March 15, 2025 • 46 mins
This weekend on Open Line with Dr. Michael Rydelnik, we welcome Moody Bible Institute professor Eva Rydelnik and Open Line producer Tricia McMillan for a Mailbag program. You've sent us your questions and they've piled up so we can spend the whole program answering them. How do you talk with those who don't believe that Bible stories really happened? Can you lose your salvation? We dive deep to answer these questions and more on our next Open Line with Dr. Michael Rydelnik.
Learn more about resources mentioned:
Bible Reading Plans
Chosen People Ministries free gift
FEBC podcast
Moody Bible Commentary
Open Line is listener-supported. To support the program, click here.
Become a Kitchen Table Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/openline/partners
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:08):
Today we're celebrating a new holiday. It's clear the Spindle Day,
also known as empty the inbox day. It's an all
mail bag all the time episode of Open Line. We've
got the questions you've sent us about the Bible, God
and the spiritual life, and we're getting ready to address
them right now. So hang tight. We're going to get
(00:28):
to those in just a moment. Hello, everyone. Welcome to
Open Line with Doctor Michael right. Zelnick Moody Radio's Bible
study Across America. My name is Michael right Melnick and
I'm professor of Jewish studies and Bible at Moody Bible Institute.
And I'm here today and every Saturday to do my
best to answer your questions about the scriptures. Normally, the
bulk of this program is taking your phone calls. Not
(00:51):
so today. Today it's all mailbag, all the time. The
best way to be in touch with us is via
our website, Open line radio.org. If you go there, it
has links to anything you might need, whether it's email
or Twitter or Facebook, you can reach us that way.
It also has links to past programs. It has links
(01:12):
to various issues that that you might find helpful. It
has a link to my personal website if you're interested
in that. It's got all sorts of stuff for you,
so take a look at that open line radio.org. Also
joining me today is the person I turn to when
I have a question about the Bible. And that's my
favorite Bible teacher, a colleague on the faculty of Moody
Bible Institute, a fantastic writer. She contributed to the Moody
(01:35):
Bible Commentary, and she is my partner in life, my wife,
my beloved forever. And she's the person I love most
in the world. Eva Redlich. Glad you're here today, Eva.
S2 (01:46):
Hey, it's fun to be here, Michael.
S1 (01:47):
You know, usually you just have to text the answers
into me. So today, you can just jump right in and.
S2 (01:52):
Write them a big piece of paper and hold it.
S1 (01:53):
Up. That's right. It'll make me sound better if you
do it that way. Anyway. Also joining us is the
person who makes everything happen on Open Line, who put
together the the mailbag for today. The person who lets
me know when I'm supposed to be and where I'm
supposed to be and when it's supposed to be, and
all the things that she does that just keeps this
program on target. That's Tricia McMillan, producer of Open Line.
S2 (02:15):
Yay!
S1 (02:16):
Glad you're here, Tricia.
S3 (02:16):
I'm glad to be here.
S1 (02:17):
You have so many questions you've put together here. Uh.
S3 (02:22):
I don't have these questions. Well, you didn't make these up.
I didn't. These are all questions that you, the listener,
have sent us. Okay, so we've got a we've got
a whole lot of them.
S1 (02:32):
We're going to have to get another spindle day soon. Yes. Yeah. Well, anyway,
we're going to do our best to get through these
as best we can. Well, now's the time to go
get your Bible. Hope you have your cup of coffee
and head over to the radio. The radio kitchen table,
as we say. We're going to talk about the scriptures. Okay. So, uh,
let's start what's what's you've ordered them. You ask.
S3 (02:55):
Them. All right. We're going to start in Genesis.
S1 (02:57):
Okay. That's a good place to start.
S3 (02:58):
Sylvia from Glenview, Illinois, listens to WNBA, says our Bible
study is on the Temptations in chapter three of Genesis.
What are the underlying categories of the devil's temptations to Eve?
She's heard that the first one is, in general, the
temptation of appetite. That is, that the tree was good
for food. The second one that the tree was a
(03:18):
delight to look at, is the temptation of the eyes.
And the third one, the tree, was desirable for obtaining
wisdom is the coveting of the knowledge of God. She's
not sure if those are accurate categories, and wanted to
know what you think that the categories represent.
S1 (03:32):
I think the best way to look at the categories
is in first John chapter two, verse 16. Uh, where
I think it's exactly related to Genesis three. It says,
for all that is in the world, the lust of
the flesh, that has to do with desire when we
(03:52):
talk about the lust of the flesh is God has
built us with desires, and those desires get out of whack.
They get distorted. And that's what's called the flesh. The
desire that, I mean, desire is normal. Desire to eat,
for example. Appetite would be normal. But to desire to
eat something we shouldn't eat, like gluttony, that would be
(04:14):
the flesh. And so the lust of the flesh, it
says the lust of the eyes. That's where we see something,
and we want it. The desire of the eyes. Uh,
and then the boastful pride of life, the the fruit
was desirable to make someone wise. I want to be
(04:35):
wise like God. I want to be really wise, is
what the temptation was. And so those are the three categories. Now,
what I think is every temptation we face. And I'm
wondering if Eva wants to add to this, but I
think this is true. Every temptation we face is in
one of those three categories, wouldn't you say?
S2 (04:54):
I think so, too. Yeah. Um, and, you know, sometimes
they you hear on on fortune cookies or whatever. It's
like there's the world, the flesh and the devil.
S1 (05:04):
Yeah. Well, that's the three. That's the that's the three
areas of warfare that we face. But this is the flesh.
The flesh is pride. It's a visual desire and physical desire.
And all three of those things. And of course, Galatians
five talks about the what comes out of that. The
(05:26):
the fruit of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit.
So great.
S3 (05:31):
Well, thank you for that. Thanks for your question, Sylvia.
Our next question is from Marilyn in Florida. Listen to
this one. She says, why would an all knowing God
bother with a flood when he knew ahead of time
the depravity of mankind would again take hold? Are we
to believe that because Noah was God fearing that his
progeny would be less depraved? Love your program and I
(05:53):
thank you ahead of time for your answer.
S1 (05:56):
Would Noah's progeny be less depraved? Apparently not, because we
see what happens almost immediately, right?
S3 (06:03):
So why even bother with a flood to wipe it out?
S1 (06:06):
Yeah, well, apparently it was getting so bad that he
was going to to judge the world in that way
and start again. Uh. Did it. I don't know why.
God in his sovereignty. Maybe he saw that it was
worse even then, and it was headed for a worse
self-destruction than what happened afterwards and what has continued since
(06:26):
the days of Noah. I don't know, God knows. But
the thing is, it says in Genesis six, I believe
that the Lord regretted that he made man, that he
made humanity. I don't think that God really regrets things.
In numbers 23 it says that God doesn't change his mind.
(06:48):
It says God is not a man, that he would
change his mind. And so it seems to me that
God knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly
what was going to come out of this. And he
uses that phrase of regret for having made man, and
then he's going to destroy the world with a flood.
That means that he's using anthropomorphisms. That's a figure of
(07:10):
speech where it attributes human characteristics to God. And so
God knows everything that's going to happen. Uh, he's judging
the world for that. Uh, and then he's going to rebuild.
And I think what we see is there's something that
experts at narrative in the Bible have pointed out that
(07:33):
there's a literary technique that's called recursion, which is a
big way of saying repetition.
S2 (07:38):
Over and over.
S1 (07:39):
Over and over it recurs. And so what you have
is God plants a garden and he places Adam and
Eve in there. He tells them to be fruitful and multiply.
He gives them everything that they could possibly want, and
it's good. And then what do they do? They rebel
and they sin. And then God rebuilt. You know, he
(08:01):
judges the earth with the. Because it gets so bad.
And you have the flood, the universal flood. And then
he starts again with Noah. And what does Noah do?
He plants a vineyard. He's got a beautiful garden. And
then he takes of the fruit in an inappropriate way.
He gets drunk. And then in the same way, the
(08:22):
behavior with his children, his son, uh, looks upon him inappropriately.
And then, uh, ham descendant Canaan is cursed. And so
it's a deliberate recursion that every time God says, okay,
I'm really fed up with this, I'm going to judge it.
I'm going to start again. And then what happens immediately?
(08:43):
The first generation, they recur the same sin. And I
think that that's one of the things that we see
is that no matter what God does, what do we do?
We go back to our selfish desires.
S2 (08:56):
And don't we also see that at the end of
time in in the book of revelation, in the Millennial Kingdom,
everything is so wonderful. And then there's a.
S1 (09:05):
Last.
S2 (09:05):
Battle, a last battle, a rebellion.
S1 (09:07):
Yeah. That there's even after a perfect thousand years where
the Lord Jesus has reigned on the throne, there will
be people born in that thousand years. And then revelation
chapter 20 talks about that. There's going to be one
more battle. They call it the war of Gog and Magog.
There it says. That's a good point. It's revelation 27.
(09:28):
When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released
from his prison and will go out to deceive the
nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog,
to gather them for battle. Their number is like the
sand of the sea. They come up over the surface
of the earth and surrounded the encampment of the saints,
the beloved city. Then fire came down from heaven and
consumed them. But even after a perfect setting like the
(09:49):
Millennial Kingdom, where Messiah is reigning directly, there still will
be a rebellion.
S2 (09:53):
At the end. It's returned to Eden in the fact
that he's there.
S1 (09:57):
Mhm. Yeah. So yeah, it just shows us what are
we like apart from God. Rebellious.
S2 (10:04):
Rebellious.
S1 (10:05):
We're always going to do it. So, uh, if there's anything,
I'll tell you what. Let me just say one last
thing about the flood. There's a structure of the way
the Hebrew is written. It's called chiasm, and I won't lie.
Chiasm means, uh, it has a, b, c, d e
and then, uh, d c b a it's sort of
(10:31):
half an x if you want to think of it.
That's how thing. And there's a parallel a pattern a
and and a and b and b. But the thing
in the center is what the writer wants to draw
your attention to. So if you say a, the first
part is the waters coming and the second part is
the waters receding. But at the center of it all,
(10:54):
the thing that that the the author is trying to
draw our attention to is God remembered. Noah. So at
the center of the flood is God's grace and God's mercy.
And that's more though we think of the flood as judgment. Uh, really,
(11:14):
what it's designed to do is show us that even
in the midst of judgment, God is merciful. Isn't that great?
It's the great reminder from the book of Genesis. We
keep sinning. God keeps being merciful. Well, we're going to
be back with more of your questions. Don't call in.
It's just an all mailbag, all the time program. Today.
