Well, we're going to jump right
into the topic and the flow of this conference, and we have
a good number of questions that have already come in from our
guests out here related to the topic. But as the Q&As go, we
open it up in terms of a theological and biblical free-for-all at
times, and so we'll move the questions around in variety and
try and involve each of you. So the first question, and first
person to jump in, press your button. Was salvation provided
after the fall and before Christ? Was salvation provided after
the fall and before Christ? LAWSON Yes. Abraham believed God, and it
was credited to him as righteousness. Obviously, people were saved. Am I hearing the question correct?
Was there salvation after the fall and before Christ? Of course.
I mean, people were saved in the Old Testament the same way
they were saved in the New Testament, by grace alone, through faith
alone, in Christ alone. They were saved by looking forward
to the coming of Christ, as we're saved by looking back at the
coming of Christ. But there's only one way of salvation,
and anytime, anywhere, anyone is saved, at any point on planet
earth, it is by the Lord Jesus Christ, and by grace and faith
in Christ. If God gives faith and He wants
everyone to be saved, why does He not give faith to everyone?
Sproul, Jr. There's a false assumption in
there somewhere. If He wants to give faith to everyone, He
will give faith to everyone. And if He does give faith to
everyone, then everyone will be saved. The Scriptures make
it clear that not everyone will be saved. Therefore, He doesn't
give faith to everyone. Therefore, He doesn't want to
give faith to everyone for His glory. Does the Bible preclude the existence
of life elsewhere in the universe? MOHLER The answer is no, that's
speculative. What it does make very clear
is that the entire cosmos was created for the drama of redemption,
as Calvin said. The cosmos is a theater of God's
redemption, of what would take place here in order to save sinful
humanity. So we have no reason to believe
there's any other story out there. There's nothing in Scripture
that says there can't be some form of life somewhere, but what
we are told is that the cosmos was created in order that on
this planet Jesus Christ in space and time and history would come
to save sinful humanity. GODFREY In fact, we know there's
extraterrestrial life. There are angels. Don't they
count? Why do people never talk about
the angels? SPROUL You just did. You know that the New Testament
word for angel, angelos, appears more frequently than the word
for sin and for the word for love. So there's no excuse for
not talking about angels. Would you like to put in a good
word for the angelic doctor? Yes. Dr. Mohler, would you comment
on the relevance, influence, significance of traditionism
as relating to creation? Yes. It's significant. There is no doubt that when God
says, let there be life, there's life, and without God's active
will that there be life, none of us would be. We are all created
in that sense. Traducianism has within it a
very important answer to how sin is transmitted in such a
way that it appears not only that there is biblical evidence
for how this is transmitted by that means in terms of the soul,
you know, being explained in its existence in a sinful state
by that way, but it also appears to have something to do with
why Christ is presented in terms of the virgin conception. Now,
it's not tied… I'm not sure exactly how you asked the question, to
be honest. It's not tied just to the existence of the soul
and what we would call original sin, but it's also tied to how
indeed, it's not just creation, it's the historicity of the Genesis
account that would include creation and fall. Am I missing something
in that question? I believe it's a general question,
influence, relevance, significance, as it relates to creation. Well,
let's put it this way. If there have been long debates
over these issues, and neither of these answers gets to a matter
of orthodoxy, so long as all that is affirmed in the Scripture
is affirmed, one could conceivably come up with an explanation for
the transmission of sin that would not require traducing-ism,
I just think it's not the easiest way to get there. It's following
Occam's razor. It's not the easiest way to answer
the question with the biblical evidence. LARSON Are there degrees
of punishment in hell? We're going to be able to answer
a lot of questions today. SPROUL JR.: : I think the New
Testament makes it clear. There are at least twenty-five
references in the New Testament that speaks of the various degrees
of punishment and reward and or reward in heaven relative
to the degrees of sinfulness of sin, even though all sin is
sin, there is still a clear distinction in the New Testament between
those sins that are covered, the multitude of sins that love
covers, that the Roman Catholic distinction between mortal and
venial is not something that we would hold, but it's a distinction
that we would agree with in part. that at least there is a difference
between less and greater sins. And the New Testament follows
that again and again. And the point that we're talking
