Program 131: Can the Same Single Line Begin at Two Different Points?

Scripture says Christ came into being in Mary’s womb. Consequently, he could not have had a pre-existence.

Welcome to WLC Radio, a subsidiary of World’s Last Chance Ministries, an online ministry dedicated to learning how to live in constant readiness for the Savior's return.

For two thousand years, believers of every generation have longed to be the last generation. Contrary to popular belief, though, Christ did not give believers “signs of the times” to watch for. Instead, he repeatedly warned that his coming would take even the faithful by surprise. Yahushua urgently warned believers to be ready because, he said, “The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” [Matthew 24:44]

WLC Radio: Teaching minds and preparing hearts for Christ's sudden return.

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Dave:

A very significant theological school has long protested the notion that one can preexist oneself. That school has asked its opponents to explain how such a thing is even imaginable. How can you be before you are!? I think that many students of the Bible have not thought this issue through, and it is the task of educators to invite reflection. It is a reflection, which is so significant that it will determine our view of who Christ really is.

I maintain that the NT says, if one looks at the forest first, and not just certain isolated trees in John and Paul, that Christ is the human Messiah promised by the Hebrew Scriptures. He is the Son of Yahuwah promised for a time future to David (2 Sam. 7:14-16; note the future tenses). The son of David is raised up “after David” and thus does not exist before! If this is not the first premise of all Christology, we might as well discard Scripture as the foundation of our faith. Is it unreasonable to insist that David’s son, who is also to be Yahuwah’s Son, is younger than David, his ancestor?

The whole point of the Messiah is that he is a member of the human race, not Yahuwah Himself and not an angel. He is an expression of the One Yahuwah — His image, yes, but still a member of the human race. The profound truth in all this is the amazing thing Yahuwah has chosen to do with a human being begotten personally by Him. It is the Devil who keeps saying “Christ is too good to be man or ‘mere man.’” The Devil is the inveterate enemy of the human race. He has been relentlessly opposed to mankind as the pinnacle of God’s great creation. But if Yahuwah so decrees — and He has — a mediating human being can forgive sins and raise the dead, performing all sorts of miracles. He can do this, as Christ did, as the One God’s human agent and plenipotentiary.

I think that there is a great danger that Scripture on this point about the human Messiah Christ is discarded. As I hope to show, this is what in fact happens when “orthodox” scholars write whole books to defend the ancient and classic Trinitarian idea that Christ preexisted as the Son of Yahuwah and then “assumed human nature” (the Incarnation, capital “I”). I maintain that one can only begin to get such a theory off the ground if 1) one forgets who it was Yahuwah promised as Savior throughout the OT; 2) one ignores the primary and clear Christology of Matthew and Luke, who brilliantly develop their Christology on the basis of the expectations and promises of the Hebrew Bible, 3) one does not critically inspect the whole concept of personal preexistence, and 4) one is willing to speak of two Persons who are God — a subtle polytheism.

Naturally enough I think that John and Paul did not overthrow the work of Matthew and Luke and thus agreed with them — and this they both say constantly — that Christ is the Messiah. That is what the NT says plainly and constantly. That is their common confession, and it is chaotic for me to imagine that Paul disagreed with Luke, his companion, or that John who knew of the Synoptic gospels set out to contradict their clear teaching about the origin of the Son of God, the Messiah.

Yes, the origin of the Son as the Greek text has it in Matthew 1:18, the genesis of the Son, his beginning. Remember that according to mainstream churches the Son is not supposed to have a beginning at all. He has always existed! That is the umbrella teaching (the Trinity) under which some readers are gathering.

The same person cannot begin from two different points. Can the same single line begin at two points? The same person cannot be six months younger than his cousin (Christ was six months younger than John the Baptist) and at the same time billions of years older. I think it impossible for the son of David, which Christ must be, to be also the creator of David, or even the ancestor of David. Such mythology is not much less amazing than the fictions of The Da Vinci Code.