You're listening to me, Michael Radonich and Tricia McMillan and
(11:35):
Ella Radonich. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Have
you ever wondered how we got the Bible? The story
of the Bible by Carl Laney, takes you on a
fascinating journey through scriptures from divine inspiration to modern translations.
Doctor Laney reveals how God gave us his Word. This
book will deepen your confidence in the Bible's reliability while
(11:58):
answering questions you've always had. If you'd like a copy,
it's yours. When you give a gift of any size,
just go to our website, openline radio.org or call (888) 644-7122.
Everyone has questions about God, the Bible and living out
our faith and that's why we're here on Open Line.
We take your questions and provide answers straight from Scripture.
(12:20):
But we couldn't do this without you. When you become
a kitchen table partner, you're not only keeping this program
on the air. Every weekend, you'll also receive exclusive benefits
like personal audio messages from me that offer biblical encouragement.
Become a kitchen table partner today by calling (888) 644-7122 or
go to Open Line radio.org. Welcome back to Open Line
(12:47):
with Doctor Michael Radonich. That's me. And joining me today
is my wife Eva Radonich, who is professor at Moody
Bible Institute. She teaches literature education, some Jewish studies, you
name it, she teaches it. She also wrote in the
Moody Bible Commentary and made sure that I wrote everything
she wanted in my parts to. She was.
S2 (13:06):
A big job, but.
S1 (13:07):
You got to include that, she'd say. Yeah. And also
Trish McMillan, our producer, who has put together this all mailbag,
all the time program. She's got all your questions you've
sent in. Right.
S3 (13:17):
We do. Our next question is from Juliana. So we've
just talked about in our first segment, we talked about
Genesis and the flood. Hers kind of piggybacks on that.
She said her sixth grade son attends a private school
within the Christian tradition. Recently, his religion teacher mentioned to
the students that Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark are
just made up stories to teach lessons. When I called
(13:38):
the head of the school, he also said that they
weren't real, that it's not part of the actual actual
history because they can't they couldn't have been recorded and
they can't be proven, but that the message is real.
I'm just beside myself because I've always believed these stories
to be real, and now I don't know what to believe.
Can you please clarify this for me once and for all?
S1 (13:59):
Well, I'm sure you read in the Bible how it starts.
Once upon a time, God created the heavens and the earth.
S2 (14:08):
Or once upon a time, the heavens and the earth
just kind of happened.
S1 (14:10):
Yeah.
S2 (14:11):
Yeah.
S1 (14:13):
Well, it seems to me that people have a hard
time with the creation story, and so they want to
get around it. And the way they get around it
is by saying, oh, it's it's uh, uh, what do
we call it? Uh, their messages are true. But now
(14:36):
narrative literature in the Bible, which includes the creation narrative
stories of the Bible. They are defined as the representation
of past events for the purpose of instruction. And what
I mean, that's a definition I would give in my class.
The representation of past events for the purpose of instruction. Meaning,
(14:56):
when we have narrative or what are called stories in
the Bible, they are histories, they are true stories, and
they have been designed and written down in a way
so that we can actually learn from them. All things
were written for us so that we can learn from them.
First Corinthians ten says, and so, yes, they're true stories,
(15:16):
but they're designed for instruction. It sounds to me like
what they're saying is like this, this question about is
it Noah's Ark, right.
S3 (15:24):
Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve.
S1 (15:25):
Adam and Eve, that they're just trying to get the
instruction from it without accepting the true history of.
S2 (15:31):
It? I think, you know, part of the confusion comes
with calling the Bible stories. And so we sort of
think of stories like Grimms Fairy Tales or.
S1 (15:38):
Yeah, but now the reason. That's why I started with
my answer. There are literary clues given by authors to
tell us when they're making stuff up. So if I
were to write Once Upon a time, all of you
would think, yeah, he's making that story up. That's a
fairy tale. But the Bible doesn't ever present its material
(16:01):
that way. It states what it states not just as fantasy.
It doesn't do that. It presents it as fact. And
that's why we can get instruction from it. Because it's true.
Now sometimes people say, well, it's hard to believe. Yeah,
I think it's hard to believe that a donkey spoke
in numbers, but it says God opened its mouth. And
(16:22):
I believe in a sovereign God. And there's a reason
why that story is put there, because in the next chapter,
Balaam's going to prophesy. And if God can speak from
the donkey, he can speak through the other donkey, too,
you know, and it's to remind us of that. And
so the point of it is these these stories, even
miraculous ones, even ones that are hard to believe, are
(16:43):
designed by the writers of Scripture to believe them. And
one of the things that I don't think to interpret
the Bible, but Eve is really the master of this.
She always, or I should say the mistress of it,
because I have to get my genders right. But oh please,
the she was in charge of as our kids were
growing up, and they had questions about these things and
(17:04):
they were going to secular school. Of course, they weren't
learning the creation story. Eva was always working with them
on helping them to see the historicity and the truth
of the Bible.
S2 (17:16):
I think one of the interesting parts about this question
about Adam and Eve will start with their, you know,
it's about God being the creator. And if you took
a pencil and you underlined every time God is mentioned
as creator in the whole Bible, you'd have to go
through several pencils by the time you finished reading. It's
not a.
S1 (17:34):
Whole nature.
S2 (17:35):
Part of his whole nature is not an isolated event,
so it's in the beginning. Those verses and it's not
mentioned again, it is the theme that runs through the
scripture of God being our creator.
S1 (17:44):
We were talking before about Annie and her iguana.
S3 (17:47):
Yes, my four year old daughter is in Awana and
and our recent Bible verse was John 1717. Your word
is truth and even the importance of when I'm reading
to her the Bible passage, the importance of picking up
an actual Bible and not just reading it off of
my phone or on a printed out piece of paper,
(18:08):
but that she sees that. And that I'm differentiating between
the Bible is true and other stories that we read
and pick up off of our bookshelf. But how do you?
So as a mom, you're sending your child to this
school where you think they're getting the the Bible teaching
that you want them to get? What do you do
(18:28):
now when when you find out that the teachers are saying, oh,
they're just stories. Even if they say, well, well, God's creator. Yeah,
that kind of just weaves through the whole thing. Um,
which is true. Ha! But but it's more than that.
The whole the whole story is true. Not just that
message that kind of weaves through it. How do you
(18:50):
how do you handle that?
S2 (18:52):
Yeah, I think you need to. It's a good opportunity
to do a little Bible study with your kids and say, okay,
where where else is Adam and Eve mentioned in the Bible?
Are they only mentioned here or are they mentioned other places?
And look at the other places where they're mentioned. And
every time they're mentioned, they're mentioned as historical.
S1 (19:07):
Yeah. And in fact, someone by the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. Mentions them and treats them as historical.
And so basically I would, I would, I would say,
who are we going to listen to the teachers that
say it's not or our Lord? I mean, obviously that's.
S2 (19:26):
And you can do it without being disrespectful, building disrespect
in your kids for their teacher. You know, you know,
you know. Mr. Wilson is a great teacher and he
has so many good things to say. But on this,
I don't think he has a real good understanding of
what the Bible is really talking about here.
S1 (19:41):
The other thing to this is maybe a challenge. I
think that parents maybe that we were sending our kids
to secular school, so we knew that they're going to
be hearing things that were contrary. So we just said, listen,
I really appreciate your teachers. We love them. We think
they're great. But on this stuff, we think that we
differ with them and we think we're right. And so,
you know, don't argue or have big fights with your
(20:03):
teachers in class, but instead, you know, just this is
what what I'll teach you and what I've taught them.
And then so that's one thing you can do that's
an approach you can take. Or the other approach is
you can say, I'm going to find a school that
teaches the Bible as true and maybe shop schools. Shop schools,
you know, that's another possibility.
S3 (20:22):
And those are good life lessons to teach your kids
to that, that the Bible is true and foundations to
build upon in their lives throughout this. Well thank you.
Thanks for that. I hope that's helpful. Juliana. Um, our
next question is from Crawfordsville, Indiana. Um, in Genesis, so
much of our understanding hinges on certain Hebrew words. Moses
(20:45):
was educated in presumably the best Egyptian schools and tutors available.
If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, as we believe, are we
arguing over a Hebrew translation of an Egyptian language? Would
he have written it in Egyptian?
S2 (20:58):
I think we need to remember that he spoke Hebrew.
You know, he was he was the child of Jewish parents,
and I'm sure his of of Hebrew parents. Right. And
remember when he was everybody knows the the, the Bible
story of where he was hidden in the basket and,
and the Egyptian princess said, I would like to find
(21:19):
a nurse for him. And his sister had been sent
to watch to be sure that he wasn't eaten by
the crocodiles or whatever. And she goes, oh, I know
a nurse. And he was taken back to his own
mother to take care of him. So certainly his heart
Language was Hebrew.
S1 (21:32):
Yeah, I'm sure they spoke with him in Hebrew at
home as he was being raised. And also, I'm sure
he learned Egyptian. He was probably bilingual, right? That's not
hard for us. And so I would not presume that
the the Bible was written in Egyptian and then translated
into Hebrew. I would not presume that, but even if
it were, it's really irrelevant. Here's why. When we read in, uh,
(21:57):
second Timothy 316, it says, All Scripture is God breathed.
All Scripture is inspired. Now, what does this mean? This
means that it is the text of Scripture that is inspired,
not the authors of Scripture. We often think of the
(22:19):
writers as being the inspired ones, but it says it's
the the text of Scripture that's God breathed. Now men
were moved by the Holy Spirit. It says in Second
Peter 121 to write what it is that God wanted
them to write. Uh, it wasn't dictation. They did it
with their own personalities. They did it with their own ideas.
But the Holy Spirit was moving them as they did
(22:40):
this sort of working together. Nevertheless, it's the text of
Scripture that's inspired. So even if Moses in his process
wrote it in Egyptian, first had a hieroglyphics Bible, and
then wrote it and translated that into Hebrew, it's really
irrelevant because the scripture we have is in Hebrew. So
it's the final form. What's Hebrew? That's what's inspired. And
(23:03):
so we don't have to and this is not a
new thing. We we hear people who say, well, Jesus
spoke Aramaic in the Gospels.
S2 (23:14):
Which is a Hebrew, like.
S1 (23:15):
It's a, it's a Semitic language like Hebrew. And the
Jewish people picked it up when they were in Babylon,
and they came back, and that's what they were speaking
every day in Hebrew was also a language that they knew.
