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Q: My question is, “In Romans 13, in relation to Romans 13, what should a Christian do if they are against vaccines if the government tries to force us to take them?”
A: let me just make a quick and obvious statement. As it is now, you have a 99.998 percent chance of having no lasting effect from COVID. From what we hear, the vaccine is 94 percent effective. So why reduce your odds?

Q: I’ve worked with young people for many years now back in my home country in Guatemala, and now here. Is there a point in which you – and I know some of my friends who are students or counselors from TMU, we’ve talked about this – is there a point in which after you deal with one person over and over and over and you don’t see a lot of fruit in them that you just let go at some point? I say this because I know when I was in the world, Christians were reaching out to me, and good brothers in Christ now. But I guess I needed because of my stubbornness and my pride to fall into the sins that I did. And I think I’m the person that I am today because of the grace of God shown to me through my sinfulness. So is there a point as a counselor, as a, you know, brother in Christ where you say, “That’s it”?
A: The answer is, “Of course there is,” because in the end, any work of God in the heart is the work of God. There’s an end to your exhausting counsel. There’s an end to your exhaustive warnings. There’s an end to the process of trying to pick the people up and call them back to faithfulness. There’s an end to that. Even God runs out of patience, according to Scripture. But since the work is God’s work anyway, there doesn’t have to be an end to your prayers. So when, in my life, when I’ve exhausted all that I can do – and there are people in my life about whom I can say that I have done everything I can do, I have exhausted every possibility personally and in ministry – I can’t do any more, and I ask the question, “Are they getting closer or are they getting harder?” And if I see the hardness, then I have to move on to ripe fruit, but I don’t have to stop praying; and prayer is the power that moves God. : Just put them on your prayer list, and after a certain point, if you feel they’re coming toward the truth, then you continue. If you feel that you’re just reaching the same resistance – and the same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. So you’re shining the light of God’s truth on some hearts and they melt, and on some hearts and they harden. When you see that, put them on the prayer list and go on to someone else who’s more responsive.

Q: I’m a mother of two adult daughters who are unsaved. Both have significant others who happen to come from Christian homes. I’m not allowed to mention Christ to them at various times. I’ve been informed that I’m not to mention God or I will not be welcomed in their home. Interestingly enough these Christian in-laws are respectful of this request, as my daughter tells me they only have to pray over meals in their homes. Why is this such an urgent burden upon my heart, and how do I resign myself to honoring the requests?
A: I don’t think you have to honor that request. Why would you honor that request?

A: Because they won’t let me in their home if I don’t.
A: That’s their choice. Where I go, Christ goes. When I open my mouth I speak of Him, I don’t have a language without Him. If you tell me I can’t come into your place and speak to the honor of Christ then I can’t be in your place; and I think that kind of alienation is more stark than you conforming to them. It’s not lovelessness on your part to do that, it is faithfulness. You belong to the Lord; you can’t even live life without speaking of Christ.

Q: Where do they got the testimony then?
A: The testimony will come if that is the purpose of God. Their salvation isn’t left in your hands, that belongs to God to save them. You know, Jesus talked about casting your pearls before swine. You just don’t throw away holy things in front of people who tread on them; and to silence yourself about that is to acquiesce to that, and that makes them feel more justified. I think they need to pay the full price of that kind of demand on your life, and you need to be continually reminding them, “I want to be in your life, I want to be a part of your life, I want to be with you, but I will and I must talk of Christ, because He is the one you need. If you don’t want me to do that, then I can’t be with you. Tell me when you’re ready for me to speak the things that are most important to me.” Okay?

