December 10, 2025 • 56 mins
Pastors' Perspective is a one-hour call-in program where listeners can call in and get answers to questions about the Bible, Christianity, family, and life. The program is live Monday through Friday from 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Pacific. You can call 888-564-6173 to ask your questions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello and welcome to Pastor's Perspective. I'm your host, Brian Perez,
and the phone lines are now open 888-564-6173 is the
number to call. Special thanks to Michael David for filling
in for me yesterday. Michael David is 6'7. No, seriously,
he's 6'7, so I wasn't just making one of those
cultural references. Although today is gonna be better than 6'7,
(00:40):
because today is 1210, and on a scale of 1
to 10, today's show is gonna be a 12.
See what I did there? OK, never mind, never mind.
Brilliant, I got it. Well, good. Brian Broderson is here.
He's from Echoesof Mercy.com, also the pastor emeritus of Calvary Chapel,
Costa Mesa, and our special guest, once again, we have
(01:02):
brought in Sean McDowell, the associate professor of Christian apologetics
at the Talbot School of Theology.
at Viola University. Sean, good to see you,
Speaker 2 (01:10):
man. Good to be back. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
This is awesome. He was here just a few weeks
ago with Char, and now he's here with you. I know,
and I'm so glad that I heard nothing but great
things from Char. He really enjoyed the program and, uh,
Sean and I have done a few things together over
the years, so it's always good to reconnect.
And yeah it's great we brought in the big guns
(01:33):
for uh for 12:10 10:12 or whatever it is whatever
it is yes 104
Speaker 2 (01:40):
was awesome by the way
Speaker 1 (01:41):
yes
so quick question for you Sean, how's your dad doing
nowadays
Speaker 2 (01:45):
you know what he's doing
Speaker 1 (01:46):
all right.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
He's not for
Speaker 1 (01:48):
anybody who doesn't know.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, fair enough. He's not in a position to do
interviews and, uh, speak.
Anymore like he did, but he's content and he's happy
and he's coming to kids' games all the time. In fact,
tonight I'll be at the Biola versus Point Loma basketball game.
My son will be playing, sitting with my parents there,
so that should be fun.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
How neat.
That's very cool, I think. So what do you think? Um,
is Viola gonna?
Walk away with a win tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh, you know what? Since I went there and played there,
I'm always going to put my money on Viola, even
if I lose. It's gonna be tough. I asked my
wife that question last night. She goes, Man, it's fifty-fifty
because Point Loma is tough. They have a good team,
and Viola is good this team year, this year as well,
so prompts to be a good game, but my money's
(02:40):
on Viola.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Not that we're condoning betting, by the way, sports betting, gambling.
It
Speaker 2 (02:46):
was a metaphor like we see sometimes in the Bible.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, yes,
very true.
All right, so call in 888-564-6173 is the number to call.
You can also send in your questions online using the
pastor's perspective page at uh Kwave.com. The easiest way to
get to that page is to scan the QR code.
If you're watching right now on Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram,
(03:11):
that'll take you right to that page. That is uh
how our first uh questioner sent in there and
Question is anonymous, so you can send in your questions
that way as well if you need to, or if
you call into the show, you can change your name.
We won't know. So, uh, first question, what does the
Bible say about non-practicing bisexual individuals? Pastor Brian, what say you?
(03:36):
Well, you know, what does the Bible say? I mean,
you know, it doesn't say anything specifically about bisexuality. Um,
the Bible, uh, of course, talks about the issue of
sexuality and the Bible, um, you know, when it, when
it comes to kind of, you know, these days when
(03:57):
it comes to talking about, um, sexual orientations and things
like that, I think, I think we have to be
careful to
Make sure that.
Um,
We're communicating correctly, so there are some people who uh have.
(04:18):
of tendencies or inclinations or desires for the same sex,
but yet recognize that this is a behavior that is
unacceptable to God, made clear in God's words. So they resist.
Those um urges, they, they live a life of commitment
(04:42):
to Christ.
And they, um,
Where was I going? And they, uh, and so I,
I think what I, what I, what I wanted to
say here is we, we have to make a distinction between,
(05:02):
you know, people who are practicing or, or people and
people who are saying, you know, uh, this is OK.
You know, God made me this way, or, you know,
God's fine with this. Um, and, and the Bible is
very clear.
That God created them male and female, and that the
(05:24):
biblical um sexual relationship that that God honors and allows
really is that relationship between a man and a woman
in the context of marriage when it comes to sex.
So I think the simple way to put it, obviously,
it's not nuanced, it's just the simple way is that
(05:48):
any sexual activity outside of the marriage between a man
and a woman is prohibited in scripture. But I was, I,
I kind of lost my train of thought actually, you know, I'm, I'm.
I'm talking about, and you know, you and I have
even talked about this before, you know, there's, there are people,
(06:09):
you know, sometimes I think we think, well, you know,
when you come to Jesus, let's just say you come
out of a gay lifestyle, when you come to Jesus, automatically,
you just become heterosexual, you no longer have, you know,
desires for the, for the same sex, and that in
some cases does happen, but it doesn't happen in every case.
(06:31):
And it's not the.
The proclivity or the inclination that's the sin necessarily, it's the,
it's the acting upon it. So when a person says,
you know, I still have these desires, but I, I
desire to honor God. I desire to serve Jesus, and
so I submit those desires to Him and I live
in obedience to His word.
(06:53):
We would, we would say right on that that's what
we need to do.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, that's great. I, uh, obviously all we have is about,
I don't know, 15 or 20 words that make up
this question. What does the Bible say about non-practicing bisexual individuals?
Two things jump out to me. Number one, I've had
conversations like you have for really decades at this point
about sexuality, about LGBTQ and beyond.
(07:19):
And so often there's a story beneath questions like this.
This is an anonymous question for us. Maybe I'm reading
too much into it, but I would just really strongly
encourage this individual or others who relate to it to
go to a Christian, go to a pastor, somebody you trust,
who will listen to you, look you in the eyes,
(07:39):
walk you through this together, and so it's not anonymous
and show God's love and grace and truth to you.
And so I don't know that that's the case here,
but I've just heard so many painful backstories that make
sure you share it with somebody who's gonna express God's
grace to you. The other thing that I would say
here is the Bible doesn't address bisexual identities or individuals
(08:02):
because the idea that somebody would be bisexual is a
modern idea. From what I understand, even the idea of
homosexuality and my sexual attractions defining me.
is a Freudian idea that appears sometimes in the mid
to late 1800s. So given that the Bible was written
(08:22):
1800 years minimally before that, we wouldn't expect it to
identify somebody by their sexual attractions.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Now to be clear, you're not saying there was no
homosexuality all those thousands of years ago or bisexuality. Of
Speaker 2 (08:39):
course, I'm
Speaker 1 (08:40):
not saying that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
We see in it's addressed.
In Leviticus, in the Old Testament, specifically, we see it
addressed in the teachings of Paul and Romans 1, we
see Jesus talking about the nature of marriage being a
sex institution in Matt chap Matthew chapter 19. So of
course there was homosexual or same-sex sexual practice, but the
idea that somebody's identity would be rooted in their sexual attractions,
(09:07):
that's a modern idea. The Bible doesn't speak.
To so the Bible speaks to our design and our attractions.
That's what the Bible addresses. So what does the Bible
say about non-practicing bisexual individuals? Well, follow God's design. Don't
follow according to your feelings or attractions. Follow according to
(09:30):
what the Bible says about God's design for relationships, God's
design for sexuality.
That's what really God would say to anybody, regardless of
how they identify.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, and I think the the important thing too, because
we're living in that time, of course, like you said,
where it's all about an identity. It's like I, OK,
let's just say that a person has what is being
described here, non-practicing bisexual. So non-practicing bisexual means you're just
like it sounds, you're not actually engaging in it. But
(10:06):
apparently there are desires there.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So for men and women, male, female, yeah,
Speaker 1 (10:11):
so you don't build your whole identity around that. This
is just, this is a struggle in your life. And
so you submit it to Jesus just like somebody else
struggles with something else. But you, but the, the remedy
is the same. You, you bring it to
the Lord
Speaker 2 (10:27):
I agree. Yeah, well said. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
All right, very good. Let's do another question that was
sent in online before we go to the phones.
This one is from Albert in Pomona, who writes, I
have a family member who has recently bought into replacement theology.
They believe now that Israel has no part in God's
promises and is no longer accepted since they rejected him,
and that Israel is a nation of bad.
(10:52):
He has somewhat cited that they need to be on
their own with all their wars. Is this a dangerous theory,
and does it affect salvation? OK, who, who, who said that?
Go back to the beginning. I missed, Albert, Albert's family
member has recently bought into replacement theology, OK.
All right, well, Sean's here, you know, I, I got
(11:14):
to answer the first question first,
so fair
Speaker 2 (11:17):
enough. So somewhat take this in reverse order. Is this
a dangerous theory and does it affect salvation?
That's gonna depend on what we mean by a dangerous theory.
I don't think if somebody endorses replacement theology, they necessarily
lose their salvation. I don't see that as a requirement
when I look at the early creeds, when I look
(11:38):
at scripture, that you believe you're a sinner, Jesus is God, that,
uh you repent of your sins, salvation by faith, God
is triune. Jesus is God, he's human.
And there's a future position for Israel as far as
being saved. I, I wanna, I wanna relieve the person
of that concern, but is it an important issue? And
(12:00):
I would say yeah, it is an important theological issue
for two reasons. Number one, I think scripture teaches that
God has a future role for Israel and of course
we could go to.
Romans 9 through chapter 11, and that's the classic passage
that would take some unpacking, but I think you see
that early on in Genesis. Uh, I opened up right
here the Abrahamic covenant you have in, in Genesis 12
(12:23):
and of course in 15 repeated in 17 is God
gives this commandment early on to Abraham, the Father, and
there's this indication that this is a permanent kind of
covenant that will go on.
And of course there's a shift in some sense when
Jesus comes and is the new covenant, but I think
there's theological and biblical precedent to believe out of consistency
(12:47):
for scripture that there is a future role for Israel.
For me, that aside, and this would take us apart
from the Bible, I would still, even if I were
not a Christian and I looked at the nation of Israel,
I would think it'd be important to support Israel just.
Because of what they stand for in terms of democracy
(13:08):
across the Middle East. Now does that mean you can't
be critical of Israel? Of course not, but I think
what they stand for, for me as an American, I
think is worth supporting and standing behind theology and Bible aside.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Amen. Yes, um, I, I, I'm not adding anything because
I think that was great and feel totally sufficient. But, but,
you know, I do, I do think that, and, and
I know you, you do as well as I do, Sean.
