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Well this is one of those evenings that is to be a surprise to me. I am not yet sure what I will say since I don't know what the questions are. And I know that we could have you turn in questions in advance and then it becomes a sorting issue and all of that and we may never get to the questions that are really on your mind. And so it's just better to maybe have a little bit of a conversation. This is about as informal a time as we can get. We want you to feel like you can ask what's on your heart. Try to be to the point so we can cover as many questions as possible in the next say 50 minutes or so. And hopefully we'll be able to say things that are helpful to all of us as we look together to the things of the Lord and to the Word of God.
Father, I want to ask You as we begin this tonight to just give us direction and guidance that we might say those things that will bring honor to You and be helpful to all of us. We thank You that Your Word is the truth and it speaks to every issue of life. Every matter that is of urgency and importance to us is covered in Your precious truth. Help us to understand and to apply the truth that we hear tonight. We commit it to You in Christ's name. Amen.
Now before you ask any questions, I'm going to pose a question and answer it myself because I assume it's going to be asked. Everybody keeps asking me about the DaVinci Code and so I thought rather than wade through a lot of questions to get to the issue, we will jump right into it. I have been asked a number of times what is my perspective on the DaVinci Code.
First of all, let me say I haven't read the book and don't intend to and I haven't seen the movie and don't intend to either. So my understanding of the DaVinci Code is by reading rather extensively all that has been said about it, both positive and negative and neutral to understand what is contained in this story. It is, of course, fictional, as we know, but it mixes in some ancient lies, some old deceptions, some old Satanic counterfeits so as to have the illusion of being religious and even being spiritual and perhaps even giving the right spin on Jesus and the Bible.
It is really no different than any other deception, it's just another way to deceive people. To call it fiction but to mingle it with revisionist history and satanic lies about Jesus and the Bible and the gospel just makes the mish-mash all the more deceptive. And this is the right generation, this is the right time in history to offer people a mixture of history and fantasy...a mixture of truth and lie. It's the perfect time to do that because we live in a post-modern world in which people have come to the conviction that everybody has his own truth anyway and what your truth is somebody else's truth might not be, and since religion as now an inner experience that each individual has, you can have your own experience with your own Jesus in your own way in your own religion and this is the perfect scenario for this kind of thing.
But just to give you the brief summary of what this particular assortment of deceptions that has converged in this DaVinci Code book and movie is all about, the bottom line is that the basic story is that Christianity is a fraud. Christianity as we know it today, biblical Christianity or even historic Christianity, whether you're talking about Protestant biblical Christianity or Roman Catholic Christianity is a fraud...the whole thing is a fraud. Jesus was a man, nothing more than a man and I will just hurry to say that all occult material, all Gnostic material, second and third century and right on to today, all liberal approaches, all false approaches to the gospel and the Bible always assault the nature of Christ. That's the cardinal and foundational reality of Christianity is that Jesus is the one true and eternal God incarnate in human flesh. So Jesus is a man, Jesus founds an occult religion that worships the sacred feminine. It's all about goddess worship which is the perversion and the twisting that goes all the way back to the Tower of Babel and mystery Babylon religions, the religions that found their way into Egypt and Persia and the Roman world and the Greek world, the worship of the sacred feminine.
And so the story line is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and Jesus intended to pass the religious leadership on to His wife, Mary Magdalene, after His death and then to their seed, a baby that she was supposedly carrying at the cross, already pregnant and that child later born was named Sarah, but the male apostles wouldn't let this happen so they commandeered the church. Mary had to flee. She went to Gaul and there she gave birth to this child, or took the child that had already been born, I'm not sure which, and she comes to Gaul and out of this child come a line of Merovingian kings who have a dynasty for a period of time, around the fifth or sixth century. And all of these people who bore the blood of Jesus are the holy grails of history that people have been searching for which, of course, is a bogus idea to begin with. By 325 the men now have commandeered the church, a great strong male leader arises named Constantine. In 325 he invents the deity of Christ, he creates the Bible. He creates the Bible out of selecting only the four gospels and ignores all the rest of the gospels. He accepts the bad ones and lets the good ones go. He creates not only the Bible, but he invents sexual morality to suppress the true religion which offers sexual freedom, even androgyny. You would usually find sex in some perverted way at the core of all false religion.
The true religion, however, the true religion, the worship of the sacred feminine goes underground. It's hidden in secret codes and places. It shows up among some of the elite, like DaVinci who paints it into his paintings in very obscure and secretive ways, and so forth. Finally it's unearthed in this novel approach by Dan Brown. The reason people buy the book is it's very well written, I guess, and very interesting to read. But its bottom line is an attack on Christianity and an elevation of the feminist goddess worship that was characteristic of ancient cultures and particularly elevated by Gnosticism.
To understand Gnosticism you have to simply understand second and third century developed...a religion developed that had its roots in the New Testament, it's addressed by the Apostle Paul. It had a number of elements that are addressed by the Apostle Paul, Docetism which is a denial that Christ had a body. It was the idea that he was a phantom, that he never really died on the cross. The one who died on the cross was Simon of Cyrene because Jesus was never a man, he was always just a floating spirit. Gnosticism said, for example, in those early centuries the God of orthodox Christianity and the God of the Old Testament, the Creator of heaven and earth is blind and an evil fool who created evil matter. He is the God who foolishly said, "I am God and there is no other besides Me," not knowing that above and beyond Him was the great spirit who created Him. The Gnostic goddess in Gnostic literature casts Yahweh into hell.
So it's not some mild assault. It is an assault on everything that is sacred in Christianity. The earliest Gnostic, probably Marcion, M-a-r-c-i-o-n about the year 150 begins this elevated knowledge and sacred technologies by which you attain to communion with the deities. And Marcion rejects the God of the Bible and comes up with this kind of bizarre stuff. Recently you heard about the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Judas which National Geographic has made much of. The gospel of Judas, just so you know, says, for example, that God the Creator is an evil demon, that the reprobates of the Old Testament, Cain, Esau, Korah and Sodomites are the good guys and the bad guys are Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets. And Judas becomes a good guy because they want to overturn everything. That's what Satan wants to do to twist and change and overturn everything.
In the gospel of Thomas which is another one of these strange books, and there are lots of ancient writings against the Bible, lots of false writings that came from demon sources. Even the Apostle Paul acknowledged there would be false teachers all over everywhere. Paul even acknowledges that the believers had received a false letter very early on in the very time of the New Testament writing, misrepresenting truth. But the gospel of Thomas is one, for example, that says, and I quote, "When you make the male and female one and the same so that the male not be male nor the female, female, then you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven." There is this sexual androgyny mingled into this. It is a bizarre and twisted kind of thinking. It develops what's called spiritual technologies, mysticism, mantras, meditation, some transcendental experiences that can be induced a number of ways so that you can ascend to the worship of the true Spirit. And Gnostics believe that the serpent of Genesis spoke the truth and the God of Genesis was a blind fool and an evil liar. One group of Gnostics called themselves the Nacenes from the Hebrew nachash which means serpents. They were bold enough to say they worshiped the serpents. So Satan worship goes way back and this is all nothing more than one form or another of Satan worship.
So, you don't need to answer every issue in this kind of thing. It's just another in a long line of assaults on the Lord Jesus, on the character of God. It opens the world to the Gnostic literature so it's a pretty formidable thing. I don't know what it is, sixty million people have bought the book, twenty-seven or thirty million in America. And now I guess a lot of people will see the film. And in a culture where people are told that they can develop their own spirituality along the lines of their own preferences religiously. This is a perfect kind of thing because the one thing it doesn't ask is anything of the believer. It doesn't ask anything morally, doesn't ask anything spiritually, doesn't ask for any devotion, doesn't ask for any self-denial, doesn't ask for any recognition of sin, of unrighteousness, of unholiness. It doesn't call for humility. It doesn't call for repentance. Doesn't say you have to believe in anything particular, it's perfect religion for a post-modern proud self-esteeming world of people who think they can ascend to the levels of true spirituality by their own intuition and their own feelings. It is, of course, a damning lie. When interviewing...watching some interviews of people, they were saying, "Have you changed your view of Jesus by seeing the film?" And they said, "Yes, I've chanted my view of Jesus by seeing the film." Now that shows you the mindlessness of the culture in which we live. Without regard for whatever is said is true, that's not a point that seems to matter to a lot of people since Jesus is...is a plastic figure that can be twisted and shaped like the old Gumbys that your kids used to play with. You can make Him into anything you want Him to be.