The notion that Christ preexisted his own begetting in Mary (please think long and hard as to how this could be!) and was thus active and vocal during the OT period contradicts the plain statement in Hebrews 1:1-2 that Yahuwah did not until the NT period speak through His Son. I don’t know how language can more clearly exclude the Trinitarian idea that the Son was in fact active and speaking in the prophets, appearing visibly as an angel or as a man. Yet this contradiction of Hebrews 1 is the view of the earliest church fathers, as is well known. It became the foundation of later Trinitarianism.

Yes, the early church fathers and apologists plainly declare that it was the preexisting Son who spoke throughout the OT period, beginning by speaking to Adam. In so doing they are telling us that they were imagining a different, pre-human and therefore non-human Christ. You just cannot preexist yourself. You cannot be pre-human and human without being two persons. A son cannot be begotten, i.e., come into existence, if he is already in existence. Oh, he might be “morphed” into an embryo, but that is a curiously pagan idea, much more akin to reincarnation.

Trinitarian scholar A.T. Hanson refers to the problem “which it seems so difficult to make sense of, a personal preexistence of Jesus Christ and a glorified humanity belonging to the risen Christ.” He candidly admits that “there is thus in the prologue to the 4th Gospel nothing that demands a doctrine of a preexistent person called Jesus Christ, only of the preexistent Word of God.” Dr. Colin Brown is even more assertive on this point:

“To read John 1:1 as though it said ‘In the beginning was the Son’ is patently wrong.”

The same Dr. Colin Brown, seasoned systematician at Fuller Seminary, says correctly, “to be called Son of God in the Bible means you are not God.”

Of Hebrews 1 Hanson says:

“It is not even certain that the name Son is unhesitatingly applied by him to the preexistent state. Hebrews 1:2 could be rendered: ‘He has in these last days spoken to us in the mode of a Son,’ which would imply that the Sonship only began at the incarnation.”

This gives away a great clue. The church fathers were mistaken in their claim that the Son of Yahuwah spoke constantly in the OT period. Hebrews denies this. Hanson picks up on another important fact, and as a Trinitarian is puzzled by it:

“The puzzling fact is that the synoptic gospels, which as publications are later than Paul and contemporary with Hebrews, do not exhibit any tendency to elaborate a doctrine of preexistence.”

In other words, if the synoptics are offering the faith to the public in the later NT period, how come they say nothing at all about a pre-historic existence of Christ as Son of God? How is it that they exclude a pre-human Christ altogether? Hanson, I would think, is on the verge of giving up his Trinitarianism. He concedes that “the historical evidence that in fact Christ of Nazareth was conscious of his Divinity and remembered his pre-incarnate state is totally insufficient.”

I suggest that the whole theory of the Son existing as a conscious person before his birth is unwarranted and has led to a deluge of conflict and division in the faith, not to mention some martyrdoms and violent excommunications. Neither the angel Christ nor the eternal Christ is the Christ of the Bible. There is no God the Son in the text of Scripture. But there is the uniquely begotten one Son of Yahuwah, the human Messiah.

This whole concept of personal preexistence was an import from Greek thinking, which invaded the Church by 150 AD. Adolf Harnack, the “prince” of church historians, was right that the entire orthodox dogmatic system is based on the false premise found in II Clement (9:5): “Jesus Christ being first spirit became flesh.” This contradicts Paul flat in I Corinthians 15:46 where he says that the spirit Christ was not before Adam, but the other way round. Adam came first, then the second Adam. Of the mistaken idea of II Clement Harnack rightly says:

“This is the fundamental, theological and philosophical creed on which the whole Trinitarian speculations of the Church of the succeeding centuries are built and it is thus the root of the orthodox system of dogmatics.”

Those dogmatic decisions bind church members to this very day.

Let us 1) think about what we mean when we say “preexistence,” and 2) listen carefully to Matthew and Luke and see if they describe the assumption of human nature by an already conscious Person living in heaven.

Preexistence: Albert Reville, professor of the history of religion, wrote:

“The fact is that the two ideas — preexistence and Virginal birth — cannot be reconciled. A Preexistent person who becomes man reduces himself, if you will, to the state of a human embryo; but he is not conceived by action exterior to himself in the womb of a woman. But conception is the point at which an individual is formed, who did not exist before, at least as an individual.”

