Bible Q&A • Episode 49

Hi everyone, welcome back. I'm Pastor Paul LeBoutillier, here with my wife Sue. We're back with more Bible questions. What do we have first?

Joselle asks,

Well, she's asking two questions there. First of all, do I believe it should be part of the Bible? No, I don't. But as far as my overall thoughts on the book of Enoch, this has really been a question that has come up fairly regularly. It's kind of funny. Things like this, some of these books just kind of rise in popularity for a while, I suppose. People start talking about them, and people are drawn to what they consider to be mysteries. Exactly. There might be something in this book that we need to know, that sort of thing. First of all, there was a historical person named Enoch. He was considered to be, I think it was the great-grandfather of Noah. So we're talking pre-flood. He is one of only three people in the Bible who was taken bodily into heaven. They are Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus. But, of course, only one of two people that did not experience physical death, and then was taken into heaven. I suppose the fact that he's one of two people who lived on the earth and didn't die makes him a rather mysterious sort of person. But there's a problem with the book, and actually it's books, but the book of Enoch. Are you ready for a big word? Yeah. We consider the book of Enoch to be pseudepigraphal. The first part of that word is pseudo, which comes from pseudo, meaning false. And essentially what that means is that pseudepigraphal books make a claim to authorship, which ultimately turns out to be false. And, you know, these books usually pick some fairly popular, well-known individual, claim that that person is the author, and then they get widely distributed. Actually, there are three books that go by the name of Enoch. One of them, and this is the one most people are referring to, and we'll call it First Enoch, okay? This book only exists in the Ethiopic language, and it is considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but nowhere else. Well, there's one other group that I think accepts it. So what you mean is it's actually in their Bible? It's in their Bible, yeah. Yeah, they consider it to be, you know, part of the Word of God. There's also what we'll call a Second Enoch, and it is titled The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. And so that's got to draw people. And then there's a book called Third Enoch, we'll call it Third Enoch, and that is actually titled The Hebrew Book of Enoch. Interestingly enough, that's not the one that Jude quotes. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But it is pretty clear that people read the Book of Enoch. And again, this is Enoch 1. And the reason I say it's pretty clear people read it is because we found fragments of the Book of Enoch in the Dead Sea Scrolls, or along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, fragments. And of course, as I mentioned, Jude, a biblical writer who we believe to be the earthly brother of Jesus, quotes from Enoch 1. And so that has obviously created... An interest. Well, an interest, and even more than an interest, it's even created a question to say, if an inspired biblical writer quoted the Book of Enoch, does that mean the Book of Enoch is therefore inspired? And that is actually a good question, but I need you to know, and I think everybody needs to know, the Book of Enoch has never been considered inspired by biblical scholars. And that's just the simple message, okay? So if you were to read the Book of Enoch, here's the other question I get a lot. Should we read it? Should we study it? Well, again, it's pseudepigraphal, meaning that the author... We don't know who the author was. It claims to be written by Enoch, but it wasn't, okay? So is it worth reading? Well, you know, like I said, it was widely read at some time during history, enough that it's even quoted slightly in the Bible. You're gonna find in the Book of Enoch a lot of apocalyptic information. Talks a lot about judgments. Talks a lot about end times. And, you know, it also includes some very fanciful stories. For example, the Book of Enoch claims to explain the origin of the Nephilim from Genesis 6. People love that. Oh man, I tell you, the Nephilim, that's a big topic. And so... But I call it fanciful because the Book of Enoch, if it's gonna be believed, you'd have to believe that the Nephilim were taller than the mountains. The Nephilim, according to the Book of Enoch, were like 4,500 feet tall. Yeah. So anyway, I personally don't think that it's worth studying. I think that the 66 books of the Bible that we have have enough good information, important and nourishing information, that we should spend our time focusing on those. And not any apocryphal or pseudepigraphal works of literature.

Yeah. Okay, good. Well, you gave your thoughts. That's what she asked for.

That's what she asked for. She's gonna say, I'm sorry I asked. You did a good job.