But Jesus spoke Aramaic. Therefore, what we need to do
is go to the Gospels and see and translate them back,
especially Jesus words, into Aramaic, and understand it that way. No,
(23:38):
it's in Greek, the God breathed word of God. The
scriptures are in Greek, and that's what we read. I
had a woman write to me recently and say, uh,
we know that Jesus heart language was Aramaic, and then
she makes this logical leap. And therefore Adam and Eve
probably spoke Aramaic in the Garden of Eden. Well, that's
(24:00):
a logical leap. And then said, we have to translate
the words in Genesis back into Aramaic when they named
the animals. No we don't. It's the final form. The
final form is in Hebrew. And by the way, I
don't believe it was in Aramaic or anything like that,
or in Egyptian. But even if it were, what do
we have? We have an inspired text of Scripture. We
(24:21):
read it in that way, and then we have accurate
translations and we can read it that way. For those
of us who don't read Hebrew or Greek, we can
still understand the Bible. We don't have to go back
to a language behind the Bible, which is what sometimes
people think that we need to do. That would be a,
I think, a really serious mistake. So that's it's I
(24:43):
always say we're going to interpret the text, not the
events behind the text. We're going to interpret what the
text of Scripture says. And by the time a student
has me for a biblical interpretation, what's called hermeneutics, by
the end of the semester, they're saying, yeah, we know text,
not the events, text, text. We know because I keep
saying it's what we have. That's what we read. That's
(25:06):
what God gave us. That's the inspired Word of God. Well,
you can write to us with your question. Open line
at Moody Edu, you can go to our Facebook page.
You can post your question there. You can tweet your question.
Our handle is at Open Line Radio one, whatever you like,
because we're answering an all mailbag all the time program.
Today you're listening to Open Line with Michael, right, John?
(25:27):
We'll be right back. Many people wonder if Jewish people
still need to hear the good news of Jesus the Messiah.
Doctor Al Mohler's answer is yes. Absolutely. Chosen People Ministries
is offering his book to the Jew first in the
21st century. In it, Mohler maintains that bringing the gospel
to the Jewish people shows our faithfulness to the truth.
(25:48):
For your free copy, go to Open Line radio.org. Scroll
down and click on the link that says A Free
gift from Chosen People Ministries to receive your copy of
To the Jew First. We're so glad that Febc partners
with Open Line with Doctor Michael Ray Dolnick, bringing the
Febc mailbag every week. Learn how Far East Broadcasting Company
(26:08):
is taking Christ to the world at febc. Org on
their weekly podcast. Until all have heard with Ed Cannon,
you'll hear stories of lives changed by Messiah all across
the globe. Again, you can hear the podcast when you
visit febc. Org That's febc.org. We're back. This is Michael
(26:35):
Radonich on Open Line where you can ask any question
about God, the Bible or the spiritual life. Today's an
all mailbag all the time program. And joining me is
producer of Open Line, Tricia McMillan and my fellow faculty
member here at Moody Bible Institute, fellow contributor to the
Moody Bible Commentary. And she happens to be my wife,
Eva Radulovic. And we're talking about your questions that you've
(26:58):
sent in. Trish did a great job putting together all
of these questions. But before we get to the next question,
I want to tell you about a great guide that
can help you answer tough Bible questions that you may
have at home. The Moody Bible Commentary. It can be
used every day as you study the Bible. I had
the privilege of being co-editor with Doctor Michael Vanlandingham, and
(27:18):
it has commentaries written by 30 faculty members of Moody
Bible Institute. Each individual commentary provides an introduction of the
biblical book. Each one also traces the flow of thought
of the biblical book and explains difficult passages. If you'd
like a free digital sample of the Daniel and Romans commentaries,
just go to Moody Bible commentary.com/daniel. Then you'll see the
(27:41):
digital versions of both Daniel and Romans from the commentary. Again,
the website is moody Bible commentary.com/daniel. It's also available in
your local bookstore or through various online booksellers. Now you
can study the Bible with the faculty of Moody Bible
Institute using a commentary you can trust. And you know
Trish every week. You are faithful. When I come into
(28:05):
the studio, as we do Open Line, what have you
done at the table there by the microphones?
S3 (28:10):
I make sure you have the moody Bible commentary on
the table within reach.
S1 (28:15):
Yes. And a.
S3 (28:15):
Cup of.
S1 (28:16):
Coffee. And a cup of coffee. But mostly.
S3 (28:17):
Commentary. Mostly the coffee. Sometimes Delayed.
S1 (28:21):
I always appreciate that because I'm always afraid. So far
it really doesn't happen very often, but I'm afraid I'm
going to go completely like, ah, I better grab the
commentary and see what it says. Yes, and so it's
there and I appreciate you having it there. For me,
it's my security blanket.
S3 (28:38):
And it's here today.
S1 (28:39):
Here it is right now. It's got stuff on it,
but I can pull it over to me in a moment.
That's right. And, you know, I think we're so bad,
Iva and I, I, we both have it on our desk.
Except we at home, we share an office.
S2 (28:53):
It's not a big room.
S1 (28:54):
It's not a big room. And yet we each have
our own. That's right. Sitting on the desk. Because if
I want to look something up, I don't want to
wait for Iva to be done with her moody Bible commentary.
So I need my.
S2 (29:05):
Or. I don't want to get up and walk across
the room. Six feet. Six feet. Yeah.
S3 (29:10):
Well, now you can mark it up yourself. That's right.
Your own things. You could sign each other's.
S4 (29:15):
Yeah. You know.
S1 (29:17):
Well, now you can study if you're listening, or you
can get a gift for someone so they can study
the Bible with the faculty of the Moody Bible Institute.
And feel free to go to our online bookstore or
to your local Christian bookstore and get a copy of
the Moody Bible Commentary.
S4 (29:33):
All right.
S3 (29:33):
Our next question is from Roy in Peotone, Illinois listens
to WMP. His question is out of Exodus 27, verses
20 and 21. Aaron and his descendants are given a
statute to be observed for ever throughout their generations, to
keep and tend a lamp from evening until morning. So
it's kind of got two questions. Do you think it's
possible that there may be a lamp still being tended
(29:56):
either publicly or in secret? And if not, then why
would God give a statute to forever be observed by
the people of Israel?
S1 (30:04):
Well, first of all, it is not being burned today.
It's called the the Eternal flame. The near Tamid is
what it's called in Judaism, and it was part of
the tabernacle and the temple worship. And it's there is
no temple. There is no tabernacle.
S2 (30:24):
It was in the tabernacle. And then when the temple
was built, that was all transferred to the temple.
S1 (30:28):
But no more. No more. And so we don't have it.
So how can it be?
S2 (30:32):
Can you remind us how come? Because in 70 A.D.,
the temple was destroyed. Yeah.
S1 (30:36):
That's it. So, uh. So that's why since A.D. 70,
this has not been burning the menorah. The the the
eternal flame. But it's it's called. I'm looking here at
Genesis 2721. It's called a perpetual statute in the new
(30:57):
American standard, a permanent statute in the hcsb. But what
I think is interesting, it's it's a statute for forever.
That's how it literally reads in Hebrew. And the word
is olam. Uh, olam means forever, a forever statute. Now,
(31:21):
the word olam is a really interesting word because it
doesn't always mean for all time. It it can mean
for the period of time. For the lifetime, I guess
you could say, for the lifetime of this statute. And
here's what I mean. In Exodus 21, it says that
(31:42):
a slave could decide to stay with his master, doesn't
want to leave. And so he would then bring have
his ear pierced. You know, that famous passage and Exodus
20 would have his ear pierced, and then he would
stay with with his master La Olam forever. Now, did
that mean for all eternity he was a slave to
(32:04):
his master? No, of course not. It meant for his lifetime.
And so the same thing with these statutes. This is
for the lifetime of the statute and the. The lifetime
of this statute is till to the the temple was
destroyed and then it can't be observed any longer.
S4 (32:19):
Huh? Sorry, I'm making notes.
S2 (32:22):
But the tradition is carried on in Rabbinic Judaism today.
So that synagogues have a light in their in their,
in their building.
S1 (32:30):
But it's not a flame.
S2 (32:31):
And yeah, it's not a flame, but it's but it
is a it's a special lamp that burns. And it's.
S1 (32:36):
A.
S2 (32:36):
Reminder as a reminder of.
S4 (32:37):
This, a symbolic. Yeah. Remind you. Okay. Okay.
S3 (32:40):
Well, great. Thanks for that question, Roy. Our next question
is from Rita in Ravenna, Ohio. Listens to Wtxf in
judges nine. Why does Scripture say Abimelech killed the 70
sons of Gideon when he actually only killed 69 because
Jotham escaped?
S2 (32:57):
I think it's probably a literary rounding up of the number.
I think it's not. It's not a mathematical inaccuracy that
makes you want to say, well, if they say 70
and it was only 69, then let's don't even believe
the Bible anymore. I think it is just a Referee
summary statement that he killed all the 70 sons of Gideon.
(33:18):
But actually Jotham escaped.
S1 (33:20):
Yeah. Jotham escaped. And so this morning I was reading
the questions that you sent a skimming through them, and
I saw that question, and I read it out loud
to Eva, and she said, can you say roundup?
S2 (33:33):
Yeah.
S1 (33:34):
That was her. I thought, well, that's the simplest and
best explanation for this, that it's not sometimes we we
become hyper literal. I think we should be literal. When
we read the Bible, we become hyper literal. We don't
allow for the normal way that we talk and the
normal way that we would summarize, like rounding up to 70.
That's all it is.
S3 (33:55):
Okay. And I know there are a couple other uses
of 70 in there. Like there's 70 pieces of silver
that they gave him. And so there may be I mean, there.
S1 (34:05):
Might be.
S3 (34:06):
There might be some sort of 70 and 70 and.
S1 (34:09):
And rounding it up.
S3 (34:09):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
S1 (34:11):
Okay. But I think that that what happens is that
we get hyper literal. One of my favorite stories was, uh,
Jesus was Eve was teaching about Jesus healing of a
man to little kids once. And he said, Lord, if
you say the word, my, my servant will be healed.
Do you remember that?
S2 (34:31):
I do.
S1 (34:31):
And the little girl looked at Eve and said.
S2 (34:34):
What's the word?
S1 (34:38):
Because she she was so literal. She thought there was
one special word that he had to say.
S2 (34:42):
Word. Right?
S1 (34:42):
And I think sometimes too many people come to the
Bible and they treat it that way instead of reading
it for its plain meaning. Simple meaning.
S3 (34:50):
Okay.
S1 (34:52):
Of course she's excused. She was seven.
S5 (34:54):
She was seven, right? Yeah.
S3 (34:56):
Um, our next question is from, um, Cynthia in Lakeland, Florida.
Listens to Wcqs. I enjoy your program and admire your
dedication to the word. My question is in Luke 1619
to 31. Um. It states that Lazarus the beggar died
and was carried by the angels to Abraham. Why? Abraham.