about here is that we are heaping up our sins against the day of
wrath, heaping up wrath. piling it up, treasuring it up,
according to the Apostle Paul. And so it's not like if I've
committed one sin, if I've heard a guy say, well, I've lost it
after I've already committed that sin, so I might as well
go ahead and finish the action. No, no, no. You're just entering
into a more egregious violation of that previous sin. I once
heard a psychiatrist speak a refutation of the ethics of Jesus because
Jesus said that every sin is equally heinous, he says, and
anybody knows better than that. And I said, Jesus never said
that every sin is equally heinous. Jesus said that every sin is
real sin and violation of the character of God and all the
rest. But even when he says in his explanation of the Sermon
on the Mount that if you lust after a woman in your heart,
he doesn't say, that's as bad as. actually committing adultery,
but what he is pointing out is that even if you've refrained
from the actual act does not mean that you have been totally
obedient to the commandment. And so Jesus expands the implications
and repercussions and consequences of the commission of sin, showing
that the Pharisees in their oral tradition had a simplistic understanding
of the prohibitions of God. But Jesus never said that all
sins were equally heinous. Just to add a couple verses,
Hebrews 2, 2 and 3 says, every sin shall receive a just recompense. So each individual sin would
have the proper consequence to that sin. Some sins are greater
and there is a greater condemnation. than others, and we see that
established in the Mosaic law, an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth. It means that the punishment fits the crime. It's
not an eye for a tooth or a tooth for an eye, but an eye for an
eye, meaning if you take out someone's eye, then you must
replace that eye, so to speak, or a tooth for a tooth. and it's
a matching up of the punishment for that sin, and under the Mosaic
law, there were – I can't remember the exact number, but it's 21,
23, something like that – sins deserve the death penalty, where
other sins did not deserve the death penalty. So there's a distinction
in God's justice as He meets out the punishment for the crime.
What is true in time will be true in eternity. Yeah, Paul
tells us about God's judgment being to each according to His
deeds committed in the flesh. If it's according to, to each,
that would indicate an individual judgment in which there would
be some variation. No one, no one found innocent of anything
less, that is, guilty of an infinite assault upon the holiness of
a righteous and omnipotent God. But I think R.C. put it exactly
right. Even in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, it's false
to say Jesus said this is all the same. LARSON. Dr. Godfrey, what would
you say to a health care worker who must work on Sunday and so
never attends a service on the Lord's Day? Well, our Reformed heritage rightly
has always taught that we're to rest on the Lord's day except
in cases of necessity and mercy. Some of the really rigorous Reformed
churches used to have three services on the Lord's Day, and I suspect
if there are three services on the Lord's Day, a health care
worker might well be able to arrange schedules so you could
get to one. I think Christians, even those very seriously involved
in works of mercy and necessity, should certainly be trying to
arrange their schedules so they are not permanently barred from
worship. There may be a small group of
people who really can never get there for legitimate reasons,
but worship, fellowship with God's people, rest on the Sabbath
day ought to be such a high priority that we really pursue that as
a goal actively and not be content to find reasons to avoid finding
a way to do it. LARSON We hear from many sources
that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God. They don't
listen to Renewing Your Mind, obviously. How should we respond to that
assertion? You know, this frustrates me
because it comes back again and again and again. You know, famously
someone observed years ago that we live in an age that is supposed
to be marked by harmony. Obviously it's not, but nonetheless
the elites keep telling us everybody's got to get along and you have
to say whatever and believe whatever is necessary to get along and
harmonize everything. And the Western secular elites
are in a particular urgency of their own collapsing worldview
to try to argue that there's no theological claim that could
be taken seriously, which is why they can't understand a resurgent
Islam. They have no intellectual equipment with which to understand
a theological truth claim. So they just can't believe that,
so far as they're concerned, this has to be explained by politics
or sociology or something else. And repeatedly we're being told,
you know, you've got to somehow, you know, smooth out the theological
rough places. And so you hear people saying,
obviously the controversy recently at Wheaton College and elsewhere,
you know, Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Well, we
don't. And it's not a question of linguistics.
