You're listening to KFI A six forty on demand. Rubelle, Welcome to the
Jesus Christ Show. Hi Jesus, thanks for taking my call, my pleasure.
How can i help you? Okay, 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, it's not a problem. If you swear to God and you
lie, you burn an hell. So that's like, I don't see the
difference between that and swarting to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth. So I'll be God. Is that 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 comnant 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 is you can go through and you
can read them 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 walk down this isle. It seems
quite strange by today's standards dealing with these offerings. And for the point of
understanding, you had 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
his 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 a 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 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 playing 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 us, 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 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 want to stand on, stand on on your
own, say leave 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 seven. God says, So,
God created man in his own image. I'm one behind. Possibly, yeah,
let us make man in our image. He's speaking in plural there,
and it confuses me. You know, some people, 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 is the direct answer, and that is
that in the Hebrew the word which is used there for God is actually plural.
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 Judeo
Christian belief system is always one, always one. The Shmah is hero is
reel, the life, 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. There's not
many gods. So the debate goes on here from there and goes from the
just a 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 Neil believes that also 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 in 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 Elohim 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 going to reference Matthew three, sixteen and seventeen
tewod 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 Psalm 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 scripture. Jim,
welcome to Jesus Christ show. All right, Jesus is great to talk to
you. My pleasure, Jim. How can I help you? Uh conundrum
in some of my some of the churches I've been in in the past,
as I realized that I was kind of just a Christian and 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'll know others about it by their free And the biggest thing that
that seems so hard to get a pastor to address, especially a male pastor,
is im modest dress among women, especially in church, especially leavage.
And you know, I brought up to a person at 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 reasons 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 more modestly, or the Lord would like you to do
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 decollegue. 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 for 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 four through seven, so 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 is. 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 and an understanding here. One Timothy two nine and ten.
One Peter three through five will give you an idea of certain verses that talk
about modesty and dressed 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. 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 gonna be hard, Jim, for you to say. Now,
you may know it when you see it, you may say that bothers
me, but to dictate that to someone else, there's not going to be
a biblical precedent for that. There's not gonna be a place where you can
say you can't do this specifically, because in scripture it talks about general ideas
or things that were 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 gonna have to kind of change with
it. If something bothers you then you need not to look at it.
But a woman showing her cleavage isn't 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. But when it comes to cleavage, 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, 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 are 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,
a sash, and a coat that went over that long piece of cloth,
sometimes leather sandals. Men would wear turbans. I know you don't think of
it that way, and 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, has to deal with sexuality
and these types of things, but there were basic concerns that if you didn't
know that you were. 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 one 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 specific abuses
during the early church growth, and some people feel, some theologians feel that
Paul was 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
three 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 One Timothy two nine through ten and One 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
in the New Testament says, but that's the truth. The 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, and 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 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, half
tops 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 new way shape.
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 the 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 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 then
going along those lines, did you die for everyone as the Bible says?
Or is there limited atonement for the elect that you read about in Ephesians,
in tewod 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
theological 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, 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 newly man would say it's chocolate, or
they might even word it this way. If we had chocolate and 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 the whole premise of that show was 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 fast cars and we're going to be able to
eat all the ice cream we want. And 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, it 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 the election is not done on
God's end. God wishes everyone, God desires everyone to be saved. The
blood and the cross is there 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 gonna 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 six forty on demand