(35:19):
There's another Lazarus. This one should be a real quick thing.
There's another Lazarus in John 11 one through 44. Um,
John 11, who has died and was raised by Jesus.
That's a different Lazarus, correct? Why would the beggar Lazarus?
So it's kind of two different things. Why would the
beggar Lazarus go to Abraham and not go to God?
S1 (35:38):
Yep. First thing is, it's true. There are different lazaruses.
Lazarus is the name of the friend of Jesus who
died and was resurrected by Jesus.
S2 (35:48):
Uh, had the sisters.
S1 (35:49):
The sisters? Mary and Martha. Exactly. And that's the Lazarus
is a name like today we would say John. Okay. Uh,
it was just a common Hebrew name.
S5 (36:00):
Okay.
S1 (36:01):
It was from Eliezer. Uh, in Hebrew. And so that's
the first thing. Secondly, this Lazarus, when Jesus told the
story of Lazarus and the the rich man. It was
just that. It was a parable. It wasn't. It was
an illustrative story. It is not. It's based on truth.
But there was no real Lazarus character. There was no
(36:23):
real rich man. It's a parable. It's an illustration. And
we have to understand what a parable is. It's it's
it's true to life, but it's not a factual retelling
of a story. And in that culture at that time,
when a person went to be with the Lord, the
patriarchs were there to bring comfort.
S2 (36:44):
That was the, the, the image in the tradition.
S1 (36:48):
In the tradition. And so Jesus just goes with that.
And who's to say that that's not true, that Abraham
won't be the one to bring comfort and and so
I think that's why it's there. But if he was
bringing comfort, he was just an instrumental comforter in the
hands of God when bringing comfort. So anyway, we're going
(37:08):
to be back with more questions in just a moment
on this all mailbag, all the time edition of Open Line.
So glad you're listening in. We'll be right back on
Open Line. Stay with us. Welcome back to Open Line.
(37:31):
I'm Michael Ray Dolnick, and if you'd like to know
a little bit more about me, you can go to
my personal homepage. You'll find my bio there. Blog posts,
also info about speaking engagements, books I've written, even trips
to Israel. Just go to the Open Line Radio website
that's Open Line radio.org and scroll down. You'll see a
link with my smiling face that says my website. Click
on that and it will take you to my personal website.
(37:53):
And you can see all those things that I just
mentioned with me today for this all mailbag, All the
Time program is Tricia McMillan, producer of Open Line, and
Eva Radonich, who's generally at home during the program, texting
me the answers to your questions. But today she is here,
giving me the answers directly. So thank you for being
here and it's.
S2 (38:13):
Great to be at the radio kitchen table.
S1 (38:14):
Yeah, yeah. We need we need the coffee. We need
everything so that we can just get everything done. That's
what we need. So and so. Eva, just hold up
big signs. You don't have to text.
S2 (38:26):
Okay? Okay. Good, good.
S1 (38:28):
Okay. So, Trish, we got something going.
S3 (38:31):
Yeah. Our next our next question is from Brad says
I absolutely love spending part of my Saturday morning with
you when I can. Blessings to you and the Moody family. Um,
his question is about the location of your spirit right
after you die. So the next several questions actually kind
of are about where that sort of thing. Um, if
your spirit goes immediately into the presence of God, does
(38:53):
this mean that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,
he brought his spirit back from being in the presence
of God to his body in the grave?
S2 (39:01):
Well, I think he probably didn't bring it back to
his body in the grave as much as he brought
it back to his body, which was then.
S1 (39:07):
What was in the grave. It was ready.
S2 (39:09):
But yeah, but it probably wasn't reunited until he was
made alive. Yeah. And he came out in the grave clothes.
S1 (39:14):
Yeah.
S2 (39:15):
Yeah.
S3 (39:16):
But would he have been with God that it was,
like now? Oh, sorry. You know, you got that bad news.
S2 (39:20):
For Lazarus, right? Yeah. Lewis does. C.S. Lewis, I Wish
I Had It With Me has a great poem about
how Lazarus felt. Yeah. Being called back from the presence
of God into into earth.
S1 (39:30):
So I don't have any. I think he was in
the presence of God. He was being he was there.
He came back. I have no basis for what I'm
going to say now. Okay. Okay. Uh, but it's possible
that the Lord took away his memory of what it
was like in heaven. Uh, sort of like Men in black,
(39:53):
where they had the neuralyzer.
S2 (39:54):
Yeah.
S3 (39:55):
Uh, a little memory thing. Yeah.
S1 (39:56):
Yeah, exactly. Uh, I just think that it would be
so hard to be in God's presence and then return
that I think God took that memory away. And that's
why it says that the only one that that could
speak about what it's like in God's presence was the
Lord Jesus, because his memory was not taken away. Right?
He came down from the father. He returned to him.
(40:17):
And so I have no basis for saying that. But
I think it's possible that that's what what happened?
S3 (40:24):
Okay.
S1 (40:26):
Okay. And that's the worst thing is I want people
don't say Dolnick said. Because I don't know. I'm just guessing. Right? Yeah,
that's that's what I think though.
S3 (40:34):
But not based on Scripture. Just just thinking. Yes.
S1 (40:36):
Just my thinking.
S3 (40:36):
Yeah. Yeah. Um, Gertrude in Lafayette, Indiana, listens to Wagner
has a question along these lines. Um, she's heard that
there are three heavens and wanted to know if you
can speak about this. And then she wanted to know, um,
the little girl in Luke eight that Jesus raises from
the dead. And then also Lazarus there kind of spoke,
(40:57):
spoken about as if they're not really dead, just sleeping.
Were they actually Fully dead.
S1 (41:03):
Or were they sleeping.
S3 (41:04):
Or were they sleeping?
S1 (41:05):
Let me take the first question, which is the three heavens?
I'm going to throw the second question over to Eva. Uh,
so first of all, three heavens, people want to say
that there are levels of heaven. I think that when
Paul talks about the third heaven, he is not talking
about a higher level of heaven than a lower level
of heaven. I think you've got a sky that's first heaven,
(41:29):
then you've got the atmosphere around us. That's the second heaven,
and then you've got the presence of God. That's the
third heaven. So when Paul says he was taken to
the third heaven, it meant he was just brought to
the presence of God. Mm. Uh, and so that's that's
the three heavens. Now, were they sleeping or were they dead?
S2 (41:47):
Dead. Sleeping is just a it's just a euphemism to
say that a person has died because they look a
dead person laid out. Looks like they're just sleeping. And
so I think that's it was just euphemistically A common
expression that someone has had had died, but it just
seemed too harsh to say they're dead. Yeah, so they're sleeping.
S3 (42:08):
So, like we would say, they've passed away.
S2 (42:10):
They've passed.
S3 (42:11):
Away. They're with the Lord. Instead of saying they died.
S1 (42:15):
Dead means separated.
S2 (42:16):
Means separated. Right.
S1 (42:17):
It's separating the the spirit, the immaterial portion from the
physical portion. The material portion. And it's used in first
Thessalonians four as well.
S2 (42:25):
Right. You see it on tombstones. If you go to
the old graveyards, they have, like little epitaphs and stuff.
It'll say like asleep in Jesus. But it's just a,
it's a, it's a, it's a softer expression for death.
S5 (42:35):
Okay.
S3 (42:36):
All right. Thanks, Gertrude, for your question. Faye says she's
listened to a well-known preacher say that all of our
loved ones in heaven know what's going on with us
and what's happening in the world. And he also said
that things wouldn't bother them. Um, and she's not understanding that.
Do you agree or disagree? What do you think?
S1 (42:55):
Well, I think it's a misunderstanding to think that God.
That that people see what's going on with their loved ones. Uh,
it's based on a misinterpretation of Hebrews 11.
S2 (43:08):
And too many Hollywood movies.
S1 (43:10):
Yes. But people get it from the Bible, from Hebrews 11,
actually Hebrews 12. Uh, they they make a mistake. Uh,
but they do get it from the movies more than
they get it from the Bible. Uh, therefore, since we
have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, and
so they presume that the they know that it's talking
(43:32):
about the people in Hebrews 11. Right. Mhm. And they
are a cloud of witnesses. So they presume that the
witnesses are witnessing what we do on earth. And so
they say, oh look, dead people can see us. That's
not what Hebrews 11 is saying. The word witness means
to testify. Right. If a person goes on trial and
(43:54):
is called as a witness, they testify. And so what
it's saying is, since we have such a large cloud
of testifiers, of people who testify to the value of faith,
then we should also exercise our faith in the same way.
And so they're there testifying to the value of faith.
And they are not witnessing what we do when we die.
(44:15):
We don't become little gods that become omniscient. We go
into the presence of the Lord. But God's admonition we're not.
We don't become God. And so we can't see everything
that's going on. I know a woman wrote in and
she was concerned that her mother would be seeing, uh,
what she and her husband are doing, and she thought
she might be upset about that and felt uncomfortable with
her mother watching her on Earth. And I'm like, no,
(44:40):
you're honestly, if your mother is with the Lord, she's
a little bit more interested in him than she is
in you. And that's an encouraging thing for us. So no,
we're not we're they're not watching us. So.
S3 (44:55):
All right. Yeah. All right. We'll try and squeeze in
one last question. Okay. Michael wants to know what the
Jewish faith teaches about the afterlife. Is there a heaven
or hell?
S1 (45:03):
I just taught that my Jewish religious thought class. Jewish.
S2 (45:06):
Did you answer this question then? I will. Okay, good.
S1 (45:08):
I said in class that you get two Jews. You
get three opinions. That's something we all live with. The
fact that I'm Jewish. You know, I changed my mind
from day to day. But the. If you go to
rabbinic theology, Judaism teaches that there's that the perfectly righteous
go to Paradise immediately. If you're if you never sin,
(45:29):
that must be a very small group of people. But
they say there's some that go to God, to Paradise.
Immediately the perfectly wicked go to Gehinnom, which is hell.
And they are. They suffer there for a year and
then they're exterminated. And then there's ordinary people who go
to who both have both good and bad. They go
(45:50):
to Gehinnom and they are purged. And after a year
they go into the presence of God in Paradise. And
that's rabbinic theology. I don't think it's right, but that's
what rabbinic theology in the Talmud teaches. Well, can you
believe it? The first hour of Open Line is a fast. Yeah,
don't go away. Stick around. Because I'm most of these stations.
(46:12):
There's a second hour of open line. And if you like,
check out our web page on the break here. Go
to Open Line radio.org. You'll find links there to past
programs email Facebook, Twitter. There's a link to the Chosen
People Ministries free resource and you can sign up for that.
There's also a link that goes to my personal home page.
