Created for Companionship: The God Who Walks With His People

Posted on 11/23/2025 by Paul Pavao

When the Philistines seized David in Gath, he wrote:

You count my wanderings.
You put my tears into your container.
Aren’t they in your book?
Then my enemies shall turn back in the day that I call.
I know this: that God is for me.
In God, I will praise his word.
In Yahweh, I will praise his word.
I have put my trust in God.
I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?

I was reminded of a morning in the hospital, getting chemo for leukemia. God had done something amazing for me, which happened a lot during my leukemia trek, and I was giving him thanks, marveling at the attention he showed me. I felt the Lord speak, in seeming frustration, “What will it take for you to believe I am for you?”

I told my wife about this, and she told me about a story she read in a book. A man was praying one morning, and he felt God wanted him to go out to his hot tub. Despite not being sure this was really the Lord’s leading, he went. As he sat in the hot tub, wondering why he was there, God asked him why he bought the hot tub.

I’m guessing that he was wondering whether God wanted him to get rid of it. He had bought it partly for health reasons and partly for the sheer enjoyment of it. God said, “How you feel in this hot tub is how I want to be with you. I want to enjoy you and spend time with you.”

We need to be reminded that God made Adam and Eve in the garden so that he could walk with them and enjoy the cool of the day with them. That goal has never changed.

We consider Enoch blessed because he was caught up to heaven (Gen. 5:24). Only one thing was said about Enoch, that he walked with God. If one of the notably blessed humans was blessed for walking with God, then it must be that God wants to walk with us … with you … with me.

“We love him because he first loved us.”–1 John 4:19

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The Salvation Evangelicals Forgot: Paul’s Missing Category.

Posted on 11/21/2025 by Paul Pavao

One of the biggest problems with evangelical (Reformation-based) theology is that no one considers whether “saved” or “salvation” can mean more than one thing. This despite the fact that the apostle Paul wrote:

Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life. (Rom. 5:9-10)

“We were reconciled,” but “we will be saved from God’s wrath.” Being reconciled to God is what we evangelicals generally call “being saved.” Yet Paul says “much more then,” if we are justified and reconciled, we will be saved from wrath through Jesus and “his life.”

What is this second salvation?

The people I meet in churches and Bible studies diligently guard themselves against assigning too much importance to the judgment by works mentioned in 2 Corinthians 5:10. It’s not central to their thoughts because, obviously, works have nothing to do with salvation … and by salvation they mean both the reconciliation to God we have already received and the salvation from wrath that Paul says is in the future. The past-tense, future-tense distinction in Romans 5:9-10 is not important to them because “works have nothing to do with any salvation.”

The problem is that someone forgot to train Jesus, Paul, and–of course–James in evangelical theology concerning the future salvation Paul mentioned in Romans 5:9-10, salvation from wrath:

Know this for sure, that no sexually immoral person, nor unclean person, nor covetous man (who is an idolater), has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. Therefore don’t be partakers with them. (Eph. 5:5-7)

I highlighted the words that express the importance of what Paul is saying here. If you did not process the actual important message, though, go back and read the words in normal type. Doesn’t it sound like works may have something to do with that future salvation?

In case it helps, I am going to point out that many of the pastors I listen to, and even some of my friends, like to say, “We will only be judged by the good works we have done, and only for rewards.” Paul said though,”… according to what he has done, whether good or bad” in 2 Corinthians 5:10.

I’m going to leave you with two last things here: 1. Peter’s response to the judgment; and 2. the caveat on God’s mercy I now put in all my posts like this.

Peter’s Response to the Coming Salvation from Wrath

1 Peter 1:17 says:

If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear.

Let’s talk about the phrase “reverent fear” in the translation I use, the World English Bible. The Greek word there just means “fear.” “Reverent” is added by the translator. It is true that fear can be crippling, and there is no good to be had in cowering from God. All true fear should drive you toward God, not away from him. John Bevere has an excellent video on the true fear of God. All of us who have experienced it the way Bevere describes know this is the true fear of God.

Nonetheless, I would be doing what so many others do, leaving truth out they don’t think you can handle, if I did not tell you that “fear” in the New Testament involves not only being scared enough to do something, but even trembling. Paul says we are to work out our salvation with “fear and trembling” in Philippians 2:12. I am certain he means the same thing Peter does in 1 Peter 1:17.

More generally, the Holy Spirit says through Isaiah, “I will look to this man, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2). 

Caveat: God’s Mercy

To put it simply God is merciful deep down in his very nature. He announces to Moses that he is …

a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, 7 keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin … (Ex. 34:6-7)

It is true that the next line says that he will by no means clear the guilty, but by “guilty” he means those who do not fear him, do not hate evil, and who just continue in their wickedness. Even then he is always hoping the wicked will repent and become righteous (Ez. 18:20-24; 2 Pet. 3:9). He does not want the wicked to die (same verses).

Psalm 136 tells us 26 times that God’s lovingkindness endures forever. When Jehoshaphat put singers in front of his army on the way to battle, they sang, “God’s lovingkindness endures forever.” In the middle of Jeremiah’s great lament over the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jews’ captivity in Babylon, he wrote:

This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope. It is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. “Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul. “Therefore I will hope in him.” Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. (Lam. 3:21-27)

Yes, God is just and, yes, God is holy, but his justice and holiness do not get in the way of his mercy. As Hosea, and Jesus, said, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” Some, as evidenced by D. James Kennedy’s Evangelism Explosion and the Southern Baptists’ “Continuing Witness Training,” wrongly think that God’s justice triumphs over his mercy. It does not. If you are living wickedly …

Seek Yahweh [through Jesus] while he may be found.Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him, to our God, for he will freely pardon. (Isa. 55:7)

Jesus did not die to change God. God was already overflowing with and longing for mercy toward the repentant. He died for you so that you would have the power to repent and live in the fear of God and be able to expect the abundant mercy of God when you stumble like a human (Heb. 4:16). The righteous stumble seven times and rise up again (Prov. 24:16).

James, the Lord’s brother, known to Jews and Christians alike as “James the Just,” possible the most righteous man who ever lived, wrote: For we all stumble in many things (Jas. 3:2). Rise up and patiently continue to do good by the Holy Spirit, for you will reap in due season, if you do not faint (Rom. 2:6-7; Gal. 6:9).

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Only the Unruly Need Be Warned & the Faith Once For All Delivered to the Saints

Posted on 11/05/2025 by Paul Pavao

Only the Unruly Need Be Warned

I write a lot of things on good works and the warnings that we must continue in the faith if we expect to receive the reward on the last day. We learned during the years at Rose Creek Village, however, that the ones who don’t need the exhortation are the first to receive it, while those who need it tend to think they’re doing fine.

1 Thessalonians 5:14: We exhort you, brothers: Admonish the disorderly; encourage the faint-hearted; support the weak; be patient toward all.

