Focal Point

Dave Drewby: When two godly men study the same page of scripture and land in different places, does that mean one of them got it wrong? Or does it mean something else entirely? Well, today Pastor Mike helps a listener work through that tension, weighs in on a politically charged news story with a caller who's sworn off the media altogether, and gives a sobering explanation of Hell that touches on relevant topics like annihilationism and eternal suffering. I'm Dave Drewby, and let's get into it on this edition of Ask Pastor Mike Live.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: David, yes. Give me your question today.

David: My question has to do with intellectual anxiety. I understand the idea of biblical triage, like second grade and third grade issues. But as a layman, if I'm listening to two Christian men who, for example, you and someone like William Lane Craig, two very highly educated men who love God's word and have studied it and learned about it to a capacity that almost certainly I never will, and who also have the Holy Spirit leading them into all truth, it can be difficult sometimes. You'll have two men like that and they'll disagree on an issue.

Even though it's maybe not an essential issue, it is frustrating because it feels like there is an answer. There is a right answer, even though maybe we don't know it on this side of heaven. It can be tricky wrestling with how to sort through that and manage that. I think particularly the frustration can come when there's this idea we're supposed to have the Holy Spirit leading us into all truth. How do I discern and how do I ever trust my own discernment? Ultimately, I'm arriving at a decision that might disagree with someone who, as far as I know, is a man who loves Christ and who is extremely educated. So there's this sense of unease that I've arrived at this answer, it seems to make sense to me, but also I could be totally wrong.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Totally. I get your question 100%. The first thing I would say, and I don't want to shoot down the premise, but I'm going to shoot down the premise. The premise is you're quoting John 16:13, which is a promise to the apostles in the upper room. I think that had very much to do with what God had in mind because we couldn't even be reading the text of John 16 were it not for the fact that He is granting the apostles an apostolic authority that came as the Spirit was going to endow them with the ability to do what they did. That is recall what He had said and giving them authority to be able to speak on behalf of what the Spirit was going to lead them to write.

Just as Peter put it, the Spirit was going to carry them along so that they would write down, just like the prophets of the Old Testament, they would speak it and they would write it, what it was that the Spirit wanted to say. In that sense, they would be guided into all truth. Now, not every promise in the book is ours, and certainly that particular promise had a particular meaning at the end of Christ's three-and-a-half-year ministry to have these apostles go out and write the New Testament.

Everything about the New Testament is harmonious. Everything that is written in the 27 books of the New Testament canon does comport. So all the New Testament scholars looking at the writing of the apostolic canon are going to go, "Yep, there's one ultimate author and that's the Spirit of truth." He guided these authors into all the truth. I would say even those who didn't write, as they taught in their apostolic office, they were teaching absolutely harmonious truth. It all comported with each other and there were no contradictions in the truth they taught about heaven, about God, and about all the oracles that were coming to the New Testament audience there in that first century as they spoke as apostolic, capital A, "I'm speaking as a representative of Christ." Christ didn't write it all down. Christ did not preserve it in the written canon.

Now, we as people who are listening to it all or, in our case, reading it all, we don't have that promise. We have the ability in the doctrine of what we call illumination to be able to understand what needs to be understood to have eternal life. That's great if we are Christians and we trust that God has made us alive in Christ because the Spirit of God has convicted us of sin, righteousness, and judgment. That's where the Bible's clear the Spirit has gone into the world to do that. I'm a part of the world that has now been converted because the Spirit did his job in me to convict me of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

There's a lot of things that the Spirit has done to give me illumination to understand what has been written by the apostles and prophets. The church has been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So that's good, but I'm going to disagree with some people and their conclusions, and you're going to disagree with other people as well, and we're all going to have limited understanding even with the Spirit giving us insight. We don't have the promise of John 16:13. I think that's a hermeneutical conclusion that I think we have to reach given the audience.

We come to that conclusion that leaves us saying what I've sat down at dinner with some of the smartest men I think in our generation who we don't say it on the radio necessarily because we have some good things to say and we would only say the things that we are confessionally convicted to say with affirmation. But at the end of the day, we can sit around and say, "I'm sure there are many things that we believe in our hearts that will be corrected the moment we see Christ because we don't have all knowledge. We don't have all truth."