Scripture says that the Son of Yahuwah was conceived (the mother’s part) and begotten (the action of the Father).

Listen to Professor Mackay on the extraordinary difficulty involved in preexistence as a concept at all:

“It is best to begin with the problem of preexistence, not only because there are linguistic difficulties here, but because it leads directly into the main difficulties encountered in all Incarnational and Trinitarian theology. As soon as we recoil from the suggestion that something can preexist itself, we must wonder what exactly preexists what else, and in what sense it does so.”

“It does not take a systematician of any extraordinary degree of perspicacity to notice how exegetes themselves are the unconscious victims in the course of their most professional work of quite dogmatic (that is, uncritical) systematic assumptions.”

I think this is absolutely right. Prince of church history, Adolf Harnack, agrees:

“The miraculous coming into being of Christ in the virgin through the Holy Spirit and real preexistence of Christ mutually exclude each other. Later, and in fact very soon, people were admittedly forced to think of them as compatible.”

Pannenberg makes our point well:

“Christ’ virginal birth stands in irreconcilable contradiction to the Christology of the Incarnation of the preexistent Son of God…[According to the virgin birth] Christ first became God’s Son through Mary’s conception. [Preexistence] is irreconcilable with this: that the divine Sonship as such was first established in time [as Matthew and Luke teach]. Sonship cannot at the same time consist in preexistence and still have its origin only in the divine procreation of Christ in Mary…[Matthew and Luke] teach that from his birth onward Christ has been God’s Son, because through his birth he is God’s Son…Preexistence cannot be connected without contradiction conceptually with the original motif of the virgin birth…The contradiction of preexistence and Virgin Birth the patristic church apparently did not notice…How was such a transformation of the original faith in Christ possible? How did Christ, exalted through the resurrection from the dead, become the preexistent divine being descending from heaven? This remains to the present a chief problem of the history of the primitive Christian tradition.”

The problem is resolved by believing what Matthew and Luke have to say, and of course Acts and Peter, and then agreeing that Paul and John did not contradict them. The Son of Yahuwah did not exist literally until he was supernaturally begotten in Mary. Luke 1:35 deserves to be shouted from the housetops. Pastors should be urged to give full-length expositions of this verse.

Virginal begetting, the supernatural coming into existence of the person Christ, the Messiah, Son of God, is the unquestioned teaching of Matthew and Luke. It is a hopeless task to try to read a doctrine of Incarnation into them. This can only be done by destroying their testimony. Until recently the clear teaching of Matthew and Luke as having nothing to say about preexistence has been widely accepted. Now recently amazing efforts are being made to make Matthew and Luke believe in a preexisting Son.

Douglas McCready says that the Synoptics teach not directly but implicitly that Christ preexisted as the eternal Son. He turns to Luke but in a section dedicated to discussing the title “Son of God” (several pages) fails to take any note of Luke 1:35.

This is really an amazing phenomenon. That statement of Gabriel provides the Bible’s main key to the status of Christ as Son of God. Few verses actually unpack themselves with the clarity of Luke 1:35. Few verses actually interpret themselves. But this one does. Gabriel and Luke here tell us exactly how, why, when and where the Son of Yahuwah was begotten. They provide a biblical definition of Son of Yahuwah as applicable to Christ. It was “precisely for this reason” (dio kai), i.e. the creative miracle in Mary, that the “holy thing to be begotten is the Son of God.” Matthew is no less clear that the genesis (Matt. 1:18) of Christ is found in the miraculous begetting which is to occur “in Mary” (1:20). To beget means in Greek and English to cause to come into existence. To come into existence means you are not in existence already. Language has no clearer way of telling us this. Matthew has rehearsed the word “beget” some 40 times in his first chapter. He has called the Messiah son of David and son of Abraham and then proceeds to tell us how the Son of Yahuwah came into existence, was begotten, in Mary (1:20), not through Mary. It was the Gnostics who first said that Christ came through Mary, preexisting himself in some mystical way. Orthodoxy, with its notion of a preexisting Son, is in fact harboring a subtle Gnostic tendency. Harnack recognized what has happened. He spoke of the “Gnostic leaven” which orthodoxy never got rid of.