You can go there and if you're interested you can
find out more about me. You can see books I've written, DVDs,
(46:33):
I've done blogs I've written, speaking engagements that are upcoming.
And of course, you see our current Bible study resource
that you can get, or you can figure out how
to become a kitchen table partner. Keep reading the Bible.
We'll talk about it next week. Open line with Doctor
Michael Ray Dolnick is a production of Moody Radio, a
ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Today we're celebrating a new holiday. It's clear the Spindle Day,
also known as empty the inbox day. It's an all
mail bag all the time episode of Open Line. We've
got the questions you've sent us about the Bible, God
and the spiritual life, and we're getting ready to address
them right now. So hang tight. We're going to get
(00:28):
to those in just a moment. Hello, everyone. Welcome to
Open Line with Doctor Michael right. Zelnick Moody Radio's Bible
study Across America. My name is Michael right Melnick and
I'm professor of Jewish studies and Bible at Moody Bible Institute.
And I'm here today and every Saturday to do my
best to answer your questions about the scriptures. Normally, the
bulk of this program is taking your phone calls. Not
(00:51):
so today. Today it's all mailbag, all the time. The
best way to be in touch with us is via
our website, Open line radio.org. If you go there, it
has links to anything you might need, whether it's email
or Twitter or Facebook, you can reach us that way.
It also has links to past programs. It has links
(01:12):
to various issues that that you might find helpful. It
has a link to my personal website if you're interested
in that. It's got all sorts of stuff for you,
so take a look at that open line radio.org. Also
joining me today is the person I turn to when
I have a question about the Bible. And that's my
favorite Bible teacher, a colleague on the faculty of Moody
Bible Institute, a fantastic writer. She contributed to the Moody
(01:35):
Bible Commentary, and she is my partner in life, my wife,
my beloved forever. And she's the person I love most
in the world. Eva Redlich. Glad you're here today, Eva.
S2 (01:46):
Hey, it's fun to be here, Michael.
S1 (01:47):
You know, usually you just have to text the answers
into me. So today, you can just jump right in and.
S2 (01:52):
Write them a big piece of paper and hold it.
S1 (01:53):
Up. That's right. It'll make me sound better if you
do it that way. Anyway. Also joining us is the
person who makes everything happen on Open Line, who put
together the the mailbag for today. The person who lets
me know when I'm supposed to be and where I'm
supposed to be and when it's supposed to be, and
all the things that she does that just keeps this
program on target. That's Tricia McMillan, producer of Open Line.
S2 (02:15):
Yay!
S1 (02:16):
Glad you're here, Tricia.
S3 (02:16):
I'm glad to be here.
S1 (02:17):
You have so many questions you've put together here. Uh.
S3 (02:22):
I don't have these questions. Well, you didn't make these up.
I didn't. These are all questions that you, the listener,
have sent us. Okay, so we've got a we've got
a whole lot of them.
S1 (02:32):
We're going to have to get another spindle day soon. Yes. Yeah. Well, anyway,
we're going to do our best to get through these
as best we can. Well, now's the time to go
get your Bible. Hope you have your cup of coffee
and head over to the radio. The radio kitchen table,
as we say. We're going to talk about the scriptures. Okay. So, uh,
let's start what's what's you've ordered them. You ask.
S3 (02:55):
Them. All right. We're going to start in Genesis.
S1 (02:57):
Okay. That's a good place to start.
S3 (02:58):
Sylvia from Glenview, Illinois, listens to WNBA, says our Bible
study is on the Temptations in chapter three of Genesis.
What are the underlying categories of the devil's temptations to Eve?
She's heard that the first one is, in general, the
temptation of appetite. That is, that the tree was good
for food. The second one that the tree was a
(03:18):
delight to look at, is the temptation of the eyes.
And the third one, the tree, was desirable for obtaining
wisdom is the coveting of the knowledge of God. She's
not sure if those are accurate categories, and wanted to
know what you think that the categories represent.
S1 (03:32):
I think the best way to look at the categories
is in first John chapter two, verse 16. Uh, where
I think it's exactly related to Genesis three. It says,
for all that is in the world, the lust of
the flesh, that has to do with desire when we
(03:52):
talk about the lust of the flesh is God has
built us with desires, and those desires get out of whack.
They get distorted. And that's what's called the flesh. The
desire that, I mean, desire is normal. Desire to eat,
for example. Appetite would be normal. But to desire to
eat something we shouldn't eat, like gluttony, that would be
(04:14):
the flesh. And so the lust of the flesh, it
says the lust of the eyes. That's where we see something,
and we want it. The desire of the eyes. Uh,
and then the boastful pride of life, the the fruit
was desirable to make someone wise. I want to be
(04:35):
wise like God. I want to be really wise, is
what the temptation was. And so those are the three categories. Now,
what I think is every temptation we face. And I'm
wondering if Eva wants to add to this, but I
think this is true. Every temptation we face is in
one of those three categories, wouldn't you say?
S2 (04:54):
I think so, too. Yeah. Um, and, you know, sometimes
they you hear on on fortune cookies or whatever. It's
like there's the world, the flesh and the devil.
S1 (05:04):
Yeah. Well, that's the three. That's the that's the three
areas of warfare that we face. But this is the flesh.
The flesh is pride. It's a visual desire and physical desire.
And all three of those things. And of course, Galatians
five talks about the what comes out of that. The
(05:26):
the fruit of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit.
So great.
S3 (05:31):
Well, thank you for that. Thanks for your question, Sylvia.
Our next question is from Marilyn in Florida. Listen to
this one. She says, why would an all knowing God
bother with a flood when he knew ahead of time
the depravity of mankind would again take hold? Are we
to believe that because Noah was God fearing that his
progeny would be less depraved? Love your program and I
(05:53):
thank you ahead of time for your answer.
S1 (05:56):
Would Noah's progeny be less depraved? Apparently not, because we
see what happens almost immediately, right?
S3 (06:03):
So why even bother with a flood to wipe it out?
S1 (06:06):
Yeah, well, apparently it was getting so bad that he
was going to to judge the world in that way
and start again. Uh. Did it. I don't know why.
God in his sovereignty. Maybe he saw that it was
worse even then, and it was headed for a worse
self-destruction than what happened afterwards and what has continued since
(06:26):
the days of Noah. I don't know, God knows. But
the thing is, it says in Genesis six, I believe
that the Lord regretted that he made man, that he
made humanity. I don't think that God really regrets things.
In numbers 23 it says that God doesn't change his mind.
(06:48):
It says God is not a man, that he would
change his mind. And so it seems to me that
God knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly
what was going to come out of this. And he
uses that phrase of regret for having made man, and
then he's going to destroy the world with a flood.
That means that he's using anthropomorphisms. That's a figure of
(07:10):
speech where it attributes human characteristics to God. And so
God knows everything that's going to happen. Uh, he's judging
the world for that. Uh, and then he's going to rebuild.
And I think what we see is there's something that
experts at narrative in the Bible have pointed out that
(07:33):
there's a literary technique that's called recursion, which is a
big way of saying repetition.
S2 (07:38):
Over and over.
S1 (07:39):
Over and over it recurs. And so what you have
is God plants a garden and he places Adam and
Eve in there. He tells them to be fruitful and multiply.
He gives them everything that they could possibly want, and
it's good. And then what do they do? They rebel
and they sin. And then God rebuilt. You know, he
(08:01):
judges the earth with the. Because it gets so bad.
And you have the flood, the universal flood. And then
he starts again with Noah. And what does Noah do?
He plants a vineyard. He's got a beautiful garden. And
then he takes of the fruit in an inappropriate way.
He gets drunk. And then in the same way, the
(08:22):
behavior with his children, his son, uh, looks upon him inappropriately.
And then, uh, ham descendant Canaan is cursed. And so
it's a deliberate recursion that every time God says, okay,
I'm really fed up with this, I'm going to judge it.
I'm going to start again. And then what happens immediately?
(08:43):
The first generation, they recur the same sin. And I
think that that's one of the things that we see
is that no matter what God does, what do we do?
We go back to our selfish desires.
S2 (08:56):
And don't we also see that at the end of
time in in the book of revelation, in the Millennial Kingdom,
everything is so wonderful. And then there's a.
S1 (09:05):
Last.
S2 (09:05):
Battle, a last battle, a rebellion.
S1 (09:07):
Yeah. That there's even after a perfect thousand years where
the Lord Jesus has reigned on the throne, there will
be people born in that thousand years. And then revelation
chapter 20 talks about that. There's going to be one
more battle. They call it the war of Gog and Magog.
There it says. That's a good point. It's revelation 27.
(09:28):
When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released
from his prison and will go out to deceive the
nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog,
to gather them for battle. Their number is like the
sand of the sea. They come up over the surface
of the earth and surrounded the encampment of the saints,
the beloved city. Then fire came down from heaven and
consumed them. But even after a perfect setting like the
(09:49):
Millennial Kingdom, where Messiah is reigning directly, there still will
be a rebellion.
S2 (09:53):
At the end. It's returned to Eden in the fact
that he's there.
S1 (09:57):
Mhm. Yeah. So yeah, it just shows us what are
we like apart from God. Rebellious.
S2 (10:04):
Rebellious.
S1 (10:05):
We're always going to do it. So, uh, if there's anything,
I'll tell you what. Let me just say one last
thing about the flood. There's a structure of the way
the Hebrew is written. It's called chiasm, and I won't lie.
Chiasm means, uh, it has a, b, c, d e
and then, uh, d c b a it's sort of
(10:31):
half an x if you want to think of it.
That's how thing. And there's a parallel a pattern a
and and a and b and b. But the thing
in the center is what the writer wants to draw
your attention to. So if you say a, the first
part is the waters coming and the second part is
the waters receding. But at the center of it all,
(10:54):
the thing that that the the author is trying to
draw our attention to is God remembered. Noah. So at
the center of the flood is God's grace and God's mercy.
And that's more though we think of the flood as judgment. Uh, really,
(11:14):
what it's designed to do is show us that even
in the midst of judgment, God is merciful. Isn't that great?
It's the great reminder from the book of Genesis. We
keep sinning. God keeps being merciful. Well, we're going to
be back with more of your questions. Don't call in.
It's just an all mailbag, all the time program. Today.
You're listening to me, Michael Radonich and Tricia McMillan and
(11:35):
Ella Radonich. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Have
you ever wondered how we got the Bible? The story
of the Bible by Carl Laney, takes you on a
fascinating journey through scriptures from divine inspiration to modern translations.
Doctor Laney reveals how God gave us his Word. This
book will deepen your confidence in the Bible's reliability while
(11:58):
answering questions you've always had. If you'd like a copy,
it's yours. When you give a gift of any size,
just go to our website, openline radio.org or call (888) 644-7122.