Allie says,

Well, you know, that's a good question. We're going to be serving the Lord. The Bible actually says the saints will be reigning with Jesus during the millennial kingdom. But the Bible doesn't go into detail as to what that means. I assume that, yeah, we probably will. I don't think we're gonna be sequestered somewhere off on a mountaintop, you know, hanging out, you know, humming. I think we're gonna be busy during the millennial kingdom. And so I think it is a safe assumption to say, you know, since there are gonna be people on the earth during that time who are mortal, that, yeah, we will be involved in some capacity. What capacity that is, we're just simply not told. But we'll find out.

We'll find out, yeah. Leo says,

Yeah. And so basically what's being asked here is, as I'm waiting on the Lord, how much effort that I might put forth to bring about an answer or whatever is wrong. Right. It's very, you know, this is gonna depend on the person. It really comes down to what's in your heart rather than more what you do, okay? Because waiting on the Lord is a heart matter. It's a willingness of the heart to allow the Lord to make His will known. I don't think waiting on the Lord has to be completely stationary or motionless on our part, actless, you know? I don't know if that's even a word, but I think you know what I mean. But different people are going to draw that line, maybe in different places, as to whether or not I'm jumping ahead. Because that's what a lot of Christians do. We pray about something, and then we jump ahead. And George Mueller used to call this working out your own deliverance. And he'd say, we pray to the Lord to deliver us from a situation, and then we get busy to work out our own deliverance. I do think you have to be careful. When you've prayed about something and said, Lord, lead me in the way that I'm to go, if you get up and start busting down doors, you know, you're basically communicating to the Lord that you weren't really willing to wait around for an answer. Sure. You know, so... But there can be, to use your analogy, there can be a big difference between busting down doors and wiggling doorknobs.

Very good, very good analogy.

And just see, well, is this the area of success? Is this the area where the Lord is going to lead me? Let me open up this door and see if this might work. Many times I've prayed and said, Lord, if it's not a door, you want me to go through it? through, then don't, let it be locked, locked shut. And so in that case, as I'm wiggling doorknobs, as you say, I'm trusting that the Lord is gonna keep those doors closed if it's not according to his will. So again, it comes down to a matter of the heart, yeah.

Okay, well, Sandra is from Tanzania and she says,

Well, you know, wars have been going on for a long time. And if we're gonna start feeling bad about, you know, the nation of Israel because of war, we're gonna have to, you know, go way back into history and start feeling bad there. I would say the first step, you know, for Sandra is stop listening to the news about Israel. Stop being programmed using the word. She's telling us here, she's admitting that, you know, or if you're gonna listen to the news, listen to news sources that are not clearly anti-Israel. And that's, I think that's probably important. But secondly, understand this, our love of Israel does not negate the fact that we may at times disagree with direction or decisions that Israel makes. And just because we see and recognize in the Bible that God has a plan for Israel and that there is still a special nation status for Israel that is yet unfulfilled in the Bible, that doesn't mean that they get a free pass to do anything they want, say anything they want, go anywhere they want or to fight any wars that they want. We still have the right, even though, you know, we love Israel to say that was wrong. They shouldn't have done that. I think you can be critical. You know, it's kind of like in your family, you love your family members, but you don't always agree with what they do or what they say, and sometimes you even confront them and you say, ah, that was wrong. What you did there, what you said there, that was wrong. Now, you're not saying that because you no longer love the person. In fact, you may even be saying it because you do love them. But the point is you can love someone or even a nation and not be in agreement with everything they do. Hey, I have lived in the United States of America all my life and I love this country, but I don't agree with everything this country has done. And there are times, not from the pulpit, but in my conversations with others, I've been very critical of some of the decisions made by the United States of America. That doesn't negate my love. So I think there's a pressure that people put on themselves to say that, well, if we're going to support Israel, we have to support them in everything they ever did, said, and were. Well, that's just not the case. So I think we need to kind of get over that particular issue. Hey, if you're critical of some of the things they're doing, so be it, but that doesn't mean we hate. It's an enormous difference between hating a country and just being critical and critically thinking about a country. Right? There are a lot of people and there are a lot of news outlets that clearly hate Israel and you should not be listening to those because they're going to feed your heart in very negative and dark ways, okay? Destructive ways. So yeah, be careful there. But again, you're not going to agree with everything they do and that's okay.