This is to say that many of my friends don’t need to be warned about the upcoming judgment. You already live in fear of God. The fear of God is to hate evil, and you are already warring against the evil in your life, giving yourself to the service of God and others. You just need a pat on your back and to be told, “Those who serve everyone in humility the way you do will be the greatest in God’s kingdom” (Matt. 20:26-28).

*Everyone should know this song (many already do), to remind ourselves of that great truth.

The Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints

I hope, though, that everyone wants to know what the Bible says, and there is a paradigm (a model or worldview, maybe) of Christianity that prevails in the United States and which contradicts the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

The faith was once delivered by the apostles. It was delivered to the next generation of saints. We have lots of writings from them, and they tell us what was delivered to them. It was not Calvinism, not going to heaven by faith alone, not a taboo against the word “works,” but it was a warring together against evil deeds in our midst and a profound horror at division.

From AD 185:

The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one” [Eph. 1:10] and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to Him [Php. 2:10-11], and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send spiritual wickednesses, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.

As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Bk. I, ch. 10, par. 1-2)

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How I Finally Reconciled “Faith Alone” and “Works” in the Bible.

Posted on 10/28/2025 by Paul Pavao

I was taught, like most Protestants, “salvation by faith alone.” The problem with this is that I was taught that “salvation” meant “going to heaven.” The two, however, are not equivalent. This is the story of how I found out that “saved” does not always mean “going to heaven,” and that if you don’t understand the difference, you will continually misinterpret the apostle Paul and his letters.

I wrote this in response to someone who argued that we should not launch off on our own, but make sure we have good counsel before we start delving into questionable or controversial ideas.

Like most Protestants I was taught–in my case by the Assemblies of God–that salvation is by faith alone. As I pointed out above, we all thought this meant “going to heaven” by faith alone. So, the first time I ran across Romans 2:6, which says we will be judged by our works, I wrote it on the last blank page of my Bible. It only took a year or two to fill the back page and then the inside of the back cover with Scripture references, dozens of them. At the top of the list was the only occurrence of the words “faith alone” or “faith only” in the Bible, James 2:24, which says “not by faith only.”

Of course I know that “faith apart from works” is the equivalent of “faith only,” but it is nonetheless intriguing that the actual phrase in found in a verso that says “not by faith only.”

Nonetheless, I just could not figure out how to reconcile “not by works so no man can boast” with “know this for sure, that no unclean, immoral, or covetous man has any inheritance in the kingdom of God and Christ,” both written by Paul and both in the same letter, Ephesians (2:8-9 & 5:5).

When I married I was still writing all those references and struggling to reconcile them. After a year or so of controversy with the pastor of the Baptist church we were attending, Lorie asked me, “How can you be the only one who is right?”

As an aside, to help you understand her question, I was beginning to question whether baptism was really a symbolic public testimony in Scripture. The apostles baptized immediately and there is no record in Acts that they ever prayed a sinner’s prayer with anyone. Most pointedly, when Ananias baptized Paul, he told him, “Arise and be baptized, washing away your sins and calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). I was teaching Sunday school at the time, but I chose to talk to the pastor rather than teach the things I was seeing. It did not go well. He first said greater minds than ours have discussed these things, then that I needed to go to a different church.

I told her, “I can’t. If I’m the only one seeing these things, then I have to be wrong. But the Baptist church we’re going to can’t be right either because they don’t even care what these verses say.”

Finally, a friend brought me David Bercot’s Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up right after it was published in 1989. I read it, brought it to my wife, and said, “I’m not wrong; I was just born in the wrong century.”

Still, Bercot’s book did not resolve the conflict between Ephesians 2 & 5 because he just said, “It’s faith and works.” Later, reading the fathers themselves, I found the same contradiction in Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians. Chapter 1 says we’re saved by faith apart from works, quoting Ephesians 2. Chapter 2 says God will only raise us up if we keep his commandments, don’t return evil for evil, etc.

Polycarp didn’t resolve the conflict for me, but he must have known how someone could believe we are saved by faith apart from works but also believe that we can only enter the kingdom of God if we patiently continue to do good (Rom. 2:6-7). I began anxiously expecting to find the secret.

In 1992, reading the Letter to Diognetus (ch. 9), I finally found what should have been obvious to me. The letter points out that what we received by faith is the power to enter the kingdom or, in other words, the power to do good works (cf. Eph. 2:10; Tit. 2:11-14). Entering the kingdom, though, requires us to do the good works we are created in Christ Jesus to do (cf. Gal. 5:19-21 & 6:7-9; Eph. 5:3-7; 1 Cor. 6:9-11).

I felt dumb. How did I not see for SIX YEARS that all the “faith only” verses are in the past tense! All the verses requiring works are in the future tense. During those 6 years, I’m sure I read Romans at least 6 times, but never caught “we were reconciled by his blood” and “we shall be saved from wrath by his life” both in Romans 5:9-10. Saved from wrath is future. Saved from being dead in sin and enslaved to sin is in the past tense. Slaves to sin can’t save themselves by not sinning. Once Jesus saves us, though, reconciles us to God and makes us new creatures, we have to stop sinning because sin has always been what separates us from God (Isa. 59:2). To stop sinning has always been what God wants from us, not sacrifices but obedience (Isa. 1:1-20; 1 Sam. 15:22).

Thus, the central purpose of Jesus’ death was not the forgiveness of sins. God offered forgiveness of sins for repentance in pretty much every book of the Old Testament (e.g., Isaiah 1:1-20; Jer. 7:21-23; Ezek. 18:20-30; Micah 6:6-8; etc.). The primary purpose of Jesus’ death was ransoming us out of slavery to sin just as he ransomed Israel from Egypt.

All of this happened not quite on my own, but it would never have happened if I had listened to the counsel of the Assemblies of God and the Baptists. If you dig deep and find something that absolutely contradicts your teaching then, apparently, you need to go to another church because your church sure isn’t going to change just because of the Bible. At least, that was my experience.

Worse, if you convince some of their sheep of the truth of Scripture and the faith once for all delivered to the saints, you’ll be branded a sheep stealer and a divisive man.

It is, and was for me, a tough row to hoe. God saves people who don’t have their theology right. Those saved people know they have to do good works, but they cannot admit that the Bible says so no matter how many verses are presented to them. I admit they’re really saved, but if I try to teach them the Bible, which tells me to “contend earnestly” for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, they run me off.

I’m older now, so I let God do the teaching bit by bit, except online and in books where people can read and consider without the pressure of toeing the party line. In person I content myself with trying to obey the things I teach by loving and serving, making every effort to live out my own teachings. I’m trying not to be a hypocrite and thus be disqualified even while preaching to others (1 Cor. 9:24-27).

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Psalm 38: What Is Righteousness and How Merciful Is God?

