Questions and Answers, Part 13

Selected Scriptures

     Well, we want to have a little time for you to just share with me and I know I'm up here talking at you all the time and you never get to talk back at me.  So I want to give you an opportunity to do that.  What we like to do in these sessions is just let you ask questions about the church, something about the Bible.  It's not Stump the Pastor.  We want to get that straight at the beginning.  The idea is not to ask me questions I can't answer, but make me look good.  Ask me questions (laughter) that I can answer which will help a lot.

     Okay, there's a hand right up there.  Just stand up and...right there.

QUESTIONER:  I've always been interested in the mentally retarded, mental illness and all that and that's my general ____________.  The specific question I'd like to ask is what is the status of a mentally retarded person who has been mentally retarded from birth or maybe made a, I guess, what you'd call a vegetable.  Do...are they accountable to God for their sins or how did...why did God allow _________.

JOHN:  Well, you know, _________ you've asked me a whole pile of questions.  Why does God allow it?  I don't know.  You ask me why questions and I'm already stuck because I don't know why.  But I do know that God has His own purposes.  For example, in Exodus, chapter 4, "the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth?"  Just listen to this.  "Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?  Have not I the Lord?"  In other words, the people who come into the world with some handicap may be no less, or are no less the creation of God.  Now, what God's purposes are in those individual cases, only God knows.  Keep in mind that I don't think it's God's specific purpose in the creation of man that man should be so made.  But I think that is the inevitability of the curse of sin, which falls under His permissive will.  And then I think that in the case of a mentally retarded individual, a person who is a vegetable or whatever, God alone is the Judge and I would think that it's only, you know, it's only known to Him just exactly what the situation is.  I would say this, though, that I believe personally that if a child grows up, you know, handicapped mentally, retarded or whatever and that child dies, God is not going to punish a child eternally for a decision he couldn't make.  And so I'm convinced that it's no difference than the child previous to the age of accountability.  And Jesus said "Suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of Heaven."  David's infant son died.  David said, "he cannot come to me, but I shall go to him."  David had the confidence that his son was in the presence of God.  And Jesus said that in effect.  I believe God would treat those people who have an infantile mind the same way He would treat an infant.  So that without a conscious rejection of Jesus Christ, without a conscious rejection of the revelation of God in creation or whatever as Romans 1 says, without an overt rejection of those things, God's not going to hold a man accountable or a woman.  So, I think in a case where you have retardation or you have a mental handicap and the person is not responsible for his own behavior, that God would never hold them eternally accountable for something he could never make a decision about.  So, I think God treats them with great love and great care and I think you see that just in the nature of God.  I mean, God is too loving to be unnecessarily unkind to too just to be unfair.

     Somebody else have a question?  Yes, right here.

QUESIONER:  __________ 1 Timothy 4:1.

JOHN:  I Timothy 4:1.

QUESTIONER:  _____________________________________________

_________________________.

JOHN:  Right.

QUESTIONER: _______________________________________________

________________________...

JOHN:  Mm-hmm.

QUESTIONER:  ____________.

JOHN:  Okay.  I Timothy 4:1 says, ""Now the Spirit speaketh specifically that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons," so forth.  I don't believe...he was saying is this somebody who loses their salvation.  No, I don't think so.  I don't think you can make the word "some" into a Christian, necessarily.  "Some shall depart from the faith..."  Some within the framework of Christianity will depart from the faith.  And, of course...for example, I was just reading today in the latest issue of the Evangelical Press news service, which comes out every week and I just got it today so it's hot off the wires.  Claremont theological school has just hired a man who believes that the biggest myth in the Bible is the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  And he has spent years, he's written seven books, one of which majors on the myth of God incarnate.  All right.  He is teaching at Claremont Graduate School of Theology, which is under the name of Christianity.  I think that's what you have in view here.  Departing from the faith...what faith?...the faith.  That's a very important concept.  The faith is not faith, but the faith.  It's not the act of belief; it's the content.  In other words, he's not departing from believing, he's departing from the faith.  What faith?  Jude calls it the "once for all delivered to the saints" faith.  And what is the "once for all delivered to the saints" faith?  It's here.  And so in the latter times, the Spirit says that there will be people who, under the name of Christianity and under the guise of teaching God's truth, will depart from the historic faith.  And I don't think it has anything to do with people losing their salvation.  I think that they simply teach the doctrines of demons.  It's false teachers.  That's the key.