So this is just another in a long line of evidences that the culture is corrupt because it imbibes this stuff without any discrimination. Another indication that the people who run the media in this country are bent on promoting what is blasphemous. And you have to understand that. That is exactly what they are intending to do, not always knowingly, but nonetheless it's still what they do because they are under the full control of the prince of the power of the air who uses them for his own purposes. And this is one of those purposes clearly as if there's not enough corruption in this culture, they have resurrected corruption the church deemed heresy centuries ago, and resurrected it at a perfect time in Satan's understanding of how people think. This is a perfect time to resurrect spirituality on a personal individual basis, elevated knowledge, spiritual technologies that everybody can do on their own, come to their own conclusions. So...so much for the Da Vinci Code.
All right? All right. We have some microphones and I even resisted saying that much because I don't want to make more out of this than we should. Simply this, folks. There are a zillion lies, right? I mean, they're everywhere. So what's really important is that you know the truth. If you know the truth then you can spot the lies. Okay?
Now we have some of our brightest pastors out there to assist you with your questions. And we'll just let you maybe line up a couple of three deep behind these microphones and we'll start over here at the left. Give me your name first.
CHOICE? My name is Choice. God bless you, Pastor John.
JOHN: Thank you.
CHOICE: Thank you and I love you for your teachings and what you offer everyone here at the church. My question is heaven a physical place? I've heard different theories on it and I just want to know what the Bible speaks about it being a physical place.
JOHN: Sure. The first thing is, I want to give you a gift. Go to the bookstore and I wrote a book on heaven. And just tell them you want it and to put it on Bill Shannon's account. No...I'm just kidding. Just tell them it's a gift from John and they'll put it on my account. You can take it with you and it will give you a complete outline on that.
Let me say this. When Jesus rose from the dead He arose in a physical literal body, a body that they could see and touch. He said to Thomas, "Reach hither your finger and touch My side." This is a physical body. He was in the room with them, He spoke to them, He ate with them, He walked with them, He talked with them. And when we are raised in eternal glory, we will have, Philippians 3:20 and 21, a body like unto His body. So there is physicality in our eternal bodies, which means there must be a physical environment in some sense. So heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is not an ethereal place where we float around in some kind of consciousness, feeling only good feelings and good emotions. It is an actual place. It is a recreated new heaven and new earth, a recreated universe. It has at its center a capital city which is described in Revelation as the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. It is described in detail. It is essentially a cubed city fifteen hundred miles cubed which makes it a massive place. It has streets that are made out of transparent gold. It has twelve gates, each gate being a single pearl. Its foundations are all jewels that refract the light of the glory of God like one of those mirror balls in the middle of a dance floor or skating rink, shedding light in every direction, refracting the beauty of God's glory all over the endless universe. So it is a real place. There is a river of life there. Trees planted along the river for the joy of the saints. There will be ministry. There will be activity. There will be a room in the Father's house. All of those are indications of its physicality.
Now not in the sense that we know it because it's not subject to the curse. And it is not subject to any change, such as the Eden in this world while not at that particularly time cursed was subject to the curse, and of course received the curse and we're still under it. Heaven has no curse ever and so that final and eternal state will be a state of glory both for the redeemed spirit and the glorified body. Okay? Thank you.
Yes ma'am.
QUESTION: Good evening, Pastor MacArthur. I just want to thank you for your faithful teaching of the truth.
JOHN: You're welcome.
QUESTION: I have a two-part question.
JOHN: What's your name?
JOHN: Oh yeah, I couldn't see you. Shashem, sure.
SHASHEM: My maternal grandfather was a rabbi and even though I didn't follow the religion does that automatically make me a Jew? And so, what does it mean to be the chosen post Christ verses pre-Christ?
JOHN: First of all, whether or not you had a relative who was a rabbi has nothing to do with your being Jewish. Being Jewish is because you are born into the race of Jewish people. So if you are a child of a Jewish mother and a Jewish father, is that correct? Gentile father, Gentile mother?
SHASHEM: Gentile father, Jewish mother.
JOHN: I'd claim Judaism. Not as a religion, but I'd claim Jewishness on that basis. That was kind of the story with Timothy, wasn't it? Timothy had a Gentile parent and a Jewish mother and a Jewish grandmother who taught him the Scriptures from the time he was young. You can make an argument that the Jews would consider that if you had a Jewish mother you certainly could be considered to be Jewish. But yeah, I mean, I think that's a reasonable assumption that you definitely fall in to the privilege of possessing Jewish blood that flows down through the ages from the Patriarchs. So that's an honorable thing. I've always said it's wonderful to be Scottish and throw a little German and English in there but I wouldn't mind being a little bit Jewish. But didn't have that opportunity or privilege. But that's okay, I'm in Christ and I inherit His righteousness and all the benefits of His Jewishness are passed to me in that way.
So, yeah. In the end of the day, however, it doesn't matter what your race is. It only matters what your relationship to God is. And as Paul says, not all Jews are Jews in the true sense. Not all Israel is Israel. That's the sad reality that many people who have inherited the blood of the Patriarchs, if you will, who are a part of the Jewish race are not a part of the Kingdom of God, and so their Jewishness counts for nothing. On the other hand, as we know, those of us who are Gentiles, sheep of another fold, if you will, to borrow the language of the gospel of John chapter 10, or to borrow the language of Romans chapter 11, we are the branch grafted in to the stock of blessing. So what matters is that you're in Christ. But doubly blessed you are if you also are in Abraham and in Christ. Okay?
SHASHEM: Chosen means...
JOHN: To be chosen...
SHASHEM: I mean...
JOHN: There's two senses. One, the nation was chosen to be the race through whom God would bring the Scripture and the Messiah. Okay? That does not mean that when God chose the nation Israel He chose them all for eternal salvation. It simply means He chose the nation to be theocratic, to be a nation over which He would rule and through which He would mediate the Scripture and through which the Messiah would come. Okay? But not all of the chosen nation were individually chosen to salvation. And that's what the Apostle Paul is saying in Romans 9, 10 and 11. Esau have I loved...or Jacob have I loved, Esau have I...what?...have I hated. And this is by God's choice. And not all Israel is Israel. A Jew is a Jew who is one inwardly, not outwardly, Romans 2. In fact there's an indictment by Paul in Romans 2 about those who are only Jewish outwardly and that was of no value whatsoever before God. So there is a sense historically in a very real sense in which God chose Israel...Israel, Mine elect...as a nation to be the vehicle through which He conveyed the revelation of His glory, the Scriptures, and through which He brought the Messiah and to which He first proclaimed the gospel. That's different than being chosen unto salvation. There were some in the nation chosen to salvation, there are some, of course, outside the nation and now many in the Gentile world who have been elect unto eternal salvation. Okay? Thank you.
EDITH: Hi, John, I'm Edith. I have a question about 2 Thessalonians 2:10 through 12. I recently heard an interpretation of this passage that says that only the people who didn't hear the gospel and rejected before the Rapture have a chance to be saved after the Rapture. Do you think this passage teaches that if you heard it and rejected it before the Rapture you don't have a second chance after the Rapture, only the ones who didn't hear it and reject it have a chance?
JOHN: No, I don't think there's anything in the Scripture that says that. Just to clarify what we're talking about here, in the future the Bible is clear that the Lord Jesus is going to take the church out, John 14, 1 Corinthians 15, and 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. There's a snatching of the church, this is the Rapture where believers leave. The question then is after the believers have been raptured and all hell breaks loose on earth, as God releases judgment on the world during the period of time called the Tribulation.
And by the Way, coming up when I get back from our summertime and all that, in the fall I'm going to do two series. I'm going to do one on the authority of Scripture because I want you to understand how we know the Bible is true. So we're going to do a basic foundational study on the authority of Scripture. And then we're going to go into a study of eschatology and study the last days and what is the real sequence of events. It's been reduced to a minor issue today by many, many very good theologians who think it doesn't matter how the story ends, I think it matters a lot how the story ends. Others think it's not clear how the story ends. I think it's crystal clear how it ends. And we need to understand that. We understand it because it's revealed so clearly in Scripture. So we'll get to that.