Posted on 10/25/2025 by Paul Pavao

Caught again, your faithless friend.
Don’t you ever tire of hearing what a fool I’ve been?
(“Stubborn Love” by Kathy Troccoli)

King David wrote Psalm 38. It seems like it has to be about the Bathsheba incident because he is crushed and repenting for some grave sin. It might not be, though, because the story in 2 Samuel 11 & 12 says nothing about David losing his health. Psalm 38, though, has him so sick that his “wounds stink and fester” (v. 5, ESV). This is “because of my foolishness” (also v.5).

It seems odd, then, very odd, that David would close the Psalm with:

They who render evil for good are also adversaries to me,
because I follow what is good.
Don’t forsake me, Yahweh.
My God, don’t be far from me.
Hurry to help me,
Lord, my salvation. (Ps. 38:20-22)

Whaaat?? He follows after good? I don’t think so. He did something so bad that “my iniquities have gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me” (v. 4). How can he possibly say he follows after good?

I confess to complaining often that we ignore warning verses in the New Testament that are preceded by “don’t you know?” and “don’t be decieved” (1 Cor. 6:9-11), “I forewarn you even as I also forewarned you” (Gal. 5:19-21),  and “let no one lead you astray” (1 Jn. 3:7).

I can write about the requirement for righteousness and good works if you want eternal life (Rom. 2:6-7; 6:22; Gal. 6:7-9) because I know what the Scriptures say about righteousness and the mercy of God. Jude, our Lord’s human brother, warns us not to turn the favor (grace) of God into a license for sin (Jude 1:4), but let’s talk about the difference between turning the favor of God into indecency and turning the mercy of God into indecency.

Jude uses “favor” (grace) in his warning, not mercy. Here’s why:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age; looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works. (Tit. 2:11-14)

God’s grace, better translated his favor, is all about releasing us from sin. Romans 6:14 says that sin won’t have dominion over us because we are under favor rather than law. God’s favor triumphantly makes us, who were but are no longer dead in our sins, alive in Christ (Eph. 2:5). It stays with us, empowering us to take our stand as servants of Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1-2). It teaches us, which means we are continually being taught by his favor, how to live righteously (quote above).

Don’t falsely teach his favor as though it were merely mercy. Don’t tell people, “Oh, don’t worry, God’s favor means he won’t attribute sin to you (Rom. 4:8).” That would be turning favor into a license for sin.

On the other hand, mercy is an allowance for sin. The same God our Father, the same Lord Jesus, that teaches you by favor and calls you to deny yourself and take up your cross, knows “we all stumble in many ways” (Jas. 3:2). The same God who said, “your iniquities have separated you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you” (Isa. 59:2), also said:

Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
Let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him,
to our God, for he will freely pardon. (Isa. 55:7)

The apostle John understood these things, saying that those who claim to be without sin are deceiving themselves and are liars (1 Jn. 1:8 & 10). In the next verse, he tells us he is writing his letter so that we don’t sin, but “if we do sin, we have a Helper with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Don’t let anyone tell you that the Greek word parakletos means “defense lawyer” in that verse. We don’t need a defense lawyer with God. He is not waiting to kill you for every sin you commit, only prevented from doing so because he sees that he already killed his Son, relieving his blood-wrath against you. That’s an insult to God and a lie from the devil. Here is what God is like when we sin:

Yahweh passed by before [Moses], and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty …” (Ex. 34:6-7)

God our Father and Jesus our Lord have the same will and the same heart. Isn’t that what the doctrine of the Trinity is all about? It’s crazy to think that the Father wants to kill us, but the Son wants to have mercy on us. It’s God the Father who so loved the world that he send his only Son to save us. The Son loves us just like the Father, not differently, laying down his life for us while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). That verse points out, too, that when Jesus laid his life down for us, it was “God commend[ing] his own love toward us.”

In 1 John 2:1, the word I translated “Helper,” and that most Bible translations translate as “Advocate” or “Counselor,” is the same word that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit 4 times in John, chs. 14-16. There translators use “Helper” or “Comforter” almost exclusively.

When we sin and have to go to the Father, here is what the Bible says is happening:

Let’s therefore draw near with boldness to the Throne of Favor, that we may receive mercy AND may find favor for help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16)

Let’s try to “see” the picture of Jesus helping us when we sin. We are  running to the Throne “boldly,” because Jesus has cleansed the throne room, the Holy of Holies, with his blood. Hebrews compares this to the priest cleansing the Ark of the Covenant, and especially its cover, where God dwelt between the cherubim, with the blood of animals on the Day of Atonement (Heb. 9:7-12). The high priest had to do that every year under the Old Covenant. Jesus, however, has purified the heavenly Holy of Holies of our sins forever and ever with just one offering that never needs repeating.

Righteousness in the New Testament is not pretend righteousness, where God pretends you are as righteous as Jesus is. The righteousness of Jesus for those who are actually doing righteousness (1 Jn. 3:7 … “let no one lead you astray”). But it is the commonly pushed misunderstanding of doing that I am warring against today.

Note: I don’t want to lose anyone. I am arguing that you are probably already doing righteousness if you are following Jesus. People tell you that you can’t be worthy, can’t do good works–or at least not enough good works, and that you can’t be righteous. Don’t believe them. If you’re trying at all to follow Jesus, then God is creating you in him to do good works. Don’t deny that he is being successful in his work; give thanks for it! David did!

Okay, back to the throne room. According to Ephesians 3:12 as well as Hebrews 4:16 we are coming to the Throne of Favor in confidence. There, we are obtaining mercy from our merciful Father, who sits on a Throne of Favor because favors us! Another acceptable translation would be that he sits on a Throne of Grace because he is gracious to us all the time.

At the Throne of Favor, the Son is sitting at God’s right hand, ready with his Father, to bestow mercy and forgive your sins. The reason he is called parakletos (1 Jn. 2:2) at that Throne is because he is the one who helps us. We are not only receiving mercy, but also favor to help in time of need.

Jesus is our Helper in exactly the same way the Holy Spirit helps us. Normally, we have to go to John 14-16 and explain that Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit he will send is exactly like him, like Jesus. In this post, though, I have to refute the false idea that Jesus is a defense attorney and tell you that Jesus is just like the Holy Spirit. He is providing favor so that you can be helped through your time of need, a need that probably had a lot to do with the sin you are, hopefully boldly, confessing at the Throne, which you came to on a path made for you by the blood of Jesus.

As a side note, you don’t need to ask for the blood of Jesus at the Throne. It was applied to the Throne itself and made a path for you a long time ago.

Back to righteousness. David’s claim that he  follows what is good (Ps. 38:20) was true, despite the fact that he was temporarily under severe physical chastisement for severe sin that he had done against God. The sin was the exception; the fierce loyalty to God that David was famous for was his norm. Thus, he was a righteous before God.

Just keeping us on track, God is looking for a pattern of righteousness, not sinless perfection. It is the sacrifice, the animal, that had to be perfect, not the one offering. Jesus had to perfect and without sin, and so he was, but we who follow Jesus are called to patiently continue to do good (Rom. 2:7) without growing weary of doing so (Gal. 6:9), not to sinless perfection.

