Questions and Answers, Part 3

Selected Scriptures

     We wanna share tonight in a time of question and answer.  For our guests, we might explain to you that normally we are studying through a book in the Bible; but, periodically, there...there is a piling up of Bible questions that occurs; and so we halt somewhere in the process and devote a Sunday night or two to answering questions.  Some of you have asked questions that have rather lengthy answers.  Many questions, to me, have rather lengthy answers; and...it's very difficult to give a short answer.  And in many cases, those questions are related to passages which I have already taught to you in the text of some book that we've studied.  So if you have asked a question say on an interpretation of Acts or Hebrews or Galatians or something, and that's already in the tape ministry, and it's already available to you through the tape library or through the purchasing of it or whatever, we're gonna assume that you can check it out at that point, if it's a long answer, and not spend our time repeating something, unless it's been so long ago, and it's a little bit off center of the way we discussed it on the tape. 

     Now, in addition to that, I...I would encourage you to get in the habit of...of having your own questions answered by your own study.  I think it's very important that you answer your own questions.  You know, there are books that are published that are titled The Bible Questioned Answered, and there have been several in that same category.  I have yet to find in those books really an answer that fully satisfies me, because I may come at a problem with just a little bit different outlook, and the only way I can be fully satisfied and cover all the bases is to get it for myself; and I think that will be true with you.  I will answer your question, but it'll be an answer coming from my mind to the question, rather than yours, and it may come at it from a little different angle.  So if we don't just exactly meet on what you were asking, then take note of the fact that you can take what I said and maybe go from there to dig out your own answer.

     Then the other thing that I wanted to say, just as an introductory comment is that there's one verse that I claim continually in answering Bible questions, and that's Deuteronomy 29:29, which says, "The secret things belong to the Lord."  And there are many things that can't be answered; and there will be many mysteries.  There will be many answers that will be given as Biblical answers, but they will have lose ends on them.  People always ask those ultimate questions like why did God allow evil.  Or how can you choose to come to Christ when it's all predetermined before you're born; and if it's predetermined before you're born, why bother to evangelize, and so forth and so forth. 

     And there are always gonna be those questions where, even after you've answered the whole thing, there's a little leak in your answer; and the reason there's a little leak in there is because that's God.  That's where God gets into the answer, and you don't have revelation on that subject.  So we'll try to giv