Everyone has questions about God, the Bible and living out
our faith and that's why we're here on Open Line.
We take your questions and provide answers straight from Scripture.
(12:20):
But we couldn't do this without you. When you become
a kitchen table partner, you're not only keeping this program
on the air. Every weekend, you'll also receive exclusive benefits
like personal audio messages from me that offer biblical encouragement.
Become a kitchen table partner today by calling (888) 644-7122 or
go to Open Line radio.org. Welcome back to Open Line
(12:47):
with Doctor Michael Radonich. That's me. And joining me today
is my wife Eva Radonich, who is professor at Moody
Bible Institute. She teaches literature education, some Jewish studies, you
name it, she teaches it. She also wrote in the
Moody Bible Commentary and made sure that I wrote everything
she wanted in my parts to. She was.
S2 (13:06):
A big job, but.
S1 (13:07):
You got to include that, she'd say. Yeah. And also
Trish McMillan, our producer, who has put together this all mailbag,
all the time program. She's got all your questions you've
sent in. Right.
S3 (13:17):
We do. Our next question is from Juliana. So we've
just talked about in our first segment, we talked about
Genesis and the flood. Hers kind of piggybacks on that.
She said her sixth grade son attends a private school
within the Christian tradition. Recently, his religion teacher mentioned to
the students that Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark are
just made up stories to teach lessons. When I called
(13:38):
the head of the school, he also said that they
weren't real, that it's not part of the actual actual
history because they can't they couldn't have been recorded and
they can't be proven, but that the message is real.
I'm just beside myself because I've always believed these stories
to be real, and now I don't know what to believe.
Can you please clarify this for me once and for all?
S1 (13:59):
Well, I'm sure you read in the Bible how it starts.
Once upon a time, God created the heavens and the earth.
S2 (14:08):
Or once upon a time, the heavens and the earth
just kind of happened.
S1 (14:10):
Yeah.
S2 (14:11):
Yeah.
S1 (14:13):
Well, it seems to me that people have a hard
time with the creation story, and so they want to
get around it. And the way they get around it
is by saying, oh, it's it's uh, uh, what do
we call it? Uh, their messages are true. But now
(14:36):
narrative literature in the Bible, which includes the creation narrative
stories of the Bible. They are defined as the representation
of past events for the purpose of instruction. And what
I mean, that's a definition I would give in my class.
The representation of past events for the purpose of instruction. Meaning,
(14:56):
when we have narrative or what are called stories in
the Bible, they are histories, they are true stories, and
they have been designed and written down in a way
so that we can actually learn from them. All things
were written for us so that we can learn from them.
First Corinthians ten says, and so, yes, they're true stories,
(15:16):
but they're designed for instruction. It sounds to me like
what they're saying is like this, this question about is
it Noah's Ark, right.
S3 (15:24):
Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve.
S1 (15:25):
Adam and Eve, that they're just trying to get the
instruction from it without accepting the true history of.
S2 (15:31):
It? I think, you know, part of the confusion comes
with calling the Bible stories. And so we sort of
think of stories like Grimms Fairy Tales or.
S1 (15:38):
Yeah, but now the reason. That's why I started with
my answer. There are literary clues given by authors to
tell us when they're making stuff up. So if I
were to write Once Upon a time, all of you
would think, yeah, he's making that story up. That's a
fairy tale. But the Bible doesn't ever present its material
(16:01):
that way. It states what it states not just as fantasy.
It doesn't do that. It presents it as fact. And
that's why we can get instruction from it. Because it's true.
Now sometimes people say, well, it's hard to believe. Yeah,
I think it's hard to believe that a donkey spoke
in numbers, but it says God opened its mouth. And
(16:22):
I believe in a sovereign God. And there's a reason
why that story is put there, because in the next chapter,
Balaam's going to prophesy. And if God can speak from
the donkey, he can speak through the other donkey, too,
you know, and it's to remind us of that. And
so the point of it is these these stories, even
miraculous ones, even ones that are hard to believe, are
(16:43):
designed by the writers of Scripture to believe them. And
one of the things that I don't think to interpret
the Bible, but Eve is really the master of this.
She always, or I should say the mistress of it,
because I have to get my genders right. But oh please,
the she was in charge of as our kids were
growing up, and they had questions about these things and
(17:04):
they were going to secular school. Of course, they weren't
learning the creation story. Eva was always working with them
on helping them to see the historicity and the truth
of the Bible.
S2 (17:16):
I think one of the interesting parts about this question
about Adam and Eve will start with their, you know,
it's about God being the creator. And if you took
a pencil and you underlined every time God is mentioned
as creator in the whole Bible, you'd have to go
through several pencils by the time you finished reading. It's
not a.
S1 (17:34):
Whole nature.
S2 (17:35):
Part of his whole nature is not an isolated event,
so it's in the beginning. Those verses and it's not
mentioned again, it is the theme that runs through the
scripture of God being our creator.
S1 (17:44):
We were talking before about Annie and her iguana.
S3 (17:47):
Yes, my four year old daughter is in Awana and
and our recent Bible verse was John 1717. Your word
is truth and even the importance of when I'm reading
to her the Bible passage, the importance of picking up
an actual Bible and not just reading it off of
my phone or on a printed out piece of paper,
(18:08):
but that she sees that. And that I'm differentiating between
the Bible is true and other stories that we read
and pick up off of our bookshelf. But how do you?
So as a mom, you're sending your child to this
school where you think they're getting the the Bible teaching
that you want them to get? What do you do
(18:28):
now when when you find out that the teachers are saying, oh,
they're just stories. Even if they say, well, well, God's creator. Yeah,
that kind of just weaves through the whole thing. Um,
which is true. Ha! But but it's more than that.
The whole the whole story is true. Not just that
message that kind of weaves through it. How do you
(18:50):
how do you handle that?
S2 (18:52):
Yeah, I think you need to. It's a good opportunity
to do a little Bible study with your kids and say, okay,
where where else is Adam and Eve mentioned in the Bible?
Are they only mentioned here or are they mentioned other places?
And look at the other places where they're mentioned. And
every time they're mentioned, they're mentioned as historical.
S1 (19:07):
Yeah. And in fact, someone by the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. Mentions them and treats them as historical.
And so basically I would, I would, I would say,
who are we going to listen to the teachers that
say it's not or our Lord? I mean, obviously that's.
S2 (19:26):
And you can do it without being disrespectful, building disrespect
in your kids for their teacher. You know, you know,
you know. Mr. Wilson is a great teacher and he
has so many good things to say. But on this,
I don't think he has a real good understanding of
what the Bible is really talking about here.
S1 (19:41):
The other thing to this is maybe a challenge. I
think that parents maybe that we were sending our kids
to secular school, so we knew that they're going to
be hearing things that were contrary. So we just said, listen,
I really appreciate your teachers. We love them. We think
they're great. But on this stuff, we think that we
differ with them and we think we're right. And so,
you know, don't argue or have big fights with your
(20:03):
teachers in class, but instead, you know, just this is
what what I'll teach you and what I've taught them.
And then so that's one thing you can do that's
an approach you can take. Or the other approach is
you can say, I'm going to find a school that
teaches the Bible as true and maybe shop schools. Shop schools,
you know, that's another possibility.
S3 (20:22):
And those are good life lessons to teach your kids
to that, that the Bible is true and foundations to
build upon in their lives throughout this. Well thank you.
Thanks for that. I hope that's helpful. Juliana. Um, our
next question is from Crawfordsville, Indiana. Um, in Genesis, so
much of our understanding hinges on certain Hebrew words. Moses
(20:45):
was educated in presumably the best Egyptian schools and tutors available.
If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, as we believe, are we
arguing over a Hebrew translation of an Egyptian language? Would
he have written it in Egyptian?
S2 (20:58):
I think we need to remember that he spoke Hebrew.
You know, he was he was the child of Jewish parents,
and I'm sure his of of Hebrew parents. Right. And
remember when he was everybody knows the the, the Bible
story of where he was hidden in the basket and,
and the Egyptian princess said, I would like to find
(21:19):
a nurse for him. And his sister had been sent
to watch to be sure that he wasn't eaten by
the crocodiles or whatever. And she goes, oh, I know
a nurse. And he was taken back to his own
mother to take care of him. So certainly his heart
Language was Hebrew.
S1 (21:32):
Yeah, I'm sure they spoke with him in Hebrew at
home as he was being raised. And also, I'm sure
he learned Egyptian. He was probably bilingual, right? That's not
hard for us. And so I would not presume that
the the Bible was written in Egyptian and then translated
into Hebrew. I would not presume that, but even if
it were, it's really irrelevant. Here's why. When we read in, uh,
(21:57):
second Timothy 316, it says, All Scripture is God breathed.
All Scripture is inspired. Now, what does this mean? This
means that it is the text of Scripture that is inspired,
not the authors of Scripture. We often think of the
(22:19):
writers as being the inspired ones, but it says it's
the the text of Scripture that's God breathed. Now men
were moved by the Holy Spirit. It says in Second
Peter 121 to write what it is that God wanted
them to write. Uh, it wasn't dictation. They did it
with their own personalities. They did it with their own ideas.
But the Holy Spirit was moving them as they did
(22:40):
this sort of working together. Nevertheless, it's the text of
Scripture that's inspired. So even if Moses in his process
wrote it in Egyptian, first had a hieroglyphics Bible, and
then wrote it and translated that into Hebrew, it's really
irrelevant because the scripture we have is in Hebrew. So
it's the final form. What's Hebrew? That's what's inspired. And
(23:03):
so we don't have to and this is not a
new thing. We we hear people who say, well, Jesus
spoke Aramaic in the Gospels.
S2 (23:14):
Which is a Hebrew, like.
S1 (23:15):
It's a, it's a Semitic language like Hebrew. And the
Jewish people picked it up when they were in Babylon,
and they came back, and that's what they were speaking
every day in Hebrew was also a language that they knew.