We can see this in many of David’s psalms. In Psalm 25, David sings, “Pardon my iniquity, for it is great” (Ps. 25:11), yet he begins Psalm 26 with “Judge me, Yahweh, for I have walked in my integrity. I have trusted also in Yahweh without wavering.”

Both these things are true! The righteous are rewarded for a habit of putting God first; they are not rendered unrighteous because “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). We have been taught that God requires sinless perfection of us, but it is actually only the lamb of the offering that has to be spotless, in our case, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

I thought of an objection here. Colossians 1:22 says God will present us “holy and without defect and blameless.” But how do we obtain this blamelessness: simply by continuing in the faith, grounded and settled therein, not moved away from the hope of the Gospel (Col. 1:23). We must  remember that although we are not to be deceived about the fact that only those who do righteousness are righteousness as Jesus is righteous, those who faithfully and patiently do good are righteous like Jesus. Imparted righteousness is real for those who continue to do good, which will happen for all who remain grounded and settled in the faith, all who are being created in Christ to do the good deeds our merciful and loving Father has prepared for us to do.

People freak out when I tell them that God rewards those who patiently do good with eternal life, but it is exactly what Paul said in Romans 2:7. People don’t believe Romans 2:6-7 because they don’t understand what it means to be a doer of righteousness and a doer of good works. To be a doer of righteousness and of good works is to be like David, Daniel, Job, and Noah, imperfect but wholly devoted to the Lord.

I have good friend who told me he could not listen to the things I was saying because if going to heaven had anything to do with works, he was doomed. Nonsense! He is one of the most righteous men I know. In fact, he is a lot like Job. He never lets a morning pass that he does not cry out for his children to know the Lord.

He sees his sins. I am sure he cries out with David, “Pardon my iniquities, for they are great.”

God, though, says that if a wicked man will  repent and do good, he will forget all the wickedness that man has ever done (Ezek. 18:21-23). He’s not waiting to kill because someone sinned. He’s not looking at the blood of his Son, reminding himself that he slaughtered his Son so he could feel better. No, he’s waiting for you to come boldly to the Throne of Favor. He’s waiting for you to come reason together with him so that your sins of scarlet can become white as snow (Isa. 1:16-20).

Yes, God will by no means clear the guilty (Ex. 34:7), but let’s not be foolish about who the guilty are. The guilty are those who refuse to repent. It’s as simple as that because God says he is delaying Jesus’ return waiting for every last one who will repent to repent because he doesn’t want anyone to perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

God save us from the false Calvinist idea that you are a bloodthirsty God who will not forgive without killing! We repent and humble ourselves for insulting you with such talk when you created us out of your delight in us (Prov. 8:22-31), and loved us so much that you sent your Son to save us from our slavery to temptations of the world, the lusts of our body, and captivity to wicked spirits.

 

 

Posted in atonement, Bible, Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Evangelicals, Gospel, Modern Doctrines, Rebuilding the Foundations, Teachings that must not be lost, Verses Evangelicals Ignore | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I thought the retired pastors were motormouths, but they are actually gushing wells

Posted on 10/23/2025 by Paul Pavao

I go to a Wednesday morning Bible Study with three long-time pastors even older than I am. If you meet someone who just wrote a book, you will have trouble talking about anything other than the new book. In the same way, any verse we cover might elicit a sermon.

One of the pastors is the founder and leader of the Bible study, and it is right that he is the one talking the most, leading the discussion in the direction he wants it to go. When the other 2 began showing up, though (to my shame) I was a bit frustrated with the sudden small sermons that would burst forth. In the old days–the 1980s–there was a lot of Reformation tradition deeply entrenched in evangelical churches:

“If, in your investigation, you probe into the history and influence of Calvinism, you will discover that its doctrines have been incorporated into the majority of the great creeds of the Protestant churches” (The Five Points of Calvinism, David N. Steele & Curtis C. Thomas, Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., 1963, p. 61).

I have spent a lot of my Christian life trying to refute these Reformation traditions because, supposedly, we want to follow and learn the words of God rather than the traditions of men. Thus, my initial reaction to these mini-sermons was to cringe at some of the old, set-in-stone, unbiblical traditions. It’s not even that I wanted to point them out and argue over them. I don’t enjoy angering a group of godly men even if I can solidly defend my position, and I have never seen good come from it. (I find it much better to teach on social media or with a book, allowing readers to quietly assess my arguments on their own with no pressure.)

After a few of those mini-sermons, and some stories in the midst of those, my perspective began to change. My eyes began to open, and their mini-sermons became windows into the past. I see so many things through those windows! Some take my breath away; some make me laugh.

These guys have fought the good fight for men’s souls and for discipleship. Sure, some false traditions were mixed in with the meat, but these guys are not the Pharisees that Jesus rebuked. These are seasoned warriors who have earned their retirement. Retirement for them means they don’t have to prepare a sermon every week (something I would never want to do), but although they don’t seem to ever quote Paul’s warnings (my frustration), they warn, urge, cajole, strengthen, and ooze from every pore the joy of the Word of the Lord and the effort to get men to share their joy.

My frustration has quickly changed to awe. When I say I “see” the wars they have fought and their new retired and wordy way of fighting the good fight, I mean literally see. It’s like looking down a long hallway and the battles, wounds, weariness, and triumphs are there, acted out and living like portraits in Hogwarts Castle.

Now when a mini-sermon starts, I snap to attention. I sit upright in my seat as the masters teach, mostly by their shining eyes and excited voice, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

They shall bubble over with the memory of Your abundant goodness And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness. (Ps. 145:7, NASB1995, using footnote)

Posted in Miscellaneous, missions, Modern Doctrines, Testimonies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Responsibility and Authority: What Others Won’t Tell You About Women in Ministry Roles

Posted on 10/21/2025 by Paul Pavao

The point of this post is to argue that the issue of women in ministry roles cannot be reasonably argued nor understood without understanding the connection between responsibility and authority. I apologize for the provocative title, but that is what gets attention in our modern setting.

I sent a text to the lead pastor in our church, supporting his decision about letting women teach from the pulpit. I think it is easier to post that text than try to write something different today:

“When I talk about men-women roles, I have found it helpful to tie authority to responsibility. Responsibility is first, then there is the authority necessary to fulfill the responsibility. What we are not overextending to women is responsibility and the weight of responsibility.

“The head of woman is man because he is to ensure that everyone in the family is fed, clothed, and in good health. Yes, the woman may do most of the work that ensures those needs are fulfilled, but if they are not, it is his responsibility to solve the problem.