We know, I know people who embrace a, a replacement,
uh kind of a view or a millennial position, which
(13:45):
is essentially a replacement theology. And, and I, and I
think like
You, you land there and there, there are lots of
good Christian people who do land there and there are
some brilliant theologians who land there. But I, but I
think that, um, and I've kind of just been on,
on this a lot lately. Um, I, I love theology,
(14:09):
you love theology, you're a professor of apologetics, but I
do think you, you can get things wrong if you're looking.
A lot of times more through a theological lens than
you are through a biblical lens. And I think they're
those are two different things, you know, a theology is a, basically,
it's a human interpretation of a biblical idea or a
(14:30):
biblical text or something like that. So,
Um, you know, when I'm reading through the Bible, I'm
just seeing like, no, I'm in Isaiah right now, as
a matter of fact. And you know, no matter how
bad Israel is, and it is very bad at times
in history, and of course, Isaiah is, you know, preceding the, uh,
(14:53):
Babylonian captivity and the northern kingdom of Syria has already
gone into captivity and, and all of that stuff. Yet
there are, there are promises.
For a, uh, an ultimate glorious future for Israel, that
I don't think you can apply them to the church.
I don't think you can apply them to a different group,
(15:13):
unless you take a theological lens to it. If you
just take the biblical statement, it's like, yeah, this is
talking about Israel. I mean, it's pretty crystal clear that
it's talking about Judah. It's talking about, you know, all
of these things that are, are very much Israel. And
then like you said, the classic New Testament passages, of course,
would be Romans 9, 10, and 11. And I think
Uh, I think Romans 11, I think to.
(15:37):
To read Romans 11 and walk away thinking that replacement
theology is even a possibility, I think you have to
just go back and read it again because it does
not even lend itself to that remotely.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I'm
with you on that. I, I'm actually really curious as
to the backstory of how somebody got there. Did they
get there because of critique of Israel and just
Uh, what we're seeing in the news with the war,
or did it get there theologically before I address somebody
and their concerns about this, I want to know what's
driving it and then address it accordingly if, if I can.
(16:11):
But yeah, I think you're right about that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
And I,
I, I think it's just an opinion, but I, I
think today it's probably more due to the current situation
than it is to deep theological, um.
You know, discovery. I think, I think in past generation,
it has tended to be more theological. And I think
(16:34):
people grow up in certain, um, context theologically where it just,
it's just assumed that this is the position, that this
is the historic position, people will say.
Um, but nowadays it seems like it's, it's more connected to.
The current situation in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, I think that's probably right. I
Speaker 1 (16:55):
agree. Albert, thanks for sending in your question through the
pastor's perspective page at Kwave.com, which you can easily get
to if you're watching on Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram. You
can scan that QR code and that, that'll take you
right to the page at Kwave.com. 888-564-617.
is the number to call today. Brian Broderson and Sean
(17:15):
McDowell are in the studio till 4 o'clock, so call
in with your questions at 888-564-6173. Here's Ernest in Covina,
listening on FM 107.9 K wave. Hello, Ernest. Welcome.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Um, I hope everyone is doing well. Um,
really appreciate all the, uh, work that you guys put
(17:38):
in to, uh, answer these questions for us, and I
have a question today. I listened to Brian, uh, Broderson. Uh,
I listen to him and I, I like his answers.
Well, thank you, Ernest. I appreciate that. I, I, I
wanna direct this question to Brian, uh, but the other gentleman, Sean,
(18:01):
he can chime in too, but I wanna hear what
Brian thinks. So in the book of Daniel chapter 3,
verse 25, the Bible says he answered. Now he is Nebuchadnezzar.
It says he answered and said, low.
I see 4 men loose walking in the midst of
the fire, and they have no hurt.
(18:24):
And the form of the 4th is like the Son
of God. Take note, Son is capitalized and God is capitalized. So,
my question is, are we talking about Jesus, Yeshua here,
and if so, how did King Nebuchadnezzar even know what
Jesus would look like or his characteristics if the Messiah
(18:48):
had not even come yet?
That is a great question, Ernest, and
I hope I give you a good answer because you
know I'm, I, I don't want a lot on the line.
There's a lot going on here.
Um, OK, so I think yes, this is the Son
of God.
(19:09):
But I don't think Nebuchadnezzar knew that like we know
it because like you said, I mean, you know, the
incarnation is still hundreds of years off and, and probably
a better translation. I think most newer translations will read
a son of the gods plural. So Nebuchadnezzar at at
(19:30):
this point, um, anyway, he's not thinking so much as
a um.
Uh, a monotheist, you know, he's not thinking one true
and living God. He's still thinking multiple gods, you know,
the gods of Babylon and the gods of Egypt and,
and so on and so forth. But, but there's obviously
something about this fourth person that is extraordinary. So he
(19:54):
is attributing, you know, some sort of divinity to this person.
But he, but he actually does say, uh, son, uh,
of the gods plural. So,
Uh, but, but again, he, he is seen, I think, anyway,
I think Jesus is the one in the furnace with them.
But of course he didn't know that, um, like we
(20:16):
know it today. Sean.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, that's a great answer. I, I, I'll step back
broadly and just say you're right when you mentioned that
Jesus had not been born yet. We don't have the
incarnation described in like John chapter one.
But we do of course know that Jesus is eternally
God and was present of course at the creation moment.
(20:38):
I was just talking with my son recently about how
the Trinity was present at creation because God the Father's
creating through the Son. We learn in Colossians 1:15 and 16,
and the Holy Spirit is present.
What we see in the Old Testament are what we
call often referred to as like Theophanies or pre-incarnate appearances
(20:59):
of Christ. Now how much people at the time, like
you said, Brian, understood that this was
The second person of the Trinity, God in human flesh. Well,
of course, I don't know that we have access to
their minds, but there's other examples of this, of course,
if you go to Genesis 32, when Jacob is wrestling
(21:19):
with God, this is an instance, of course, before Daniel
would take us back, you know, hundreds of years, probably,
you know, even more than that.
And he, he describes in here, he, you know, he's
wrestled with him. He says, what is your name? Your
name will no longer be Jacob. And he describes it,
I have seen God face to face. Now, how much
(21:42):
exactly Jacob understood about the character of God who was
still revealing himself over time.
I'm not sure that we know, but I think it's
a pretty strong hint that he's actually seeing God in
human form appear, and I think that's probably what also
is going on in the story of Daniel chapter 3.
(22:04):
In some ways we only know this really looking back,
but Nebu.
Enezzar's response is right. Like, to look at this and go, Whoa,
this is clearly not a human being. Something divine is
going on. And from his worldview, it's like a Son
of God. And the rest of us watching this go, yeah,
it's not just like a Son of God. This is
actually the Son of God present with them.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
What do you think, Ernest? I appreciate those answers. So
now I'm kinda understand. So because they had no knowledge
like we have today of, you know, of, of Jesus
or Yeshua, they had no knowledge, right? So basically, they're
just seeing.
The Lord and His divine nature, and they just describing
(22:54):
it the best way that they can, not knowing that
it's actually Yeshua.
Yes, right, right, exactly, yeah.
OK, that, that, that's great. OK, well, thank you, gentlemen.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, that's great. And just keep in mind that God
is revealing Himself progressively through scripture.
So when he first shows up with Abraham, I mean
this is one of the first time God shows up
and his reasoning with Abraham, he has no other prophets,
he has no scripture, he has these pagan deities, and
then Moses, and then we have David, and then we
(23:32):
have Daniel to the New Testament. We're learning more and
more about God's character over the, you know, extended period
of the Old Testament.
Until fully revealed in the person of Jesus, and then
expressed in the scriptures, so some of these truths we
only really understand looking back in light of what God
has later revealed.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Ernest, thank you for your phone call today on Pastor's Perspective.
888-564-6173 is our number. We're gonna be here till 4
o'clock with Brian Broderson and Sean McDowell, the associate professor
of Christian Apologetics at the Talbot School of Theology at
Viola University. Sue and Beaumont, welcome to Pastor's Perspective. How
can we help you?
(24:15):
Hi, thank you. Um, I have a question. I, uh,
went on TV, the YouTube, and, um, I noticed that BB, uh,
because I can't say his name very well, Benjamin over
in Israel. Oh, I thought you meant Brian Broderson, BB.
You mean BB, Benjamin Netanyahu.
(24:35):
Yes, and I noticed that um 1000 pastors went over
there and I was kind of disturbed about that, but
I thought, well, maybe, you know, I should just check
it out more. But then today they said that they're
sending those pastors back here to get gathered 10 more,000 pastors.
(24:56):
I thought we were supposed to stand with Israel, but
are we not gonna, we don't stand with what he's doing.
And I'm just kind of um.
Confused a little bit, I would say, um, what's going
on because I don't want to go anything against what
you know, God said that we need to stand with Israel.
(25:17):
Do you see what I'm trying to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and you know, we, we were talking a little bit
about this earlier when we were answering a different question,
but it is, it's a, it's a difficult time right
now because of all the politics and things like that,
you know, so you've got the
You've got the Bible, of course, and you've got what
the Bible says about Israel, past, present and future. And
(25:38):
then you've got the, the history of the nation of
Israel from, say, you know, 1948 till today and you've
got a number of the Arab-Israeli wars as they're often
called and then of course most recently you have this
whole issue with Gaza and Hamas and and so forth.
(25:58):
And so it it is challenging, um.
I think at at this particular time to know, you know, how, how,
how do we as Christians navigate this. So, um, I'll just,
I'll just tell you this, I spent 3 hours before
I just came to the radio today. I was 3
hours with my friends who live in Jerusalem. And we
(26:21):
were catching up and we were talking about the current,
you know, environment and things like that. And they're they're
believers in Jesus, um.
One of them is Jewish.
And you know, they, they find themselves in in a
bit of a dilemma themselves because they live in the
(26:41):
midst of the Israelis and they see a lot of
things that they think are not good and not right. Um,
but they understand their kids are in the Israeli, they're
in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. And so, you know, that,
I mean, their whole life is just like
(27:04):
Uh, but, but they see that there's two sides to
the story. It's not all, you know, one sided. And
it was interesting because they, they said to me today,
they said, you know, we feel like, um, and you know, they're,
they're supportive of Israel from a biblical standpoint. They believe
that Israel has a future in God's plan.
(27:24):
Uh, but they said they do feel like among Christians today,
there is sort of a of an Israel idolatry that
sort of takes them to a place in perspective to
Israel that is it kind of goes beyond what the
scriptures would say or even what would, you know, God
would maybe, maybe want us to um think about today. So.