It's not a question of Allah. Allah was a word for God, simply,
you know, the word used for God before Mohammed ever came along. So it's not, are Allah and God
the same? Actually, Allah and God might
be the same if you're talking with an Arab-speaking Christian
who means the Trinitarian God revealed in Scripture. But the
Allah taught of Islam, that Allah, which is what just about everybody
means, is incompatible with the God of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and we have His testimony for this. Jesus Christ, who just
for one example in John chapter 9 says, if you don't know Me,
you don't know the Father, and He was speaking to Jewish leaders
who came to rebuke Him. And so here's this. Islam teaches,
you see this on the Dome of the Rock Mosque, the Al-Aqsa Mosque,
you see it says there is only one God, Mohammad is His prophet,
and He has no son. The central… one of the central
truth claims, one of the first three statements made to define
Islam is that God has no son, that Jesus Christ is not the
incarnate Son of God, or what we would go on to define as the
second person of the Trinity. And that's where… here's the
question. Can one reject Jesus Christ as
the Son and truly know the Father? The answer to that fundamentally,
logically has to be no. But biblically, we've got Jesus
saying it Himself in John chapter 9. We don't have to extrapolate
this. All you've got to do is read the gospel, and Jesus makes
that clear. And then I have people come back
to me all the time and say, well, then you are saying that Jews
do not worship the same God. And I say simply, I don't say
anything. Jesus said that if you reject
Him and you do not thereby know Him, then you do not know, in
another place He says, never knew the Father. I'm with Jesus. I don't know
anything to say other than what Jesus said, and I think it's
abundantly clear. The difference though is that
Jesus didn't live in our day, where our culture is defined
by relativism and its twin pluralism. And the thing that's most politically
incorrect in our day is to declare exclusivity for Christ or for
Christianity, or to say there's only one way. or for the Bible
to say there's only one mediator between God and man, and that's
the Lord Jesus Christ. So we run right up against that
in the culture everywhere we go. We hear the tsk, tsk, tsk
of disapproval. There's one thing I found, and
you've all found this, that in this culture it's okay for an
individual to affirm his own beliefs. That's all right. But you cannot deny the antithesis. If you deny the antithesis, then
you're in cultural hot water. That's why even in our Christology
statement we have to have affirmations and denials. Not only do we affirm
this, but we deny its contrary. And that puts us on a collision
course with the pluralism and relativism of our day. But to
ask a question like, do Muslims and Christians worship the same
God? Really, it shouldn't take more
than five minutes to answer that question. As you said, just look
at the opening pages of the Koran and compare it to the opening
statements of the New Testament, and you see that antithesis jump
right out at you. You can't eat your cake, have
your cake, and eat it too. That's a straight theological
proposition. God, that's the one other thing,
because I talked to a reporter about this the other day, and
she was completely scandalized. I could just see, you know, the
blood was…she'd met one of these, finally she'd found one. And
she'd heard we existed, but now she found one. And so I decided
I've got to…I've got to… No, these reporters have this National
Geographic moment with evangelicals who really believe in Orthodox
Christianity, and all of a sudden go, wow, they do exist. Fascinating
species. At one point, I simply thought,
OK, I've got to go ahead. I said, I want you to also understand
that I don't think Unitarians worship the same God. I don't
think Mormons worship the same God. And I said, I went on down,
I said, this doesn't…this isn't a list in which we don't think
Muslims worship the same God. We don't think anybody worships
the same God unless they come to Him through Jesus Christ our
Lord. And then there's one Lord, one
faith, one baptism. It's pretty exclusive. Related to this, several different
questions coming in about Islam and Christianity. How should
Christians think about Muslims given the constant threat of
Islamic terrorism? Another question that expands
that a little bit more, as image bearers glorifying who desire
to glorify Christ, how do we respond to this terrorism? How does the individual Christian,
the church, reconcile the kingdom of the cross with the kingdom
of the sword? SPROUL JR.: : That's a big subject.