It is the paradox of all paradoxes then that the Nicene Creed actually anathematizes any who say that “before he came into existence he was not in existence.” The creed therefore excommunicates Matthew and Luke — and Paul in Galatians 4:4 and John in I John 5:18. Paul speaks of the Son as “coming into existence” from a woman. And John speaks of a point in time when the Son was begotten, i.e. brought into existence (gennetheis).

No wonder that the very candid and celebrated Roman Catholic commentator on the birth narratives, Raymond Brown, confesses that Luke 1:35 “has embarrassed many orthodox theologians since in preexistence Christology a conception by the holy spirit in Mary does not bring about the existence of God’s Son. Luke is seemingly unaware of such a Christology [he was no Trinitarian]. For Luke conception is causally linked to divine Sonship.”

Dunn is right with us on this point. Dunn incidentally has now given up belief in preexistence even in John’s Gospel. “Luke is more explicit than Matthew in his assertion of Christ’ divine Sonship from birth (1:32, 35). But here too it is sufficiently clear that it is a begetting, a becoming, which is in view, the coming into existence of one who will be called, and will in fact be the Son of God, not the transition of a preexistent being to become the soul of a human baby, or the metamorphosis of a divine being into a human fetus…Luke’s intention is clearly to describe the creative process of begetting…Similarly in Acts there is no sign of any Christology of preexistence.” No Incarnation, according to Luke!

Godet is quite clearly in line with Luke: “By the word ‘therefore’ the angel alludes to his preceding words: he will be called the son of the Highest. We might paraphrase it: ‘And it is precisely for this reason that I said to you…’ We have then here, from the mouth of the angel himself, an authentic explanation of the term Son of God, in the former part of his message. After this explanation Mary could only understand the title in this sense: a human being of whose existence Yahuwah Himself is the immediate author. It does not convey the idea of preexistence.”

Equally frank is Fitzmeyer, the commentator in the Anchor Bible on Luke. He puts his finger on the enormous change that came over the faith as early as the mid-second century: Justin Martyr reads the account in Luke to mean that the preexisting Son, called the power of Yahuwah and holy spirit, engineered his own conception in Mary. Preexisting himself he caused his own existence in Mary. Justin was driven to this by his premise that the Son had been fully active in OT times, as a buffer between the world and the ineffable God the Father who did not directly deal with the world.

Note how clear Fitzmeyer is about what had happened by way of obstructing the plain sense of Luke 1:35 by Justin (150 AD):

“Holy spirit is understood in the OT sense of God’s creative and active power present to human beings. Later church tradition made something quite other out of this verse. Justin wrote: ‘It is not right therefore to understand the Spirit and power of God as anything else than the Word, who is also the first begotten of God’ (Apology 1:33). In this [Justin’s] interpretation the two expressions, spirit and power, are being understood of the Second Member of the Trinity. It was scarcely however before the 4th century that the Holy Spirit was understood as the third person…There is no evidence here in the Lukan infancy narrative of Christ’ preexistence or Incarnation. Luke’s sole concern is to assert that the origin of God’s Messiah is the effect of His creative spirit on Mary.” (He says the elements of the Trinity but not the doctrine itself are found in Luke.)

The Christology of the Synoptics is a barrier to all speculation about a Christ who does not originate in the womb of his mother. Thus the human Christ is established and emerges as a credible model for human spirituality as well as the chosen instrument for human salvation as the lamb of Yahuwah, so constituted by Yahuwah Himself. Yahuwah, rather than councils, should be allowed the freedom to choose what sort of Savior is adequate to the task. I thank Him that He graciously appointed a member of the human race as mediator, savior and judge. “Every High Priest is selected from among men” (Heb. 5:1), not from among angels, and certainly Yahuwah cannot be a High Priest to Himself.

If the Savior has to be God, it is hard to see how the immortal Yahuwah can die (when Yahuwah declares that He is immortal, I Tim. 6:16) and how even a created preexisting holy angel, who also has immortality, can do the job. Only a human being who is mortal can die as Savior for the sins of the world. All the later complex divisions of the one Person Christ into two, will not answer this point.