We have to be okay with that living this side of our glorification and we don't know. We don't know everything. It's like Deuteronomy 29:29. The things that have been that are secret belong to God and the things He revealed belong to us and our children forever. Now, if you're Moses, you know a lot more than the people that learn from Moses. So if you're an apostle, you know a whole lot more and you're speaking things that comport with all the other apostles. But those who listen to the apostles, like us, and we're learning from what the apostles wrote, well, we're not on that same par.

It's a lot like what you find in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. A lot of people like to read all of that and say, "Well, that's me, that's me, that's me." Well, that's speaking about the work of the apostolic work of taking, and I think Paul was a part of that clearly, the spiritual things that come from God that are spiritually given to them to bring us the truth of God's word. So I don't want to over-apply truths about having some promise from God that I'm going to be able to understand everything. I'm not, and my interpretation's not infallible, and I don't know all truth and I can't possibly interpret everything correctly.

I'm doing my best to study to show myself approved unto God, a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, but that is not perfection and it's not going to be perfect. That's why great men I think who study their whole lives can sit around, a lot of them I know play golf together, and they have completely different eschatologies. They believe differently about some of the ordinances and that's okay. At the end of the day, we go, "Yep, we've got to be convicted about where we stand." As leaders in churches, if we're pastors or leaders of seminaries or whatever, we've got to have a conviction and we've got to teach a position because that's our job. You've got to put your marbles in a particular place and say, "Here is what I believe and here's what I'm convinced of and I'm going to teach this."

Now, am I right? I think I am. Now, the essentials, we're all going to die on a stake and we're going to die on that hill. But the other things, yep, we're going to teach them and we're relatively sure of them, I mean, beyond at least the preponderance of evidence, we can say, "Yes, I think this is true," but we're not going to. I'm not going to be emphatic and I'm sure a lot of these other guys that you hear on the radio or you quote or you read, I think they would say the same thing. I know many of them have said it to my face and I think there's great humility among most of the scholars that you probably listen to.

David: Okay. Yeah, that is extremely helpful. I didn't really think about that being just applied to the apostolic authority. So definitely over-applying that verse in my life.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Yeah, and it's quoted often in that regard. I would also go, as I quoted, 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Just start reading in verse 6 to the end of the chapter and notice how often that text is, "We have the mind of Christ," all of that. Just read it once as most people read it and then read it again as Paul is trying to talk about his role and the apostolic band teaching what they teach and how the recipients in Corinth are supposed to understand the role of how the apostles stand in for Christ and His authority. I think it clears up a lot of things. All right. Hope that helps. Thanks for the call.

Dave Drewby: That's Pastor Mike Fabarez and you're listening to Focal Point. What you're hearing today are actual calls from Ask Pastor Mike Live, Pastor Mike's weekly call-in broadcast where listeners bring their real-life questions straight to him. And here's the thing, you can be part of it. Ask Pastor Mike Live airs every Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central and the phone lines are open. To get the call-in number and everything else you need, head on over to askpastormike.live. More questions and more of Pastor Mike's answers coming up right now.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Monty, you're on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help?

Monty: Hi, Mike. I don't know if I should ask you this question. It's more of a political question. I don't watch the news anymore so I haven't kept up with anything but I did hear a lot about this ICE agent who defended himself in Minnesota. I couldn't help because it really bothered me at the time. If you remember that protest that took place when Biden was elected, or supposedly elected, and this lady called, was it Angela Babbitt? I know her last name was Babbitt. She got shot just for trying to enter the House and I remember that guy was classified as a hero. I was just wondering if anybody's ever heard anything as to what happened to that guy that shot her or if he's still classified as a hero.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Yeah, I don't know what happened to that Capitol police officer that shot her, but yes, you're always going to hear the spin on whatever the situation is based on the position politically of the person talking about it. There's no doubt that there is a lot of distinction in how these things are spoken of. I mean, think about, if you don't watch the news, there was another protester carrying a gun to this protest against the ICE agents that was shot and killed and having a he had a couple clips and a gun.