“In the church, God has assigned the men, and especially the elders, to insure the church is fed, healthy, and defended. If a woman helps feed the flock, the pastor has done his job by ensuring the flock is fed and making sure the pulpit is not occupied by a wolf or heretic. None of our women should have the responsibility of choosing who is teaching because God will be angry with you (Pastor Matt), the elders, and all the men for dumping such a responsibility on them when, in fact, God has assigned that task to men and the elders, especially you. An elder guides the flock as one who gives account to God. You did not dump that responsibility on [the woman who taught the church yesterday]. You noticed her gift and wisely benefitted the people of God by allowing a gift, given by the Holy Spirit, to function in a way that, as best you could and with counsel, you determined would benefit the flock assigned to  you.”

On Facebook this morning, I added:

“Authority is only given to humans because God has given them a responsibility, and they need the authority to fulfill the responsibility. When a man, but much preferably men, take over responsibility for a work, it is to take weight off womens’ shoulders. God’s order, men being the head of women, is so that men get slashed and gutted with swords, while the women are safe until the last man has fallen.

“We need to apply that spiritually as well. Men carry the weight so that women can thrive in what they do. We are not in the first century. Our women and educated in both the Scriptures and in earthly education. That does not mean I am going to dump the weight and responsibility of the church on them. According to Scripture, in my opinion, men are the ones called to bleed in battle. I think the truth about responsibility, authority, and women in the church has little to do with teaching. A woman, an experienced missionary, taught in our church this last Sunday, and the pastor is doing his job, carrying the responsibility and dealing with the arrows being shot at him over it, shielding her from having to face the flak. This allows her to operate in the gifts God has given her while under the supervision of the elders, for her own safety.”

Practical Comments (Stories)

I read last week that some group did a study on business leaders over 2 or 3 decades. The article did not address the whole study, but it did say that the one most effective thing that a leader can do for his company is put his people in the right positions.

Our elders have not turned over leadership of the church to women. I am not talking about lesser positions of authority. I hope we, as the men in the church, never do that. I would not consider that to be freeing or enabling women, but dumping responsibility on them that they are not called to bear, but …

In my 20s I was part of a small home church (regular attendance: 8 adults). One of our members, though, was friends with a woman in the Dominican Republic who had started 7 churches. Her name was Mercedes, and she was married to a German man. Our house church was in Germany. All four men were in the military and assigned there. On a trip home to see the husband’s family, Mercedes was asked to come teach our home church.

I was blessed by the teaching, which was mostly inspired by Watchman Nee (I think), but afterward I just had to ask her about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. I asked privately and with respect, not combatively. She said, and I quote, “Paul was saying,” then she paused for a few seconds. Then, emphatically, “I don’t know what Paul was saying; I wish he had never said that!!”

It was the most delightful answer to a question I have heard in my Christian life. That was just about 40 years ago, and I can feel the joy to this day.

I’m not sure why I was so delighted, but I think it was both her honesty … and God’s delight.

In conversation over the 2 or 3 days she was there, she told me about the problems of establishing a church. She told me that the most important thing to know was that God would send people that I would not like. They would be gifted, obviously Christian, but socially intolerable, exceptionally annoying. Planting a church is pretty much the messiest, most patience-trying thing I would ever do as a Christian.

Now, I have never planted a church. I have learned over 40 years that this is OBVIOUSLY not my calling. I did, however, help someone else start a church, and he completely freaked out because he had not been prepared by Mercedes. He bailed out on what we were trying to do and chose instead to contact an institutional church to ordain him so he could have authority over the problem people.

He also had to run me off because I would not do it with him. His last explanation was telling: “I know you could build a church with me in the pews, but I can’t build one with you in the pew because, even silent, you would influence everyone.”

Wow!

Thank you, Mercedes!

 

 

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Understanding the Trinity: How Proverbs 8:22-31 Harmonizes Scripture and Personalizes Creation

Posted on 10/18/2025 by Paul Pavao

Scripture quotes today are from  the ESV, which was an accident. Usually I use the World English Bible because it is not copyrighted. Lately, though I have been reading the ESV, and I forgot to switch my Bible app back to the WEB.

Proverbs 8:22-31 is possibly the best guide to understanding the Trinity that there is, but it is sadly forbidden to us because it was misused by one Bible school that left the church in Antioch around 1,750 years ago. In this post, I hope to give you back the loveliness and the harmonization of Scripture that Proverbs 8:22-31 provides. If you want to read the whole passage first, just hover your mouse over the Scripture reference.

Note: Arius is famously known as the arch-heretic who denied Jesus was God and then was later refuted and condemned at the Council of Nicea. Arius did not come up with his heresy on his own, but was taught at a school that was led by Lucian and left the church in Antioch (or was possibly excommunicated), but returned to the church after 15 or 20 years. Lucian was martyred in AD 312 and has gone down in history as the holy man he probably was, but his role as founder and teacher of possibly the largest and most damaging heresy in history has been virtually forgotten. In my book, Decoding Nicea, I had to piece together the story from many sources, but you can read about him at ChristianHistoryInstitute.org.

After Arius used Proverbs 8:22 to argue that the Son of God was created in the same way as everything and everyone else, and was condemned at the Council of Nicea, the churches slowly stopped applying the whole passage, verses 22-30, to the birth (the begetting, in old English) of the Son of God in eternity past. Forsaking Scripture because a heretic misused it, however, is never a good idea.

Today, the Trinity is a horribly confusing doctrine, and there are even Scriptures that seem to deny it, saying that only the Father is God (e.g., Jn. 17:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; 1 Tim. 2:5).

Today, we (you and I) are going to use Proverbs 8:22-31 to defend the Trinity as it was taught by the apostles, and I am going to do my best to express the thrill and loveliness I feel when I read it.

As I proceeded, I realized I need to defend the truth that Proverbs 8:22-31 is describing our Lord Jesus. If you don’t need that defense, jump down to The Majesty and Beauty of Proverbs 8:22-31.

Proverbs 8:22-31 Is Spoken by the Son of God

Let’s first dispense with the most obvious objection to Proverbs 8:22-31 having anything to do with the Trinity: the passage is talking about Wisdom, and Wisdom is a “she” in Proverbs.

English is one of the only Western languages that does not use gender in referring to objects. For example, in both German and Spanish, coffee is masculine, and a coffee cup is feminine. In both languages, you are pouring him into her. Even more objectionable to English-speakers, a wife is feminine in German, but a maiden is neuter. She is an “it.”

That is not a result of misogyny (being against women), but of grammar. All nouns have gender in most languages. It has nothing to do with whether the items seem more feminine or masculine or neuter. It is ancient grammar structure beyond my knowledge of history and is true of both Greek and Hebrew (but see here and here).

That said, Wisdom is not a woman in Hebrew, it is simply a feminine-gender noun in exactly the same way that Mädchen and Fräulein are neuter in German or a cup is feminine in Spanish.

I am about to explain the Trinity using Proverbs 8:22. The people who first learned and knew about the Trinity were the apostles. The apostles went into the Roman Empire teaching the Scriptures in Greek because that was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, the language learned by all societies so they could communicate with one another. Therefore, we are going to look at Proverbs 8:22 in Greek, from the Septuagint.