(27:49):
You know, I, I think a safe thing to fall
back on is, um, you know, when you go to
the New Testament, the, the apostles, Paul, let's just use
Paul because Paul, all of, all of the apostles were Jewish,
but Paul was
You know, as he says of himself, he was a
Hebrew of the Hebrews, so he kind of outdid everybody
in his Jewishness. Um, but Paul's mission wasn't to preach Israel.
(28:15):
Paul's mission was to preach Jesus and the gospel. And
I think sometimes what can happen today is I think
Christians in our, our zeal for Israel, we understand the history,
we know that they're the ancient people of God, we
know that God has a plan. You know, sometimes we
can get that sort of out in front.
And it ends up obscuring the gospel and in some
(28:37):
cases can even be a stumbling block to people coming
to hear about Jesus because maybe they come from a
perspective that, uh, you know, let's just say maybe they
come from the Arabic world or something like that, and
they've had, um, you know, personal issues with real things
(28:57):
that have happened in real life that caused them to
have a negative view.
So, you know, it, Sean, I mean, you know, you,
you know, you talk to a lot of people, you
have a YouTube channel, you know, I, I mean, it's,
I've been in ministry for, you know, 45 years, and
I don't, I can't think of another time when things
(29:19):
have been so complex. And, you know, I mean, I've
talked about Israel for decades and never
Had to go into the kinds of explanations that we
have to today. So we'll come back to the yep,
it's break time on Pastor's perspective. Still taking your calls
till 4 o'clock. 888-564-6173 is our number. We've got Pastor
(29:42):
Brian Broderson from Echoesof Mercy.com and Sean McDowell, Associate professor
of Christian apologetics at the Talbot School of Theology at
Viola University, 888-564-6173.
(30:19):
Welcome back to Pastor's Perspective. Brian Perez here. Sue and Beaumont,
are you still on the line with us?
Yes, OK, what do you think of what you've heard
so far?
Um, it's good. I just wanted to make sure that
I don't, you know.
Get off what uh the wrong path of what God
(30:41):
says in the Bible or look at what they're doing
over there. It's like a distraction, um.
And that's, uh, you know, I just have to keep
reading the word and, and reading my Bible because I
know maybe down the road they're gonna start, you know, uh,
taking out verses or substituting words in the Bible, but, um,
(31:06):
I have two Bibles and I have to do a
lot of notes, um, when I read the Bible. So
I just wanted to make sure, um, on that because
of him.
Because of him being, uh, Netanyahu.
Yes, yes, um, so that's all, you know, I just
(31:27):
kind of, it kind of caught me off guard today
when that, when that came up with the pastors, and
I'm like, yeah, well, you know, let me say this. Sean,
Sean's gonna jump in here in a second, but let
me just say to, um, you know.
Israel is obviously struggling on a lot of levels and,
you know, world opinion has become very negative, you know, um,
(31:52):
toward Jewish people, as, as all of us know. Uh, again,
I mentioned my friend, you know, they're talking today about
many of the of the young.
Um, people in, in the military, there's a lot of
the suicide rate is, is drastically increased in the IDF
over the
Uh, past couple of years, and you know, there's a
(32:13):
lot of things contributing to it, but one of them
is the, the global anti-Semitism that has resurfaced. These kids
just feel like hopeless, you know, what are they doing?
They're gonna, you know, they might die in a, in a,
in a war or even if they get out of
the war and they want to get out of the
country and go travel and they can't say they're Jewish because, uh,
(32:34):
you know, so it's, it's really a, a heavy, heavy thing.
Um, but what I was gonna say is, uh, Netanyahu,
Netanyahu has been around many, many Christians over his long,
you know, terms as the prime minister. And so, and
of course, he looks at the evangelical world and sees
like there's generally been support from the evangelical world. So he's,
(32:56):
he's trying to rally that.
And, um, you know, he knows Christians have been friends
of Israel. So I think he's, you know, he's wanting
more people to be friendly to Israel at this time.
And you, you know, so you can understand that. And then,
of course, Netanyahu is his own person and there's all
kinds of different opinions about him, you know, some people
just absolutely hate him. I think he's the worst thing
(33:17):
that ever happened and some people think he's the greatest hero. Um,
I think these are the things that we sort of
have to guard against getting sucked up into.
And just recognize that um you know, in the end
Jesus is gonna save Israel, not America, not President Trump,
not the evangelical Christians of America, and you know that
that's what we have to keep reminding people of Sean,
Speaker 2 (33:41):
what you said a minute ago is exactly right going
back to our Bible as the source, we just pulled
up an article really quick.
At the break about this trip because this is the
first that I had heard about 1000 pastors going over
and the bottom of the top of the article says
the goal of having a large group of American evangelical
pastors tour Israel lies in being reminded of its scriptural
(34:04):
roots and the importance of pushing back against a worldwide
rise in anti-Semitism. Now if there's any concern.
That Netanyahu is gonna change the scriptures or the theology
the pastor's going over. I'm not worried about that. You
got the Chancellor of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. There's a
couple of names of people that went here that I know,
(34:26):
and they're committed to scripture, and they're not going to
change it because of some leader who's in Israel, whoever
that might be.
Of course we made a case earlier, Brian and I
talked about how we do believe biblically there is a
future role for Israel, but what's interesting is the top
of the article also says concern about the rise in anti-Semitism,
(34:49):
and can I tell you, probably, I don't know, 6
weeks ago I had a.
In depth friendly debate you might say threw it up
on my YouTube channel with an Orthodox Jew who works
with Prager You by the name of Shabbas Kestenbaum, and
he went to Harvard Divinity School, really sharp, brilliant, and
(35:10):
one of the things he said to me really stuck
with me.
He said, Shawn, for the first time in history of America,
Jews in America are now wondering not when but if
America will be a safe place for Jews in the future.
He said every Jew is thinking that, and it started
(35:32):
October 7th, 2023, not October 8th, not October 9th. On
October 7th, he experienced a rising level of anti-Semitism.
And I am seeing this from the woke right you're
seeing it from the left on my radar talking with
young people. Christianity Today just had a recent article about this,
(35:54):
and I had a chance to put a quote in there.
Anti-Semitism is rising and real in a way I haven't seen.
And so I'm thankful that these pastors are going over
there being aware of that and addressing it because we're
seeing a wave of anti-Semitism worldwide and in the states
that we haven't seen at least in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Correct. OK. OK.
All right, uh.
My brain's gonna have to absorb all this.
But thank you so much and you guys have a
great day. You're welcome. Thanks Sue.
Yes, thank you for calling.
(36:37):
It looks like you want to say something. Well, I,
I do, but I can't remember what it was. I've
tried to, I've tried to get back to, um, well,
let me say this. OK, go ahead. anti-Semitism thing. I mean,
I think, you know, and they're, I mean, the troubling
thing to me is, is to see some, you know,
evangelical Christians who are developing a real antagonism, you know,
(37:00):
toward Israel and toward Jewish people. And I think, you know.
This is so antithetical to Jesus said love your neighbor.
Jesus said love your brother. Jesus said love your enemy.
So there's no place in the Christian community or in
a Christian's heart for animosity toward any people group really,
(37:23):
but and the Jews are included in that.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
So, you know,
Speaker 2 (37:28):
amen. I agree. Jesus was Jewish. The disciples were Jewish.
John the Baptist, his forerunner was Jewish. He went to
the nation of Israel. I mean, the Gospel of Matthew
has Jewish roots. I mean, my goodness,
Speaker 1 (37:42):
it's.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Everywhere and that doesn't mean the way you phrase it
is important at the expense or value of other people.
The whole purpose going back to Genesis 12 is they'd
be a blessing to all the nations. That's a point
from the beginning is God would uniquely speak through them.
So to see anti-Semitism arising as we should hatred for
(38:05):
any group should concern Christians, but I think I just
have to pause and say it's not just any group,
it's a group that has been hated on and attacked
in so many ways historically speaking that raises concern, the
increase there today.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
A few years ago, right around 9/11, everybody was, you know,
anti-Palestinian and anti, you know, Arab, everything that Islam, that's
the word I'm looking for. Thank you. And, uh, so
now it's, yeah, now it's anti-Semitism and not, not everybody,
of course, but yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it, it, you know, it truly is a, a,
(38:44):
a really crazy time. And like you said, Sean, you know,
October 7th, 2023, um, and you know, I mean, I,
I don't think before that.
Any Jewish person ever even imagined.
It would have even been remotely possible in their minds
that somehow America would become an, an unsafe place for
(39:08):
these people. And yet now, like you said,
Speaker 2 (39:11):
it's at least in the back of their minds. Will
this happen? That's a radical shift.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
And, and I know Israelis who are telling me like they.
Uh, when they're traveling, they don't let people know that
they're Israelis. So I mean, if they can help it,
you know, obviously if they go through immigration or something,
they have to with their passports, but they're not just
out in the open like, oh, I came from Israel,
you know, they're kind of keeping that quiet.
If you wanna watch that interview that Sean did with
(39:37):
Shabos Kestenbaum, it's on Sean's YouTube channel. It was released
November 25th, so you can go there and, uh, check
it out. It's about an hour and 20 minutes long.
888-564-6173 is the number to call us today here on
Pastor's Perspective. And now here's Lydia in La Habra. Welcome
to the program, Lydia.
Thank you for taking my call. As I stated, you know,
(40:00):
regard Romans chapter 13, that our leaders are supposed to
be examples of righteousness. They're supposed to be going after
the criminals.
But we have an indicted criminal in the White House
and he's gonna go after the criminals. And uh we
have seen, I have experienced bigotry and hate.
(40:24):
And you know, my focus is on my Lord, my
God and my Savior, because when it's all said and done,
he will have the final say and he will have
the final word. I even had bigotry at some churches
that I even that crying and had to shake the
dust off my feet. I know the holy word of God.
(40:45):
I remember when I gave my life to Jesus. I
love him and I can't wait to see him.
And I know, you know, what's this thing with America?
America is a continent. We're supposed to be the United
States of America. Do you have a question for us, Lydia?
Yes, what is going on? We talk about Israel. What
(41:06):
is going on here in this nation?
In regards to
Uh, people supporting and talking about Trump like he's this wonderful,
he's an indicted criminal.
OK.
Well, Lydia, honestly, I mean, these are the kinds of
discussions we don't really engage in um on the program here.
(41:29):
We're not a political program in any way. I mean,
you know, sometimes there are issues that
Maybe are sort of considered to be political, but they're
they actually are more rooted in scripture. But when it
comes to your opinion about the president, that's kind of
just more your opinion. And so that's the that's the
(41:52):
type of conversation we we don't engage in. So, um,
I think, you know, you you know Jesus, you love
the Lord, you know your Bible, like you said, um,
keep your focus there.
