadow of scripture because of a
book, or even because of perceived science. And I say that because science
by definition is observational, and those observations do change. So having said all
of that, there's nothing about this author, there's nothing about the topic or
anything like that that I think is damaging or detrimental. On its face,
I think it's wonderful that you guys would get together and start reading this and
you know, pass it along to others, and and if it really speaks
to you, it speaks to you. The biggest problem with the concept of
theistic evolution of any kind is if there's any crossing of the flesh, meaning
that in Genesis it talks about God creating and everything was created unto their own
kind. Some people may say that this is defining a phylum like a group
that branches off, but it's a phylum. The problem that Christianity has is
not with the concept of evolution, and a lot of people don't understand that.
They think that all Christians hate evolution, but really, if they're an
educated Christian, you'll understand that the Bible really opposes the special theory of evolution,
that great change is possible within fixed kinds. That's not what took place
scripturally. But it's fine with the general theory of evolution, or it's not
okay with a general theory of evolution, which is amiba to human beings.
That there's nowhere there's there's no argument in scripture that you'll find that. But
as far as the special theory of evolution, that there's great change or there's
an adaptation and things like that, of course. But you know, also,
in addition to reading this book, I'm reading the autobiography of Charles Darwin
because I sort of thought it sit in with what I needed to learn.
He's an interesting cat. No, he is so interesting, and he's not
a bad guy. No. No. That's another thing that gets kind of
sticky is when people demonize thinkers. Now, there are some there are some
mean people throughout history who've written some ugly things about the Church and about God,
and that had their own issues, but most often the scientific community.
Really, if you look at it, philosophy birth to science, and and
through that came a greater understanding of religion, not a lesser understanding. Now
I know that there's a branch of sciences that, you know, go towards
trying to disprove God, which is silly because you can't prove a negative.
And in this particular case of Darwin, you've you've you find somebody who is
fascinated by by life. Now it's a faulty premise that Darwin uses, and
that's why most scientists, if not all, currently don't adhere to darwin True
Darwinism. Yeah, that type of evolution doesn't really exist anymore. And Darwin
himself said, hey, you're gonna find you're you're gonna be digging and there's
gonna be transitional fossils everywhere, and you know here you are. Well,
I thought, the really interesting thing about Charles Darwin is that the statement that
he made towards the end of his life is that he wanted to be seen
as a theist. Well, these are things that are in debate too.
Those those yes, those statements often aren't you know, or they're taken out
of context. A lot of people trying to do that with with Einstein as
well. And you can't help but look at the complexity of life and say,
hey, listen, you don't come across a watch and say, oh,
this just happened to, you know, pop up this way because it
was sitting in the sun for a certain amount of time. It's just when
you see plexity and the argument that some might use for evolution saying look at
all the similarities and all these animals, you could also say they you know,
that's like saying, look at all the similarities in a family that came
from the same mother and father that by by the designer in that sense,
or the creator, they're going to have similarities in creation. But I don't
see anything. There are some books that I would say run, don't walk
from This is not one of them. What do you think of C.
F. Lewis? I love C. S. Lewis, and we referenced
C. S. Lewis quite a bit. And this was a This was
a man who who battled through a lot of frustrations as well, and through
you know, after his death, a lot of those writings that were never
meant to be books by the way, a lot of those writings and diaries
and journals and things that he had written or are now passed along to the
reader, and with very interesting notes about his battle. And the reason why
I like C. S. Lewis and we talk about C. S.
Lewis on the air and recommend a lot of his works through Neil is that
he has an intense honesty and there's a lot of falsification in the church,
a lot of smile through it type stuff Jesus Loves You and the batting of
the eyebrows and that business. And it's it's not just about that kind of
candy eyed thought process. There's a lot more to it, and there's a
lot of pain in the process of learning about God and learning about yourself and
growing into a healthy human being. And I think C. S. Lewis
is incredibly honest about that. And so it's it's not that C. S.
Lewis hasn't been misquoted in books or used by people that that I certainly
wouldn't think are healthy Christians. I do say, though, that it's usually
a pretty good sign when somebody quotes C. S. Lewis that at least
they're somebody who is honest with not only their own faith, belief and understanding,
but also a healthy understanding of the reality of God, not being you
know, the ultimate candy giver. Oh, I'm going to believe in God
and everything's gonna be great, and life's gonna be danding. We're gonna skipping
on to church hand in hand and all of those things. So I'm very
proud of you, Kathy. I think that's that sounds like a wonderful book
for you to be cracking into. And the fact that you're so excited about
something and it's engaging you like that, I think is a very wonderful thing.