Of course, anybody who had a gun in their car at the Capitol, they were saying they need to go to prison and that's none of the discussion, at least in the liberal media today. The rules are not consistent. That's the problem when you have to consider the source of who's talking about whatever the news events are. So yeah, that's absolutely true and that's just the way it's going to be and you have to consider the presuppositional positions of the people that are reporting the news.

That's why I think today, at least in our information age, it is helpful if you are going to listen to the news to try and look at the wide spectrum of the reporting. If you do that, you can see one event reported in a variety of different ways and in doing that, you can sometimes come to an understanding of what actually happened because they all can't be true. You have to be consistent from one situation to the next. Few things are black and white. Most things are nuanced, although some things are clearly right and wrong and we just need to be a little bit more discriminating about the kinds of news that we're ingesting. In your case, you've decided you're done with it all and I think most of us can't afford to do that depending on what we do for a living, but I can understand your frustration with it all.

Monty: Oh, thank you very much for answering that.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Yeah. Well, I wish I had more information on that. I'm sure a lot of people are talking to their radios right now because I'm sure a lot of people do know what happened to the guy who shot Babbitt and I forget her first name as well. All right. Thanks for the call, Monty. I'm sure other people know all the details of that. Let's talk to Deb. Deb, you're on the air with Pastor Mike Fabarez. How can I help?

Deb: Hi, Pastor Mike. I would like your opinion on Hell, just there you go.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Okay. I don't want anybody going there, but Jesus was very clear, only a few are going to be saved, so a lot of people will end up there. I do know that every cult group out there, almost all of them from Mormons, Christian Science, Scientology, JWs, Hindus, Buddhists, they all will run from it. Seventh-day Adventists, they will just they don't want anything to do with it and they will write it out of their doctrine. So it's one of the first things to go when people try to monkey with the doctrinal positions of the Bible because it's distasteful.

Of course, all of us as human beings are sinful according to Romans chapter 3 and sinners don't like judgment for their sin and so if we're going to change something about the Bible, let's change that. That is something that is often jettisoned and thrown out very early on if we're going to start tweaking with the truth of the Bible. But the Bible's very clear and there's two parts to this Hell thing. One is passive retribution and one is active. Passive is that you get shut out of all the good that God would like to give His creatures. He'd love to give His creatures good. That was the intention from the beginning. But because of rebellion, the good is going to be withheld.

That's where it says in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 8 and 9 that at the end, those who don't obey the gospel, they don't respond rightly to it, they're going to be punished by being shut out of the presence of the Lord and the way it's put here is the majesty of His power. Now, the majesty of His power, Jesus talked about that in the Sermon on the Mount. It's the rain on the field, it's the sun on your face, it's all the good things that God gives to His creatures, all the grace we call common grace. It's all going to be withheld. Jesus talked about being cast into outer darkness. In other words, you're away from all the blessings that God gives.

That's why all these people that say, "Well, I don't want to be with those Christians anyway and I'll party with my friends in Hell." Well, there's no party, there's no music, there's no light, there's none of that because you don't get any of the blessings that you enjoyed and things you perverted here on earth because you rejected the God that you didn't like, you didn't like His rules. Like it says in Psalm 2, you saw them as chains and strictures and handcuffs so you got rid of the God who gave you everything that is good. Every good gift comes from God and now you don't get any of those gifts. So that's the passive part of it.

The active part of it is all based on what you knew and what you did. All the things you did that you shouldn't have done, God is going to respond to actively. That's why the Bible's very clear about your judgment based according to your deeds. A lot of it is based on how much you knew when you got involved in those deeds. Since the Bible is super clear that there's going to be both body and soul placed in Hell, as Acts 24 says, there's a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. There's going to be a physical reality to it.

That's going to be something that everyone should be able to understand being physically embodied now. We know what it is to have the flu and to suffer and not feel good now physically. The extent of that physical suffering is going to be based on not only the withdrawal of a lot of the good gifts that God gives, but there's going to be now some kind of infliction of something unpleasant based on what we knew and what we did. You're not going to be unconscious like a lot of the religions teach. You're not going to go into some state of whatever suspension. You're going to be conscious. That's why Jesus told a story about it in Luke 16. You're going to know where you're at, you're going to know what you're doing. I don't think you're going to shake your fist at God because you're going to have a perception of justice and your eyes are going to be clearly opened and you're going to say, "Yep, I'm where I belong." It's going to be something you know you're right where you ought to be. Not that you're going to feel good about it, but you're going to know that you're not getting ripped off because you're where you ought to be. So that's, in a nutshell, the reality of what God has said in His word.