Moreover, if Christ as the Trinitarians officially say is “man” and not “a man,” who did Mary bear? It is really incredible to believe with orthodoxy that Mary bore “human nature” and not a newly existing son of David. Does the Hebrew Bible promise us “human nature” as the descendant of David or the seed of Eve? Hardly. The Bible simply does not deal in such abstractions, and this fully justifies the remarks of Bart Ehrman and Geza Vermes that “The official line taken by Christianity…was not directly tied to the actual words and deeds of the historical Christ.” “Compared to the dynamic religion of Christ, fully evolved Christianity seems to belong to another world.”

“Polytheism entered the Church camouflaged.”

Harnack puts his finger on the whole problem that arose in Christology when Greek philosophical paradigms were brought in to explain the Bible:

“The church opposed the gross docetism and the tearing apart of Christ. But did not the teaching of a heavenly Aeon, who was incarnated as the Savior, contain a remnant of the old Gnostic leaven? Does not ‘emanation of the Logos’ for the purpose of the creation of the world remind us of the emanation of Aeons [in Gnosticism]? Was not ditheism promoted when two or three divine Beings were prayed to?…A struggle began…which was the history of the suppression of the historical Christ by the preexisting Christ in dogmatics, that is to say the suppression of the real Christ by the fictitious Christ in dogmatics, the triumphant attempt to regiment the faith of the laity by means of a formula incomprehensible to the laity…and to put the mystery of the Person of Christ in the place of the Person himself. When the Logos Christology triumphed [i.e. the Son was read back on to the logos], the traditional view of the supreme deity as One Person and along with this every thought of the real and complete humanity of the Redeemer was in fact condemned as being intolerable in the Church. Its place was taken by the ‘nature’ of Christ which without ‘the person’ is simply a cipher.”

Thus the precious son of David was turned into a cipher. Trinitarians were committed to the view, inevitable once the Son preexists, that Christ was “man” but not “a man.” Who is willing to defend this view when in the future Christ inspects what we have been teaching about him? Happily in our times voices of protest have arisen from many quarters. Notably J.A.T. Robinson of Cambridge who remarks, “John is as undeviating a witness as any in the NT to the unitary monotheism of Judaism.” And from Professor Caird of Oxford, who warns us to beware of any theory which tries to make the Messiah of Judaism into more than one Person:

“The Jews had believed only in the preexistence of a personification. Wisdom was the personification, either of a divine attribute, or of a divine purpose, but never a person. Neither the fourth Gospel nor Hebrews speaks of the eternal Word or Wisdom of Yahuwah in terms which compel us to regard it as a Person.”

They knew this at Qumran also when they wrote “By Yahuwah’s knowledge everything has been brought into being. And everything that is, Yahuwah established by His purpose, and apart from Him nothing is done” (I QS XI.11). And Philo said of Moses, who preexisted in the plan of Yahuwah according to Jews, that he was “by divine foreknowledge the logical embodiment of the Law” (nomos empsychos). No wonder then that John could think of Christ as the embodiment of grace and truth — Yahuwah’s expression.

Finally, this from Roman Catholic professor Roger Haight in his mammoth Christ Symbol of God:

“Once Logos is hypostatized [i.e. made to be a Person before the birth of Christ] one has the problem of a second God.”

That says it all. And if polytheism is a problem, we had better take note.

I remind you that no one reading the eight English translations before the KJV would have been misled into reading “All things were made through him [the Son].” They read “all things were made through it [the word].” Only under the influence of the Roman Catholic Rheims version did the English Protestant versions change the pronoun to introduce a preexisting Son.

To make sense of the God of Scripture we must return to that unitary God of Christ, the Father who in Christ’ words is “the only one who is truly God” (John 17:3), the God of Christ as well as of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

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* * *Daily Mailbag (Miles & Dave)

Miles: Our first question from our daily mailbag is one that I think a growing number of people will be able to relate to, or at least, may have struggled with themselves. It’s from Belinda Murray in the United States. She writes: “Dear WLC, My husband and I are struggling with knowing how to deal with a certain situation that is tearing his family apart. His brother is getting married and his parents refuse to attend because he will be marrying another man.