A lot of these types of books come out and go by the wayside.
I would recommend to you, Kathy, checking out Reasons dot org and
the folks at Reasons to Believe with doctor Hugh Ross and the like. You
have chemists and astro physicists and the like that write and talk about these things
all the time, and I think that they do it in a very healthy
way as well, and most likely if you went to their website today,
that they have a critique or a thought or two about this book The Language
of God as well. But I think it's wonderful that the scientific community is
starting to break out again, because if you go back, you see that
the early scientists were people of faith in one form or another, were people
of faith, and and so that that is kind of bridging the gap a
little bit. And now it's becoming a little more okay for scientists to say,
no, I absolutely do not see it as as contradictory to be a
scientist and to be a person of faith. Brian, Welcome to the Jesus
Christ Show. That's allows going to Jesus. Good Brian, what's going on?
Yeah, I just had a question. I was wondering why a lot
of paintings and pictures show angels having things okay, and I was wondering if
the UFO phenomena had had anything to do with these angelic beings. Oh,
it's interesting and there's a lot of theory on both. I don't know that
we'll get to all of it, but let's go to the scripture first.
That's best place to start that. You know, you see the cherubic the
little child with the loincloth and the little wings and their chubby faced you know
how you see those in paintings and stuff. Well, that's that type of
description is nowhere in scripture, and what is in scripture is a hierarchy,
almost like a military of created beings, specifically created beings by God that are
messengers, which is what angel means. You will see times in scripture,
like for instance, in Isaiah, if you go to Isaiah six, verse
two and six, you'll see that it talks about a seraphim, and the
seraphim in this case said that each one had six wings, two that covered
the face, to that covered the feet, and two that he flew with,
and and so a lot of description, you know, and paintings come
from that. If you really saw the intensity of an angel. Keep in
mind, the angel does not have a physical body form, only has a
body form at particular times and necessities to be seen by humans. Yes,
do you think maybe when they when they all they get, you know,
receive a body. No, it's not a it's not a necessity. Now,
it doesn't mean that they can't possess because angels demons and fallen are fallen
angels that yes, they could possess a body, but they don't receive a
body. A lot of that kind of twisted theology comes from Hollywood and the
harps and the and that people die and then they go to heaven become angels.
That's not the way it works in scripture. Also, there's uh talking
in the Book of Daniel about flight and the like. So when you read
these things, it's kind of assumed that they have wings because people think,
well, how does someone fly? So part of it is anthropomorphic. It's
applying very human or human understanding to something. Back to Daniel, we're talking
about Daniel, like when they describe the I guess chariot of fire in the
sky, like, like, wouldn't chariot be like, you know, if
we were if we were to see something now, we would call it an
aeroplane. But I guess back then they you know, obviously they refer to
it as chariot. Well there's yeah, there's instances in Isaiah as well as
well about the wheel in the sky and things like that. The important thing
is to understand its context, to see what it's not saying. Because you
can go into gift shops and all kinds of little shops, and angels were
kind of an end thing for a while. They're people were collecting little figurines
and books on angels. But a lot of the New Age movement, a
lot of you know, garbage actually has seeped into the concept of angels,
because, to make it short, people do everything they can not to worship
God, and they try and find anything else to worship or to believe in
or to participate with that isn't actually being accountable to God. And angels kind
of fall into that category. Yet angels have always said when someone went to
worship them, don't worship me. Do not worship me. I am not
here to be worshiped. But there's a book that Neil put up under his
recommended reading that's called Angels Elect an Evil by Cefred Dickinson, and he thinks
it's a fantastic book on angels, And if you really want to know about
angels, there's a good place to start because it's completely based on Biblical references
about the hierarchy, about the stations of angels, the names, the appearance
of angels in movies. It's funny you see angels appear as women most of
the time. Almost every single physical appearance of an angel is in a masculine
form, with exception of one that some scholars question whether it's an angel or
not. And there's discrepancies, but these types of things actually have been modified
by Hollywood. Brian They's Hollywood has found sexier, more interesting ways, in
their own opinion, to portray angels, and so therefore you start seeing these
different types of angelic beings. But angels in scripture have been described with wings,
not the single pair, and that kind of appearance that you're used to,
but usually in more dramatic form. And some of the you know,
demons and the like are pretty intense, and the appearance of an angel is
pretty intense, more intense than a very flowery painting that will go in your
mother's bathroom might be KFI amix on demand