     Okay, right here.

QUESTIONER:  Okay, in Luke 24:39...

JOHN:  Luke 24:39.  I told you before, this is not Stump the Pastor (laughter) so you have to ask me questions I know.

QUESTIONER:  Okay, in Luke 24:39 Jesus told his disciples not to touch, or to touch Him to see that He's not a ghost after He was risen from the dead. 

JOHN:  Mm-hmm.

QUESTIONER:  Okay, now in John 20:17, He says don't because He has not ascended to Heaven...

JOHN:  Right.

QUESTIONER:  ...__________do and don't.

JOHN:  Sure, that's a good question.  Jesus said, "handle Me and see; a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see Me have," Luke 24:39.  On the other hand, He said to Mary, "don't touch Me.  I have not yet ascended to My Father."  The difference is in the Greek verb and the King James doesn't help you there.  You see, what He said to Mary was don't hang onto Me.  In other words, Mary Magdalene was so broken up when Jesus died.  Right?  She was just really broken up.  And, of course, when all of the sudden He appeared to her in His resurrection, well, she just wanted to hang onto Him.  And so she was literally clutching Him.  And He says, you can't hang onto Me now cause I have to ascend to My Father.  So the difference was simply the fact that He said, reach out and touch Me to see that I'm real, but to Mary He said, don't hang onto Me; I gotta go back.  And even in her mind, you know, I'm back to prove to you I'm alive.  I'm not back to stay so don't hang onto Me.  You're gonna have to release Me to go back to My Father.  Okay?  So really a difference in the Greek verb helps to clarify that.

QUESTIONER:  _____________________________________________

_____________________________.

JOHN:  Yeah, she has a friend at work who is a Seventh Day Adventist and she wanted to know whether they are saved.  You know, I don't care whether you're a Seventh Day Adventist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Catholic or whatever.  If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and you put your confidence in Him and His death and resurrection on your behalf, you're saved.  And every Seventh Day Adventist who's ever done that is saved.  As to the individual, I really don't know, but I'm convinced as I try to examine what I see as current, the current manifestation of people in Seventh Day Adventism, and I'm pretty convinced that many of them really do know the Lord Jesus Christ.  Again, you know, historically, Seventh Day Adventism has the trappings of a cult because it was basically generated by a woman named Ellen G. White.  And, of course, if you go back to the cults, you have Madame Blavatsky, you know, and you have Mary Baker Eddy and you have Annie Besant.  You have all of these women who sort of spawned these kind of cultic things.  And so some people have tended to take Ellen G. White because, you know, they read The Desire of the Ages and all that stuff that comes out from Ellen G. White as if it was really truth.  But I think...and, of course, they believe in soul-sleep.  They believe that when you die, you just go out of, you know, you go into a coma until some time in the future and we don't believe that.  They also attach a pretty strong and rigid legalism to the issue of living the Christian life in regard to, well, they used to not allow you to drink Coke and coffee and keep the Sabbath and so forth.  But it seems recently there has been a greater concentration among those people on the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  And I know I've met many of them who really do know Christ.  So I don't think you can classify them by that system as non-Christians.

QUESTIONER:  _____________________________________________.

JOHN:  Yeah, if she's keeping the Sabbath, yeah, yeah.  Well, they do keep, they keep the Sabbath.  That's right.  And, you know, but I mean...

QUESTIONER:  ____________________________.

JOHN:  ...yeah, and she's a vegetarian.  Mm-hmm.  Oh, I know, I was...I've eaten those walnut burgers at the Adventist Hospital (laughter).

QUESTIONER:  ___________________________________.

JOHN:  Yeah.

QUESTIONER:  _______________________________________.

JOHN:  I'll take a Big Mac (laughter) myself.  Anyway...

     Okay.

QUESTIONER:  In Matthew 24 where it says this generation will not pass away, does that have anything to do with the 1948 ______________?