But the idea is, the church is snatched away, that's the next event in God's future plans. It could happen at any moment and it will happen suddenly in the twinkling of an eye where the Lord just snatches the church. Nothing has to happen prophetically before that event...nothing. It can happen at any time. The church has always lived in imminency, the expectation of that Rapture of the church. After that, the church is taken away. There are left on the earth unbelievers. The question is, what happens to them? The answer is, it's laid out very clearly in the Scriptures. The gospel will be preached. It will be preached in numerous ways, even miraculously it will be preached by an angel flying in heaven...sort of like, you know, the Outback blimp, or whatever it is, with a message going along the side. There will be an angel preaching the everlasting gospel from heaven. There will be a 144 thousand Jews, twelve thousand from every tribe and only God knows what tribe Jews are in today because all their records were lost in the destruction of Jerusalem. And those 144 thousand will be witnesses across the face of the earth. There will be two predominant witnesses, Revelation chapter 11, two witnesses, powerful witnesses, the whole world will...will see them, according to Revelation 11 and they will be killed for their testimony. But the world will see them killed which can only happen in a television age. The world will see them being killed. The world will also see them rise from the dead. It will have a massive impact. Jerusalem...the people of Jerusalem will be converted in the beginning of God's salvation of Israel will begin. And out of that Tribulation time will come people who weren't Christians when the Rapture came, there will come people from every tongue and tribe and nation race of the world who will be purchased by the blood of the Lamb during that period. It says they will come out of the time of Tribulation. Nothing says that that salvation is restricted to people who never heard the gospel before. There's nothing to restrict that. In fact, it would be very unlikely that people...all the people who are being saved at that time since it's a massive amount of people, all Israel will be saved. The nation of Israel, two thirds of the rebels will be purged out and the remaining third will be saved....that's millions of people. And there will be a massive salvation among the Gentiles around the world as well. And there's no indication that this can only happen to those people who did not hear the gospel. It's pretty simple to understand. You have your lifetime. You have your lifetime now to respond to the gospel. You'll have your lifetime then to respond to the gospel, even if there's a Rapture, that doesn't change the fact that you still have your opportunity and the gospel will be preached. Okay? Good question.
RON: My name is Ron.
JOHN: Yeah, can you just keep those microphones up if you can.
RON: My question is, a couple of weeks ago at work I was sharing the gospel with a non-believer and, you know, how he needs to repent of his sins, embrace Jesus Christ. He said I hope He accepts me. I said Jesus stands at the door and knocks. So we were talking about Acts 4:12, 1 Timothy 2:5 and then there's a Roman Catholic, another co-worker comes, butts in and says, "You have the wrong way." And I turned to him and I said, "I don't listen to you, I don't listen to man, I listen to God." And I turned away from him immediately and I told the non-believer, "See how Satan works in people's hearts." So is that the right way to confront, cause I....
JOHN: Well it was certainly the correct analysis of the situation. It was a correct analysis. One of the things that I fear is because I'm so direct in the pulpit, you all end up being equally direct in every conversation that you ever have with everybody.
Now, look. I can get away with things here that you might want to soften a little bit in a conversation. I can preach on "Get thee behind Me, Satan," but maybe you don't want to say that to your co-worker when you're having a conversation. So...I would say you made an apt analysis but you might have said to him, "You know, I appreciate your concern about that and as soon as I'm finished talking with this friend I'd love to sit down with you and talk about that. Instead of cutting him off and eliminating an opportunity, you need to deal with him in such a way as to give yourself a future opportunity with him, okay? I appreciate your boldness. And I take the responsibility for it. Okay.
RON: Well I've had past opportunities with him and he's Roman Catholic and he's staunch.
JOHN: Well still...
RON: Mary is the way and he won't listen to what I say anything about the gospel.
JOHN: Well, all you can do is do what you can do. And I think the thing with all these people is, especially Roman Catholic people is to say, "Are you certain if you were to die now you would go to heaven?" And just plant that thought because the answer is no....no...no...no. The Bible promises you certainty and you can take them to those places where that promise is crystal clear. That's...that's the way you approach these people who live with this constant fear and uncertainty. And even though they're afraid, you see he operates out of fear, he's afraid to abandon Catholicism because Catholicism has made him afraid. His only hope is through Mary, his only hope is through the church. The church is a surrogate Christ. Catholics are not connected to Christ, they're connected to the church. The church is a surrogate Christ. You connect to the church and through sacred technologies, just like Gnosticism, through mechanical means of the Mass and eating and drinking what they are told is the body and blood of Jesus and through praying to Mary and praying to the saints and going through all of these kinds of things saying your beads, etc., etc. These are the mechanisms, these are the sacred mechanisms that keep you connected to the Church. But the message the Church keeps giving you is this is no guarantee of heaven. And so you...you have to keep driving that home with these people that that is not what the Bible says. The Bible says you can know, you can know, these things are written that you may know that you have eternal life. The thesis of 1 John, take them to 1 John and just walk through that reality because it...it is a trap and it is a trap constructed on fear. They're afraid to disconnect because they've been told their only hope is through the connection to the Church. And if they abandon the Church, they have no hope. But even if they hold to the Church they have no assurance. So it is...that is really the Achilles heel in their system and that's...that's the point of attack, I think, that can be most effective, okay?
RON: Thank you.
BRUCE: Am I on? Okay. My name is Bruce Dixon.
JOHN: Hi, Bruce.
BRUCE: Hi. The Bible teaches me that only those who are called can be saved. But it also says in Revelation 22:17, "Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely." In your commentary on that verse, you state that this is an unlimited offer of grace and salvation to all who desire to have their thirsty souls quenched. My question is, does free will exist and if so, what role does it play in salvation?
JOHN: Let me answer it this way. The offer is always unlimited, otherwise why would be told to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? The offer is always unlimited or men couldn't be condemned for rejecting it. And Jesus says you will die in your sins because you believe not on Me. Where I go you'll never go, you'll die in your sins because you believe not on Me. Everyone who ends up in hell, this is what we were saying today, you don't go to hell in the end because of your sin, you don't go to hell only because of your selfishness, although everybody in hell was sinful and selfish, but so is everybody in heaven. It all comes down to what you did with the message of salvation, what you did with the gospel. And all condemnation is the condemnation of rejection. Jesus says you will not come to Me that you might have life. How often I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her brood but you would not.
Is there free will? I don't ever use the expression free will. Is there human will? Yes. Is that will free? No. It is within the bounds of its own sinfulness free to make sinful choices. But it cannot choose righteousness on its own. It is free...it's like a criminal. If you're in prison, you've been sentenced and sent to jail and you're now incarcerated in a prison. Is there freedom? There is freedom within the walls. There is freedom to go here and go there. There's freedom to think this. There's freedom to act this way and act that way, to cultivate relationships this way and that way. There is freedom but it's all freedom in the prison. There's no freedom to go out to leave. The unregenerate person is free within the confines of fallenness, free within the confines of reprobation, free within the confines of depravity to select his categories of sin, to select the nature of his behavior as a sinner. But he is not free on his own to do anything other than that which is consistent with his fallenness. You understand that? So it's a contained freedom.
The only thing that breaks that freedom is the intruding sovereign eternal power of God. And God does that when He wills for whom He wills, not apart from their faith and repentance, but by means of their faith and repentance which He Himself generates. So it is wholly an act of God when all of a sudden the bars of the prison are open and the sinner is turned loose into the glories of a new righteous freedom. He is now experiencing a freedom in a world of beauty and a world of wonder and a world of righteousness, and for the first time is free to do and able to do what is right. So we also have a freedom, it is freedom in the world of what is right. And that's what we're motivated to do, even though there are times when we fail to do that and fall back into sin.
Now that then asks the question, how can God hold sinners responsible for their condition when it can't be altered except by Him? Right? That's the big question. And the answer to that question is He does and it's right because whatever He does is what is right. God doesn't do right by an external standard. Certainly not ours. Whatever God does is right because God is the standard of what is right. And you say, "Well it doesn't sound fair." No, we're all sinners and it's fair for us to all be condemned. The part that's not fair is that we would be saved. If you want fair, we all go to hell. Right? If we get what we deserve, we all go to hell. The fact that God chooses some to salvation is not about being fair, it's about demonstrating His grace.
God has every right to put His full glory on display. If there were no sin, and there were no sinners, there would be no grace displayed. If there were no grace displayed, then God would not have the opportunity to manifest the glory of His nature as a gracious merciful compassionate, kind, forgiving, loving Savior both to men and to angels. So God allows for sin in order that He might destroy it and in the process display His grace. On the other hand, God is a God of wrath and judgment and justice and holiness and He displays His wrath as well in the condemnation of sinners.
Now how this harmonizes, this question is always asked, and I answer it typically in as simple a way as I can to help people understand this. Look, we're talking about the eternal God of the universe, okay? And I know we desperately want to reduce Him to a manageable size. We want to figure Him out but we're really unable to do that. Okay? This is the inscrutable mind of God, unattainable, imperceptible beyond our comprehension. How is it that God can condemn people to sinners...as sinners to hell because they do not believe the gospel when they have within them no capability to do anything other than reject it? And how at the same time He can hold them responsible for their rejection when He alone is the one who saves them? I...I don't know how God resolves that, I just know that's exactly what Scripture teaches. Scripture teaches that the only people who are saved are the ones that God has chosen, that He regenerates, that He awakens, that He gives sight to, that He grants faith and repentance to at the hearing of the gospel. God has to do it all. And yet the sinner is responsible. And so the Bible pleads with the sinner. It proclaims the gospel to the ends of the earth to the sinner and holds the sinner accountable.
Now just to give you an illustration. This is not an unusual difficulty...an apparent paradox, not a real one, it's only apparent to us, it's no paradox to God because a paradox is a contradiction. It's not contradictory to God, it's just to us with our pea brains that we can't grasp it. But let me help you with this a little bit. Here's a simple way that I would explain that. Take the book of Romans, for example, who wrote Romans?