SPROUL JR.: : It is a big subject, and it has to do with our understanding
of the role that under God government has to play. And we as individuals
do not have the right to seek vengeance, but God has not only
ordained a church, but He also ordains government to protect
from the evildoer and from unrighteousness, and has given the power of the
sword to them, not to us. But He has given the power of
the sword to them. And it is the duty, I believe, even a non-Christian
government, I said, certainly has the responsibility to maintain,
protect the sanctity of life, which our government certainly
doesn't do. We know that. But it still doesn't excuse them
from their responsibility under God. As long as we sanction abortion
on demand, we're not operating under God. We're operating outward
defiance of God and for the very purpose for which any government
is established. And we need to understand that.
MOHLER Can I come back to the first part of that? Because I
do think it's really important that we come back and say, look,
when you see someone who may be dressed or otherwise presenting
as a Muslim, our first thought shouldn't be
potential terrorist. We should be thankful that the vast majority
of Muslims in the world are not engaged in an act of jihad against
us or against the West. But, as I mentioned on the briefing
just recently, you know, this massive study came out saying
we should be thankful that 90 to 95 percent of Muslims around
the world, country by country, say they don't support ISIS,
but that does leave 10 to 5 percent, which means tens and tens and
tens of millions of people who are given to this. The other
thing we have to recognize is that theology matters. Let me just come back
to that again and again. And there is no form of Quranic Islam,
and by the way, there's no other form of Islam, I shouldn't say
like biblical Christianity. But in the Koran, holy war is
built in as a central animating purpose, geographical conquest
and the bringing of conquest. The world is separated between
the world of Islam and the world of war. And thus we have to understand
that we should be thankful most are not actively involved in
terrorism, though we can understand given that theology how many
would be. even their eschatology. But we do have to recognize that
the distinction between Muhammad, who is revealed in the Koran
and bragged about in Muslim tradition as a warrior with a sword bloodied
by many, is in direct contradiction to Jesus as the Prince of Peace
who told Peter to put away his sword. And it is an opportunity
for the preaching of the gospel in an age in which the thesis
and the antithesis have perhaps never more dramatically been
separated and made distinguished in the headlines of every day. We have had at our seminary in
the past a student from Turkey, and he told us the story of a
missionary couple who had been working in Turkey, which has
historically been regarded as one of the safer, slightly more
secular, more tolerant Muslim societies. And the man was out
witnessing for Christ, and someone jumped out of the crowd and cut
his throat and killed him publicly. And the television carried this
story and interviewed his widow shortly after this had happened
and asked her what she would like to say to the nation. And
she said, I would like to say, in the name of Christ, I forgive
my husband's killer. And the Turkish student said,
that one sentence. did more to communicate the essential
nature of Christianity to the Turkish world than any number
of books and missionary activities might have done, because Turkish
culture is a revenge culture. And to have this testimony to
forgiveness was arresting, perhaps baffling, And that's why our
Savior said to us that we're to turn the other cheek, that
we're to love our enemies. However difficult that is personally,
whatever cost that might lead to, that's what we're called
to do and to be. It's not what the American government
is called to do and to be. They are to promote justice.
They're to maintain order. They're to protect citizens.