Q: With everything that’s going on, how can we pray for you?
A: Just pray for me all the time. You know, I feel like the Lord has just surrounded my life in amazing ways in this period. It’s hard for me to understand how it is that the city of Los Angeles, state of California tries to shut us down. They’ve been trying to shut us down for nine months, and they can’t do it. And the Health Department fining us every week $500.00, $500.00, $500.00 every week for violation here. And we haven’t had to pay them because until there’s a full trial on the First Amendment, they can’t receive the $500.00. So we just keep dumping it in an escrow account; we haven’t paid any of it. And now the Supreme Court out of nowhere for some Catholics and some Jewish rabbis in New York rules in favor of us. And then in California, a couple of charismatic churches get a ruling from the Supreme Court that further protects us. And I think this is probably the third Sunday in a row when the Health Department hasn’t been here. Is that true? They don’t come anymore. We actually got an inside message from someone in the Health Department and they said most of the people in the Health Department are embarrassed about how the Health Department is treating Grace Church. There are some people here on Sundays, have been in the past with the Health Department who were sitting in the back singing hymns with us because they know the Lord. The police sent out a memo in the city a few months ago that said, “In the event that you should take any action to the city fathers against Grace Community Church, the LAPD will not be involved.” So I think we’re having police training here this week; we are. They come all the time. They come all the time. They love Grace Church and we love them. So the Lord has really protected us, hasn’t He? And you all look better than you’ve ever looked. You look healthy, and, you know, we all feel like a bunch of Daniels, don’t we? Take a look at us, the Lord’s sustaining us.

Q: Thank you for signing my book. I know you’re a busy man, I had to send it to you; but thank you. It’s called The Almost Christian by Matthew Mead. And when I sent it to you I asked for conviction. This is a book of conviction. And so my question is to express the importance of the Puritans in terms of this church, the history back then in the 17th century and where we are now. How important are the Puritans to this particular church?
A: That’s such a good question. If you go to the bookstore at all, go to wherever the Puritans’ books are and start reading the Puritans. We had planned to have the first national conference on the Puritans right here at Grace Church. Joel Beeke, everything he writes about the Puritans is just phenomenal. And COVID ended all that. It was all planned, and you all would have been exposed, mega exposed to the Puritans. So we hope that that’s going to be reinstated as soon as whatever happens is going to happen. People ask me, “When are they going to stop treating us like this, the government?” and my answer usually, “When you stop letting them.” And until people respond by saying, “We’re not going to do that,” we want to be submissive to the government in an orderly way and in a legal way, but they don’t have laws that allow them to destroy our lives. So, no, you need to go to the bookstore, get some of the – start with some of the paperbacks or Matthew Mead on The Almost Christian Discovered, or Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity, or any of those. I think what makes the Puritans so profoundly rich is they live in an uncluttered era. Life was slower, media was nonexistent, and they thought more deeply than people do today in the mad panic of our lives. They thought profoundly and deeply about the Word of God, the things of God. I just finished a book, an Oxford book on the company of pastors who were part of Geneva during Calvin’s era 1546 to 1609, about 120 or 130 of these men. And all they did all week long in the city of Geneva was exposit the Word of God day after day, after day, after day. It was in the St. Pierre, the great cathedral where I preached in Calvin’s pulpit when they introduced the French Study Bible in then the la de toire, the little auditorium next door. All day long, all day long they’re expositing the Word of God. The book says how devoted they were to the discipling of people, how serious they were about church discipline. The Puritans were so fully engaged in sound doctrine, teaching the Bible, and applying it to people’s lives in a very personal way from house to house like the apostles. There’s a richness in the writings of the Puritans. It’s uncluttered by the philosophies of modern era. It’s like going back to some pure stream, because they’re not influenced by all the things that have influenced the centuries in between. So if you don’t know the Puritans, look at the bookstore. Find something on the Puritans, start reading, and you will discover a whole new realm of spiritual blessing and joy.

Q: Glory to God for what He’s been doing here, praise God for that. A question about the thief on the cross when Jesus Christ told him, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” And then John chapter 20, verse 17, it talks about Mary and Jesus revealing Himself to her, and she’s not supposed to touch Him, and He says, “Because I haven’t ascended up to heaven to the Father.” So where is Jesus and the thief in those moments of time in between?
A: I’m trying to figure out exactly what you mean by that. When Jesus said, “Today you’ll be with Me in paradise,” He meant that thief would be in heaven that day and He’d be there, too.