BRUCE: Paul
JOHN: Pardon? Is that your complete answer.
BRUCE: I have no idea.
JOHN: Paul
BRUCE: Paul.
JOHN: Is that a full answer?
BRUCE: No.
JOHN: Okay, try that again.
BRUCE: Inspired by God.
JOHN: So who wrote it? Paul?
BRUCE: God.
JOHN: Which one are you going to take?
BRUCE: God...final answer.
JOHN: You see the problem? It's Paul, it's Paul's words, Paul's experiences, Paul's heart, Paul's mind, Paul's will fully engaged, fully active saying exactly what he wanted to say in his heart, and yet every single word is inspired by God. How can it be all Paul and all God and not be dictation?
Another question. Have you ever heard of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints which is what the Bible teaches that those who are saved who persevere to the end, if you persevere to the end you will be saved. And yet the Bible also teaches that we are secure in Christ and nothing can ever remove us from Christ, no one can take us out of the hand of the Lord. So is it God keeping us or is it us persevering?
Here's another question. Who lives your Christian life? This is pretty basic stuff.
BRUCE: Did you want me to answer that?
JOHN: Yeah, who lives your Christian life?
BRUCE: I do but only with the help of God, only with the help of Christ.
JOHN: So who does the good stuff?
BRUCE: I got this guy back here telling me everything to say. What's the question?
JOHN: But you can't answer that question. If I say who lives your Christian life, you're trapped because you know that you're responsible to live it, every command in the Bible assumes that. Every discipline in the Bible, we disciplined a gentleman this morning in the church, is he responsible for his sin? Or is God?
BRUCE: He is.
JOHN: He's responsible.
BRUCE: I got that right.
JOHN: Because we're all responsible. I...I, says David, have sinned against You, I take full responsibility for my sin because I disobey, that's my sin. And yet when you come down to it, I...I can't take credit for obedience. Though you have the same conundrum, Paul put it this way, "I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live, yet not I." So he didn't understand it either. Because again it is that amazing conflict between understanding on a human level and the vast mind of God. So we obey, we live our Christian lives, we're responsible for our obedience and our disobedience and yet it's all of God. We persevere and yet it's all of Him to keep us. We believe and we repent and yet it's all His work. And you can't create something that resolves that without doing damage to those great truths. So you leave them alone, rest in them. This is one of the great evidences that God wrote this book because it was written by a committee of men, they would have resolved all that. Okay? Good question.
BRUCE: Thank you.
JED: I, Pastor John, my name is Jed. I've been wondering when Christ was crucified on the cross, we understand from the gospels it says, "My God, why have You forsaken Me?" And even in the hymn we sing it says the Father turns His face away. So how does that...you know, how does that work? From your understanding, how does that work?
JOHN: Well, I have absolutely no idea. And that's another one of those same things. How can God forsake God when Jesus is fully God and fully bears the divine nature as does the Father and the Spirit, how can God who is one and indivisible and undivided be separated from Himself? I have no idea, but I know this, I know it doesn't mean that there was a breach in the divine nature. It doesn't mean there was a rending of that divine nature. So whatever that separation was, it didn't change the nature of Christ. It didn't change the essence of who He was. There was in that horrendous sin-bearing when the wrath of God was poured out on Jesus a true...a true alienation. And the question is often asked...if Jesus actually took the full punishment for all sinners who would believe through all history, and He did, how could He have taken all that punishment in one day in a matter of hours? Which if those sinners all went to hell, they could never fulfill an eternity together? In other words, if the judgment on the sinner is everlasting, how could Christ bear that judgment in full for millions of sinners? And the answer is, He could bear an infinite judgment because He was an infinite person. We can't even fathom the infinity of those hours upon an infinite person. And so He did not cease to be God, but in a real and true sense He experienced a time in which for the purpose of sin bearing the wrath of God was actually placed enforced upon Him. It wasn't that He became a sinner, it was that He received a judgment. And the judgment was not just physical, there was some breach in communion, not nature, not essence, but communion for fellowship. Okay? Good question.
JEFF: Hello, my name is Jeff Brown.
JOHN: Hi, Jeff.
JEFF: Hi. My question is about the chronologies, Matthew, Mark and Luke, verses John regarding after the resurrection. It appears to be a contradiction, but I'm just trying to figure out this chronology. Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Thinks the body is stolen but on the way back to the disciples sees Jesus and then Peter and John are there and they come to the tomb, I guess. John...in John she goes and tells Peter and John and the disciples without seeing Jesus at all. They come back, run past her and then she follows. After they see the empty tomb, then Mary sees Jesus, thinks he's a gardener. I can't figure out this chronology, how to work it out and was wondering...if you've encountered the same problem.
JOHN: Sure. The best help I can give you is to get the commentary I wrote on Matthew, volume 4, chapter 28, verse 1 to 15, the last of Matthew where I work through all that chronology. That;'s part of what happens.
Also, in the study Bible there is a what's called a harmony of the gospels. And in a harmony of the gospels, all of that is laid out. I'm looking at my...I have a NAS here that just came out, the New American Standard, and the harmony of the gospels here moves down through the betrayal, the crucifixion, the burial, the resurrection and it lists all the corresponding passages. And if you just track with those corresponding passages, and read the commentary, even the footnotes in the study Bible, you should be able to resolve those things. There is no real conflict, in fact it's really an amazingly consistent record when it's all blended together. But that's the best thing to do so that you get a good look at it. Just about any commentary on the resurrection is going to do that, any commentary that's any good is going to pull all those pieces together. That's something I really enjoyed doing and since I haven't yet written the one on Luke and haven't yet preached on Mark and haven't gotten to the second volume of John, if I remember right, I worked through that at the end of Matthew. Okay?
JEFF: Okay. Thank you.
JOHN: We're going to have to hurry cause we're running out of time. So quick, and I'll try to give a short answer. I'm not known for that...but.
SCOTT: Yeah, my name is Scott. Praise, God, for you, John. My question is it's in regard to Christian Living, in particular about faith. As God's people in regards to our daily living, how are we in regards to exercising our faith, how are we to apply these Scriptures, I'm going to run off a few Scriptures to you...Matthew 8:13, "As you have believed, so let it be done for you." Matthew 9:29, "According to your faith let it be to you." John 11:40, "Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" And lastly, Mark 9:23, "All things are possible to him who believes."
JOHN: Sure. Very simple. Everything within the purpose of God, within the will of God, everything that God desires to give...another way to say it is whatever you ask in My name, consistent with who I am and what I will shall be done. Faith is exercised when we ask and when our asking is consistent with the will of God we will receive. That is a general promise, that is...that is not necessarily specific to...for example, if I pray for the salvation of this person, that person is going to be saved. Or if I pray for this person, that person is going to be healed....not unless it is within the will of God to save and the will of God to heal. So all of those are conditioned by the repeated statements that this is all in accordance with My will.
But remember now, in the gospel accounts in those early years, what Jesus is trying to do is overcome a continually indicated issue and it's indicated in a little phrase that Jesus said to His disciples, "O you of...what?..little faith." They...they were so minimal in their faith that He was always saying those kinds of things that would encourage them to move to a greater and greater confidence, a greater and greater trust and a greater and greater faith and that it should show up even in the petitions they brought before Him. This is part of spiritual development and spiritual growth but it's always within the framework of that which brings honor to God. That's why when Jesus taught us how to pray He said pray like this, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your will be done, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Now let's get to the requests. It always starts out with Your will, Your Kingdom, Your glory, and then we talk about here. Okay? So it's always in that framework. So that's a general..a general promise of the Lord that when we ask, He will give us, obviously what is consistent with what is best for us because that's the only thing the Lord will do, okay?
ZACHARY: Hello, my name is Zachary.
JOHN: Hi, Zachary.
ZACHARY: I have two little questions.
JOHN: Okay.
ZACHARY: How old were you when you became a pastor and did you also want to be a pastor when you were little?
JOHN: Wow, those are good questions. You know, I think, Zachary, when I was pretty little, I think I thought I'd be a pastor, that was because my father was a pastor, and my grandfather was a pastor, and all of their friends were pastors and so I was surrounded by pastors. I guess I just thought when you grew up you became a pastor because there were so many pastors in my life. My parents never pushed me to be a pastor, but I do...I guess I was mimicking my dad, you know, I sometimes would stand on the back steps and preach to my sister. I remember I said to my...I came to the end of the house, this is my father telling me, I don't remember this, but he said I came in the house and I said, "Well," my sister Jeanette, "She's going to hell for sure." I must have been about six or something and he said, "Why are you saying that?" And he said, "Because...I said, Because I preached to her and when I give the invitation, she will not raise her hand." So I don't know whether...I don't know what that meant but I certainly started early to think about being a preacher. Even when I was in high school I had, you know, I thought...I never really thought of a different kind of career. You know, even in high school I never had any idea of going this way and the Lord had to redirect me. The only thing I thought about sometimes was athletics because I was pretty good at that. And I got a lot of affirmation. But it was time to go to college, I turned away from all of that and went to study the Bible, so I just think it was always in my heart. Then I had an accident after my freshman year that almost killed me, I ended up in bed for three months, thrown out of a car. And that's when the Lord really sealed that in my heart. So I was eighteen years old when I said, "Okay, Lord, if You want me to be a preacher, that's what I want to be."