The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works.

That’s scary, isn’t it? It’s no wonder that Arius used this verse because his argument was that the Son of God was created.

It’s not scary, and it wasn’t scary in the fourth-century, either. Arius’ heresy was not the product of misreading Scripture, but the product of obstinance and arrogance. He knew the answers to his own argument as well as anyone, but he loved feeling important. That is the way of most heretics (cf. Rom. 16:17-18).

Here is the refutation of Arius’ position from Eusebius the historian (in the AD 320s):

Although it is once said in Scripture, “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways on account of his works” [Prov. 8:22] yet it would do us well to consider the meaning of the phrase and not … jeopardize the most important doctrine of the church from a single passage! … For although [the Scripture] says that he was created, it is not as if he were saying that he had arrived at existence from what did not exist, nor that he was made of nothing like the rest of the creatures. (cited from Eusebius’s Against Marcellus by The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, c. 440)

I think it is probable that only scholars understand the meaning of “the substance of God,” a phrase found in the Nicene Creed. The Creed is saying that the Son of God is made of whatever “stuff” God is made of, not “matter,” the stuff that we, spiritual beings, ants, and dirt are made of:

The multitude, who cannot distinguish between matter and God, or see how great is the interval which lies between them, pray to idols made of matter. … we … distinguish and separate the uncreated and the created, that which is and that which is not, that which is apprehended by the understanding and that which is perceived by the senses, and [we] give the fitting name to each of them … they are at the greatest possible remove from one another, as far asunder as the artist and the materials of his art. (Athenagoras, c. AD 170-180, “A Plea for the Christians,” ch. 15)

In other words, the problem was not that Arius said the Son of God was created, but that he claimed the Son of God was created like the rest of us. There is a great divide between the potter and his pot, and so there is a great divide between God and his handiwork. In God’s case, the Artist is uncreated and eternal, while his art, us, is created and corruptible.

The early churches normally used begotten, generated, or emitted in describing how God could possibly have a Son, a concept far beyond anything we can comprehend.

Don’t let anyone think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. … The Son of God is the Logos [Greek for “Word,” as in Jn. 1:1] of the Father … He is the first product of the Father, not as though he was being brought into existence, for from the beginning God, who is the eternal Mind, had the Logos in himself. (A Plea for the Christians 10)

The churches did understand one thing, no matter what word you used, even “created,” from Proverbs 8:22, the Son came from God, not matter. The Son was “made of” the uncreated substance of God. What is uncreated is eternal by definition. The Son is of the substance of God, not matter, and therefore his very being is uncreated and eternal. The substance of God is not divisible into two entities, so although God has chosen to communicate with us through his Word, the Son, there is but one indivisible substance, one uncreated divinity, which joins them both as one.

I have a lot more early quotes like the ones above on my website and in Decoding Nicea.

The Majesty and Beauty of Proverbs 8:22-31

The passage begins with Wisdom, that is, God’s Son speaking as the Wisdom of God sent to earth, letting us know that

Yahweh created me the beginning of his ways for his works. (Prov. 8:22)

It is impossible that the Hebrews did not know that there was a Messenger from God who was not human, not merely angelic, but somehow God himself. Samson’s parents received a message that they would have a son from someone they both called “a man of God,” but as soon as that man ascended into heaven in a flame, they knew whom they’d seen and they fell to the ground.

Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.” (Judges 13:21-22)

Notice that Manoah not only knew that the man was not a man, but the Messenger of the Lord (“Messenger” is the correct translation of the Hebrew and Greek words normally transliterated as “angel.”). He also knew that the Messenger of the Lord was divine, was God.  In the same way, in Genesis, chapters 18 & 19, Abraham had no problem with the idea that 1 of the 3 men/messengers that visited him was Yahweh, the God of Israel. Moses had no problem describing that incident as Yahweh, the One who had just talked to Abraham and was still on earth, raining fire down on Sodom from Yahweh in heaven (Genesis 19:24).

That is the same Yahweh that spoke Proverbs 8:22 and is introducing himself to the human race, letting us know just who he is!

Note: If you really want to bust the chops of the next Jehovah’s Witness that knocks on your door, show them Zechariah 2:8-11. Everyone shows them John 1:1 and Genesis 19:24, but they almost never see Zechariah 2:8-11 where, in their New World Translation, Jehovah of Hosts says he was sent by Jehovah of Hosts several times.

In early Christian terminology, the Word of God was telling all of us that the very first thing God ever did, before all creation, was birth/beget/emit/make him–not anew as though he had never existed, but out of his own bosom, not from outside of God, but from inside of God–as “the beginning of his ways,” to be beside him in his works.

Before all things God was alone … He was alone because there was nothing external to him except himself. Yet even then he was not alone,for he had with him that which he possessed in himself, that is to say, his own Reason [Tertullian, writing in Latin, translated the Greek “Logos” as “Reason” rather than “Word.” (Tertullian, c. AD 200-210, Against Praxeas 5)

You’ll love the Greek translation of Psalm 45:1 that the apostles used: “My heart has emitted a good Word.” They understood that to mean that the only-begotten Son was begotten by being emitted from God’s heart.

So, our passage begins with the Word, the Messenger and Wisdom of God, saying, “I was brought forth by God for his works.” I’ll put Proverbs 8:23-31 here so you can bask in the picture of what he meant by “for his works.”

He established me before time in the beginning, before he made the earth: even before he made the depths; before the fountains of water came forth: before the mountains were settled, and before all hills, he begets me. The Lord made countries and uninhabited spaces and the habitable heights of the world. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him; and when he prepared his throne upon the winds: and when he strengthened the clouds above; and when he secured the fountains of the earth: decree. and when he strengthened the foundations of the earth: I was by him, suiting , I was that wherein he took delight; and daily I rejoiced in his presence continually. For he rejoiced when he had completed the world, and rejoiced among the children of men. (Brenton’s 1851 Septuagint translation, highlight mine)

Notice that Wisdom does not just say God made him, but in verse 25, he equates that with “begets me.” Eusebius was right in condemning Arius for using one word in one verse to jeopardize the most important doctrine in the Church. Whatever the word we use, “The Word” is divine, uncreated, eternal, and without beginning since he was always in the bosom of the Father.

But let me not wander too long into the intellectual things I live in so much. We may love the description of God’s great acts of creation in Genesis 1-3, but we should also love the very personal perception of creation in Proverbs 8:22-31.

I picture, symbolically and not literally, God squatting to form mountains and rivers with his hands, pouring sand around the edges of the soon-to-be inhabited earth to stop the oceans from wearing down the coast. He is looking at the earth with his Son at hand, working together, carving out our living space, but much more, he rejoiced among the children of men.

You can’t get everything out of Proverbs 8:22-31 just with that sentence, that God and Jesus rejoiced among the sons and daughters of Adam., but you can use it as the background for God making the depths, bringing forth the waters, and settling the mountains. He was doing it for us.