Um, you know, there have been lots of rulers all
throughout the history of the world that have been less
than ideal, and Christians have navigated that for centuries. I mean, the,
(42:16):
the New Testament was written under the, the reign of
the Roman emperors and um Nero, who was a very
corrupt emperor was in power when Paul was writing his letters.
And it's interesting that Paul never really mentions Nero. Uh, if,
you know, if you want to talk about corrupt.
People in history, he was very corrupt. But Paul doesn't
(42:39):
say he, all he says is pray for him, you know,
pray for, pray for these authorities, pray for these people
in power. So that's the position that we pretty much
take here. So, um, pray for him. Pray for Trump.
You know, I heard recently, you know, he's, you know,
he's figured out he's not going to heaven, but he's
thinking he wants to get there. So he's hoping that he,
(43:02):
You know, he's hoping to get in and so, uh,
you know, pray that God will save him. I mean, that's,
that's what he needs ultimately. He needs to be saved, right,
like everybody does, Sean.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I, I think that's a great perspective to pray for
our leaders and, you know, given the perspective that you have, Lydia,
about President Trump, you know, if you go back to
the first century when you said Nero was leader, it's,
you still pray for your leaders. It's amazing to think
that Romans 13 was written.
(43:34):
While Nero was reigning, and we're still called to submit
to governing authorities. Now that doesn't give a pass to
governing authorities. That is not my point. We are called
and we have precedent in the Bible to disobey when
what our leaders ask us to do violates God's higher laws.
(43:56):
That's for sure. We see that in Exodus 3 with
the midwives, we see that with Rahab.
But there's still something where we are called to pray
for and submit ourselves to our authorities even though they
aren't close to being the beacon of lights that we
would want them to be morally speaking, you know, we
don't have to go there. I, I don't think in
(44:17):
this program we could, but we would, but you described
earlier where you really felt like you've been mistreated and
I don't know the details of that, but.
You know, sometimes we have not navigated in the church
political differences well, we have strong opinions, we divide over
those and politics matters, you know, there is a way
to think biblically about politics, but if you've had somebody
(44:39):
of a different political persuasion mistreat you and at least
not minimally hear you out and try to understand where
you're coming from.
I'm sorry somebody has has treated you that way.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Now, Pastor Brian and maybe you too, Sean, uh, you've
studied history. Can you give us a comparison? I'm, I'm
not asking you to compare Trump and Nero.
But for people who don't know how bad of a
guy Nero was, can you, uh, give us some of
his highlights or lowlights perhaps I should say.
Well, I mean, you know, Nero is, you know, there's a,
(45:14):
there's a lot of things you could say about Nero.
Um but one of the things was he led a
major persecution against Christians in the 60s of, you know,
the first century. And before that, there had not been
a um so much a, not that this was necessarily
(45:34):
a government sponsored persecution because it didn't go much beyond Rome.
But, but he brutally persecuted Christians in Rome and, um,
you know, lit them on fire in his dipped them
in pitch and lit them on fire in his garden and,
you know, he did, he did horrible things, um, on
(45:55):
all kinds of levels, but persecution was, was a big one.
But
Speaker 2 (45:59):
yeah, we're talking about murdering family members, just gross levels
of sexual immorality.
And Tacitus, a Roman historian in the early 2nd century,
reports that there was a fire in Rome, and what
Nero did was use the Christians as a scapegoat to
(46:20):
blame them for the fire, and multitudes were just brutally
killed and tortured in ways that we don't even need
to go into on the air. And yet we have
Romans 13.
Written by Paul, likely during his reign or right around
that time, so that's something worth really wrestling with, you know,
(46:42):
one thing I was reading this morning, you're in Isaiah, Brian, I'm,
I've been reading Deuteronomy and this morning I read Deuteronomy
chapter 32.
And verse, you know, 35 stood out to me. It
says vengeance belongs to me.
I will repay. Well, Nero died about a couple 1000
years ago, and you know what, Trump, like the rest
(47:04):
of us, he's gonna die someday too, and he's gonna
stand before.
Uh, his Maker, and the last thing we heard politics
aside from Trump at the Charlie Kirk memorial was he's like,
I hate my enemies and clearly seemed to reject the gospel.
So absolutely we should pray for Trump that he would
(47:26):
rule justly and also more than anything that he would
repent of his sins and that when he does meet
his Maker, he can actually experience the mercy that God
offers to him.
That's what we should pray for Trump as we should
all of our leaders across the political aisle.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yes, indeed. You know, this, this passage in Titus spoke
to me a, a long, long time ago. Um, when I,
when I was a young pastor and, you know, ignorant
of a lot of things back in those days, whenever,
you know, election cycles and things would come around, you know,
I'd always jump on the bandwagon of, you know, and I,
(48:07):
and I remember, you know, I preaching against this guy,
that guy, you know, all of this stuff and.
And, and one day the Lord just really convicted me
with this passage, and this is it. It's in Titus
chapter 3, and it says, um, it's, it's the first, uh,
verses here, it says, um, remind them to be subject
to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for
(48:28):
every good work. Here it is to speak evil of
no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to
all people.
For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving
various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and the hateful
and hating one another, and man, you know, God just
(48:52):
convicted me, you know, speak evil of no one because you,
we were all, you, you were that person as well,
and it really honestly, it just, OK.
The pulpit is not a place to do that, and
I've kind of made that a practice since then. But
you know, we're slandering no one, avoiding fighting, being kind,
(49:16):
always showing gentleness to all people that doesn't get likes
on social media.
So I know nobody likes my my post. I don't
know what it is. I'm just, I guess I'm just
too nice. I'm just saying everything is so inflamed nowadays
that you've gotta.
Go to the extreme and yeah, it seems like it, yeah.
So sad. Lydia, thanks for your phone call. Let's uh
talk to Daniel in Los Angeles. Welcome to the program, Daniel.
(49:42):
Hello. Hi, what's your question?
Yeah, so, um, I was wondering how would we go
about talking to our Jewish friends about Christianity and maybe
planting that seed.
That Jesus is the way that you can.
(50:02):
OK, you got some methods, Sean McDowell?
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Uh, first off, I love that you want to talk
to anyone about Jesus and speak to your Jewish friends.
Good for you. Uh, in some ways, you know, is
this an Orthodox Jew? Is this reformed Jew? Is this
conservative Jew?
Uh, I actually am working on a book with a
friend of mine who's a secular Jew, who's a complete
(50:27):
materialist and atheist, but practices a lot of the Jewish
kind of traditions and rituals because it's a part of
his culture, and they have meaning for him. So how
are you're going to talk to
There's no formula for talking to everybody who's Jewish the
same way. What I'm gonna do is I want to
find out that person's story. What does it mean that
(50:48):
you're Jewish? When did you become Jewish? Why are you
Jewish now? How do you practice your faith? Who do
you think Jesus is? I mean, have a conversation with
this person.
Now if I was to draw some generalizations, in my experience, I,
I found that a lot of objections, there's two that
seem to consistently bubble to the top in my experience.
(51:10):
One of them is that many Jewish people feel like
if they become a Christian, they're going to lose and
have to abandon their Jewishness.
So talking about how you can be a believer in
Jesus and maintain your Jewishness uh is important for many people.
I think that's key and the other one is I just,
(51:31):
you know, I mentioned this a few minutes ago is
I had a friendly debate with an Orthodox Jew recently.
And I asked him, I said, why aren't more Christians
and Jews having this conversation? He said, I can't speak
for Christians, but for many Jews there's a certain fear
because of over history how Jews have fared not so
well under Christian rulers and there's.
(51:55):
A fear about that that prolongs it throughout history, Christians
have not always treated Jewish people well, so that can
be a figure a piece as well. When it's all
said and done, how do we want to talk to
our Jewish believers? We want to convince them that Jesus
really is the Messiah. So can we point towards certain
Old Testament prophecies, show how they're fulfilled in Jesus, and
(52:18):
ultimately how Jesus walked on water, raised the dead.
Raised on the 3rd day and had the authority to
speak about the Jewish scriptures, that's where I would want
to go. But by the way, there's a wonderful ministry
called Chosen People Ministries.
We partner with at Talbot School of Theology, uh, they
(52:38):
have wonderful resources that I would check with them as
well because this is what they do full time.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
What do you think, uh, Daniel?
Oh, that was uh very insightful.
Thank you so much. Um, yeah, I will check out
that ministry for sure.
Chosenpeople.com. That's the one, right? Yes, yep, chosen.
Perfect, thank you. Yeah, um, and just anything I could
(53:08):
add to my arts you know, you know, the knowledge
has helped so much, so thank you.
Brian, any thoughts from you?
Well, I do, I do think that we're, you know,
we're in a, uh, as we've talked about on the
program today, we're, we're in an interesting time. I do
think that
There's probably more opportunities to speak to Jewish people today
(53:32):
than there has been for a long time because they're,
you know, they're, they're feeling.
Isolated and, you know, the hostility that they're sensing and stuff. So, yeah,
I think it's just a good, like Sean said, I mean,
the first thing is you just, you know, get to
know somebody, just find out a little bit about them. And, and,
you know, like you said, Sean, you know, some people
are Jewish, and that just simply means they're not a non-Jew.
(53:55):
It doesn't mean anything else, you know. I mean, I've
met so many Jewish people that have never read the Bible.
They'd never even had a bar mitzvah, you know, they're just, yeah,
I'm Jewish, whatever.
Uh, and then you have varying degrees of Jewish people
and some are extremely religious, but, um, but I also
think like this is a great time to just encourage
(54:15):
them to read even just their Bible. Maybe recommend a
few portions of scripture like, hey, you know, check this
out because like, you know, Sean, most Jewish people have
never read the Bible. So they don't even, I mean,
they have ideas about Moses and stuff, but they don't
know the actual story.
So just get him to read a portion of scripture
(54:37):
and then maybe you could um follow up with a
conversation about it, you know.
Nice. Daniel, thanks for your phone call today on Pastor's Perspective,
and that's all the time we have on today's episode.
We'll be back tomorrow. Special thanks to Sean McDowell for
showing up again, showing up in more ways than one.
good to have you here, sir. Thanks. Good to be here. Yeah,
follow him on YouTube, including that video that we were
(54:58):
talking about earlier, his, uh, interview with Shabos Kestenbaum from, uh,
Prager University. He's a
Political commentator at Prager U and uh you can find
that on Sean's YouTube channel. Alright, today's episode will be
archived on Facebook, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, so check
it out later. And if you've got a question for
(55:19):
the pastors, call in tomorrow. They will be here between
3 and 4 in the afternoon. We'd love to hear
from you then. For Brian Broderson and Sean McDowell, I'm
Brian Perez. Thanks for watching and listening to Pastor's Perspective.