ZACHARY: Can I ask you my other question now?
JOHN: Uh-huh.
ZACHARY: Did Satan know the Scripture or like did he learn it by himself or did God have to tell him?
JOHN: No, He wrote it down for everybody...even Satan. He knows it very, very well. First of all, he's very, very old and he's known it for a long time and he lived with God before he fell, not long, probably, but he lived with God before he fell and so he knew truths about God before they were ever written down in Scripture. But he can read the Bible and very cleverly twist it and pervert it. And that's why it's so important to have pastors and people who can teach the truth so that others aren't deceived by Satan. Okay? Good questions, Zachary. (Applause)
JOHN ADAMS: How you doing, Pastor MacArthur, my name is John Adams.
JOHN: Hi, John. Good to have you here.
ADAMS: It's good to be here, man.
JOHN: I've got to tell you about John. I met him a few weeks ago...
ADAMS: Oh, here we go...here we go.
JOHN: John said to me, he's driving down Roscoe looking for another church, he's driving down Roscoe trying to find another church.
ADAMS: No, I didn't know...okay?
JOHN: And he drove by the sign and he saw John MacArthur, that's a familiar name. And so he called your brother on the cell phone...
ADAMS: No, I called my brother when I got home. My brother is he's an associate pastor at my father's church and he's a gospel hip-hop performer. So I called him and I don't need to take the story over...
JOHN: No...no, go, go.
ADAMS: So I called my brother cause my brother and my father both told me, they were like...Look, if you get a chance, you should go to see Pastor MacArthur. I said okay, so I called him after I saw the church and I go...Grace Community Church, is that the church...is that Pastor MacArthur's church? And my brother who I said is a gospel hip-hop performer...he goes, "Oh, yes...yes." And I go...well I said, "Well I think I'm going to go next Sunday." He said, "You didn't stop?" He goes....he said, "Man, if it was me, I would have pulled over on the side of the road, walked in and be like J.Mac, I'm in the building, baby...I'm in the building. Souls reporting for duty, baby, I'm in the building." So...
JOHN: J.Mac, I'm in the building. That's...I'll take it. I hope my tapes are bigger with the hip-hop people than theirs are with me...so. So anyway...we're glad you're here, John. Go ahead, ask your question.
ADAMS: I'm glad to be here, Pastor MacArthur. My question is as it pertains to tithing and giving. I would like you to shed some insight on tithing and giving as it pertains to those who live in the Old Testament and then as it pertains to New Testament and pertains to us today.
JOHN: Good question, John, let me give you a quick answer and I think we might have time for maybe two more. Sorry for those of you who have been in line, you guys can discuss your question, pick the one that is most urgent there, guys. Anyway, let me answer this question, okay. Here we go real quick, John. Tithe is a word that means tenth, ten percent. In the Old Testament, let's just start with the Mosaic Law, in the Old Testament there were three tithes every year...okay? Tenth which was basically the tithe that went to fund the Levites and the priests. In other words, the theocratic kingdom was basically...the officers of the government were priests and Levites. They...they ran the religious structure so they were paid and subsidized by the tithes of the people, it was ten percent...ten percent of everything they possessed, not just money but ten percent of whatever they had, crops and so forth...animals and things like that. There was a second ten percent. The second ten percent went to fund the national festivals, just another way to fund the theocracy. That's twenty percent. Every third year they paid a third ten percent which was a poor tax. So that broke down to 23 and a third percent a year. Then there was a temple tax, then they couldn't harvest the corners of the field and the poor could come in and pick up the corners of the field and if a bundle fell off the truck they couldn't pick that up, that was for the poor. So we estimate then that in the theocratic kingdom a Jew would probably give to the government twenty-five percent a year. That was basic taxation, okay? That was basic taxation. It was never just a single ten percent.
Now, that was what was required giving. And in Malachi 3 God says if you don't give Me that, you've robbed me. Since it's a theocratic kingdom, God is the King, you rob the government, you rob God. Okay. So 25 percent. That's not what you hear today when people talk about tithing, but that was Old Testament taxation.
Now in addition to that, there's free-will giving. And I wrote a little book on this called Giving God's Way. Free will giving, you give whatever you want, whenever you want. You have statements like, "Bring the firstfruits of your crops to the Lord." It doesn't tell you how much, just whatever you want. So they had to give 25 percent to fund the theocratic kingdom and beyond that, they gave whatever they wanted as free-will giving. And the Old Testament says if you give the firstfruits, your bonds will be full. God will bless your free-will giving. Come into the New Testament, Jesus puts it this way, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, pay your taxes, and render to God what is God's." What is Caesar's is whatever Caesar says, what is God's is whatever is in your heart to give. And Jesus puts it this way, "Give and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together and running over." The New Testament says whatever you purpose in your heart, do that....do it on the first day of the week when you come together. Sow sparingly, reap sparingly. You know, the question about free-will giving is how much do you want a return on, how much do you want back from God? You give a little, you'd get a little invested with God, you get a little back. The principles never change, pay your taxes, render to Caesar what is Caesar's. Paul says the government's ordained of God, pay your taxes, tax to whom tax is due, tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom is due, Romans chapter 13, and give God whatever you want. And that is biblical giving.
ADAMS: So the argument that tithing is an Old Testament law thing and Jesus' coming fulfilled the law and tithing is no longer applicable today has nothing to do with...
JOHN: Tithing was a way of funding the national government. Jesus carries it into the New Testament by saying Give Caesar what Caesar asks. Paul adds, pay your taxes. So the equivalent now to the Old Testament tithe system is taxation. Okay? Free-will giving has always been the same.
ADAMS: Thank you very much, Pastor MacArthur...J. Mac, baby.
JOHN: Thanks, John. All right.
QUESTION: Hi, Pastor. My question is how should we treat people that are preaching a half-true gospel and not how should...or should we come against them boldly like in Jude?
JOHN: Yeah, I think it depends. If you're talking about a false teacher who has an audience, you come...yeah, I think you address that boldly. The Bible only knows one way to deal with deception and lie and that's by confrontation. You don't strike a truce with that. If you're talking about the victims of that false teaching, you have to approach them differently. You have to snatch them like brans from the burning. You have to be careful lest you get your own garment spotted. But we are in a rescue operation and we're in danger because we're trying to rescue people out of these evil systems. And when you get close enough to rescue people out of an evil system, you're going to wind up in a dialogue with them about that system and you have to be sure your faith is strong and your understanding of Scripture is strong so that you don't get confused by them. In other words, you don't want somebody who's been a Christian three weeks inviting two Jehovah's Witnesses in the house to tell them the truth because they're liable to come out of there so confused by these very wily people. But the point is, if you're dealing with a false teacher, confrontation, exposure, I mean even pronouncing judgment indirectly, you are a false teacher. And I've done that throughout my life even on occasion to a person who came here. You are a false teacher, you need to know you're a false teacher, you're under divine condemnation. You need to stop and you need to come to the knowledge of the truth. Those kinds of things. You don't have to start a fight, but I think being direct is certainly the right thing. But when you're talking about the people who are victims, then you have to understand that they are saying what they're saying because they've been deceived. It's one thing to be a deceiver, it's something else to be deceived. Now all deceivers are self-deceived to one degree or another, but once they become a propagator, then the exposure....I mean, look at the New Testament, Paul exposes them by name who are teaching falsely...who are ruining the faith of people...Hymenaeus, Alexander, others...okay?
QUESTION: Can I add one thing onto that?
JOHN: Right.
QUESTION: The Scripture where Paul says they're like preaching, he's in jail and they're preaching the gospel...oh well, I don't remember...
JOHN: Philippians 1?
QUESTION: Yeah, I don't remember, is that in reference to that same thing, like he doesn't care if they're preaching a gospel out of dissension?
JOHN: Right, they were preaching the gospel but they were preaching it in a way they were reflected they were jealous of Paul. And Paul's in jail, Philippians 1, Paul's in jail and what these other gospel preachers were saying was they were jealous of Paul, okay jealousy is a reality even among preachers, they were jealous of Paul and so they were wanting to get the limelight and Paul was everybody's spiritual hero obviously. So they were moving into the limelight and they were saying things like...well he's in jail because God put him there, he's done, he's got some sin in his life, he's been unfaithful to the Lord, maybe we don't know why but God's put him on the shelf, his day is over, we're the new guys.