But we as Christians have to bear a different testimony. So however fearful we are, however
angry we are, we have to try to let the words of our Savior
live in our hearts that we're to love the enemy and turn the
other cheek. And we have to labor for that
because that will be the path to see conversions among Muslims. It'll be the Word of Christ's
grace that converts them, not probably a Christian version
of the sword. In fact, their sense that in
the Crusades Christians were just as bloody as Muslims were
is one of the great impediments to this day to the conversion
or to even hearing the gospel on the part of Muslims. LARSON
As a believer and also a woman who is post-abortive, How can
we as a church combat against the mentality of some sins being
too great or unforgivable? The most negativity and hatred
I've experienced is inside my church walls." I think that's such an important
question to stop and and ponder because, again, we are called
to be clear in recognizing sin as sin and never compromising
the law of God, the holiness of God, the truth of God by saying
sins aren't sins. But the gospel equally says there
is no sin that cannot be forgiven except the sin against the Holy
Ghost. we have to create an environment
where we can both speak against sin, but make clear there is
mercy for the sinner, that there is an appeal to the sinner to
come. And I think those of us in leadership
in churches need particularly to think about that. As we think
about the things we say in church and from the pulpit, we have
to ask, would a homosexual visiting here feel any love? any concern, any compassion. The same is true with a woman
who's gone through abortion. The same is true with so many
different sins. And I think we as Christians
have to really think about it, not for a moment to compromise
the holiness of God, the truth of God's law, but to always try
to be thinking, how will we be heard, and how can we be heard
in a way that would actually draw the sinner to Christ instead
of drive the sinner away? And I'm not saying that's always
easy. But certainly we want to say to any woman here who's had
an abortion, there's mercy and forgiveness full and complete
in Jesus Christ, and that you should be a loved member of His
forgiven community. Yeah, Chris, I think some verses.
To add to that, at the end of Romans 5, where sin does abound,
grace does much more abound. I think of James 2, that God's
mercy has triumphed over His justice. That in 1 Timothy 1,
that even the chief of sinners has been converted and saved. If we had said anyone in the
world would not have been saved, we would have said Saul of Tarsus.
yet he became a trophy of God's grace, and God's grace was put
on display in extraordinary measure because of the greatness and
the depth of his sin. And so, we in the church must
preach the fullness and the freeness of God's grace, the height, the
depth, the breadth, and the length of it. that Ephesians 3 talks
about, that we would come to know the height and the depth
and the breadth and the length of the love of God in Christ,
that it's so deep it reaches all the way down to the depths
of the center. The length of it, it extends
to eternity. The breadth of it is wide enough
to gather in whosoever and the height of it, it transcends our
sins. So, it's in the preaching of
the fullness and the richness of the atonement of Christ, how
He has placated the wrath of God. There is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. and He's taken our sins and placed
them behind His back. He's taken our sins and buried
them in the depths of the sea. He remembers our transgressions
no more. We just must preach that and
apply that and pastorally extend that to those who have committed
sins that they feel cannot be forgiven, as well as for those
in the church to hear as they interface with other people who
have committed extraordinary sins, to receive them as a brother
and sister in Christ. Sproul, could you read that question
again for me, the beginning of that question? As a believer and also a woman
who is post-abortive, comma. Okay, go on. How can we as a
church combat against the mentality of some sins being too great
or unforgivable? SPROUL JR.: : Okay. Was there
something else in there? LARSON. The most negativity and
hatred I've experienced is inside my church walls. SPROUL JR.:
: All right. The most hatred and negativity I've experienced
is inside my walls, the walls of the church. I hope the strongest sense of
disapproval about abortions that is ever
experienced anywhere is inside the church. Abortion, ladies
and gentlemen, is a monstrous evil, and if a woman has had
an abortion, she needs monster repentance. She can still be
saved, but I just wonder if she's mistaking hatred for disapproval. Because, you know, at the abortion
clinics here in Orlando, you know, they hear every day women
come every day and say, I'm a Christian. Jesus is going to forgive me,
and I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to abort my child.
And we hear people constantly making this mantra that if you
really believe in love, and if you really care for us, and are
really believing in the mercy of Christ, you cannot speak against
abortion so strongly. And that scares me to death,
because I believe, just as everybody else has said here, that abortion,
the sin of abortion is not unforgivable. but it must have true repentance
for that forgiveness to be realized. And again, if that person who
asked that question is really experiencing hatred among the
people of God, that's a dreadful thing. It's a horrible thing.
It's a horrible testimony against any church if what we communicate
is hatred. But I wonder if they're confusing
hatred and serious disapproval. I can disapprove of something
without hating somebody. I mean, if God loves me, then He disapproves
of all kinds of things that I do, but I don't come to the conclusion
that He hates me. And this is one of the reasons
why preachers are afraid to preach about this gross and heinous
sin in our culture that's accepted by our culture and actually glorified
in our culture, even by presidential candidates and sitting presidents
and so on who who exalt this kind of behavior. And there's this bandwagon that
if you don't get on it, you're really politically incorrect.