“My parents-in-law are very conservative Christians and believe that to attend the wedding would be supporting the sin of homosexuality. They are pressuring the rest of the family to boycott the wedding, too. My husband is torn. He and his brother are close and he feels to not go would irreparably damage any relationship he might have in the future with his brother. We want to do the right thing, but aren’t sure what the right thing is. Are there any Biblical principles we could apply to the situation?”

Dave: Hmmm. This is a tricky situation. There’s a potential for a lot of pain on both sides. And with gay marriage becoming legalized in more countries, you can see how this is a situation more and more people are going to be confronting.

Miles: And not just family members, but friends, too.

Dave: I like Belinda’s question, though. It takes it right back to where it should be, out of emotionally charged opinions, and places it squarely in the realm of principle. What are the Biblical principles that apply to the situation? Scripture may not provide a detailed solution for every situation, but if you know the Biblical principles to apply, you won’t go wrong.

Miles: So what are they? If it’s not spelled out in Scripture, how do you know what are the principles to follow?

Dave: Well, in this, as in so many other things, the life of the Saviour is to be our example.

Miles: Oh, yeah. I’m so glad to have that.

Dave: Yahushua did associate with sinners. In fact, that’s one of the reasons the so-called “righteous” rejected Him!

Would you read Luke 15, verses one and two for us?

Miles: Sure, uh … “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”

Dave: This is a particularly revealing passage because here we see that Yahushua didn’t just receive sinners. We all know that, as the Saviour of mankind, He “received” sinners. But here we see that He willingly socialized with them as well.

Now, turn over to Matthew 11 and read verses 18 and 19, please.

Miles: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil.

The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.”

Dave: It wasn’t that Yahushua ate and drank. Everyone has to eat and drink or they’ll die. It’s that He ate and drank while socializing with those whom the so-called “righteous” had rejected for being sinful.

See, the Pharisees wouldn’t accept, let alone socialize with, anyone they felt was a sinner.

We like to think of ourselves as superior to the Pharisees but, when you think about it, a lot of Christians today will react the same way, refusing to socialize with those whose lifestyles they believe are sinful.

Miles: Well, but doesn’t socializing with a same-sex couple, going to their wedding, having dinner at their house, hosting them at yours, whatever … wouldn’t that be seen as supporting them in their sin? I think that may be what many Christians are afraid of doing and why they withdraw from socializing with quote/unquote sinners.

Dave: Unquestionably Yahushua socialized with sinners. He accepted them.

Miles: Right …

Dave: What He did not do was to participate in their sin. He never approved of sin itself. What did He tell the woman caught in adultery?

Miles: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” [John 8:11]

Dave: Yahushua came to save sinners, all sinners: not just your garden-variety sinner, but all sinners. Sinners were drawn to Him because they knew He accepted them despite their sinful status.

Miles: He hated the sin, but loved the sinner.

Dave: Exactly. And, in loving the sinner, He didn’t feel the need to denounce their sin. They already knew they were sinners. What He gave them was love and acceptance, and that’s what we can do, too.

It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, not ours. Our job is to show Yahushua’s love and acceptance through treating everyone with the same loving kindness He did.

Miles: I hear what you’re saying, and it’s beautiful, but, well, what about what Paul had to say about not condoning sin? Romans 12:9 says we’re to “Abhor what is evil and cling to what is good.”

Dave: The thing most people don’t understand is that Paul actually differentiated between non-believers, and those who were believers and yet who still engaged in known sin.

Turn to 1 Corinthians, chapter five, and read verses 9 to 13.

Miles: All right … It says: “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

“But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.

“For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside Yah judges. Therefore ‘put away from yourselves the evil person.’”

Sooo … here Paul is saying the evil person we’re not to associate with are those who claim to be believers, not those who do not claim to be believers.

Dave: Right. Now, how each one should apply this in his or her own, individual lives, is a matter best left between Yah and the individual. If you ask, the He will teach you what to do in every situation.

Miles: Another thing to remember is that love draws. Condemnation drives away.

Dave: There’s a quote I read recently by one of my favorite authors. In fact, give me just a second to pull it up. I read it again recently. It says: “[Yah] has not placed us in the world to be judges, but to show forth the mercy of Christ. It is Satan’s way of doing to call the attention of others to a sinner’s faults, but it is not [Yah’s] way.