So they were using Paul's imprisonment as a way to elevate themselves and Paul said, "Look, some preach Christ out of envy and strife, contention. But Christ is preached and in that I will rejoice." I mean, that is a magnanimous attitude of a very mature selfless believer when you don't care if you're being maligned if the gospel is being preached. It doesn't make it right, but Paul is saying I rejoice that Christ is preached. They were preaching the true Christ and the true gospel. But they were doing it in a way sadly that was malicious and demeaning to Paul, belittling to him in the process. He could handle that, he could handle any personal abuse as long as Christ was exalted. Okay?
DAVE: Hello, Pastor MacArthur, my name is Dave.
JOHN: Hi, Dave.
DAVE: My question is in regards to Satan's role in light of a universe that's ruled by a sovereign God and in particular the actions that are attributed to him, such as sowing...being responsible for sowing tares among the wheat in Matthew 13, having the power over death in Hebrews 2, blinding minds in 2 Corinthians 4. How do I reconcile those types of actions in light of God ruling all those things?
JOHN: Well it's pretty simple. Satan is the servant of God. He is the Lord's devil. He's God's devil and he does only what he does within the boundaries that God sets and God has given him those boundaries. And within the framework of what God allows Satan to do is to rule this world to some degree. God overrules him at all times. To have the power of death which he can only wield within the allowances that God will give him. So he is the devil, God's servant, doing only that which God permits him to do within the boundaries of God's sovereign allotment to him for the purpose of achieving God's own ends. Okay?
That's it. Wow. Well we didn't get too many questions answered, but I hope they were helpful and sorry about those of you who had questions and didn't have them answered. But it's a wonderful thing to just kind of like be together in this format and for me to just hear your heart and the things your asking, so encouraging to me because these are questions that I know that are on the hearts of many. No question that was asked tonight was isolated to the person who asked it. That was what...and usually is so refreshing about this kind of opportunity, so thank you so much for participating and this is the joy of having the Word of God in your hands...you can get the answers. And I would just say, I think...isn't it on next Sunday that we're going to have the new Study Bible in the NAS? They're available in hardback and a lot of questions you asked I've got somewhere in these twenty some thousand footnotes. And I'm not saying that because I want to sell Bibles, I just want to help you. And next Sunday night, is it...or morning and night, we're going to have a special opportunity for you to get the new NAS which is the Bible I've always preached from, Study Bible, and I think they'll be out on the patio, or something, we'll have a lot of them in leather as well as the hardbacks already available. I know many of you want a leather one. And if you haven't used one, you'll find it's going to be very helpful because my whole objective is as I read through the Bible and study and preach, I'm always trying to answer every question that I think will come up. In fact, I probably overdo that but I try to be very observant. What are the questions that arise out of this? What are the issues that arise out of this? That's what prolongs the study. It's answering the questions because...the thing I don't want is to preach a message and answer a few questions and have you go and say...Well what about this, but what about this, but what about this?
I'd rather have you leave and say, Well there's nothing else to say about that. In a sense, I want to cover the ground. I keep asking...well what about this, well if I say this what does it mean to this? And how does it raise this question? And so I tried through the years to do all of that and most of that, at least in a brief and concise you find in the Study Bible.
Well, join me in a word of prayer.
Father, thanks for a great evening, precious friends. What a joy to have the congregation that You've given us here at Grace Church, how we appreciate their love and their affirmation and their encouragement and their faithfulness, their generosity, their service, their joy, their fellowship. What a blessing. We thank You for the single people, so many that You've brought to our church and the richness that they add to our congregation, also the families, the young people with children. Thank You for the testimonies tonight. Thank You for what You're doing through this great congregation as they scatter into the areas of their influence to live to your glory and your honor. And may you be honored in all that we've done today, our own hearts have been refreshed. And may we go forth to serve You with joy, in Christ's name...and everyone said....Amen!


text:
Baby-wearing devices were invented by either 1) an asshole or 2) a morbidly obese person. I've tried three, and each is a colossal failure of cotton dessign. The Hotsling worked the first time I used it, but now droops sadly when I stuff my poor baby in, who winds up lying flat at the very bottom of the fabric pouch, staring up at me with a look of utter disdain. Then we've got the Terra Cotta or something, which is as ineptly named as it is designed.
And finally, the Moby. Oh, where do I begin with the Moby? Why is the Moby so long? Why, God, why is it so long? One size fits all, in that it is so large that it is big enough for anyone on the planet, including a silverback gorilla.
I loathe the Moby with a violent loathing. I want to kick it in the face, but it is just a 98 foot long pile of cloth, so it doesn't care what I do to it. In fact I think it grows each time I begrudgingly extract it from its tiny cloth bag, just to mock me.
Seriously, who the hell invented this thing? All it is is a strip of fabric so long that if you tried to hang yourself with it, you'd fail, no matter how high your ceilings are. Oh, I should mention it comes with a 50 page instruction manual on how the fuck you use it, since that's how long it takes to explain why anyone needs a 98 foot long strip of fabric. Which leads me to...
2. Immediately dispose of any and all items requiring an instruction manual.
There is nothing so frustrating as scanning an instruction book while simultaneously trying to operate the device you have no clue how to use while your poor, patient baby waves her arms and grunts and begins to cry because it is taking you eons, EONS, to figure out said device, and baby needs snuggling or swaddling or food and there you are, futilely scanning the pictures of smiling moms, searching for the golden shred of knowledge that will TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR GOAL SO THAT YOU CAN MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE.
If it needs a manual, toss it in the dumpster. Unless it is a car seat. Those really just ought to come with some sort of fairy or elf who magically manipulates baby's arms and legs through the various straps and buckles the various plastic elements properly because adult human hands are incapable of such precise movements without years of prior training.
Lo, the heartbreaking wail of a baby being strapped to a
3. ...your heart will be broken, pinched, spit on, and bitch-slapped on a daily basis!
That thin little wail your baby emits when you buckle her into the carseat? Your fault, you sadistic asshole. Her wide-eyed look of alarm accompanied by outstretched flailing arms? Hey, that's because she thinks you're about to drop her! Nice going, idiot. How about when baby stops eating, turns bright red, shrieks, then starts eating again? Oh, that's just because it hurts to eat, people. It just hurts to eat.
Babies can't catch a break, and that shit is sad. Baby used to be all snuggled up cozy inside, sans bright lights or cold air or nurses who drop things on their heads or inept parents. And then they come out and you know what bitches? It's hard out here for a baby. She may not be dodging bullets, but the bathwater temperature can be dicey and her hoes are arguably more trouble than they're worth.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I just read an article which says that Kourtney " recently claimed that she is planning a drug-free hypno-birthing."
That is great! I wonder which hypnosis for childbirth program she is using?
Hypnobabies is a great choice because it has medical grade hypnosis and so many tracks to listen to and so many hypno-tools.
Maybe she will join the Hypnobabies Yahoo Group and get support from the moms there and read all the awesome birth stories moms share!


text:
mtcmail is a command-line e-mail app that takes its parameters from switches, stdin and config files. It supports many options like SSL and TLS, server authentication, automatic compression of attachments, the Keychain, and more.
What's New in mtcmail CLI
Version 1.1.1:
- Fixed a bug where VERBOSE was not being properly overridden by the command line switches if it appeared in the config files too.
Requirements for mtcmail CLIMac OS X 10.5 or later
Similar Software
Suggest other similar software


text:
New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers
April 8, 2018
1. Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
Michael Isikoff and David Corn
Details of the 2016 presidential election, with an emphasis on Russia's possible involvement.
2. Secret Empires
Peter Schweizer
The author of "Clinton Cash"
describes what some politicians might do to enrich themselves while in office.
3. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Michael Wolff
A journalist offers an inside account of the first year of the Trump White House.
4. Educated: A Memoir
Tara Westover
The daughter of survivalists, who is kept out of school, educates herself enough to leave home for university.
5. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Neil deGrasse Tyson
A straightforward, easy-to-understand introduction to the universe.
6. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Michelle McNamara
The late true-crime journalist's search for the serial murderer and rapist known as "the Golden State Killer."
7. Obama: An Intimate Portrait
Pete Souza
More than 300 pictures of the former president by his White House photographer, with behind-the-scenes stories.
8. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Steven Pinker
A case for using reason, science and humanism to counter pessimistic views of Western civilization.
9. The Last Black Unicorn
Tiffany Haddish
The comedian recounts growing up in South Central Los Angeles and finding success after a period of homelessness.
10. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History
Mitch Landrieu
A memoir by the mayor who called for the removal of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans.
11. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World
Bart D. Ehrman
The religious studies professor explores how a new religion came to influence Western society.
12. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
David Grann
The story of a murder spree in 1920s Oklahoma that targeted Osage Indians.
13. Leonardo Da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
A biography of the Italian Renaissance polymath that connects his work in various disciplines.
14. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah
A memoir about growing up biracial in apartheid South Africa by the host of
The Daily Show.
15. The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s
William I. Hitchcock
A history of the 34th president of the United States, who faced bitter partisanship.
© 2018 All rights reserved by New York Times Syndication Sales Corp. This material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner.
A version of this list appears in the April 8, 2018 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending March 24, 2018.
Delaware County District Library
84 E Winter St
Delaware, OH 43015


text: my friend and I are looking to join a gaming group for Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 if possible. He was running a game, but since we lost one of our players, we haven't played for a while. He's wanting to be a player instead of a GM for a change and so here I am looking for the 2 of us to join a game. If anyone needs 1-2 players (if he can't line up his schedule, then just me) my email is firstname.lastname@example.com


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Who doesn't want to make their workout as effective as possibly, right? If you're trying to burn fat, for instance, you may consider taking the latest advice from researchers …
The latest word on fat-burning? Don't eat before a workout.
Though many athletes have to eat before they run (think: Lance Armstrong, etc.), if you're trying to burn fat efficiently, you may want to hold off on that snack until later. According to European researchers, cyclists who trained without eating first burned "significantly" more fat than those who ate a snack prior to a bike ride.
It all has to do with the way your muscles use energy, reports the AP: "When you exercise (after fasting), your adrenaline is high and your insulin is low," said Peter Hespel, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Leuven in Belgium. "That ratio is favorable for your muscles to oxidize (break down) more fatty acids."
While the findings aren't entirely surprising, they are a good reminder of the way the body uses fuel. But here's the thing: I absolutely must eat something light before a long run or else I get weak out there and won't finish my run. So, I'll keep my banana or slice of bread with nut butter before a long run, thank you very much. 🙂
How about you? Do you find that you need a pre-workout, or are you successful at holding off until after?


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Firm Commitment
Following record years, 2014 looks fairly quiet in terms of new aircraft orders. Given the massive backlogs, manufacturers say they are not concerned. But should they be?
Both Airbus and Boeing are planning significant production increases in the next few years. Deliveries are going to go from the current 1,400 to around 2,000 in the 2018-19 timeframe, a roughly 20% boost. The key question is whether the boost in output is justified by underlying market trends. On the darker side, it could mean that the manufacturers will be taking bigger risks for weaker pricing. After all, moving production rates up and down is very expensive and has always been avoided by Airbus and, to a lesser extent, by Boeing.
The huge order backlogs seem to logically call for higher production rates. As of June 11, Airbus had 5,457 aircraft on firm order, Boeing listed 5,199—a combined 10,500 aircraft yet to be delivered for the two leading manufacturers alone. But firm orders are not always as firm as they might seem. The recent cancellation of 70 Airbus A350s by Emirates has not by itself created an overcapacity issue and given the airline's move to even larger aircraft does not signify market weakness. But it illustrates that nothing should be considered "firm."
So is there a risk of a bubble emerging?
Orders this year and next should not serve as a template for the future. After a hugely successful 2013, orders now are likely to be around half of last year's level. By the end of May, Boeing and Airbus were at a combined 750. "We don't need orders, we have enough," says The Airline Monitor's Ed Greenslet. He points to 2007, when the duopoly reached 2,600 orders, and to 2009—when the market collapsed—and notes there were a combined 750 orders at the peak of the global financial crisis.
Follow Aviation Week's coverage of the 2014 Farnborough Air Show
The Farnborough International Airshow is likely to reflect the slower pace of orders this year. As D.A. Davidson analysts point out, Boeing and Airbus collected a total of 1,450 orders worth $295 billion (list prices) at the past two big air shows in Le Bourget and Dubai last year, so given that, "we have modest expectations going into Farnborough." But that does not mean a cessation of orders. Middle Eastern carriers may well "continue to be active" and China needs more aircraft for the 2016-20 planning cycle, orders for which could be announced at the show. Ethiopian Airlines is also close to ordering larger narrowbody aircraft.
Where budget concerns may have driven defense attendance in 2012, the shifting security situation globally is taking its toll on attendance this time around. At the last Farnborough gathering, the U.S. dramatically scaled back its presence because of budget concerns. This year, a delegation of military officials will attend to trumpet the introduction of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to the international stage. And the political situation in Ukraine portends a reduced military presence for Russia, which proudly displayed its Sukhoi Su-35 fighter at the Paris air show just last year (see page 55).
Other civil orders may come if the only major product strategy decision is announced in Farnborough—the launch of the reengined Airbus A330—unofficially called the -A330neo. Air Lease Corp. founder and CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy recently stated he sees a market well in excess of 1,000 units for the type, and many other airlines, including Delta, Lufthansa and Air Asia X, have made clear their interest as well. Airbus has been noncommittal so far; Executive Vice President Marketing and Strategy Kiran Rao recently stated that the decision is "not a slam dunk." Chief Operating Officer for Customers John Leahy also cautioned that the A330neo launch may not come in time for Farnborough.
Industry experts are still split about what to expect in terms of market growth. Greenslet argues that "there is not an overwhelming risk of a bubble over the next five years. Production rates are an honest reflection of needs." He tracks traffic development and the rate of aircraft retirements as the key drivers behind demand for new aircraft. "Traffic will be pretty good," Greenslet predicts, and that is going to be primarily driven by emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. In the U.S. the rate of growth is slower, but from a much higher base.
Greenslet argues that in order to predict what is likely to happen over the next few years, "past patterns don't really matter." He expects airlines to retire a much larger number of aircraft over the next five years than in the preceding five. He calculates 3,800 aircraft will be leaving the active fleet up to 2019—that is about 1,000 more than since 2009. So even with deliveries nearing an annual 2,000, the net output will still be "500 aircraft short of demand."
Leahy concedes that 2014 is likely turning into a "slow year," but he does not anticipate a bubble. "We have been extremely conservative in production, therefore we're smoothing out the order cycle."
The cost of fuel, however, is a major unknown. Price hikes could trigger calls for more fuel-efficient new aircraft and retirement of older types, although airlines might be unable to purchase new aircraft if traffic is choked off through higher fares and thinner profit margins. Conversely, if fuel prices drop, airlines might be tempted to fly aging aircraft longer.
Greenslet is assuming fuel costs will remain constant and retirements mainly will consist of MD-80s, Boeing 737 Classics, 767s, early Airbus A320s and A340s. He sees the rate of aircraft leaving the fleet generally higher in the narrowbody segment than for long-haul types. The replacement process is likely to pick up in speed as Boeing nears full 787 production and Airbus ramps up output of the A350 beginning next year.
In spite of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, Greenslet still sees an average aircraft retirement age as 25 years, although he concedes that almost 30% of the 2013 retirements affected aircraft 20 to 25 years old. "That was almost directly linked to improving fuel efficiency," he says.
Another reason to dismiss past experience is the development of load factors, Greenslet argues. In 1993, the global airline industry was operating at an average 65% load factor. In 2014 this will have risen to almost 80%, and may move to 82-83% in the next 15 years as airlines fine-tune their capacity offerings. The implications are highly relevant for manufacturers: In the past, airlines could grow traffic by finding ways to fill more seats on existing aircraft. That option is no longer so viable for the future. In other words: If airlines are operating at beyond 80% load factors, chances are they will need a lot more new aircraft to grow traffic further compared to past projections for the same planned rates.
Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at Avitas, argues that two key factors influencing future demand could turn out quite differently from Greenslet's projections. "In the long run, fuel will come down," Pilarski believes. Also, "demand forecasts are moving to lower numbers." To him the consequence is clear: "I definitely believe the risk of a bubble exists."
But it is almost impossible to foretell when and how his predicted bubble might burst. "Bubbles are created through irrational behavior and the way they come down again is also irrational," Pilarksi notes. A single event such as a political crisis could trigger a downward spiral.
In the short term Pilarski points at the "troubling developments in the Middle East," particularly in oil-rich Iraq. "A civil war in Iraq can reduce oil production and could cause a spike in prices," he warns. But on the other hand "even fanatics want to sell oil."
Away from politics, Pilarski sees risks inherent to the current position of both Airbus and Boeing. The very fact that backlogs are already so big causes more speculative orders. Airlines are buying aircraft because they want to avoid a situation where they are the only ones in their respective market without available production slots and thus no opportunity to grow along with the competition. Consequently, "many orders probably should not be there," he avers. While Airbus is likely to easily absorb Emirates' A350 cancellation because it is linked to the specific fleet strategy of one airline, things might look different if big lessors are having second thoughts about their commitments.