But Jesus spoke Aramaic. Therefore, what we need to do
is go to the Gospels and see and translate them back,
especially Jesus words, into Aramaic, and understand it that way. No,
(23:38):
it's in Greek, the God breathed word of God. The
scriptures are in Greek, and that's what we read. I
had a woman write to me recently and say, uh,
we know that Jesus heart language was Aramaic, and then
she makes this logical leap. And therefore Adam and Eve
probably spoke Aramaic in the Garden of Eden. Well, that's
(24:00):
a logical leap. And then said, we have to translate
the words in Genesis back into Aramaic when they named
the animals. No we don't. It's the final form. The
final form is in Hebrew. And by the way, I
don't believe it was in Aramaic or anything like that,
or in Egyptian. But even if it were, what do
we have? We have an inspired text of Scripture. We
(24:21):
read it in that way, and then we have accurate
translations and we can read it that way. For those
of us who don't read Hebrew or Greek, we can
still understand the Bible. We don't have to go back
to a language behind the Bible, which is what sometimes
people think that we need to do. That would be a,
I think, a really serious mistake. So that's it's I
(24:43):
always say we're going to interpret the text, not the
events behind the text. We're going to interpret what the
text of Scripture says. And by the time a student
has me for a biblical interpretation, what's called hermeneutics, by
the end of the semester, they're saying, yeah, we know text,
not the events, text, text. We know because I keep
saying it's what we have. That's what we read. That's
(25:06):
what God gave us. That's the inspired Word of God. Well,
you can write to us with your question. Open line
at Moody Edu, you can go to our Facebook page.
You can post your question there. You can tweet your question.
Our handle is at Open Line Radio one, whatever you like,
because we're answering an all mailbag all the time program.
Today you're listening to Open Line with Michael, right, John?
(25:27):
We'll be right back. Many people wonder if Jewish people
still need to hear the good news of Jesus the Messiah.
Doctor Al Mohler's answer is yes. Absolutely. Chosen People Ministries
is offering his book to the Jew first in the
21st century. In it, Mohler maintains that bringing the gospel
to the Jewish people shows our faithfulness to the truth.
(25:48):
For your free copy, go to Open Line radio.org. Scroll
down and click on the link that says A Free
gift from Chosen People Ministries to receive your copy of
To the Jew First. We're so glad that Febc partners
with Open Line with Doctor Michael Ray Dolnick, bringing the
Febc mailbag every week. Learn how Far East Broadcasting Company
(26:08):
is taking Christ to the world at febc. Org on
their weekly podcast. Until all have heard with Ed Cannon,
you'll hear stories of lives changed by Messiah all across
the globe. Again, you can hear the podcast when you
visit febc. Org That's febc.org. We're back. This is Michael
(26:35):
Radonich on Open Line where you can ask any question
about God, the Bible or the spiritual life. Today's an
all mailbag all the time program. And joining me is
producer of Open Line, Tricia McMillan and my fellow faculty
member here at Moody Bible Institute, fellow contributor to the
Moody Bible Commentary. And she happens to be my wife,
Eva Radulovic. And we're talking about your questions that you've
(26:58):
sent in. Trish did a great job putting together all
of these questions. But before we get to the next question,
I want to tell you about a great guide that
can help you answer tough Bible questions that you may
have at home. The Moody Bible Commentary. It can be
used every day as you study the Bible. I had
the privilege of being co-editor with Doctor Michael Vanlandingham, and
(27:18):
it has commentaries written by 30 faculty members of Moody
Bible Institute. Each individual commentary provides an introduction of the
biblical book. Each one also traces the flow of thought
of the biblical book and explains difficult passages. If you'd
like a free digital sample of the Daniel and Romans commentaries,
just go to Moody Bible commentary.com/daniel. Then you'll see the
(27:41):
digital versions of both Daniel and Romans from the commentary. Again,
the website is moody Bible commentary.com/daniel. It's also available in
your local bookstore or through various online booksellers. Now you
can study the Bible with the faculty of Moody Bible
Institute using a commentary you can trust. And you know
Trish every week. You are faithful. When I come into
(28:05):
the studio, as we do Open Line, what have you
done at the table there by the microphones?
S3 (28:10):
I make sure you have the moody Bible commentary on
the table within reach.
S1 (28:15):
Yes. And a.
S3 (28:15):
Cup of.
S1 (28:16):
Coffee. And a cup of coffee. But mostly.
S3 (28:17):
Commentary. Mostly the coffee. Sometimes Delayed.
S1 (28:21):
I always appreciate that because I'm always afraid. So far
it really doesn't happen very often, but I'm afraid I'm
going to go completely like, ah, I better grab the
commentary and see what it says. Yes, and so it's
there and I appreciate you having it there. For me,
it's my security blanket.
S3 (28:38):
And it's here today.
S1 (28:39):
Here it is right now. It's got stuff on it,
but I can pull it over to me in a moment.
That's right. And, you know, I think we're so bad,
Iva and I, I, we both have it on our desk.
Except we at home, we share an office.
S2 (28:53):
It's not a big room.
S1 (28:54):
It's not a big room. And yet we each have
our own. That's right. Sitting on the desk. Because if
I want to look something up, I don't want to
wait for Iva to be done with her moody Bible commentary.
So I need my.
S2 (29:05):
Or. I don't want to get up and walk across
the room. Six feet. Six feet. Yeah.
S3 (29:10):
Well, now you can mark it up yourself. That's right.
Your own things. You could sign each other's.
S4 (29:15):
Yeah. You know.
S1 (29:17):
Well, now you can study if you're listening, or you
can get a gift for someone so they can study
the Bible with the faculty of the Moody Bible Institute.
And feel free to go to our online bookstore or
to your local Christian bookstore and get a copy of
the Moody Bible Commentary.
S4 (29:33):
All right.
S3 (29:33):
Our next question is from Roy in Peotone, Illinois listens
to WMP. His question is out of Exodus 27, verses
20 and 21. Aaron and his descendants are given a
statute to be observed for ever throughout their generations, to
keep and tend a lamp from evening until morning. So
it's kind of got two questions. Do you think it's
possible that there may be a lamp still being tended
(29:56):
either publicly or in secret? And if not, then why
would God give a statute to forever be observed by
the people of Israel?
S1 (30:04):
Well, first of all, it is not being burned today.
It's called the the Eternal flame. The near Tamid is
what it's called in Judaism, and it was part of
the tabernacle and the temple worship. And it's there is
no temple. There is no tabernacle.
S2 (30:24):
It was in the tabernacle. And then when the temple
was built, that was all transferred to the temple.
S1 (30:28):
But no more. No more. And so we don't have it.
So how can it be?
S2 (30:32):
Can you remind us how come? Because in 70 A.D.,
the temple was destroyed. Yeah.
S1 (30:36):
That's it. So, uh. So that's why since A.D. 70,
this has not been burning the menorah. The the the
eternal flame. But it's it's called. I'm looking here at
Genesis 2721. It's called a perpetual statute in the new
(30:57):
American standard, a permanent statute in the hcsb. But what
I think is interesting, it's it's a statute for forever.
That's how it literally reads in Hebrew. And the word
is olam. Uh, olam means forever, a forever statute. Now,
(31:21):
the word olam is a really interesting word because it
doesn't always mean for all time. It it can mean
for the period of time. For the lifetime, I guess
you could say, for the lifetime of this statute. And
here's what I mean. In Exodus 21, it says that
(31:42):
a slave could decide to stay with his master, doesn't
want to leave. And so he would then bring have
his ear pierced. You know, that famous passage and Exodus
20 would have his ear pierced, and then he would
stay with with his master La Olam forever. Now, did
that mean for all eternity he was a slave to
(32:04):
his master? No, of course not. It meant for his lifetime.
And so the same thing with these statutes. This is
for the lifetime of the statute and the. The lifetime
of this statute is till to the the temple was
destroyed and then it can't be observed any longer.
S4 (32:19):
Huh? Sorry, I'm making notes.
S2 (32:22):
But the tradition is carried on in Rabbinic Judaism today.
So that synagogues have a light in their in their,
in their building.
S1 (32:30):
But it's not a flame.
S2 (32:31):
And yeah, it's not a flame, but it's but it
is a it's a special lamp that burns. And it's.
S1 (32:36):
A.
S2 (32:36):
Reminder as a reminder of.
S4 (32:37):
This, a symbolic. Yeah. Remind you. Okay. Okay.
S3 (32:40):
Well, great. Thanks for that question, Roy. Our next question
is from Rita in Ravenna, Ohio. Listens to Wtxf in
judges nine. Why does Scripture say Abimelech killed the 70
sons of Gideon when he actually only killed 69 because
Jotham escaped?
S2 (32:57):
I think it's probably a literary rounding up of the number.
I think it's not. It's not a mathematical inaccuracy that
makes you want to say, well, if they say 70
and it was only 69, then let's don't even believe
the Bible anymore. I think it is just a Referee
summary statement that he killed all the 70 sons of Gideon.
(33:18):
But actually Jotham escaped.
S1 (33:20):
Yeah. Jotham escaped. And so this morning I was reading
the questions that you sent a skimming through them, and
I saw that question, and I read it out loud
to Eva, and she said, can you say roundup?
S2 (33:33):
Yeah.
S1 (33:34):
That was her. I thought, well, that's the simplest and
best explanation for this, that it's not sometimes we we
become hyper literal. I think we should be literal. When
we read the Bible, we become hyper literal. We don't
allow for the normal way that we talk and the
normal way that we would summarize, like rounding up to 70.
That's all it is.
S3 (33:55):
Okay. And I know there are a couple other uses
of 70 in there. Like there's 70 pieces of silver
that they gave him. And so there may be I mean, there.
S1 (34:05):
Might be.
S3 (34:06):
There might be some sort of 70 and 70 and.
S1 (34:09):
And rounding it up.
S3 (34:09):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
S1 (34:11):
Okay. But I think that that what happens is that
we get hyper literal. One of my favorite stories was, uh,
Jesus was Eve was teaching about Jesus healing of a
man to little kids once. And he said, Lord, if
you say the word, my, my servant will be healed.
Do you remember that?
S2 (34:31):
I do.
S1 (34:31):
And the little girl looked at Eve and said.
S2 (34:34):
What's the word?
S1 (34:38):
Because she she was so literal. She thought there was
one special word that he had to say.
S2 (34:42):
Word. Right?
S1 (34:42):
And I think sometimes too many people come to the
Bible and they treat it that way instead of reading
it for its plain meaning. Simple meaning.
S3 (34:50):
Okay.
S1 (34:52):
Of course she's excused. She was seven.
S5 (34:54):
She was seven, right? Yeah.
S3 (34:56):
Um, our next question is from, um, Cynthia in Lakeland, Florida.
Listens to Wcqs. I enjoy your program and admire your
dedication to the word. My question is in Luke 1619
to 31. Um. It states that Lazarus the beggar died
and was carried by the angels to Abraham. Why? Abraham.
(35:19):
There's another Lazarus. This one should be a real quick thing.
There's another Lazarus in John 11 one through 44. Um,
John 11, who has died and was raised by Jesus.
That's a different Lazarus, correct? Why would the beggar Lazarus?
So it's kind of two different things. Why would the
beggar Lazarus go to Abraham and not go to God?
S1 (35:38):
Yep. First thing is, it's true. There are different lazaruses.