Deb: It is eternal though. It goes on and on.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Absolutely. It's a permanent reality. As He said in His parable, there is a chasm fixed and no one can cross it. You can't go from here to there and you can't cross from there to here. It's the way it is.

Deb: And you don't burn up. You don't burn up, you're not annihilated, none of that stuff that has been going around the internet.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: No, absolutely not. As Jesus was clear in saying, the righteous go into eternal life and the lost go into eternal punishment. If you're going to pair those up in one verse, you can't say eternal punishment and eternal life and one is, well, you burn up and you cease to exist and the other one, well, you live on forever and ever. That's why even in the end of the Bible when it talks about the reality of it going on and on, it uses phrases like "day and night forever and ever." So yeah, there's no getting around the consistency that the Bible uses in this going on perpetually. That's the reality of it.

I'm just looking now at Revelation chapter 20. It's the same place. In Revelation chapter 19, the beast and the false prophet are put into the place called the lake of fire. They're both put there. And then in Revelation 20, when we talk about the end of this time when the great white throne is all discussed, they're still there and it says they will continue to be there. This is where the rest of the lost go. They will be there and they'll be tormented day and night forever and ever. You couldn't be more clear about what we're talking about. We know what it is to have the passing of time, we know it is day and night, and it says forever and ever.

So you're going to have to do a lot of fancy footwork to try to talk about annihilationism. Watch the people that try to do that. They always go back to the Old Testament and they look at early texts of Scripture. A lot of it they put in verses that are in the mouth of people like Job. This is one of the earliest books, by the way, at least one of the earliest stories that's probably put in the patriarchal period. So this is before we had a lot of the revelation even of the prophets of the middle monarchy or the exilic period.

By the time we got Daniel writing in Daniel 12, we know something of the afterlife that's much clearer. This is called progressive revelation. But when Job is sitting there in misery talking about death, he's talking about finality of it. He's talking about the end of life and how can the grave can anyone praise you from the grave? He's just talking like a lot of the laments even we see in some of the early psalms. They're just lamenting, but they're not teaching doctrine the way that the prophets were.

As the prophets went on teaching in the Bible in declarative statements, what we call didactic teachings of the Bible, they're revealing what God is trying to teach us about the realities of what we couldn't know unless God revealed it, not just people just spouting off about their pain. So we can't take words from Job as he's sitting there scraping pus off his boils and say, "Oh right there, look what Job said. Once you die, you're dead and no one's thinking anything." Okay, that's what he said, I get that.

But Judas said a lot of things too and there's a lot going on in the book of Judges that happened, but I'm not going to say that's doctrine. This is history. This is what people said. It's an accurate depiction of things that happened and things that people said, but it's not the doctrine that's clearly taught in Scripture. By the time we get to the New Testament, crystal clear. So you want to build a doctrine that is absolutely tight, we better be in the New Testament talking about the latest revelation we have in the first century as God progressed all the way through the 66 books of the Bible to teach us what we should know about the afterlife. So yes, it's there.

Dave Drewby: You're listening to Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez and what you just heard came from Ask Pastor Mike Live, the weekly broadcast where Pastor Mike takes real questions from real listeners three times a week. Got something you'd like Pastor Mike to tackle? Ask Pastor Mike Live is on the air Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central and the phone lines are open. Everything you need to join in can be found online at askpastormike.live.

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After a conversation like today's, that kind of steady clarity is worth having on your shelf. Ask for Sinners in the Hands of a Good God when you give to Focal Point. Call 888-320-5885 or give online at focalpointradio.org. Or send your gift by mail to Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. Let me ask, are you new to Focal Point? If so, we'd love to welcome you by sending you a free copy of Pastor Mike's latest booklet titled Storing Up Treasures. Just reach out for the first time at focalpointradio.org. I'm Dave Drewby, we'll catch you next time for more from Pastor Mike Fabarez right here on Focal Point.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.