Q: It says in John chapter 20, verse 17, “Jesus saith unto her, ‘Touch Me not.’”
A: Yeah. Well, what He was saying to her really is, “You can’t hold onto Me, I’m not going to stay.” I mean, you know she was horrified that Jesus had died. They were there at the tomb before the apostles were there, and she was crushed beyond imagination; and then she has the conversation about how sad she is, and He reveals Himself to her, and He’s saying to her, “You can’t hold onto Me, I have to ascend to My Father.” So He’s talking about His actual earthly ascension, His actual earthly ascension. When He died on the cross, the question is, “Where was His Spirit?” His body was on the cross in the grave. Obviously His Spirit was in heaven because that’s paradise, and He met the thief there. And obviously He made a short visit to hell, because He appeared to the demons to declare His triumph over them, Colossians says. So in the time that His body was in the grave, He was in heaven, and then He was announcing His triumph in hell. In His resurrection, He comes back to earth and says to Mary, “I can’t stay,” and He – Acts 1, right? – ascended into heaven; and that’s what He meant where He intercedes for His own and waits to return. Does that help?

Q: About seven or eight years ago I was on the East Coast hearing you preach about predestination and almost smashing my iPhone because I didn’t like that. But you’ve – God has used you to correct a lot of wrong things that I’ve thought. So, thank you.  So I just wanted – so original sin verses transgression of the law. So I’m going to ask the short version of this, and then kind of unpack it a little bit more in a longer version, and hopefully it’ll make sense why. Is there a difference in the way that God deals with original or imputed sin in our personal transgression of His law? So the wages of sin is death. All sin, so all die. Unbelievers will experience the first death and the second death. For believers, Jesus cleanses us of our sin, and we are spared the second and eternal death, but not the first. So even though death has lost its sting to the believer, there seems to be a parsing of the first and second deaths as different payments. In your book In the Arms of God, Safe in the Arms of God, you make a case that children who die before the age of accountability can still go to heaven. So is it biblical to say that the first death is a payment for our inherited original sin which would also strengthen the notion that babies born before hearing the gospel can enter heaven?
A: Yeah. Just to give you a short answer: I don’t ever want to see the death of a believer as a payment. I don’t ever want to see the death of a believer as a form of punishment, which a payment would be. Death for a believer is ushering us into the heavens into the presence of God. And you say, “Well, why would you believe that that could happen to a baby?” Because a baby is the perfect illustration of sovereign salvation by God. Jesus said, “You’ll die in your sins because you believe not on Me.” That’s not possible for a baby or for an infant or for a small child. So the first death is simply the normal end of human existence. In other words, I don’t see that death as a punishment by God as something that takes on some kind of redemptive character. I simply thing you were born, you live a physical life, and part of that physical life is you die: you’re dying through your whole physical life, and eventually it ends. That is just the dealing with the physical reality, I don’t see that as any kind of payment. I think when the believer dies, whether it’s a little one that the Lord gathers to Himself – as I try to prove in the book Safe in the Arms of God – or whether it’s a believer, it is simply the release. What would we even say? How could we even say that the death of a believer could in any sense be a punishment when you don’t even experience it? You’re absent from the body, present with the Lord. So where’s the punishment? There is nothing. Absent from the body, present with the Lord; far better to depart and be with Christ. Now if you’re a Roman Catholic and you want to fill in some big gap in purgatory, now you’re talking about the death of a person being an opportunity for that person to atone for his own sins, which calls into question the reality of the sacrifice of Christ, which is a full atonement. So He paid all of the penalty for our sins, and death for us is not a penalty; death for us is a release into His presence.

Q: How does a kid know if he or she is a Christian or not? And if they are a believer, when should they get baptized?
A; Tell me something. If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and believe that He came into the world and lived a sinless life and died on the cross, and you believe He died there for your sins, and you believe He rose from the dead, and that Jesus is your Lord, and you want to honor Him, and you like to sing songs about Him, and you like to read the Bible. So see, all of these things are desires that don’t exist in the unconverted heart. You know, you’ve expressed to me everything that the Bible says you need to believe to be a Christian; and the fact that you desire to love the Lord and honor the Lord is because He’s made you new and gave you those desires; and they’ll grow stronger as you grow older.