But we have to say as loudly as possible as Christians, we
care about you, we love you, and all of that. But if we love
you at all, we have to tell you that this can send you to hell
forever. What abortion? can send you to
hell forever and will send you to hell forever if you don't
deeply and seriously repent. Chris, can I just add something
to that quickly because I appreciate so much where we are in this
question at the moment. And I have, in the church of
which I have been a part, a woman who had an abortion is now living
as an incredible testimony to Christ and very actively involved
in a local pro-life ministry, taking a very courageous stance.
But here's what repentance looks like in that case. Our confession
of faith at the seminary based upon Westminster says it's an
evangelical grace wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit,
which leads to a repugnance towards sin, a detestation towards sin.
And I saw a sign of this when this woman who had had an abortion
and who has…who repented, came to Christ, repented of her sins.
This is a part of what she tells everybody about why they must
not have an abortion, because not only is this what an abortion
is in terms of the baby, it's what an abortion is in terms
of me. Not only the murder of an unborn human life, it also
means that I have…I've got to tell you this right now. But
this is what she said, and this is what's so powerful, and I
wish every preacher would hear this. She said, repentance means I need
to demand my preacher preach on this, lest anyone else might
follow the same way. I think that's true for divorce.
It's true where there's an evangelical scandal, too many preachers are
afraid to preach about divorce. It should be the people who have
genuinely repented of sinful behavior who tell the preacher,
you need to preach on this. And I agree, if there are people
in the church who are responding with hatred, that's a form of
moralism which is themselves, which questions their own repentance
from their own sins. But I'm just always afraid the
church is going to find a way not to tell the truth about sin
and to call people to faith and repentance. LARSON Should Christians
even use the word marriage to refer to same-gender legalized
unions, or is that giving away to new word definitions? I'm
going to jump on this because this is my everyday life. I would
wish not to use the word marriage, and I will often speak of the
legal fiction of same-sex marriage or so-called same-sex marriage,
etc., but now that the Obergefell decision is handed down, we have
a reality in which I don't believe ontologically a man and a man
can be married. I don't believe morally, ontologically Theologically,
in reality, a woman and a woman can be married. I do have to
concede that even though I believe it was unconstitutional in a
judicial usurpation of politics that was also in violation of
the Constitution and of natural law, the Supreme Court has created
a legal reality known as same-sex marriage. And we don't get to
say everything we want to say every time. So same-sex marriage,
sometimes we're going to have to say same-sex marriage while
we don't mean the same thing as marriage. But we don't get
to say, we don't get to put in all the footnotes if we're answering
a reporter's question or someone like that. And that is one of
the haunting moral realities of this horribly confused age.
I had to tell two men the other day that they think they're married.
That didn't go over too well. Amongst other things, it didn't
go over too well. But, I mean, they really do believe they're
married. They're using the name. And now, horribly, our government
is affirming them in believing that they're married. There is
now a legal reality of same-sex marriage. It goes by the name
marriage. I mean, I was living in a state where the county clerk,
you know, just became a massive thing because of this very issue. So it isn't real, but the law
says it is. We're living in Alice in Wonderland. Larson, how should a Christian
witness to a transgender neighbor who asserts that gender is subjective? Can I ask, because I've been
curious and too lazy to find out on my own, but Al knows everything. So, what percentage of the American
population is transgendered? estimated about 0.4. That's 0.4. That's four-tenths of one percent. Yeah. Now, there's a whole range. It's a spectrum from those who
have been, who have transitioned by their own definition all the
way or someone who's just dressing differently and presenting differently
or at times presenting differently, but transgender is about estimated
at 0.4 percent of the population. R.C. Sproul, Jr. Because just
looking at the question kind of historically and sociologically,
it is intriguing the amount of time and energy that the opinion
makers of America are investing in their concern for the rights
and fair treatment of 0.4% of the population with complete
indifference to any kind of respect for maybe 20% of the population,
who happen to be Christian. When certain presidential candidates
reel off their support for the rights of varying groups, somehow
we never seem to get mentioned. And I wondered if you had any
thoughts about… But I'm also going to ask questions. R.C.