Hello and welcome to Pastor's Perspective. I'm your host, Brian Perez,
and the phone lines are now open 888-564-6173 is the
number to call. Special thanks to Michael David for filling
in for me yesterday. Michael David is 6'7. No, seriously,
he's 6'7, so I wasn't just making one of those
cultural references. Although today is gonna be better than 6'7,
(00:40):
because today is 1210, and on a scale of 1
to 10, today's show is gonna be a 12.
See what I did there? OK, never mind, never mind.
Brilliant, I got it. Well, good. Brian Broderson is here.
He's from Echoesof Mercy.com, also the pastor emeritus of Calvary Chapel,
Costa Mesa, and our special guest, once again, we have
(01:02):
brought in Sean McDowell, the associate professor of Christian apologetics
at the Talbot School of Theology.
at Viola University. Sean, good to see you,
Speaker 2 (01:10):
man. Good to be back. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
This is awesome. He was here just a few weeks
ago with Char, and now he's here with you. I know,
and I'm so glad that I heard nothing but great
things from Char. He really enjoyed the program and, uh,
Sean and I have done a few things together over
the years, so it's always good to reconnect.
And yeah it's great we brought in the big guns
(01:33):
for uh for 12:10 10:12 or whatever it is whatever
it is yes 104
Speaker 2 (01:40):
was awesome by the way
Speaker 1 (01:41):
yes
so quick question for you Sean, how's your dad doing
nowadays
Speaker 2 (01:45):
you know what he's doing
Speaker 1 (01:46):
all right.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
He's not for
Speaker 1 (01:48):
anybody who doesn't know.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, fair enough. He's not in a position to do
interviews and, uh, speak.
Anymore like he did, but he's content and he's happy
and he's coming to kids' games all the time. In fact,
tonight I'll be at the Biola versus Point Loma basketball game.
My son will be playing, sitting with my parents there,
so that should be fun.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
How neat.
That's very cool, I think. So what do you think? Um,
is Viola gonna?
Walk away with a win tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh, you know what? Since I went there and played there,
I'm always going to put my money on Viola, even
if I lose. It's gonna be tough. I asked my
wife that question last night. She goes, Man, it's fifty-fifty
because Point Loma is tough. They have a good team,
and Viola is good this team year, this year as well,
so prompts to be a good game, but my money's
(02:40):
on Viola.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Not that we're condoning betting, by the way, sports betting, gambling.
It
Speaker 2 (02:46):
was a metaphor like we see sometimes in the Bible.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, yes,
very true.
All right, so call in 888-564-6173 is the number to call.
You can also send in your questions online using the
pastor's perspective page at uh Kwave.com. The easiest way to
get to that page is to scan the QR code.
If you're watching right now on Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram,
(03:11):
that'll take you right to that page. That is uh
how our first uh questioner sent in there and
Question is anonymous, so you can send in your questions
that way as well if you need to, or if
you call into the show, you can change your name.
We won't know. So, uh, first question, what does the
Bible say about non-practicing bisexual individuals? Pastor Brian, what say you?
(03:36):
Well, you know, what does the Bible say? I mean,
you know, it doesn't say anything specifically about bisexuality. Um,
the Bible, uh, of course, talks about the issue of
sexuality and the Bible, um, you know, when it, when
it comes to kind of, you know, these days when
(03:57):
it comes to talking about, um, sexual orientations and things
like that, I think, I think we have to be
careful to
Make sure that.
Um,
We're communicating correctly, so there are some people who uh have.
(04:18):
of tendencies or inclinations or desires for the same sex,
but yet recognize that this is a behavior that is
unacceptable to God, made clear in God's words. So they resist.
Those um urges, they, they live a life of commitment
(04:42):
to Christ.
And they, um,
Where was I going? And they, uh, and so I,
I think what I, what I, what I wanted to
say here is we, we have to make a distinction between,
(05:02):
you know, people who are practicing or, or people and
people who are saying, you know, uh, this is OK.
You know, God made me this way, or, you know,
God's fine with this. Um, and, and the Bible is
very clear.
That God created them male and female, and that the
(05:24):
biblical um sexual relationship that that God honors and allows
really is that relationship between a man and a woman
in the context of marriage when it comes to sex.
So I think the simple way to put it, obviously,
it's not nuanced, it's just the simple way is that
(05:48):
any sexual activity outside of the marriage between a man
and a woman is prohibited in scripture. But I was, I,
I kind of lost my train of thought actually, you know, I'm, I'm.
I'm talking about, and you know, you and I have
even talked about this before, you know, there's, there are people,
(06:09):
you know, sometimes I think we think, well, you know,
when you come to Jesus, let's just say you come
out of a gay lifestyle, when you come to Jesus, automatically,
you just become heterosexual, you no longer have, you know,
desires for the, for the same sex, and that in
some cases does happen, but it doesn't happen in every case.
(06:31):
And it's not the.
The proclivity or the inclination that's the sin necessarily, it's the,
it's the acting upon it. So when a person says,
you know, I still have these desires, but I, I
desire to honor God. I desire to serve Jesus, and
so I submit those desires to Him and I live
in obedience to His word.
(06:53):
We would, we would say right on that that's what
we need to do.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, that's great. I, uh, obviously all we have is about,
I don't know, 15 or 20 words that make up
this question. What does the Bible say about non-practicing bisexual individuals?
Two things jump out to me. Number one, I've had
conversations like you have for really decades at this point
about sexuality, about LGBTQ and beyond.
(07:19):
And so often there's a story beneath questions like this.
This is an anonymous question for us. Maybe I'm reading
too much into it, but I would just really strongly
encourage this individual or others who relate to it to
go to a Christian, go to a pastor, somebody you trust,
who will listen to you, look you in the eyes,
(07:39):
walk you through this together, and so it's not anonymous
and show God's love and grace and truth to you.
And so I don't know that that's the case here,
but I've just heard so many painful backstories that make
sure you share it with somebody who's gonna express God's
grace to you. The other thing that I would say
here is the Bible doesn't address bisexual identities or individuals
(08:02):
because the idea that somebody would be bisexual is a
modern idea. From what I understand, even the idea of
homosexuality and my sexual attractions defining me.
is a Freudian idea that appears sometimes in the mid
to late 1800s. So given that the Bible was written
(08:22):
1800 years minimally before that, we wouldn't expect it to
identify somebody by their sexual attractions.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Now to be clear, you're not saying there was no
homosexuality all those thousands of years ago or bisexuality. Of
Speaker 2 (08:39):
course, I'm
Speaker 1 (08:40):
not saying that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
We see in it's addressed.
In Leviticus, in the Old Testament, specifically, we see it
addressed in the teachings of Paul and Romans 1, we
see Jesus talking about the nature of marriage being a
sex institution in Matt chap Matthew chapter 19. So of
course there was homosexual or same-sex sexual practice, but the
idea that somebody's identity would be rooted in their sexual attractions,
(09:07):
that's a modern idea. The Bible doesn't speak.
To so the Bible speaks to our design and our attractions.
That's what the Bible addresses. So what does the Bible
say about non-practicing bisexual individuals? Well, follow God's design. Don't
follow according to your feelings or attractions. Follow according to
(09:30):
what the Bible says about God's design for relationships, God's
design for sexuality.
That's what really God would say to anybody, regardless of
how they identify.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, and I think the the important thing too, because
we're living in that time, of course, like you said,
where it's all about an identity. It's like I, OK,
let's just say that a person has what is being
described here, non-practicing bisexual. So non-practicing bisexual means you're just
like it sounds, you're not actually engaging in it. But
(10:06):
apparently there are desires there.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So for men and women, male, female, yeah,
Speaker 1 (10:11):
so you don't build your whole identity around that. This
is just, this is a struggle in your life. And
so you submit it to Jesus just like somebody else
struggles with something else. But you, but the, the remedy
is the same. You, you bring it to
the Lord
Speaker 2 (10:27):
I agree. Yeah, well said. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
All right, very good. Let's do another question that was
sent in online before we go to the phones.
This one is from Albert in Pomona, who writes, I
have a family member who has recently bought into replacement theology.
They believe now that Israel has no part in God's
promises and is no longer accepted since they rejected him,
and that Israel is a nation of bad.
(10:52):
He has somewhat cited that they need to be on
their own with all their wars. Is this a dangerous theory,
and does it affect salvation? OK, who, who, who said that?
Go back to the beginning. I missed, Albert, Albert's family
member has recently bought into replacement theology, OK.
All right, well, Sean's here, you know, I, I got
(11:14):
to answer the first question first,
so fair
Speaker 2 (11:17):
enough. So somewhat take this in reverse order. Is this
a dangerous theory and does it affect salvation?
That's gonna depend on what we mean by a dangerous theory.
I don't think if somebody endorses replacement theology, they necessarily
lose their salvation. I don't see that as a requirement
when I look at the early creeds, when I look
(11:38):
at scripture, that you believe you're a sinner, Jesus is God, that,
uh you repent of your sins, salvation by faith, God
is triune. Jesus is God, he's human.
And there's a future position for Israel as far as
being saved. I, I wanna, I wanna relieve the person
of that concern, but is it an important issue? And
(12:00):
I would say yeah, it is an important theological issue
for two reasons. Number one, I think scripture teaches that
God has a future role for Israel and of course
we could go to.
Romans 9 through chapter 11, and that's the classic passage
that would take some unpacking, but I think you see
that early on in Genesis. Uh, I opened up right
here the Abrahamic covenant you have in, in Genesis 12
(12:23):
and of course in 15 repeated in 17 is God
gives this commandment early on to Abraham, the Father, and
there's this indication that this is a permanent kind of
covenant that will go on.
And of course there's a shift in some sense when
Jesus comes and is the new covenant, but I think
there's theological and biblical precedent to believe out of consistency
(12:47):
for scripture that there is a future role for Israel.
For me, that aside, and this would take us apart
from the Bible, I would still, even if I were
not a Christian and I looked at the nation of Israel,
I would think it'd be important to support Israel just.
Because of what they stand for in terms of democracy
(13:08):
across the Middle East. Now does that mean you can't
be critical of Israel? Of course not, but I think
what they stand for, for me as an American, I
think is worth supporting and standing behind theology and Bible aside.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Amen. Yes, um, I, I, I'm not adding anything because
I think that was great and feel totally sufficient. But, but,
you know, I do, I do think that, and, and
I know you, you do as well as I do, Sean.