Q: I really enjoyed reading through the Old Testament because obviously what we’re going through now is really not a big deal in light of the span of history. But I wanted to get your recommendations on going deeper into studying the Major and Minor Prophets. I just wasn’t sure which resource to choose.
A: I just suggest to you a good way to start is just – and I’m saying this because it’s a simple approach – get your MacArthur Study Bible and read the introductions to the prophets, and then just read the book and go through the notes. So you don’t get too bogged down, start with the Minor Prophets. They’re not minor, that’s a bad term. They’re major messages, but shorter books. And I think it’s great. Read the introduction to each of the shorter prophet books, and then read the notes that help you understand the book, and you’ll be profoundly blessed going through the Minor Prophets. And when you’ve done that, you can tackle the big ones: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. Okay?

Q: When God created the heavens and the angels, He created them perfect and sinless, and there was no sin in heaven. So the question was, “How then was Satan able to sin against God?” and ultimately the question would be, “Is there anywhere in Scripture that refers to the will of angels?”
A: No, there’s nothing that I can think of that refers to the will of the angels. All the holy angels do only the will of God, so they don’t have a will independent of God; and all the fallen angels’ is basically captive to their fallen condition. The question of God creating angels and God creating a world without sin is, of course, the ultimate question; and there’s nothing that we can say that would really elucidate it. We can’t say that the sin of the angels came from inside, because they were holy. We can’t say that it came from the outside, because there was no sin on the outside. So that is the ultimate question. God allowed it because He wanted to manifest His glory in redemption and grace and mercy and forgiveness, and that required sin. But as to the source of that, the Bible doesn’t tell us. But when it does identify that sin, five times you have Lucifer saying, “I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.” He willed to take the place of God, to overpower God. So we can say then, on the basis of that, that sin did not come from anywhere outside, it came from inside Lucifer and the fallen angels who went with him; and it was an act of will. Somehow God allowed for those angels at that time to have the expression of their will. Once that was done, it was permanently solidified. The fallen angels are locked into their fallenness, and the holy angels are locked into their holiness. But what the Bible would simply tell us is it came from inside Lucifer, and he led the rebellion. So the angels had a will to fall, and that’s all they will ever know everlastingly in the lake of fire. Holy angels have only the will to honor God. That’s all we know from Scripture. Okay? Good question.

Q: Will the folks that did not have the mental capacity to know our Lord, or the children that have been aborted, will they be back in the millennium?
A: Sure. Everybody comes back in the millennium. Yeah, we all come back. He comes with the saints and the holy angels. So when our Lord returns at the end of the period of tribulation, comes in His second coming, He comes with His saints; all of the redeemed of all of the ages will come back.

Q: How do I love Jesus? Or love God?
A: How do you love Jesus or love God? It’s the same deal. You know how you do that? Do you know how you love your dad and mom? By doing what they tell you to do, by being obedient. “If you love Me,” He said, “you do what I tell you to do.” That’s how you show your love to Him. So when you read the Bible and you read something that Jesus wants you to, if you love Him, you obey Him.

Q: When Jesus was buried, He was three days/nights in the heart of the earth, hades, the region of the dead before Christ’s ascension, right? So there’s two parts to hades. There’s paradise where the Old Testament saints are, or Abraham’s bosom, and then there’s a section for nonbelievers on torment. My question is, “Did He visit both sections of hades while He was there?”
A: Yeah, that’s what we were saying earlier. Hades is just a term for the grave. So you have to define what you mean. So we said earlier that when Jesus died He met the thief in paradise; that’s the place where the righteous go. We also know in Colossians that He showed up at the celebration in hell and triumphed over demons in that very moment. They were celebrating His death, and He showed up alive and pronounced judgment on them. So, yes, I think when He was dead He was with the thief in heaven, and declared His triumph over the demons in hell. That’s not a problem for Him; He is omnipresent, right?