Lazarus is the name of the friend of Jesus who
died and was resurrected by Jesus.
S2 (35:48):
Uh, had the sisters.
S1 (35:49):
The sisters? Mary and Martha. Exactly. And that's the Lazarus
is a name like today we would say John. Okay. Uh,
it was just a common Hebrew name.
S5 (36:00):
Okay.
S1 (36:01):
It was from Eliezer. Uh, in Hebrew. And so that's
the first thing. Secondly, this Lazarus, when Jesus told the
story of Lazarus and the the rich man. It was
just that. It was a parable. It wasn't. It was
an illustrative story. It is not. It's based on truth.
But there was no real Lazarus character. There was no
(36:23):
real rich man. It's a parable. It's an illustration. And
we have to understand what a parable is. It's it's
it's true to life, but it's not a factual retelling
of a story. And in that culture at that time,
when a person went to be with the Lord, the
patriarchs were there to bring comfort.
S2 (36:44):
That was the, the, the image in the tradition.
S1 (36:48):
In the tradition. And so Jesus just goes with that.
And who's to say that that's not true, that Abraham
won't be the one to bring comfort and and so
I think that's why it's there. But if he was
bringing comfort, he was just an instrumental comforter in the
hands of God when bringing comfort. So anyway, we're going
(37:08):
to be back with more questions in just a moment
on this all mailbag, all the time edition of Open Line.
So glad you're listening in. We'll be right back on
Open Line. Stay with us. Welcome back to Open Line.
(37:31):
I'm Michael Ray Dolnick, and if you'd like to know
a little bit more about me, you can go to
my personal homepage. You'll find my bio there. Blog posts,
also info about speaking engagements, books I've written, even trips
to Israel. Just go to the Open Line Radio website
that's Open Line radio.org and scroll down. You'll see a
link with my smiling face that says my website. Click
on that and it will take you to my personal website.
(37:53):
And you can see all those things that I just
mentioned with me today for this all mailbag, All the
Time program is Tricia McMillan, producer of Open Line, and
Eva Radonich, who's generally at home during the program, texting
me the answers to your questions. But today she is here,
giving me the answers directly. So thank you for being
here and it's.
S2 (38:13):
Great to be at the radio kitchen table.
S1 (38:14):
Yeah, yeah. We need we need the coffee. We need
everything so that we can just get everything done. That's
what we need. So and so. Eva, just hold up
big signs. You don't have to text.
S2 (38:26):
Okay? Okay. Good, good.
S1 (38:28):
Okay. So, Trish, we got something going.
S3 (38:31):
Yeah. Our next our next question is from Brad says
I absolutely love spending part of my Saturday morning with
you when I can. Blessings to you and the Moody family. Um,
his question is about the location of your spirit right
after you die. So the next several questions actually kind
of are about where that sort of thing. Um, if
your spirit goes immediately into the presence of God, does
(38:53):
this mean that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,
he brought his spirit back from being in the presence
of God to his body in the grave?
S2 (39:01):
Well, I think he probably didn't bring it back to
his body in the grave as much as he brought
it back to his body, which was then.
S1 (39:07):
What was in the grave. It was ready.
S2 (39:09):
But yeah, but it probably wasn't reunited until he was
made alive. Yeah. And he came out in the grave clothes.
S1 (39:14):
Yeah.
S2 (39:15):
Yeah.
S3 (39:16):
But would he have been with God that it was,
like now? Oh, sorry. You know, you got that bad news.
S2 (39:20):
For Lazarus, right? Yeah. Lewis does. C.S. Lewis, I Wish
I Had It With Me has a great poem about
how Lazarus felt. Yeah. Being called back from the presence
of God into into earth.
S1 (39:30):
So I don't have any. I think he was in
the presence of God. He was being he was there.
He came back. I have no basis for what I'm
going to say now. Okay. Okay. Uh, but it's possible
that the Lord took away his memory of what it
was like in heaven. Uh, sort of like Men in black,
(39:53):
where they had the neuralyzer.
S2 (39:54):
Yeah.
S3 (39:55):
Uh, a little memory thing. Yeah.
S1 (39:56):
Yeah, exactly. Uh, I just think that it would be
so hard to be in God's presence and then return
that I think God took that memory away. And that's
why it says that the only one that that could
speak about what it's like in God's presence was the
Lord Jesus, because his memory was not taken away. Right?
He came down from the father. He returned to him.
(40:17):
And so I have no basis for saying that. But
I think it's possible that that's what what happened?
S3 (40:24):
Okay.
S1 (40:26):
Okay. And that's the worst thing is I want people
don't say Dolnick said. Because I don't know. I'm just guessing. Right? Yeah,
that's that's what I think though.
S3 (40:34):
But not based on Scripture. Just just thinking. Yes.
S1 (40:36):
Just my thinking.
S3 (40:36):
Yeah. Yeah. Um, Gertrude in Lafayette, Indiana, listens to Wagner
has a question along these lines. Um, she's heard that
there are three heavens and wanted to know if you
can speak about this. And then she wanted to know, um,
the little girl in Luke eight that Jesus raises from
the dead. And then also Lazarus there kind of spoke,
(40:57):
spoken about as if they're not really dead, just sleeping.
Were they actually Fully dead.
S1 (41:03):
Or were they sleeping.
S3 (41:04):
Or were they sleeping?
S1 (41:05):
Let me take the first question, which is the three heavens?
I'm going to throw the second question over to Eva. Uh,
so first of all, three heavens, people want to say
that there are levels of heaven. I think that when
Paul talks about the third heaven, he is not talking
about a higher level of heaven than a lower level
of heaven. I think you've got a sky that's first heaven,
(41:29):
then you've got the atmosphere around us. That's the second heaven,
and then you've got the presence of God. That's the
third heaven. So when Paul says he was taken to
the third heaven, it meant he was just brought to
the presence of God. Mm. Uh, and so that's that's
the three heavens. Now, were they sleeping or were they dead?
S2 (41:47):
Dead. Sleeping is just a it's just a euphemism to
say that a person has died because they look a
dead person laid out. Looks like they're just sleeping. And
so I think that's it was just euphemistically A common
expression that someone has had had died, but it just
seemed too harsh to say they're dead. Yeah, so they're sleeping.
S3 (42:08):
So, like we would say, they've passed away.
S2 (42:10):
They've passed.
S3 (42:11):
Away. They're with the Lord. Instead of saying they died.
S1 (42:15):
Dead means separated.
S2 (42:16):
Means separated. Right.
S1 (42:17):
It's separating the the spirit, the immaterial portion from the
physical portion. The material portion. And it's used in first
Thessalonians four as well.
S2 (42:25):
Right. You see it on tombstones. If you go to
the old graveyards, they have, like little epitaphs and stuff.
It'll say like asleep in Jesus. But it's just a,
it's a, it's a, it's a softer expression for death.
S5 (42:35):
Okay.
S3 (42:36):
All right. Thanks, Gertrude, for your question. Faye says she's
listened to a well-known preacher say that all of our
loved ones in heaven know what's going on with us
and what's happening in the world. And he also said
that things wouldn't bother them. Um, and she's not understanding that.
Do you agree or disagree? What do you think?
S1 (42:55):
Well, I think it's a misunderstanding to think that God.
That that people see what's going on with their loved ones. Uh,
it's based on a misinterpretation of Hebrews 11.
S2 (43:08):
And too many Hollywood movies.
S1 (43:10):
Yes. But people get it from the Bible, from Hebrews 11,
actually Hebrews 12. Uh, they they make a mistake. Uh,
but they do get it from the movies more than
they get it from the Bible. Uh, therefore, since we
have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, and
so they presume that the they know that it's talking
(43:32):
about the people in Hebrews 11. Right. Mhm. And they
are a cloud of witnesses. So they presume that the
witnesses are witnessing what we do on earth. And so
they say, oh look, dead people can see us. That's
not what Hebrews 11 is saying. The word witness means
to testify. Right. If a person goes on trial and
(43:54):
is called as a witness, they testify. And so what
it's saying is, since we have such a large cloud
of testifiers, of people who testify to the value of faith,
then we should also exercise our faith in the same way.
And so they're there testifying to the value of faith.
And they are not witnessing what we do when we die.
(44:15):
We don't become little gods that become omniscient. We go
into the presence of the Lord. But God's admonition we're not.
We don't become God. And so we can't see everything
that's going on. I know a woman wrote in and
she was concerned that her mother would be seeing, uh,
what she and her husband are doing, and she thought
she might be upset about that and felt uncomfortable with
her mother watching her on Earth. And I'm like, no,
(44:40):
you're honestly, if your mother is with the Lord, she's
a little bit more interested in him than she is
in you. And that's an encouraging thing for us. So no,
we're not we're they're not watching us. So.
S3 (44:55):
All right. Yeah. All right. We'll try and squeeze in
one last question. Okay. Michael wants to know what the
Jewish faith teaches about the afterlife. Is there a heaven
or hell?
S1 (45:03):
I just taught that my Jewish religious thought class. Jewish.
S2 (45:06):
Did you answer this question then? I will. Okay, good.
S1 (45:08):
I said in class that you get two Jews. You
get three opinions. That's something we all live with. The
fact that I'm Jewish. You know, I changed my mind
from day to day. But the. If you go to
rabbinic theology, Judaism teaches that there's that the perfectly righteous
go to Paradise immediately. If you're if you never sin,
(45:29):
that must be a very small group of people. But
they say there's some that go to God, to Paradise.
Immediately the perfectly wicked go to Gehinnom, which is hell.
And they are. They suffer there for a year and
then they're exterminated. And then there's ordinary people who go
to who both have both good and bad. They go
(45:50):
to Gehinnom and they are purged. And after a year
they go into the presence of God in Paradise. And
that's rabbinic theology. I don't think it's right, but that's
what rabbinic theology in the Talmud teaches. Well, can you
believe it? The first hour of Open Line is a fast. Yeah,
don't go away. Stick around. Because I'm most of these stations.
(46:12):
There's a second hour of open line. And if you like,
check out our web page on the break here. Go
to Open Line radio.org. You'll find links there to past
programs email Facebook, Twitter. There's a link to the Chosen
People Ministries free resource and you can sign up for that.
There's also a link that goes to my personal home page.
You can go there and if you're interested you can
find out more about me. You can see books I've written, DVDs,
(46:33):
I've done blogs I've written, speaking engagements that are upcoming.
And of course, you see our current Bible study resource
that you can get, or you can figure out how
to become a kitchen table partner. Keep reading the Bible.
We'll talk about it next week. Open line with Doctor
Michael Ray Dolnick is a production of Moody Radio, a
ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!