Try reading Proverbs 8:22-31 in your favorite translation. You don’t need the Septuagint. Read it, though, as the Son rejoicing over and delighting in us as he works with his Father to form every beauty, every useful thing, and everything that inspires awe … all for us.

As an interesting addition, Charles Darwin pointed out that the function of the beauty of plants and trees is not to please us, but to attract insects for pollination. Without insects, he wrote, the beauty of flowers would not exist. Later, Darwin would turn away from God, probably more because of the death of his 9-year-old daughter than his theory of natural selection, but I hope that we know that the function of one aspect of creation may or may not have to with the purpose of God’s creation. The fact that the flower exists to allure insects does not mean that God was not using both the bees and the trees to show us beauty. In fact, Jesus later used flowers for a lesson far something greater than beauty. If God took the time to create the flowers we so admire, but which perish quickly, how much more is his attention focused on the children of Adam in whom he was delighting even as he was forming the earth (Matt. 6:28-30).

Oh, I promised to say something about the harmonization of Scripture!

How Proverbs 8:22-31 Helps Harmonize Scriptures About the Trinity

We like to describe the Trinity as “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,” but such terminology is never found in Scripture. Instead, the Trinity in Scripture is defined as God, Lord, and Spirit (e.g. Eph. 4:4-6; 2 Cor. 13:14) or Father, Son, and Spirit (e.g., Matt. 28:19).

In John 17:3, Jesus calls the Father the one true God. That is at least partly because he was living on earth in the flesh at the time, but 1 Corinthians 8:6, after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, says there is but one God, the Father, and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ.

That sort of terminology is consistent in Scripture. Passages referring to Jesus as God are the exception, though we must not forget that the plainest reading of Revelation 1:8, in context, is that Jesus is calling himself almighty God. Nonetheless, how do we explain the passages saying that the Son is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, while we never find a verse saying that the Father is sitting at the left hand of God the Son.

More that 1800 years ago a lawyer from Carthage, a Christian, explained:

I shall follow the apostle [Paul], so that if the Father and the Son are alike to be invoked, I shall call the Father “God” and invoke Jesus Christ as “Lord.” But when Christ alone [is invoked], I shall be able to call him “God.” As the same apostle says, “Of whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever” [Rom. 9:5]. For I should give the name of “sun” even to a sunbeam, considered by itself. But if I were mentioning the sun from which the ray emanates, I would certainly withdraw the name of sun from the mere beam. For although I do not make two suns, still I shall reckon both the sun and its ray to be as much two things—and two forms of one undivided substance—as God and his Word, as the Father and the Son. (Tertullian, c. AD 200 -210, Against Praxeas 13)

A similar analogy is used by many early Christian authors. God is like a spring, and both the Spirit and the Son are like streams that flows from the spring. The spring and the stream are two things, but there in only one undivided substance in both, water. The spring and the stream are two, but the water is one. God and his Son are two, but the undivided substance–eternal, uncreated divinity–is one.

To this day, the Orthodox Church explains that the Father is called the one God in Scripture because he is the source of the Trinity, the Son begotten of him, the Spirit proceeding from him (thus their furious reaction, and subsequent division from the Roman Catholics, to the pope adding “… who proceeds from the Father and the Son” to the Apostles Creed).

This was difficult to write. I pray it benefits you.

 

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Early Christianity, History, Modern Doctrines, Teachings that must not be lost | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Prophecy Watchers Conference: The Rapture, the First Resurrection, and the Problem with the Pre-Trib View

Posted on 10/12/2025 by Paul Pavao

I am at a “Prophecy Watchers” conference in Norman, OK. I am going to make a strong effort not to personally insult or slander any of the people at this conference. Both speakers and attendees appear to be among the most zealous Christians I have ever met.

As for the saints who are in the earth,
they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. (Ps. 16:3)

I detest Calvinism and find it both unbiblical and insulting to God. Nonetheless, Calvinists like Georg Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon, John Piper, Paul Washer, and others are or were more devoted and holy before the Lord than I have been. With John Wesley, I have to say that I won’t see those guys in heaven because they will be far closer to the throne than I will be in the great multitude of those ransomed by the blood of the Lamb.

The last couple days I have been indulging some excellent ones in whom is all my delight as they pass on ignorance and foolishness to hundreds.

First, their absolute certainty about a 7-year tribulation coming is astonishing by itself, but they are just as certain that the rapture, the “catching away” described at the end of 1 Thessalonians 4, will happen before that tribulation. This is a rousing “we pre-tribbers are right and no one can possibly doubt it” conference.

Second, the conference began with an important speech in which the speaker warned everyone at the conference that the date-setters have a historical accuracy rate of 0.0000% exactly. Nonetheless, at one session, the speaker began by asking who believes that this is the last generation. Every hand went up except one (guess who?).

The speaker wasn’t even going to ask who didn’t believe that, but he caught himself, chuckled, and asked, “Who doesn’t believe that.” I shot my hand up, but he wasn’t even looking. He was already back to staring at his notes, knowing no one was foolish enough to think there was any possibility that society as we know it would be around in 2065 (a generation from now in biblical terms).

I have only two things I want to share about this conference, then an interesting 3rd point not necessarily on the subject of this conference:

The Rapture Is a Resurrection

Most Christians, in my experience, don’t think about the rapture as a resurrection. “The dead in Christ will rise first,” however, is a resurrection by definition.

This is a problem for the end-time understanding of everyone, or almost everyone, at this conference. They all believe there will be a 7-year tribulation in which the mark of the Beast will be forced upon everyone who wants to be able to buy or sell. In Revelation 20, however, we read that those who rejected the Beast and didn’t receive his mark lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years (“the millennium”). This, says John the Revelator, was the first resurrection.

The first resurrection is of saints who reject the Beast and his mark, and their resurrection marks the start of the millennium. If it is the first, there can be no resurrection before. The rapture is a resurrection and, thus, cannot happen until after the first resurrection.

This destroys their whole timeline.

There may be a lot of evidence for a pre-tribulation rapture, but you can’t ignore a plain teaching in Scripture even if you have lots brilliant but not certain verses backing up your theological position.

Excursus on Ignoring Bible Verses

This sort of abuse of the Bible bothers me to no end, which is why a lot of mainline denominations and their members are bothered by my teaching. Salvation has nothing to do with works, they say over and over and over and over again, at this conference, at every other conference, from pulpits, and at coffee shop Bible studies.

I repeatedly respond with Romans 2:6-7; Galatians 6:7-9; and Ephesians 5:5-7. They repeatedly tell me that Romans 2:6-7 doesn’t mean what it says. This tells me they are misinterpreting the rest of Romans 2, which is confirmed by the fact that everyone knows what Romans 6:23 says, but no one knows what Romans 6:22 says. Both talk about eternal life, but we don’t like what Romans 6:22 says about it.