JOHN:  That's one interpretation.  The generation that sees the fig tree bud will not die off until all these things be fulfilled.  And if in fact we can interpret the fig tree budding as the rebirth of the nation Israel, then the generation alive in 1948 to see that, will be the generation alive when all these things are fulfilled.  But there are other interpretations of that.  "Genea" can mean generation and then you can argue about how long a generation is, whether it's 40 to 80 years and everybody stops somewhere in there.  People who are...used to say it's 30 years are getting a little antsy by now cause it's passed.  But the thing is, there are, there are some who interpret "genea" as a race and that what Jesus is saying is this people.  It can be translated as people or nation.  This nation, Israel, shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.  That's just as great a prophecy, that Israel is gonna abide throughout history until the coming of Jesus Christ.  That's another possible interpretation.  Some interpret generation as a reference to the people standing right there with Jesus who would not pass away until this would be fulfilled in the sense of its prefiguring, which was the destruction of Jerusalem, because in 70 A.D. the destruction of Jerusalem was a sampler of the Second Coming.  It was a sampler of final judgment.  And they saw it that way, I mean, the Biblical writers.  And so He...some say He was saying, well, your, you know, this generation right here isn't gonna pass away until they see this thing fulfilled, you know.  It's kind of like Joel, too, you know, where He says even now you've seen this fulfilled.  Right?  And then it talks about that your young men shall dream dreams and prophecy and all these things.  Well, that wasn't fully fulfilled, was it, because the moon didn't turn to blood and all those other things Joel said.  But there was a prefillment, a sort of a pre-preliminary thing.  And so some say that the generation that is there, that's standing there with Jesus, will be there when they begin to see what that's gonna be like as it's sampled in the destruction of Jerusalem.  So there's several options in interpreting that.

     Yeah, do you have a question?

QUESTIONER:  Yes, I'd like to know, is it...after you're saved, is it possible that Satan can physically touch you or create an actual physical impression around you and if so, why does he?

JOHN:  Yeah, he's asking, if you're a Christian and you've been saved, can Satan actually create a physical impression around you or whatever.  Well, the answer is yes.  And the reason I say that is because of II Corinthians, chapter 11 [this is in chapter 12] where Paul the apostle, no less than Paul the apostle said he had "a messenger from Satan, a thorn in the flesh sent to buffet" him.  Satan was permitted by God to bring upon Paul a certain disease or certain problem, but it was for his own good.  If you go to the book of Job...right?  And Satan goes into the presence of God and says, ah, you don't have a faithful man in the world.  And God says, yes, I do; I have Job.  He's a faithful man.  Satan says, he's faithful because you've blessed him so much.  Let me get at him a little while and he'll bail out.  So God says all right.  So He let Satan go and Satan literally oppressed Job in a severe way.  So there's no question in my mind and...but I think the thing you have to remember is that there are two kinds of things like this.  Now, ____ keep in mind that no evil thing befalls someone from God.  All right?  But God will use those things.  God doesn't invent trials and temptations but allows them, because they try our faith and make us strong.  Right?  So as a Christian, I believe God allows Satan to tempt me.  God allows Satan to put me through trials.  God allows Satan to get on my case a little bit, because then when I, when I win the victory in the strength of the Lord, I'm stronger next time.

     But that's different than being obsessed or depressed or whatever by Satan.  That's another thing.  And that's where a believer begins to cultivate sin in his life.  He begins to lose the warfare, wrestling against flesh..."not against flesh and blood, but principalities, powers, the rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places," and as you begin to live an unholy life, you lose the breastplate of righteousness, you're wide open, you're vulnerable because of your sin.  Then I believe Satan can really mess you up even as a Christian.  And the devil goes around "like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour."  And the Bible says, if you resist the devil, he'll flee from you, but if you don't resist him, he not gonna flee.

     So there are two ways to look at it.  One is that God allows Satan to bring you a certain amount of temptation.  He did Jesus, didn't He.  He tempted Christ, but Christ came through with victory and I think God wants us to do that.  But that's different than when we begin to sin and we begin to walk in unrighteousness and then Satan begins to crowd in our lives and mess everything up.