We know, I know people who embrace a, a replacement,
uh kind of a view or a millennial position, which
(13:45):
is essentially a replacement theology. And, and I, and I
think like
You, you land there and there, there are lots of
good Christian people who do land there and there are
some brilliant theologians who land there. But I, but I
think that, um, and I've kind of just been on,
on this a lot lately. Um, I, I love theology,
(14:09):
you love theology, you're a professor of apologetics, but I
do think you, you can get things wrong if you're looking.
A lot of times more through a theological lens than
you are through a biblical lens. And I think they're
those are two different things, you know, a theology is a, basically,
it's a human interpretation of a biblical idea or a
(14:30):
biblical text or something like that. So,
Um, you know, when I'm reading through the Bible, I'm
just seeing like, no, I'm in Isaiah right now, as
a matter of fact. And you know, no matter how
bad Israel is, and it is very bad at times
in history, and of course, Isaiah is, you know, preceding the, uh,
(14:53):
Babylonian captivity and the northern kingdom of Syria has already
gone into captivity and, and all of that stuff. Yet
there are, there are promises.
For a, uh, an ultimate glorious future for Israel, that
I don't think you can apply them to the church.
I don't think you can apply them to a different group,
(15:13):
unless you take a theological lens to it. If you
just take the biblical statement, it's like, yeah, this is
talking about Israel. I mean, it's pretty crystal clear that
it's talking about Judah. It's talking about, you know, all
of these things that are, are very much Israel. And
then like you said, the classic New Testament passages, of course,
would be Romans 9, 10, and 11. And I think
Uh, I think Romans 11, I think to.
(15:37):
To read Romans 11 and walk away thinking that replacement
theology is even a possibility, I think you have to
just go back and read it again because it does
not even lend itself to that remotely.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I'm
with you on that. I, I'm actually really curious as
to the backstory of how somebody got there. Did they
get there because of critique of Israel and just
Uh, what we're seeing in the news with the war,
or did it get there theologically before I address somebody
and their concerns about this, I want to know what's
driving it and then address it accordingly if, if I can.
(16:11):
But yeah, I think you're right about that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
And I,
I, I think it's just an opinion, but I, I
think today it's probably more due to the current situation
than it is to deep theological, um.
You know, discovery. I think, I think in past generation,
it has tended to be more theological. And I think
(16:34):
people grow up in certain, um, context theologically where it just,
it's just assumed that this is the position, that this
is the historic position, people will say.
Um, but nowadays it seems like it's, it's more connected to.
The current situation in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, I think that's probably right. I
Speaker 1 (16:55):
agree. Albert, thanks for sending in your question through the
pastor's perspective page at Kwave.com, which you can easily get
to if you're watching on Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram. You
can scan that QR code and that, that'll take you
right to the page at Kwave.com. 888-564-617.
is the number to call today. Brian Broderson and Sean
(17:15):
McDowell are in the studio till 4 o'clock, so call
in with your questions at 888-564-6173. Here's Ernest in Covina,
listening on FM 107.9 K wave. Hello, Ernest. Welcome.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Um, I hope everyone is doing well. Um,
really appreciate all the, uh, work that you guys put
(17:38):
in to, uh, answer these questions for us, and I
have a question today. I listened to Brian, uh, Broderson. Uh,
I listen to him and I, I like his answers.
Well, thank you, Ernest. I appreciate that. I, I, I
wanna direct this question to Brian, uh, but the other gentleman, Sean,
(18:01):
he can chime in too, but I wanna hear what
Brian thinks. So in the book of Daniel chapter 3,
verse 25, the Bible says he answered. Now he is Nebuchadnezzar.
It says he answered and said, low.
I see 4 men loose walking in the midst of
the fire, and they have no hurt.
(18:24):
And the form of the 4th is like the Son
of God. Take note, Son is capitalized and God is capitalized. So,
my question is, are we talking about Jesus, Yeshua here,
and if so, how did King Nebuchadnezzar even know what
Jesus would look like or his characteristics if the Messiah
(18:48):
had not even come yet?
That is a great question, Ernest, and
I hope I give you a good answer because you
know I'm, I, I don't want a lot on the line.
There's a lot going on here.
Um, OK, so I think yes, this is the Son
of God.
(19:09):
But I don't think Nebuchadnezzar knew that like we know
it because like you said, I mean, you know, the
incarnation is still hundreds of years off and, and probably
a better translation. I think most newer translations will read
a son of the gods plural. So Nebuchadnezzar at at
(19:30):
this point, um, anyway, he's not thinking so much as
a um.
Uh, a monotheist, you know, he's not thinking one true
and living God. He's still thinking multiple gods, you know,
the gods of Babylon and the gods of Egypt and,
and so on and so forth. But, but there's obviously
something about this fourth person that is extraordinary. So he
(19:54):
is attributing, you know, some sort of divinity to this person.
But he, but he actually does say, uh, son, uh,
of the gods plural. So,
Uh, but, but again, he, he is seen, I think, anyway,
I think Jesus is the one in the furnace with them.
But of course he didn't know that, um, like we
(20:16):
know it today. Sean.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, that's a great answer. I, I, I'll step back
broadly and just say you're right when you mentioned that
Jesus had not been born yet. We don't have the
incarnation described in like John chapter one.
But we do of course know that Jesus is eternally
God and was present of course at the creation moment.
(20:38):
I was just talking with my son recently about how
the Trinity was present at creation because God the Father's
creating through the Son. We learn in Colossians 1:15 and 16,
and the Holy Spirit is present.
What we see in the Old Testament are what we
call often referred to as like Theophanies or pre-incarnate appearances
(20:59):
of Christ. Now how much people at the time, like
you said, Brian, understood that this was
The second person of the Trinity, God in human flesh. Well,
of course, I don't know that we have access to
their minds, but there's other examples of this, of course,
if you go to Genesis 32, when Jacob is wrestling
(21:19):
with God, this is an instance, of course, before Daniel
would take us back, you know, hundreds of years, probably,
you know, even more than that.
And he, he describes in here, he, you know, he's
wrestled with him. He says, what is your name? Your
name will no longer be Jacob. And he describes it,
I have seen God face to face. Now, how much
(21:42):
exactly Jacob understood about the character of God who was
still revealing himself over time.
I'm not sure that we know, but I think it's
a pretty strong hint that he's actually seeing God in
human form appear, and I think that's probably what also
is going on in the story of Daniel chapter 3.
(22:04):
In some ways we only know this really looking back,
but Nebu.
Enezzar's response is right. Like, to look at this and go, Whoa,
this is clearly not a human being. Something divine is
going on. And from his worldview, it's like a Son
of God. And the rest of us watching this go, yeah,
it's not just like a Son of God. This is
actually the Son of God present with them.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
What do you think, Ernest? I appreciate those answers. So
now I'm kinda understand. So because they had no knowledge
like we have today of, you know, of, of Jesus
or Yeshua, they had no knowledge, right? So basically, they're
just seeing.
The Lord and His divine nature, and they just describing
(22:54):
it the best way that they can, not knowing that
it's actually Yeshua.
Yes, right, right, exactly, yeah.
OK, that, that, that's great. OK, well, thank you, gentlemen.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, that's great. And just keep in mind that God
is revealing Himself progressively through scripture.
So when he first shows up with Abraham, I mean
this is one of the first time God shows up
and his reasoning with Abraham, he has no other prophets,
he has no scripture, he has these pagan deities, and
then Moses, and then we have David, and then we
(23:32):
have Daniel to the New Testament. We're learning more and
more about God's character over the, you know, extended period
of the Old Testament.
Until fully revealed in the person of Jesus, and then
expressed in the scriptures, so some of these truths we
only really understand looking back in light of what God
has later revealed.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Ernest, thank you for your phone call today on Pastor's Perspective.
888-564-6173 is our number. We're gonna be here till 4
o'clock with Brian Broderson and Sean McDowell, the associate professor
of Christian Apologetics at the Talbot School of Theology at
Viola University. Sue and Beaumont, welcome to Pastor's Perspective. How
can we help you?
(24:15):
Hi, thank you. Um, I have a question. I, uh,
went on TV, the YouTube, and, um, I noticed that BB, uh,
because I can't say his name very well, Benjamin over
in Israel. Oh, I thought you meant Brian Broderson, BB.
You mean BB, Benjamin Netanyahu.
(24:35):
Yes, and I noticed that um 1000 pastors went over
there and I was kind of disturbed about that, but
I thought, well, maybe, you know, I should just check
it out more. But then today they said that they're
sending those pastors back here to get gathered 10 more,000 pastors.
(24:56):
I thought we were supposed to stand with Israel, but
are we not gonna, we don't stand with what he's doing.
And I'm just kind of um.
Confused a little bit, I would say, um, what's going
on because I don't want to go anything against what
you know, God said that we need to stand with Israel.
(25:17):
Do you see what I'm trying to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and you know, we, we were talking a little bit
about this earlier when we were answering a different question,
but it is, it's a, it's a difficult time right
now because of all the politics and things like that,
you know, so you've got the
You've got the Bible, of course, and you've got what
the Bible says about Israel, past, present and future. And
(25:38):
then you've got the, the history of the nation of
Israel from, say, you know, 1948 till today and you've
got a number of the Arab-Israeli wars as they're often
called and then of course most recently you have this
whole issue with Gaza and Hamas and and so forth.
(25:58):
And so it it is challenging, um.
I think at at this particular time to know, you know, how, how,
how do we as Christians navigate this. So, um, I'll just,
I'll just tell you this, I spent 3 hours before
I just came to the radio today. I was 3
hours with my friends who live in Jerusalem. And we
(26:21):
were catching up and we were talking about the current,
you know, environment and things like that. And they're they're
believers in Jesus, um.
One of them is Jewish.
And you know, they, they find themselves in in a
bit of a dilemma themselves because they live in the
(26:41):
midst of the Israelis and they see a lot of
things that they think are not good and not right. Um,
but they understand their kids are in the Israeli, they're
in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. And so, you know, that,
I mean, their whole life is just like
(27:04):
Uh, but, but they see that there's two sides to
the story. It's not all, you know, one sided. And
it was interesting because they, they said to me today,
they said, you know, we feel like, um, and you know, they're,
they're supportive of Israel from a biblical standpoint. They believe
that Israel has a future in God's plan.
(27:24):
Uh, but they said they do feel like among Christians today,
there is sort of a of an Israel idolatry that
sort of takes them to a place in perspective to
Israel that is it kind of goes beyond what the
scriptures would say or even what would, you know, God
would maybe, maybe want us to um think about today. So.
(27:49):
You know, I, I think a safe thing to fall
back on is, um, you know, when you go to
the New Testament, the, the apostles, Paul, let's just use
Paul because Paul, all of, all of the apostles were Jewish,
but Paul was
You know, as he says of himself, he was a
Hebrew of the Hebrews, so he kind of outdid everybody
in his Jewishness. Um, but Paul's mission wasn't to preach Israel.