Pilarski warns of another element of speculation in the backlog that he calls "double counting—airlines count on the same traffic, but all cannot win." A large European airline might have placed a substantial order for long-haul aircraft to be operated mainly into Asia, but many of the putative passengers may instead fly Etihad Airways or Emirates in the future. And leasing companies are counting on the same airlines to take their aircraft.
The cost of oil also has ramifications for the way passengers decide to fly, Pilarski points out. Very high fuel prices mean stopping in the Middle East, even though traveling between Europe and Asia makes a lot more sense because the tankering of fuel is becoming so uneconomical, while the 6-to-8-hr. sectors typical for that kind of medium- to long-haul operation are much nearer to an ideal fuel-efficiency curve.
Pilarski concedes that Greenslet has a point as far as high load factors providing less flexibility inherent in existing fleets, but that could still be overcompensated by a market that may be weaker than most people perceive. He sees some markets, such as India, growing fast, and where business models like the low-cost carriers are not yet at the end of their above-average development in emerging regions, -myriad events could change the equation. "Environmental regulation is a complicating factor, and there is always an unknown level of competence in government agencies," Pilarksi says.
While Boeing concedes that it is as subject to the same "unknowns" as any other industry player, it also believes the dynamics behind today's huge order backlog are fundamentally different from historical order surges, making today's backlog much more robust than in the past. "The dynamics and the buying patterns of our customers have changed," says John Wojick, senior vice president of global sales and marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). "They are buying much further out than we thought they would . . . to make sure they can rejuvenate their fleets and replace older equipment."
The numbers back up this argument, says Randy Tinseth, BCA marketing vice president. "The case closes for replacement and that really establishes a strong base for them to order from and gives us a really strong position from which to start our production lines. In the last three years about 1,800 aircraft have left service. So over that time there have been more replacement aircraft delivered than there have been for growth. So even though we talk about all these numbers, that base is true."
Tinseth also says a key factor is the continued growth of direct services across the capacity spectrum from single-aisle to large-widebody markets. "Fragmentation is alive and well. The International Air Transport Association has reported a doubling of frequencies over the past 20 years, and the cost of travel over that period has halved. That has not happened because everyone is flying in A380s, it is because they are flying in the best product for the particular market and they are a business application." The biggest impact of fragmentation, in terms of units, continues to be seen in the narrowbody market, where the battleground is squarely between the A320 and the new neo version and the 737 and the MAX derivative, both on the way to setting records for commercial jetliner manufacturing rates.
Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, believes current narrowbody production rates are sustainable today, "but going up further can be a real problem. You can go up to 50 or 60 [aircraft per month], but if the slightest thing happens you are in real trouble." He cautions that "the idea to go up further is a great way to engineer overcapacity."
Both Airbus and Boeing have already decided to move production rates up for the narrowbody models—Airbus is boosting the A320 line to 46 aircraft per month from 42, and Boeing is moving 737 production to 47 per month from 38 and is pondering 52. Airbus is also looking at rates higher than 50 when the transition to the A320neo is completed.
Aboulafia also is concerned that some emerging players such as Lion Air or Norwegian may not fulfill their promises. Both airlines have large orders for new narrowbodies with Airbus and Boeing. From a macroeconomic point of view, this is worrisome, he says.
To an extent, the situation for manufacturers is as good as it is because of low interest rates (which encourage investment) and the high cost of fuel. These factors can change, and if Airbus and Boeing are unlucky, fuel will become cheaper and interest rates will rise in parallel. Therefore: "We are taking it too far," Aboulafia contends.
Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST for more analysis and data on on the large commercial aircraft market, or go to AviationWeek.com/civilmarket


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The increase in agricultural receipts in recent years has pushed up land values across the country, but some areas have benefitted more than others.
"The highest cropland values are in fruit and vegetable production areas on the coasts plus the Corn Belt states," says Damona Doye, Sarkeys Distinguished Professor, Extension economist and Regents Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.
Cash rents in those hot spots are also highest, Doye said at the recent Rural Economics Outlook Conference on the OSU campus. Oklahoma cropland values and cash rents have trended upward but not at the pace observed in the Corn Belt states.
USDA-NASS data show that Oklahoma cropland values are the second lowest in the country, $1,190 per acre, ahead of only Montana's $807 per acre. Texas land values were slightly higher at $1,650 per acre. Cropland cash rents in Oklahoma "are the lowest on average in the United States at $29.50 per acre." Texas cash rents were $38 per acre.
High cropland values include $12,800 per acre in New Jersey, $9,230 per acre in California and $8,000 per acre in Arizona. Florida topped $6,000 and Midwest corn states Iowa and Illinois both topped $5,500 per acre in land values.
Cash rents for the higher-value farmland states were also higher: $268 per acre in California, $196 in Iowa, $183 in Illinois and $176 in Washington. New Jersey cash rent was not as high, $62 per acre.
Doye said Oklahoma pastureland values "are not the lowest in the country and have been trending at about $1,000 per acre in recent years." Texas pastureland values are $1,500 per acre. Higher pasture values are found in the Midwest corn states and also to the east of Oklahoma. Georgia pastureland values, for instance, average $5,000 per acre. In Florida, pasture value averages $4,500 and in New Jersey pastureland may run as high as $13,900 per acre. Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia all top $3,500 per acre.
Within Oklahoma, Doye said pastureland cash rents also trend higher to the east. Values are higher in Northeast Oklahoma, she said, where landowners have more improved pasture. "Along the I-35 Corridor and around urban areas, cash rent is higher."
She said about one-third of Oklahoma's pastureland is improved with two-thirds in native pasture. Average pasture cash rent across the state is $11.50 per acre. In Texas that figure is $7.50 per acre.
Upward trend
Doye said value of U.S. cropland and cash rents have trended upward since about 2004, with a U.S. average value in 2010 just above$3,000 per acre and average cash rent just below $120 per acre.
Values and cash rent for Oklahoma have leveled off since 2008, peaking at about $1,200 per acre for non-irrigated cropland and slightly less than $30 per acre for cash rent. Cropland value shows a significant increase since 1998, from about $600 per acre to almost $1,200 per acre. Cash rent has been mostly level over that same period, ranging from about $25 per acre to a high of $30 per acre around 2005.
Pasture land values in Oklahoma have increased from about $400 per acre in 1998 to just more than $1,000 per acre in 2011. Pasture cash rent has gone up from about $8 per acre in 1998 to $11.50 per acre.
Doye also discussed rent-to-value ratios for cropland and pasture. For the United States, cropland rent-to-value ratio declined from 5 to just under 4 from 1998 to 2011with the lowest point, 3, occurring around 2007 to 2008. For U. S. pasture, rent-to-value ratio dropped from 2 to 1 during that same time span with the biggest dip beginning around 2005 and then leveling off.
In Oklahoma, non-irrigated cropland rent-to-value ratio dropped from 4.5 to 2.4 from 1998 to 2011. For pasture in Oklahoma, the ratio moved from 2 to 1 during that period.


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Extraterrestrial Fireworks
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a cosmic explosion that is quite similar to fireworks on Earth. In the nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, a massive star has exploded as a supernova, and begun to dissipate its interior into a spectacular display of colorful filaments. The greenish-blue supernova remnant, E0102, resides 50 light-years away from the edge of a bright glowing massive star-forming region.
Supernova Remnant E0102 in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Reminiscent of a U.S. July 4 Independence Day celebration, here is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a cosmic explosion that is quite similar to fireworks on Earth. In the nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, a massive star has exploded as a supernova, and begun to dissipate its interior into a spectacular display of colorful filaments.
The supernova remnant (SNR), known as "E0102" for short, is the greenish-blue shell of debris just below the center of the Hubble image. Its name is derived from its cataloged placement (or coordinates) in the celestial sphere. More formally known as 1E0102.2-7219, it is located almost 50 light-years away from the edge of the massive star-forming region, N 76, also known as Henize 1956 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. This delicate structure, glowing a multitude of lavenders and peach hues, resides in the upper right of the image.
Determined to be only about 2,000 years old, E0102 is relatively young on astronomical scales and is just beginning its interactions with the nearby interstellar medium. Young supernova remnants like E0102 allow astronomers to examine material from the cores of massive stars directly. This in turn gives insight on how stars form, their composition, and the chemical enrichment of the surrounding area. As well, young remnants are a great learning tool to better understand the physics of supernova explosions.
E0102 was observed in 2003 with the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys. Four filters that isolate light from blue, visible, and infrared wavelengths and hydrogen emission were combined with oxygen emission images of the SNR taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1995.
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby dwarf galaxy to our own Milky Way. It is visible in the Southern Hemisphere, in the direction of the constellation Tucana, and lies roughly 210,000 light-years distant.
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgment: J. Green (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Keith Noll
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, MD
Phone: 410-338-1828
Email: email@example.com
James Green
Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, Astrophysics Research Laboratory
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
Phone: 303-492-7645
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.