“Christ is the only true One who can read the soul, the only One who can measure the repentance and know its genuine worth, and the man who takes upon himself the responsibility of judging the sinner will be accounted in greater guilt than the one he condemns. We are to do everything in [Yahuwah’s] way, not in our own way, and if we err at all, it better be on the side of mercy rather than on the side of severity. Christ … identifies Himself with humanity in every detail of experience. Be careful how you deal with human minds. Christ has paid the ransom money for every soul.”

Miles: Hm. I like that: If we err at all, err on the side of kindness.

Okay! Next question. This comes from … hm. I don’t know who this is coming from, or where. It’s anonymous, but it’s a great question and one I think we’ve all struggled with at one time or another.

The person writes: “I did something I knew to be wrong and now I am tormented with feelings of guilt and unworthiness. I knowingly sinned and now I wish I had never done it. Is there any hope for me? Have I lost my salvation?”

Dave: First of all I want to say that knowingly sinning is not what will keep you out We’re told that Eve was beguiled but Adam wasn’t.

Miles: Oh, that’s right! He knowingly sinned, didn’t he?

Dave: Yes. So knowingly sinning is not what will keep anyone out. It is refusing to repent and continuing in rebellion, rejecting the forgiveness offered, that will keep a person out.

Turn to Revelation 12 and read verses 9 and 10, would you please.

Miles: “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our Theos [or God], and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our Theos day and night.”

Dave: Notice what Satan is called here: the accuser of our brethren. This letter writer is swamped in guilt because Satan is accusing him or her – I’ll just say “him” to make it easier – Satan is accusing him of knowingly sinning.

But we’re all sinners. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of Yah. But that’s why Yahushua was sent in the first place! To seek and to save the lost!

Miles: That’s very true.

Dave: I want to say this, and I’m saying it to everyone, because we’ve all sinned: if you are feeling overwhelmed with guilt, take it as a sign of encouragement that it is not too late to be saved. The very fact that you are wrestling with feelings of guilt says that there is still hope for you because if your heart were truly hardened in sin, if it were too late for you, you wouldn’t be feeling this way! Your heart would be so hardened that the drawing of the spirit of Yah would have absolutely no effect on you.

Miles: That’s the unpardonable sin, isn’t it? To reject and reject salvation until your heart no longer even cares any more.

Dave: When you feel overwhelmed with guilt and doubt, recognize that those feelings are coming from Satan: the “accuser” of the brethren. He knows that all who go to Yah will be accepted and forgiven. So, he tries his utmost to destroy the faith of any he sees whose hearts are inclining to truth and righteousness.

Don’t listen to the devil! Go to Yah anyway, just as you are. Don’t wait to make yourself better. You can’t. What’s more, He doesn’t expect you to. Just go to Him and accept the forgiveness He is offering.

Miles: “He that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” [John 6:37]

Dave: Amen. He’s in the business of saving sinners, friends! That’s what He delights to do!

In closing, I’d like to add just one more Bible promise: 1 John 1:9. I’m sure you’ve got it memorized.

Miles: I do! It’s one of my favorites. It says: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Dave: Not only will He forgive our sins, but He will also cleanse us and restore us back to where we would have been, had we never fallen in the first place. If you’re tempted again, it doesn’t mean you haven’t been forgiven. It simply means that you’re being given a second chance to choose and now, in Yah’s strength, you can choose the right.

Miles: Very true. That’s beautiful.

Well, that’s all we’ve got time for today. If you have a question or a comment, we welcome your letters. Just go to our website at WorldsLastChance.com and click on Contact Us. If we don’t get your question answered on air, we’ll do our best to address it in the Q&As on our website.

Daily Promise

This is Elise O’Brien with your daily promise from Yah’s Word.

In 1989, an earthquake registering 8.2 on the Richter scale devastated Armenia. In less than four minutes, over 30,000 people lost their lives. Unless you’ve lived through a similar experience, it’s difficult to grasp the sheer magnitude of anguish and suffering. People’s worlds are crushed. The lives of any survivors will never again be the same.