(28:15):
Paul's mission was to preach Jesus and the gospel. And
I think sometimes what can happen today is I think
Christians in our, our zeal for Israel, we understand the history,
we know that they're the ancient people of God, we
know that God has a plan. You know, sometimes we
can get that sort of out in front.
And it ends up obscuring the gospel and in some
(28:37):
cases can even be a stumbling block to people coming
to hear about Jesus because maybe they come from a
perspective that, uh, you know, let's just say maybe they
come from the Arabic world or something like that, and
they've had, um, you know, personal issues with real things
(28:57):
that have happened in real life that caused them to
have a negative view.
So, you know, it, Sean, I mean, you know, you,
you know, you talk to a lot of people, you
have a YouTube channel, you know, I, I mean, it's,
I've been in ministry for, you know, 45 years, and
I don't, I can't think of another time when things
(29:19):
have been so complex. And, you know, I mean, I've
talked about Israel for decades and never
Had to go into the kinds of explanations that we
have to today. So we'll come back to the yep,
it's break time on Pastor's perspective. Still taking your calls
till 4 o'clock. 888-564-6173 is our number. We've got Pastor
(29:42):
Brian Broderson from Echoesof Mercy.com and Sean McDowell, Associate professor
of Christian apologetics at the Talbot School of Theology at
Viola University, 888-564-6173.
(30:19):
Welcome back to Pastor's Perspective. Brian Perez here. Sue and Beaumont,
are you still on the line with us?
Yes, OK, what do you think of what you've heard
so far?
Um, it's good. I just wanted to make sure that
I don't, you know.
Get off what uh the wrong path of what God
(30:41):
says in the Bible or look at what they're doing
over there. It's like a distraction, um.
And that's, uh, you know, I just have to keep
reading the word and, and reading my Bible because I
know maybe down the road they're gonna start, you know, uh,
taking out verses or substituting words in the Bible, but, um,
(31:06):
I have two Bibles and I have to do a
lot of notes, um, when I read the Bible. So
I just wanted to make sure, um, on that because
of him.
Because of him being, uh, Netanyahu.
Yes, yes, um, so that's all, you know, I just
(31:27):
kind of, it kind of caught me off guard today
when that, when that came up with the pastors, and
I'm like, yeah, well, you know, let me say this. Sean,
Sean's gonna jump in here in a second, but let
me just say to, um, you know.
Israel is obviously struggling on a lot of levels and,
you know, world opinion has become very negative, you know, um,
(31:52):
toward Jewish people, as, as all of us know. Uh, again,
I mentioned my friend, you know, they're talking today about
many of the of the young.
Um, people in, in the military, there's a lot of
the suicide rate is, is drastically increased in the IDF
over the
Uh, past couple of years, and you know, there's a
(32:13):
lot of things contributing to it, but one of them
is the, the global anti-Semitism that has resurfaced. These kids
just feel like hopeless, you know, what are they doing?
They're gonna, you know, they might die in a, in a,
in a war or even if they get out of
the war and they want to get out of the
country and go travel and they can't say they're Jewish because, uh,
(32:34):
you know, so it's, it's really a, a heavy, heavy thing.
Um, but what I was gonna say is, uh, Netanyahu,
Netanyahu has been around many, many Christians over his long,
you know, terms as the prime minister. And so, and
of course, he looks at the evangelical world and sees
like there's generally been support from the evangelical world. So he's,
(32:56):
he's trying to rally that.
And, um, you know, he knows Christians have been friends
of Israel. So I think he's, you know, he's wanting
more people to be friendly to Israel at this time.
And you, you know, so you can understand that. And then,
of course, Netanyahu is his own person and there's all
kinds of different opinions about him, you know, some people
just absolutely hate him. I think he's the worst thing
(33:17):
that ever happened and some people think he's the greatest hero. Um,
I think these are the things that we sort of
have to guard against getting sucked up into.
And just recognize that um you know, in the end
Jesus is gonna save Israel, not America, not President Trump,
not the evangelical Christians of America, and you know that
that's what we have to keep reminding people of Sean,
Speaker 2 (33:41):
what you said a minute ago is exactly right going
back to our Bible as the source, we just pulled
up an article really quick.
At the break about this trip because this is the
first that I had heard about 1000 pastors going over
and the bottom of the top of the article says
the goal of having a large group of American evangelical
pastors tour Israel lies in being reminded of its scriptural
(34:04):
roots and the importance of pushing back against a worldwide
rise in anti-Semitism. Now if there's any concern.
That Netanyahu is gonna change the scriptures or the theology
the pastor's going over. I'm not worried about that. You
got the Chancellor of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. There's a
couple of names of people that went here that I know,
(34:26):
and they're committed to scripture, and they're not going to
change it because of some leader who's in Israel, whoever
that might be.
Of course we made a case earlier, Brian and I
talked about how we do believe biblically there is a
future role for Israel, but what's interesting is the top
of the article also says concern about the rise in anti-Semitism,
(34:49):
and can I tell you, probably, I don't know, 6
weeks ago I had a.
In depth friendly debate you might say threw it up
on my YouTube channel with an Orthodox Jew who works
with Prager You by the name of Shabbas Kestenbaum, and
he went to Harvard Divinity School, really sharp, brilliant, and
(35:10):
one of the things he said to me really stuck
with me.
He said, Shawn, for the first time in history of America,
Jews in America are now wondering not when but if
America will be a safe place for Jews in the future.
He said every Jew is thinking that, and it started
(35:32):
October 7th, 2023, not October 8th, not October 9th. On
October 7th, he experienced a rising level of anti-Semitism.
And I am seeing this from the woke right you're
seeing it from the left on my radar talking with
young people. Christianity Today just had a recent article about this,
(35:54):
and I had a chance to put a quote in there.
Anti-Semitism is rising and real in a way I haven't seen.
And so I'm thankful that these pastors are going over
there being aware of that and addressing it because we're
seeing a wave of anti-Semitism worldwide and in the states
that we haven't seen at least in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Correct. OK. OK.
All right, uh.
My brain's gonna have to absorb all this.
But thank you so much and you guys have a
great day. You're welcome. Thanks Sue.
Yes, thank you for calling.
(36:37):
It looks like you want to say something. Well, I,
I do, but I can't remember what it was. I've
tried to, I've tried to get back to, um, well,
let me say this. OK, go ahead. anti-Semitism thing. I mean,
I think, you know, and they're, I mean, the troubling
thing to me is, is to see some, you know,
evangelical Christians who are developing a real antagonism, you know,
(37:00):
toward Israel and toward Jewish people. And I think, you know.
This is so antithetical to Jesus said love your neighbor.
Jesus said love your brother. Jesus said love your enemy.
So there's no place in the Christian community or in
a Christian's heart for animosity toward any people group really,
(37:23):
but and the Jews are included in that.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
So, you know,
Speaker 2 (37:28):
amen. I agree. Jesus was Jewish. The disciples were Jewish.
John the Baptist, his forerunner was Jewish. He went to
the nation of Israel. I mean, the Gospel of Matthew
has Jewish roots. I mean, my goodness,
Speaker 1 (37:42):
it's.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Everywhere and that doesn't mean the way you phrase it
is important at the expense or value of other people.
The whole purpose going back to Genesis 12 is they'd
be a blessing to all the nations. That's a point
from the beginning is God would uniquely speak through them.
So to see anti-Semitism arising as we should hatred for
(38:05):
any group should concern Christians, but I think I just
have to pause and say it's not just any group,
it's a group that has been hated on and attacked
in so many ways historically speaking that raises concern, the
increase there today.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
A few years ago, right around 9/11, everybody was, you know,
anti-Palestinian and anti, you know, Arab, everything that Islam, that's
the word I'm looking for. Thank you. And, uh, so
now it's, yeah, now it's anti-Semitism and not, not everybody,
of course, but yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it, it, you know, it truly is a, a,
(38:44):
a really crazy time. And like you said, Sean, you know,
October 7th, 2023, um, and you know, I mean, I,
I don't think before that.
Any Jewish person ever even imagined.
It would have even been remotely possible in their minds
that somehow America would become an, an unsafe place for
(39:08):
these people. And yet now, like you said,
Speaker 2 (39:11):
it's at least in the back of their minds. Will
this happen? That's a radical shift.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
And, and I know Israelis who are telling me like they.
Uh, when they're traveling, they don't let people know that
they're Israelis. So I mean, if they can help it,
you know, obviously if they go through immigration or something,
they have to with their passports, but they're not just
out in the open like, oh, I came from Israel,
you know, they're kind of keeping that quiet.
If you wanna watch that interview that Sean did with
(39:37):
Shabos Kestenbaum, it's on Sean's YouTube channel. It was released
November 25th, so you can go there and, uh, check
it out. It's about an hour and 20 minutes long.
888-564-6173 is the number to call us today here on
Pastor's Perspective. And now here's Lydia in La Habra. Welcome
to the program, Lydia.
Thank you for taking my call. As I stated, you know,
(40:00):
regard Romans chapter 13, that our leaders are supposed to
be examples of righteousness. They're supposed to be going after
the criminals.
But we have an indicted criminal in the White House
and he's gonna go after the criminals. And uh we
have seen, I have experienced bigotry and hate.
(40:24):
And you know, my focus is on my Lord, my
God and my Savior, because when it's all said and done,
he will have the final say and he will have
the final word. I even had bigotry at some churches
that I even that crying and had to shake the
dust off my feet. I know the holy word of God.
(40:45):
I remember when I gave my life to Jesus. I
love him and I can't wait to see him.
And I know, you know, what's this thing with America?
America is a continent. We're supposed to be the United
States of America. Do you have a question for us, Lydia?
Yes, what is going on? We talk about Israel. What
(41:06):
is going on here in this nation?
In regards to
Uh, people supporting and talking about Trump like he's this wonderful,
he's an indicted criminal.
OK.
Well, Lydia, honestly, I mean, these are the kinds of
discussions we don't really engage in um on the program here.
(41:29):
We're not a political program in any way. I mean,
you know, sometimes there are issues that
Maybe are sort of considered to be political, but they're
they actually are more rooted in scripture. But when it
comes to your opinion about the president, that's kind of
just more your opinion. And so that's the that's the
(41:52):
type of conversation we we don't engage in. So, um,
I think, you know, you you know Jesus, you love
the Lord, you know your Bible, like you said, um,
keep your focus there.