Yeah. Martha asks,

You got to wonder, don't you, if there's something behind this question. Clearly, clearly there's something in the culture, in her microculture there that is speaking to her because this is not a question we would ever-

Or a teaching maybe that they've heard about, you know, yeah.

You know, you got to remember that the men that Jesus called were poor fishermen. They were considered the lower class financially in Israel. And I mean, there were a few of them that probably had some money. Maybe Matthew had some money, but you know, Peter, John, James, Andrew, they were poor. Yeah. And so the answer to Martha's question is no. Financial status means nothing. Can I be clearer about that than that? Anyone who tells you that financial status is important to be a leader in the church, a Bible teacher, a pastor or whatever is 100% wrong and should be rebuked for their attitude because there's nothing in the Bible to support that opinion. Now, can we take this over to the other side of the line and say, what about someone who is deeply in debt? Okay, now, if somebody is like wildly in debt, then, you know, here's the deal. That may not disqualify them from being a pastor from the standpoint of their calling, but they're going to have issues that are going to be distracting them from the ministry because when you're in debt and you've got people calling you on the phone and, you know, debt collectors and that sort of thing, plus you also might be motivated to talk about money because you need money personally. So I think that it's important for money to have its rightful place in the heart of a Christian leader, and that means it's not an issue. Right. You know, if money is too big of an issue to a Christian leader, you shouldn't be a Christian leader. You shouldn't care about money. You should know beyond a shadow that God's going to take care of you. He's going to supply for all of your needs, right, along those lines, and you don't have to harp on people about money and be focused or fixated on it at all, including saying things like, you should have a lot of money if you're going to be a leader in the church. That is ridiculous, you know?

Well, you can't prove that biblically.

Well, in fact, the opposite can be proven. Sure. You know, Peter and John, you know, walk up to this, you know, lame man in the courtyard of the temple, and he's looking for money. The guy is a beggar. He's begging for money, and Peter and John say to him, silver and gold have I none, but what I give you, what I have, rather, I give you. Rise and walk in the name of Jesus. They basically told him, we don't have any money, you know, to give you, but here's what we do have. We have Jesus, so yeah, yeah, there you go.

Good, and Mickey says,

That's a good question. I have gotten it before, and what I will tell Mickey is what I've said to several other people. The Bible doesn't specify who is qualified to baptize. You know, Philip was a deacon, or that word basically means servant. He was one of the original guys who was called, the original seven, to help distribute food to the widows, and that was kind of his job, but yet he had another calling. He was an evangelist, and when he brought a particular Ethiopian man to Christ, he just baptized him on the spot, you know, and so there's nothing in the Bible that says only ordained pastors can baptize, only church leaders can baptize. That's what I'll tell you, is that the Bible doesn't specify those things, and so because it didn't see fit to specify, I would say, yeah, if the situation comes up, go for it.

Sure, that's good. Stephanie says,

Huh, interesting, isn't it? I'm assuming that she was at the funeral of a believer. Sure. And you know, a funeral of a believer should be a happy time. It's, there's grieving going on because we're gonna miss this person terribly until we're reunited, but we're going to be reunited, and that person is with the Lord because they put their faith in Jesus Christ, and so, you know, we have been to many funerals over the years that were joyous occasions. Yeah. You know, Paul, the apostle Paul, called going to be with the Lord, and I quote, better by far. Or far better, depending on the translation you're reading. Do we believe that? At a funeral, do we believe that a born-again person who has since passed away is in a better place now because they're with the Lord? Well, yeah, we should believe that. And because of that, we should rejoice. Again, that doesn't negate grieving the loss of a loved one. Grieving is normal and natural, and it should happen. It needs to happen. It does, and I think one of the practical applications here for Stephanie seems to have her spiritual head on a little bit, maybe straighter than some of the other people around her. But you have to be so delicate and careful with your expression of grief around other people's expression of grief. Because you may be in a completely different orbit than they are, and we need to just be really sensitive and not try to necessarily cheer other people up yet. Your attitude could come off hurtful. It could. Like not recognizing their grief. And so she asked, were my feelings wrong? No, there are no right and wrong feelings. There may be a wrong expression. Yeah. And so that's probably the warning in that situation when you are around other grieving people. If you get up at a funeral and cheer and clap, that might be a little, a bad expression. But just being happy that the person is with the Lord is recognizing what the scripture says.