Sproul, Jr. Well, in terms of that, in terms of the question being asked,
and, you know, Bob, I would simply say this. The way a moral revolution
happens And I love the way Theo Hobson describes, and he's a
liberal, how he describes a moral revolution. He says, a moral
revolution only takes place, you can have moral change, you
know, things can change, you can change morality, but a revolution
requires three things to take place. That which was condemned
must be affirmed. That which was affirmed must
be condemned. And the ones that will not now
affirm must be condemned. And that's where we are. So,
whereas homosexuality was condemned, now it is opposition to homosexuality
that's condemned, and the people who will not affirm homosexuality
are condemned. And there was a banding together. It's LGBTQ,
and that's going to be an alphabet soup, just keeps going, in terms
of what's going on here. And so the relative percentage
in their moral and legal case doesn't matter. because it's
all part and parcel of this moral revolution. The transgender issue
is going to be much more pastorally difficult for the church than
homosexuality. And it is because, if you think
about it, a confusion at the level of personal identity with
gender is so basic, it's prior to sex. It is prior to anything
else. And, you know, on the briefing
the other day, I was talking about the fact the New York Times had an
article about the difficulties of transgender people getting
medical care, and it pointed out that, and forgive me, I'm
going to talk biology here for a minute. Don't worry. But it pointed out, and I love
this, it said that personal physicians to transgender women must remember
they have a prostate gland. which means they are not women. But we are being called into
this mass confusion. And look, there are people who
would ask a question like that who genuinely believe that gender
is merely a social construct, but every cell in the body says
otherwise. The entire genetic structure of a human being is
male and female says otherwise. That prostate gland says otherwise.
And that's just a reminder of the fact that we are in a sinful
rebellion. We should expect it to take very
sophisticated ideological forms, and that's what we see. Very
persuasive in the courts. Why is it not persuasive among
us? It's because we operate on the basis of the Word of God
where the Creator defines us and where He has been very specific
about His intention for us as male and as female. And we have
to be heartbroken and pastorally sensitive, but this is an issue
in which the church is going to have to tell people, your
confusion here is not just about gender. It's about who decides
who you are. And here's good news, you were
known before you existed, and God had a plan for your life
in making you male or female, and you will never, ever achieve
wholeness and happiness apart from coming to terms with that
as God's gift, and then understanding that God's ultimate concern is
that you come to be His by means of the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. This is going to vex us. It's going to be very difficult.
We're going to be heartbroken over and over again, and we've
got to risk being heartbroken over and over again, because
if we're to preach the gospel to anybody, we're to preach the
gospel to everybody, and we are sinners as are they. We know
how much they need Christ. And as a word of encouragement
in a Calvinist sense, so don't get too excited, I read an absolutely
fascinating book entitled From Shame to Sin by an ancient historian,
that is a historian of ancient history. who traced in the later Roman
Empire the shift from pagan sexual morality to an increasingly Christian
sexual morality. And he said there were two prime
areas in which the Christian message resonated with pagans
in the ancient world, and that was pagans believed sex was determined,
and pagans believed that sex could quite properly be coerced.
And Christian testimony against sexual determinism and against
sexual coercion is… R.C. Sproul, Jr. You've got to define
sexual determinism. R.P. Sproul, Jr. Well, that the gods had made
you desire what you desired. You had no control over that.
And I thought, how fascinating, because we live in a world where
people are telling us all the time about the biological determinism
of sex and about how it's right, in effect, to coerce people into
sex. People are being coerced all
the time because they're told, if you're not having sex, there's
something wrong with you. And the Christian message broke
through that paganism. That's the good news, and changed
the culture. That's the good news. The Calvinist
part is it took about 300 years. So, let's settle in for the long
haul. Let's not lose heart, and if
the Lord tarries, let's keep at this, because our message
is a liberating, joyful message, not a message that's going to
harm people. Amen. Thank you all. Would you
thank our panelists this afternoon?