Um, you know, there have been lots of rulers all
throughout the history of the world that have been less
than ideal, and Christians have navigated that for centuries. I mean, the,
(42:16):
the New Testament was written under the, the reign of
the Roman emperors and um Nero, who was a very
corrupt emperor was in power when Paul was writing his letters.
And it's interesting that Paul never really mentions Nero. Uh, if,
you know, if you want to talk about corrupt.
People in history, he was very corrupt. But Paul doesn't
(42:39):
say he, all he says is pray for him, you know,
pray for, pray for these authorities, pray for these people
in power. So that's the position that we pretty much
take here. So, um, pray for him. Pray for Trump.
You know, I heard recently, you know, he's, you know,
he's figured out he's not going to heaven, but he's
thinking he wants to get there. So he's hoping that he,
(43:02):
You know, he's hoping to get in and so, uh,
you know, pray that God will save him. I mean, that's,
that's what he needs ultimately. He needs to be saved, right,
like everybody does, Sean.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I, I think that's a great perspective to pray for
our leaders and, you know, given the perspective that you have, Lydia,
about President Trump, you know, if you go back to
the first century when you said Nero was leader, it's,
you still pray for your leaders. It's amazing to think
that Romans 13 was written.
(43:34):
While Nero was reigning, and we're still called to submit
to governing authorities. Now that doesn't give a pass to
governing authorities. That is not my point. We are called
and we have precedent in the Bible to disobey when
what our leaders ask us to do violates God's higher laws.
(43:56):
That's for sure. We see that in Exodus 3 with
the midwives, we see that with Rahab.
But there's still something where we are called to pray
for and submit ourselves to our authorities even though they
aren't close to being the beacon of lights that we
would want them to be morally speaking, you know, we
don't have to go there. I, I don't think in
(44:17):
this program we could, but we would, but you described
earlier where you really felt like you've been mistreated and
I don't know the details of that, but.
You know, sometimes we have not navigated in the church
political differences well, we have strong opinions, we divide over
those and politics matters, you know, there is a way
to think biblically about politics, but if you've had somebody
(44:39):
of a different political persuasion mistreat you and at least
not minimally hear you out and try to understand where
you're coming from.
I'm sorry somebody has has treated you that way.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Now, Pastor Brian and maybe you too, Sean, uh, you've
studied history. Can you give us a comparison? I'm, I'm
not asking you to compare Trump and Nero.
But for people who don't know how bad of a
guy Nero was, can you, uh, give us some of
his highlights or lowlights perhaps I should say.
Well, I mean, you know, Nero is, you know, there's a,
(45:14):
there's a lot of things you could say about Nero.
Um but one of the things was he led a
major persecution against Christians in the 60s of, you know,
the first century. And before that, there had not been
a um so much a, not that this was necessarily
(45:34):
a government sponsored persecution because it didn't go much beyond Rome.
But, but he brutally persecuted Christians in Rome and, um,
you know, lit them on fire in his dipped them
in pitch and lit them on fire in his garden and,
you know, he did, he did horrible things, um, on
(45:55):
all kinds of levels, but persecution was, was a big one.
But
Speaker 2 (45:59):
yeah, we're talking about murdering family members, just gross levels
of sexual immorality.
And Tacitus, a Roman historian in the early 2nd century,
reports that there was a fire in Rome, and what
Nero did was use the Christians as a scapegoat to
(46:20):
blame them for the fire, and multitudes were just brutally
killed and tortured in ways that we don't even need
to go into on the air. And yet we have
Romans 13.
Written by Paul, likely during his reign or right around
that time, so that's something worth really wrestling with, you know,
(46:42):
one thing I was reading this morning, you're in Isaiah, Brian, I'm,
I've been reading Deuteronomy and this morning I read Deuteronomy
chapter 32.
And verse, you know, 35 stood out to me. It
says vengeance belongs to me.
I will repay. Well, Nero died about a couple 1000
years ago, and you know what, Trump, like the rest
(47:04):
of us, he's gonna die someday too, and he's gonna
stand before.
Uh, his Maker, and the last thing we heard politics
aside from Trump at the Charlie Kirk memorial was he's like,
I hate my enemies and clearly seemed to reject the gospel.
So absolutely we should pray for Trump that he would
(47:26):
rule justly and also more than anything that he would
repent of his sins and that when he does meet
his Maker, he can actually experience the mercy that God
offers to him.
That's what we should pray for Trump as we should
all of our leaders across the political aisle.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yes, indeed. You know, this, this passage in Titus spoke
to me a, a long, long time ago. Um, when I,
when I was a young pastor and, you know, ignorant
of a lot of things back in those days, whenever,
you know, election cycles and things would come around, you know,
I'd always jump on the bandwagon of, you know, and I,
(48:07):
and I remember, you know, I preaching against this guy,
that guy, you know, all of this stuff and.
And, and one day the Lord just really convicted me
with this passage, and this is it. It's in Titus
chapter 3, and it says, um, it's, it's the first, uh,
verses here, it says, um, remind them to be subject
to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for
(48:28):
every good work. Here it is to speak evil of
no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to
all people.
For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving
various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and the hateful
and hating one another, and man, you know, God just
(48:52):
convicted me, you know, speak evil of no one because you,
we were all, you, you were that person as well,
and it really honestly, it just, OK.
The pulpit is not a place to do that, and
I've kind of made that a practice since then. But
you know, we're slandering no one, avoiding fighting, being kind,
(49:16):
always showing gentleness to all people that doesn't get likes
on social media.
So I know nobody likes my my post. I don't
know what it is. I'm just, I guess I'm just
too nice. I'm just saying everything is so inflamed nowadays
that you've gotta.
Go to the extreme and yeah, it seems like it, yeah.
So sad. Lydia, thanks for your phone call. Let's uh
talk to Daniel in Los Angeles. Welcome to the program, Daniel.
(49:42):
Hello. Hi, what's your question?
Yeah, so, um, I was wondering how would we go
about talking to our Jewish friends about Christianity and maybe
planting that seed.
That Jesus is the way that you can.
(50:02):
OK, you got some methods, Sean McDowell?
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Uh, first off, I love that you want to talk
to anyone about Jesus and speak to your Jewish friends.
Good for you. Uh, in some ways, you know, is
this an Orthodox Jew? Is this reformed Jew? Is this
conservative Jew?
Uh, I actually am working on a book with a
friend of mine who's a secular Jew, who's a complete
(50:27):
materialist and atheist, but practices a lot of the Jewish
kind of traditions and rituals because it's a part of
his culture, and they have meaning for him. So how
are you're going to talk to
There's no formula for talking to everybody who's Jewish the
same way. What I'm gonna do is I want to
find out that person's story. What does it mean that
(50:48):
you're Jewish? When did you become Jewish? Why are you
Jewish now? How do you practice your faith? Who do
you think Jesus is? I mean, have a conversation with
this person.
Now if I was to draw some generalizations, in my experience, I,
I found that a lot of objections, there's two that
seem to consistently bubble to the top in my experience.
(51:10):
One of them is that many Jewish people feel like
if they become a Christian, they're going to lose and
have to abandon their Jewishness.
So talking about how you can be a believer in
Jesus and maintain your Jewishness uh is important for many people.
I think that's key and the other one is I just,
(51:31):
you know, I mentioned this a few minutes ago is
I had a friendly debate with an Orthodox Jew recently.
And I asked him, I said, why aren't more Christians
and Jews having this conversation? He said, I can't speak
for Christians, but for many Jews there's a certain fear
because of over history how Jews have fared not so
well under Christian rulers and there's.
(51:55):
A fear about that that prolongs it throughout history, Christians
have not always treated Jewish people well, so that can
be a figure a piece as well. When it's all
said and done, how do we want to talk to
our Jewish believers? We want to convince them that Jesus
really is the Messiah. So can we point towards certain
Old Testament prophecies, show how they're fulfilled in Jesus, and
(52:18):
ultimately how Jesus walked on water, raised the dead.
Raised on the 3rd day and had the authority to
speak about the Jewish scriptures, that's where I would want
to go. But by the way, there's a wonderful ministry
called Chosen People Ministries.
We partner with at Talbot School of Theology, uh, they
(52:38):
have wonderful resources that I would check with them as
well because this is what they do full time.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
What do you think, uh, Daniel?
Oh, that was uh very insightful.
Thank you so much. Um, yeah, I will check out
that ministry for sure.
Chosenpeople.com. That's the one, right? Yes, yep, chosen.
Perfect, thank you. Yeah, um, and just anything I could
(53:08):
add to my arts you know, you know, the knowledge
has helped so much, so thank you.
Brian, any thoughts from you?
Well, I do, I do think that we're, you know,
we're in a, uh, as we've talked about on the
program today, we're, we're in an interesting time. I do
think that
There's probably more opportunities to speak to Jewish people today
(53:32):
than there has been for a long time because they're,
you know, they're, they're feeling.
Isolated and, you know, the hostility that they're sensing and stuff. So, yeah,
I think it's just a good, like Sean said, I mean,
the first thing is you just, you know, get to
know somebody, just find out a little bit about them. And, and,
you know, like you said, Sean, you know, some people
are Jewish, and that just simply means they're not a non-Jew.
(53:55):
It doesn't mean anything else, you know. I mean, I've
met so many Jewish people that have never read the Bible.
They'd never even had a bar mitzvah, you know, they're just, yeah,
I'm Jewish, whatever.
Uh, and then you have varying degrees of Jewish people
and some are extremely religious, but, um, but I also
think like this is a great time to just encourage
(54:15):
them to read even just their Bible. Maybe recommend a
few portions of scripture like, hey, you know, check this
out because like, you know, Sean, most Jewish people have
never read the Bible. So they don't even, I mean,
they have ideas about Moses and stuff, but they don't
know the actual story.
So just get him to read a portion of scripture
(54:37):
and then maybe you could um follow up with a
conversation about it, you know.
Nice. Daniel, thanks for your phone call today on Pastor's Perspective,
and that's all the time we have on today's episode.
We'll be back tomorrow. Special thanks to Sean McDowell for
showing up again, showing up in more ways than one.
good to have you here, sir. Thanks. Good to be here. Yeah,
follow him on YouTube, including that video that we were
(54:58):
talking about earlier, his, uh, interview with Shabos Kestenbaum from, uh,
Prager University. He's a
Political commentator at Prager U and uh you can find
that on Sean's YouTube channel. Alright, today's episode will be
archived on Facebook, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, so check
it out later. And if you've got a question for
(55:19):
the pastors, call in tomorrow. They will be here between
3 and 4 in the afternoon. We'd love to hear
from you then. For Brian Broderson and Sean McDowell, I'm
Brian Perez. Thanks for watching and listening to Pastor's Perspective.
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