Right. Linda says,

This is so hard for people to understand. Satan knew exactly what was going on. Satan heard every, he heard all the, he knew the prophecies. He knew the word of God. He quoted it to Jesus. What people don't understand is that Satan couldn't do anything but what he did. We treat Satan like he had a choice in the matter. He didn't have a choice in the matter because he had been given over to his evil. You know, we're told that Satan doesn't just act evil. He is evil. A person who is given over to this sort of an evil position, they can't do anything but evil. Even if they know they're gonna lose, they're still gonna act the way that is consistent with their character. You know, so, but again, people put themselves in Satan's position and you can't do that. Sure. Because you're thinking rationally and reasonably, Satan can't do that because he is pure evil. And he will always attack, even if he knows it's gonna hurt himself in the end. He still, he has to, he has to attack. Yeah. It's a mind bender.

Yeah, it is a mind bender for sure. Ketley says,

This is not a short answer. Obviously, as we refer to Satan and Lucifer, they are one and the same. So to this person, Ketley, I would say the person who corrected you was saying the right thing. Now, here's the interesting part. What if I told you that the name Lucifer isn't in the Bible? Well, I would immediately get a lot of very loud objections from people. And rightly so, because in the King James Bible and in the New King James Bible, the name Lucifer, actually not the name, let me back up, the word Lucifer appears, okay? But it appears for a very specific reason. And it appears, by the way, in a passage in Isaiah. It's Isaiah 14, 12. Let me read the New King James version for you. Again, this is Isaiah 14, 12, and it says, how you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. And Lucifer is capitalized there as a proper name. It was never meant to be a proper name, okay? Here's the interesting thing. And I wanted to tell you how this came about. Because Isaiah did not use the word Lucifer in that passage, okay? He used a Hebrew word that means shining one, okay? Now, it was a word essentially used to mock someone who was prideful. Oh, shining one. In other words, it's kind of like saying, you think you shine, you know, but you don't, okay? So it was almost used in a mocking sort of a way. When the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, about 400 years before the time of Christ, that original Hebrew word that Isaiah used, meaning shining one, was translated into a word that meant bringer of the dawn or morning star, okay? So that's what the Greek said, bringer of the dawn or morning star. Well, we're not done translating. Because one of the popes in about the fourth to fifth century AD, of course, commissioned a Latin version of the Bible. We call it the Latin Vulgate. And this was done by one man, a man by the name of Jerome. Now, Jerome came to this passage in Isaiah, and he simply translated the word that was given him in the Hebrew. And he probably consulted the Greek as well, because that was there. And he simply gave the Latin word, okay, which is basically Lucifer, okay? But it was not a name. It was a word. And it essentially meant morning star, okay? How you have fallen from heaven, oh, morning star, right? So again, it's still not a name yet. It's just, it's a Latin word. Now, fast forward to 1611, AD when the King James Bible was being written. Well, when they came to that passage in Isaiah, rather than translating the Hebrew, the original Hebrew, they just transliterated the Latin. And so they put Lucifer in there, okay? And eventually over the years, it became popularized as a proper name. But it was never meant to be a proper name. Lucifer is not a proper name. It was the transliteration, and by the way, I need to explain transliteration very quickly. A translation means when I take a word in another language and I bring it into my language, and it means the same thing. A transliteration is where you take the individual letters or sounds of a word and give it the letters and sounds of the language you're trying to bring it into. And there's a lot of words in the Bible that are transliterated, like Abba. Abba means father. It's actually Aramaic. The word amen is both Aramaic and Greek, and it means let it be, let it be so, okay? So actually it's Aramaic and Hebrew, excuse me. But that's transliterated, okay? It's not translated. If they translated it, every amen would be let it be so. But they don't do that. They just put in amen, all right? Well, that's what the King James translators did with the Latin vulgate, the Latin version of that word. They put in Lucifer, never meaning it to be a proper name. It became that over the years. So the bottom line is that the Latin word for morning star became the popular choice for the name that we gave to Satan. So coming back to the original, if I were to say to you, Lucifer, the name Lucifer is not in the Bible, I'm actually saying what's true. It is not in the Bible. It's in the Latin version. It's a transliterated word from the Latin that was never meant to be a proper name.

That is quite a history lesson. That's very good. And probably way more than we asked for.

But I hope it's at least interesting to some people.

Oh, I think it's terribly interesting. Our final question comes from Donald. It's a very short question. We'll see if it's a short or long answer. "Can you explain what lordship salvation is?"

Yes, I can. Lordship salvation is the belief that if Jesus is not your Lord, He cannot be your Savior. Okay? Now there've been some very popular teachers over the years who've held this position. I don't personally hold to it. There's nothing in the Bible to support it necessarily. But in my own life, I remember giving my life to Jesus at about the age of 15. Right. And no, I knew. I knew that I knew that I was born again. I knew that the Holy Spirit had come to reside in me. I had an assurance of my salvation. Now, I did not crown Jesus Lord for about, till about the next nine to 10 years. I lived my own life. I went my own way. I did my own thing. For much of that time, I was married to you, or at least half of that time. And so you can testify that I was living the life of an unbeliever, and Jesus was not Lord of my life. Paul was Lord of my life. And I think that that is a common path for many people. You're not alone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I've heard from many people who came to Christ, really truly came to Christ, gave their lives to Jesus in the sense of believing that He is the Savior, their Savior, and they personally accepted it and knew that their sins were wiped out, but did not truly surrender to Him as Lord for a period of time. And sometimes it's a protracted period of time, like in my case. So I don't believe in Lordship, salvation, or the idea that if He's not Lord, He cannot be your Savior. I think He can. I think you can be saved, and you can still be doing your own thing, and being Lord of your own life. But eventually, you're going to hit a brick wall. Most of us do. And we come to terms with how our own Lordship has not served us very well. And we finally get around to crowning Jesus Lord of our lives.

Yeah. Very good. That's a wrap for today.

Okay. Well, that's episode 49. We've been doing this a long time.

Well, 49 times at least.

Well, I think that's not even all of them. I think there was a few years before that where we just didn't put numbers to it.

I think you're right.

So yeah. Anyway, but what this means is, you guys still keep having questions. And as long as you have questions, we'll have answers. At least we'll do our best. So if you have a question, send it to us at questions at lifebibleministry.com. You can also question or send your question in from our website, which again, is lifebibleministry.com. And by the way, if you haven't visited our website, please do. You're gonna find way more resources than you have on YouTube alone. YouTube only has videos. On our website, we have discussion questions, transcripts, study guides, women's study books.

Can I add something too with our upgraded website, not to discourage questions coming in, but many of people's questions can be answered by using the search bar.

You know, that is an excellent point. Can I give you a, for example, it seems like at least once a month, someone writes to us and asks about cremation. All you have to do is go to the search bar, type in that word, and you're gonna find all of your resources on that blog post that you've written. So there are some simple questions that viewers can find an answer. Water baptism. Type in water baptism. Type in the Sabbath. Yeah, any of those key words, type them in our website in the search bar, and you will find messages, articles, and other things that deal with those and answer those questions. So very good point. Very good point. So anyway, if you don't find it there, send it in to us, and we'll do our best to answer your question next time we gather. And until then, God bless you. Have a good rest of your day.

Bye-bye.