It is also from such tragedies that stories of true heroism arise. I want to tell you about one hero during that dreadful time. This man was a father. At the time of the earthquake, his son was at school. As soon as the ground quit shaking enough for him to move, he rushed to his son’s school. There, where the school had been, was nothing but an immense heap of rubble.

I cannot even begin to imagine what must have gone through his mind. Surely shock and horror would have been paramount. Other parents were there, walking around in a daze, calling out their children’s names. But this father reacted differently. The pile of rubble only spurred him into action. He rushed to the back corner of the building where his son’s classroom had been and began to dig.

You’ve got to ask yourself, “Why?” What real hope did he have? What were the chances that his son had somehow miraculously escaped being killed?

What drove this man on was a promise. He had promised his boy he would always be there for him. This was what compelled his hope and gave strength to his body.

As he dug, well-meaning bystanders tried to pull him away.

“It’s too late!” they said. “They’re all dead. You can’t help. Just go home. There’s nothing you can do.”

Even the firemen tried to pull him away, explaining, “There are explosions and fires everywhere. It’s too dangerous. Go home.”

An understanding police officer tried to get him to see reason. He said, “I understand that you’re angry. You’re upset. But it’s over. Go home.”

But the father had made a promise and he was going to keep it. The love this man had for his son kept him digging for eight hours. Then, 12 hours. Sixteen hours … twenty-four … thirty-six hours. Then, in the 38^th hour, the father pulled back a boulder and heard his son’s voice, calling for help.

“Armand!” he screamed.

“Dad?! Is that you? I told them! I told the other kids that if you were still alive, you’d come find us. You promised you’d always be there for me and you did it, Dad!”

A resolute father determined to keep his promise to his beloved son; a stone rolled away to reveal life and freedom. This story always reminds me of events that took place early one morning nearly 2,000 years ago. Our Heavenly Father rolled away a much more significant stone and kept an even greater promise. When He rolled away that stone from the sepulcher and raised His beloved son back to life, He brought to everyone who believes, eternal life and true freedom in Christ!

And the good news is He’s still in the business of rolling away stones!

Now, I don’t know what stones are in your life. I don’t know what’s keeping you from the happiness and fulfillment you desire. But I do know the Father is looking for you right now. He’s sifting through all the rubble and ruin of lives not lived for Him. However big or small the stones and boulders in your life may be, He is willing and capable of rolling them away and giving you new life in Him.

Yahuwah keeps His promises, just as He kept His promise to His own son when He rolled away a stone early one morning 2,000 years ago.

Acts 13, verses 37 to 38 says: “He whom Yah raised up saw no corruption. Therefore, let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins.”

We’ve been given great and precious promises. Go, and start claiming!

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Closing 4 (Miles)

Thank you for listening to this episode on WLC Radio.

John saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. If you wish to join with the redeemed of all ages living a life that measures with the life of Yahuwah, make the choice.

Accept salvation today!

You don't have to get yourself ready. The truth is: You can't. Neither can I.
No one can!

Come to Him just as you are. Don't wait until you've quit sinning. You're not going to get better through your own efforts. Accept Yahuwah's invitation to become a member of his eternal earthly kingdom. When you accept this precious invitation, Yahuwah will gift you with a brand-new heart.

In Ezekiel 36:26, He declares: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

Accepting this priceless gift is the only way for joining His kingdom.

Come to Yahuwah just as you are. He's waiting with arms wide open; eager

to receive all who come to Him.

* * *

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This program and past episodes of WLC Radio are available for downloading on our website. They're great for sharing with friends and for use in Bible studies! They're also an excellent resource for those worshipping Yahuwah alone at home. To listen to previously aired programs, visit our website at WorldsLastChance.com. Click on the WLC Radio icon displayed on our homepage.

In his teachings and parables, the Savior gave no “signs of the times” to watch for. Instead, the thrust of his message was constant … vigilance. Join us again tomorrow for another truth-filled message as we explore various topics focused on the Savior's return and how to live in constant readiness to welcome him warmly when he comes.

WLC Radio: Teaching minds and preparing hearts for Christ's sudden return.