Not only that, but Romans 2:6-7 and Romans 6:22 are wickedly confusing. They contradict most of what the apostle John says (but none of what the other NT writers say). We have to ask why John says we have eternal life now and by faith only because he seems to contradict every other NT writer by saying it.

No one is doing that, however, because they’re happy to ignore verses and never look at how Paul uses eternal life and how it is different from John. Instead, Paul doesn’t mean what he says in a plain, simple-to-understand way in Romans 2:6-7. That is perfectly acceptable, while explaining where John  and Paul intersect and agree (at John 5:28-29), then giving a perfectly reasonable explanation of their differing uses of eternal life will get you cold-shouldered out of churches and Bible studies.

Rant over. Back to the 70th week of Daniel.

Daniel’s 70th Week

The argument that Daniel’s 70th week (Dan. 9:24-27) is in the future seems reasonable to me. It is this conference, where everyone believes that Daniel’s 70th week is future, that suggested to me that the 70th week is not future.

One of the speakers claimed that the early church fathers wrote about a pre-tribulation rapture. This is not true. Recently I edited a book for a friend that argues for a pre-tribulation rapture. He had quotes from early Christians about 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 indicating they believed in the rapture just as explained in those two verses.

I didn’t remember where those passages were, though I must have read them because I read all the church fathers through and including Cyprian of Carthage in the AD 250s, twice. I looked them up and found out the reason those mentions of the rapture didn’t stand out. As pointed out earlier, they knew the rapture was a resurrection, and for them the rapture was simply the prelude to the final judgment.

That may seem strange, but they understood that the rapture and the final resurrection were the same thing. The saints will meet Jesus in the air so they can be part of his triumphal final return as described by Enoch and quoted in Jude 1:14-15:

Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Another speaker said that Daniel’s 70 weeks are obviously not fulfilled yet because Daniel 9:23-25 has not happened yet. The things in those verses are:

  1. “finish the transgression” and put an end to sin.
  2. atone for iniquity
  3. bring in everlasting righteousness
  4. seal both vision and prophet
  5. anoint a most holy place

He was reading from the KJV, not the ESV I just quoted, but I checked and they’re not different on this. Either way, Jesus did do all these things, in the past:

  1. Hebrews 9:26 says Jesus appeared (past tense) once at the end of time to cancel sin.
  2. Everyone agrees Jesus already atoned for iniquity, but see Titus 2:13-14 for passage saying so.
  3. Jesus established righteousness by his life, his death, and his resurrection. Romans 5:19 says Jesus, by his obedience, has made (past tense) many righteous. Surely we all know that we have entered into an everlasting righteousness that will continue into the next age, except that in the next age, there will be no temptation from our bodies nor from spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.
  4. 2 Peter 1:19 says we have the word of prophecy made sure, i.e. sealed. What the prophets foresaw, the apostles saw and experienced, which is why prophecy was “made sure.”
  5. All of Hebrews 9 and 10 are about anointing the Holy Place. The high priests brought blood into the the temple that was a replica of the temple in the heavens. Jesus brought his own blood, once for all anointing and cleansing the heavenly temple so that we can come boldly into it to obtain mercy and favor to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16; notice the difference between mercy and favor [grace] in that verse.)

The early Christians had a much different view of what the faith is. For them the faith already meant tribulation and martyrdom. Revelation 3:10, where Jesus promises to protect the Philadelphians from the trial coming on the whole earth, was almost surely about the Domitian prosecution that happened in 95-96, or an even previous one in AD 81.

They also fully understood that Jesus did all of the things mentioned in Daniel 9. They believed they were already living in a kingdom that will never end. One day, we will be resurrected into the same kingdom, but without the natural body and its desires, without the devil and his temptations, and with unhindered, face-to-face access to God and the Lamb.

Addendum: The Nephilim and the Rebellion of 1/3 of the Angels

A speaker mentioned in passing what all Christians seem to believe nowadays, that there was a rebellion in heaven before the creation of humans, Lucifer leading 1/3 of the angels. This, we say, is where the demons came from.

I am not sure where this ridiculous legend came from, but the only passage to support it is in Revelation 12, where the dragon throws down 1/3 of the stars. I have never understood why anyone would think this happened before the creation of man because the context gives no indication of that event being in the past.

That’s not the point of this addendum, though. Instead, I thought that most people familiar with the teachings of the late Dr. Michael Heiser would know that the demons came from the spirits of the nephilim, the half-angel (more accurately, half-messenger or half-watcher) children of the “Watchers” (Book of Enoch) that had children with human woman as mentioned in Genesis 6.

I originally found out about this origin of the demons from Justin Martyr’s Apology (c. AD 150). I was stunned when I was first reading through the early Christian writings to read, “The demons are the spirits of dead men.” Whaaat!!!

I found out from others about the Book of Enoch (or 1 Enoch), which I absolutely do not believe was written by Enoch, but the early Christians did. It says that God destroyed the nephilim, the children of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6, and did not allow their spirits to have rest. He consigned them to roam the earth forever. This would explain why the legion of demons in the demoniac in Mark 5 did not want to leave the region. They probably had lived their while still alive.

That’s a lot to take in, but it is the most reasonable reading of the passages about giants in the Bible. My point, though, is that people consumed with the Nephilim, like most of these conference teachers are, would know that the story of Lucifer throwing down 1/3 of the angels in the past is non-biblical.

Apparently not. The last speaker last night mentioned the demons being from the angels that fell with Satan in the beginning, just in passing, as though everyone agreed with that idea.

I hope you got something out of this!

 

 

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Early Christianity, Far-fetched, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Not a few good men, but a righteous people, zealous for good works

Posted on 10/05/2025 by Paul Pavao

“Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor …” (Ps. 12:1-2)

Just like when we speak, “everyone” rarely means everyone in the Bible. Two psalms later, David says there is none who does good (14:1). Part of what they do wrong, though, is eat up God’s people (v. 4). In verse 5 David announces that God is with the generation of the righteous, and you can see from many of his Psalms that he regards himself as among the righteous, not among the “none who does good.”

In Romans 3, Paul is not trying to say that no one has ever done any good; he is telling the Jews that they are as bad as the Gentiles in disobeying God, often being so bad that they run to shed blood. You can see this in verse 19, which says, “We know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law.” In other words, this passage I just quoted from Psalm 14 is about you Jews, not the Gentiles. The law is not making you any more righteous than other nations because righteousness doesn’t come from the law but from faith in God.

Ezekiel 14 tells us twice that Daniel, Noah, and Job were righteous. They were not among the none who do good, nor were Joseph, nor the Rechabites (Jer. 35).
We teach some nonsense as Biblical truth, and even as foundational biblical truth. Jesus’ came because God was not looking for “a few good men,” but for a righteous people, zealous for good works (Tit. 2:11-15).

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Evangelicals, Modern Doctrines, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments